Simon Ortiz

In looking at “From Sand Creek” we notice how history functions as prose and how personal histories/ethnic histories function in poetry. Ortiz seeks to complicate the historical monologue and create a dialogue between personal, subjective histories and objective, depersonalized History. How does dialogism function here? In comparison to African-American versions of dialogism?

What is the importance of poetry and prose working together in Ortiz’s work? Why do the poems lack titles? Consider the excessive amount of blank space and ‘gaps’ inside this collection and think a little about the impact of this space and textual gaps. What do such gaps help symbolize?

How does Ortiz portray double-consciousness in his work? What are some examples of this? How does he establish a balance between violence and non-violence here?

He seems to be addressing multiple questions with regard to identity-formation in this work. How does he move between his Native American and American identity? How can you relate his hybrid-identity to Kingston or Hughes, or any of the writers we have read? What is the function of the ‘hybrid’ individual in ethnic literature? What kinds of ‘ethical dilemmas’ is Ortiz presenting throughout his work?

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On Writing

This space has been created to allow all of you to communicate with one another (if you wish to do so) on your upcoming paper topics. Use your comments to either discuss your papers, ask questions, talk about thesis formation or any problems you are coming across. Please know that you are the authors of these posts and therefore no one can take your ideas and use them as their own.

Here is a useful MLA formatting guide: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/

Feel free to share useful articles/information with your peers and with me!

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Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

The excerpts for this week come from a larger work, entitled ‘Dictee,” a novel/history/fiction/nonfiction. The novel is performative and contains photographs, letters, images, prose, poetry, a combination of many genres and representations. Many classify “Dictee” as an autobiography, much like Kingston’s Woman Warrior. How do these two texts compare with one another? What does Cha employ that Kingston does not?

This novel seeks to show how identity is created through language, and how history is often a compilation of subjective images, words, characters and themes. Cha seeks to complicate the notion of a coherent self and a coherent history, blurring the boundaries of personal and national identity.

YU Guan Soon was a 16 year old female warrior who led a resistence movement in Korea. How does the section about her help empower the female inside the historically masculine warrior-category? How does this compare with Kingston’s use of the swordswoman? How is Cha reshaping history here?  How does language become a tool for creating and understanding history? Cha seems to be very aware of the absence of woman in both historical and familial histories, how does her novel (or what we have read of it) seek to forcefully inscribe women and attribute them with voice?

How do we read photographic images? How are images read differently than words on a page? Do images carry greater weight than words? Why? (Try to think back to the Inada image in Camp)

Cha uses a mixture of colonizing languages (English, French, Japanese) in order to create her narrative. What impact do these language have on the overall narration? How is she critiquing the colonizer (the power-holder) through this inventive use of multiple languages? There are multiple identifications of ethnicity here, as well as multiple gender and national identifications, how does she move between these many categories? Why does she include so many different categories of identity? What is identity for Cha?

How did you read the ‘Petition from the Koreans of Hawaii to President Roosevelt”? Is it history? Is it a historical document similar to the one Inada used in Legends?

How does this work resist the linear reading process (i.e. how does it force us to turn back, to read backwards)? Why is this important? What does Cha want us, as readers, to WITNESS in her work? Why does she include her manuscript page inside the already printed novel? How do you read her manuscript page (with her actual handwriting upon it) differently from the printed (and thus standardized) page?

What are some of the major themes we are exposed to in this work? How do these themes travel to include other words we have read in this class?

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Maxine Hong Kingston: Notes on The Woman Warrior

The first section of the novel, “No Name Woman,” deals with the creation of a ghost by a family who has decided to abandon their daughter/sister for the shame she brought upon the family. The very first words in the novel are “you must not tell anyone,” a mother urging her daughter to abandon her voice, to NOT tell. This book is an act of unveiling the restricted voice and allowing the words to erupt, it is an act of rebellion against the very first her mother uttered. In this first section of the novel Kingston imagines the aunt’s story, creates a narrative and thus grants her ghost-aunt with a voice, with a chance to tell. This aunt is erased from the memory of the family and Kingston seeks to inscribe her inside the family narrative. The entire novel deals with ghosts of all kinds, and hauntings, in what ways does Kingston use the “ghost” to deal with tradition, history, family, speech, etc? What is constantly haunting the narrator throughout the novel?

In “White Tigers” the story of Fu Mu Lan is told in first person, another act of attributing voice to a woman. The third section focuses in on her mother, and tells her story, and it is mainly told in third person (with some interceptions in first by the author). Is Kingston trying to draw comparisons between her mother and the Chinese woman warrior? How are these two women similar? What are some versions of feminism that Kingston engages with in her portrayal of female figures?

The last two sections deal largely with the immigrant experience, particularly the experience of the Chinese immigrant in California. How is this experience outlined by Kingston? Why does Moon Orchid dissolve into madness? She finds out about the story of her Aunt and the encounter with her husband from her brother, but then she tells us that she actually finds it out from her sister. This little insertion may not seem relevant but Kingston is constantly revising the truth, constantly putting tension on what reality consists of. What are some other examples of this? In which other sections/pages does Kingston throw doubt on her ability as a narrator? Why do you think this is important in a story such as hers? 

In the last section she tells us mainly of her own status a Chinese-American woman who must deal with a past she is not familiar with and with a present that often excludes her. We hardly learn anything about her that is not in some way tied to her family, to Chinese tradition, or to alternative histories. Her story is in itself a compilation of all of these, a compilation of silence and voice and it is the WAY she tells her story that is more compelling than the story itself. She does not establish a singular identity, she creates a collage of multiple faces and voices, fragments which create her.

This work is classified as “nonfiction/literature”- what does that category even mean? Think about the title: The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Childhood Among Ghosts” and try to discuss what a memoir entails. What is a memoir and how it is different from an autobiography or a work of fiction? Kingston uses both fiction and fact in this novel, weaving them together so as to make their pattern fluent and coherent. Why do you think she does this? What is this saying about our own histories/past? Do we too combine fact and fiction, relying on both to create our master life narrative?

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