Claiming a Place for Ethnic Literature

Several years ago, when poet William Oandasan was working toward his master of fine arts degree from Vermont College, a professor gave him this advice: Cut the references to your American Indian heritage and your poetry will improve.

The tip was incomprehensible to Oandasan, who was raised in the Yuki tribe of Northern California. Setting aside the fact that “my background will always color what I write,” he explained that “if you draw the ethnic clothing off language, leaving only what’s understood by everyone, you add nothing to people’s knowledge of their neighbors. That’s the opportunity of literature.”

He disregarded the advice, and in 1985 his master’s thesis, “Round Valley Songs,” won the American Books Award from the prestigious Before Columbus Foundation, a multicultural literary arts organization.

Oandasan, along with 80 other ethnic writers and scholars, recently converged on UC Irvine to expand the power of ethnic literature and promote cross-cultural understanding. Their strategy: to claim a place within the American literary mainstream by getting their work into high school and college curricula.

Co-sponsored by the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States and UCI’s Program in Comparative Culture, the first national MELUS conference brought together black poets and Hispanic novelists, Asian-American critics and writers of Creole and Slovenian extraction--in short, a mingling of literary voices and traditions as diverse as America itself.

Almost all are also teachers. From every region of the country, they traveled at their own expense to present their work to one another and to come away with new ideas and new texts for their literature classes.

Teachers of African-American literature quizzed Asian-American specialists on what Asian books to teach. They swapped titles and syllabuses and tips on presenting oral and bilingual texts to their students. They argued and debated into coffee breaks and over dinner, through an evening of ethnic films, into an afternoon of poetry readings. And they parted reluctantly last weekend, carrying home one another’s books, critical essays and addresses--along with a new feeling of community.

It was the lack of such a community--or any forum at all for the serious consideration of ethnic literature--that led English professor Katharine Newman to found MELUS in 1973. Several years earlier, she had begun working multiethnic literature into her classes at West Chester College in Pennsylvania. She did that, she explained in her keynote speech at UCI, “as much in vexation as in vision when I saw that my own students didn’t know about their ethnic heritage.”

But even more frustrating to Newman was ethnic literature’s being ignored by the Modern Language Assn., the most prestigious national group of college and university scholars. In 1972, Newman said, the group held only a single session on black-American literature before its annual convention began.

In response, with 35 kindred spirits and a grand ambition, Newman founded her organization. “We pledged to change the American literary canon--what teachers teach--to include anything written by an American, no matter what the language,” she said.

Since then, MELUS has picked up nearly 400 new members, started a scholarly journal, a newsletter (which Newman, now retired from teaching, edits and UCI prints and distributes) and a biographical directory, which helps members identify and contact one another. “Today,” said Newman proudly, “no one would dare put out an American anthology without including ethnic writers,” a fact she partly attributes to the activism of MELUS members.

Persistent Obstacles

But while the conference itself demonstrated the strong community of scholars that has developed around MELUS, it also pointed out many persistent obstacles to the fulfillment of Newman’s pledge. Participants repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with current ethnic representation in literary anthologies, a serious handicap to teaching. Latino poet and UC Berkeley English and ethnic studies professor Gary Soto called anthologies “a cold market. The editors decide, ‘We need so many blacks, so many Asians, so many Chicanos.’ But they don’t do any homework. What they include is often marginal in quality and experience. It misrepresents American history and people.”

Though MELUS is actively involved in producing an “alternative” anthology, “Restructuring American Literature,” edited by Paul Lauter, its publication is still a year away. Meanwhile, books whose ethnic character might limit their audiences are sometimes hard to publish commercially, with the result that they are often printed by small presses or at their writers’ expense.

Doris Davenport, a black poet who teaches at the University of Oklahoma, pointed out that the successes of black writers such as Alice Walker are “isolated incidents. I’m still waiting to get my own work published.” To get her two books into print, Davenport had to publish them herself.

Few such books win attention from literature teachers, who rely on large commercial publishers for their texts.

Ethnic Writers Ignored

“The literary canon,” said Alejandro Morales, novelist and UCI professor of Spanish, “is created by the Doubledays of this country.” Large publishers, he added, ignore ethnic writers “who deal in unsafe zones,” disregarding mainstream rules on how and what to write.

Yet after hearing Davenport read her work, Margaret Collanan of Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa was enraptured. “If only I had the funds to bring her to my class,” she mourned. “If my students could hear what I just heard, they couldn’t fail to be excited about poetry. I’m definitely going to teach these writers in my next class.”

Student interest, or lack of interest, in ethnic literature was another topic of debate. In a pre-conference interview, Prof. Dickson Bruce cited a trend in some colleges toward shutting down ethnic literature programs begun during the 1960s and ‘70s. Bruce, who teaches in UCI’s Comparative Culture Program--founded in 1969 and still unique in its general comparative approach to ethnic study--said the trend to dismantle such departments has been encouraged by the “vocational orientation of students today. They’re looking at where the jobs are.”

Morales, participating in a panel on common concerns of ethnic writers, was more blunt. “If they don’t read me, no importa. But our writing is a mirror. When the dominant culture looks in and they don’t see themselves, they don’t like it. Our ethnic literature reflects a different face to them.”

Ethnic scholars say they also often feel ignored. “We’ve got a morale issue as professionals,” said Gayle Fujita of the University of Hawaii. “You can feel very beleaguered in your university when the focus of your work is something others might regard as minor.”

Increasing Racism

Some participants related this attitude to increasing racism on their campuses. Others, such as Morales, described the growing climate of racism in America. “They’re off and running with the English-only laws,” Morales said.

The MELUS conference, while acknowledging these tensions, was pervaded by a sense of cross-cultural kinship, a relaxed sharing of aspirations and self-scrutiny.

“How can we take advantage of our allies out there?” asked UCI’s John Liu, referring to white teachers who want to teach ethnic writers. “They say they run across hostility, for example, when they tell blacks they teach black literature.”

“This isn’t our literature,” replied Thomas Vallejos from the University of Houston. “It’s everybody’s. We can’t complain about not reaching the mainstream if we don’t try to address them.”

Doris Nelson of Cal State Long Beach identified herself as “an ex-WASP” as she shyly stood up to testify. “Teachers like us can perform a valuable service in helping students expand their horizons,” she suggested, smoothing her pale blue shirtwaist. “I look so traditional, it’s kind of a kick for students to hear what comes out of my mouth when I talk about ethnic literature.”

Feeling of Connection

It was a kick for the audience as well as they applauded Nelson in the closing hours of the conference. As time grew short they seemed to want to hold on to their feeling of connection.

But soon poet Mitsuye Yamada, a conference organizer, was at the podium, announcing the start of the poetry readings. “The works of creative writers, providing work for the scholars to write about and the teachers to teach about, are really the substance of MELUS,” Yamada said.

Scholars, teachers and fellow writers abruptly fell silent as Silvester Brito of Tarascan and Comanche Indian heritage adjusted his string tie and began “Charm for a Fallen Warrior”:

... Rise to the eye and clear wisdom of the sacred golden eagle...

As successive poets read--Rose Mary Prosen, a Slovenian-American; Kelli Bond, a Pacific Asian-American--an image from Katharine Newman’s keynote speech seemed resonantly true.

“American literature is not an orchestra where everyone plays in tune,” Newman had said. “‘We don’t play in tune.”

Sybil Kein, whose lilting English slid into rumbling Creole from time to time like a voodoo chant, was clearly not in tune with American Indian William Oandasan, patiently bent to the microphone, methodically portioning out “the songs of the old ways.”

The music was complex, individual, each voice partly shaped by a past that had become the present.

Like the MELUS conference as a whole, it was a music that had much to tell everyone who listened; much to tell, as one listener put it, “about the different ways that we are similar.”

Here are poems by two participants at the conference held by the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.

“ACOMA”

By William Oandasan, 1987

For many distant travelers

The way to Acoma is merely

Interstate-40

A fourlane sear

Of asphalt

Stitched in between wire

Fences and telephone lines,

Running like a scar

Across the flesh

Of an ancient landscape;

They almost never know

The old way south by north

Where you can fly today

From a uranium stripmine

To the sacred Sky City

Standing on top

White Rock Mesa.

Corn and ritual predate

The cradle of history there

Like a breathing shrine,

And the way to Acoma for many

Is only curiosity,

Or a refreshment stop.

But for those who still

Travel the four directions,

The way to Acoma

Is always the way. “to the ‘majority’

from a ‘minority’ ”

By doris davenport, 1987

i did not come by faith.

but if you must know,

i came by any means i could

& any means necessary.

i came by bus

by mastercharge

by crying and carrying on.

i came by leaning on Momma who leaned on the

lord who leaned on southern comfort

i came

in crowds

in secret code

in raging and wrath sometimes i came,

barely, and alone, now

it ain’t y’r business,

how i came & i can’t stand

nosey people but

this is your business:

i am not

going back.

so here i am.

but what i am,

ain’t your business.