selections from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven--1st meeting

Sherman Alexie, b. 1966

class agenda, 2 April 2007
assignments, research reports
poetry: Susanne
quiz
[break]
poetry: Gregory
Discuss Lone Ranger:
humor & style in Alexie; loss & survival
web highlight: Bundy
terms: creation / origin stories, oral / literate cultures, trickster, syncretism

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Monday, 2 April: selections from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Read the following selections: "Every Little Hurricane," "The Only Traffic Signal . . . ," "This is . . . Phoenix, AZ," "Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire," " Train . . . to Some Result," Also consider seeing the movie Smoke Signals, based on this book.

Poetry presentation(s):

Simon J. Ortiz, “Travels in the South,” UA 278-281.

Reader: Gregory Banks

Chrystos, “I Have Not Signed a Treaty with the United States Government,” UA 304

Reader: Susanne Brooks

Web highlight (research reports or final exams regarding American Indian literature): Bundy Fowler

research reports

final exam copy on webpage (identical to syllabus at this time)

Samples on Model Assignments page

2007 proposals

You may change your topic at any time with an email to me.

Review of terms today and next class--a topic could branch off--

If your topic grows naturally from what you started with, no need to notify--just explain in your research report how it developed.

Back off or be careful with big topics like "racism" or "religion." Don't give up, but choose a dimension, aspect, or special example of the topic. Ask yourself, What am I really thinking of when I write "racism?"

Limit or narrow your topic to something you can write on in about an hour or an hour and a half.

Not so much a right or wrong outcome as an expression of what you learned so that I can follow the learning experience and want to--

Doing your research:

Two good ways to start:

Read a broad, introductory "encyclopedia-style" entry like you'll find in the Encyclopedia Britannica or Wikipedia

Talk to someone who knows more than you do--a former teacher or prof or neighborhood know-it-all

Discuss Lone Ranger:
 

humor & style in Alexie

What impact? How does it conform to or extend the image of an American Indian writer?

loss & survival theme?

humor & style in Alexie

Style is not only how a writer writes but also what s/he writes about. (e. g., Hemingway and war or bullfights; Anne Rice and vampires).

I

What are prominent aspects of Alexie's style? After reading Lone Ranger, how would you know it was the same author if you picked up another book by Alexie but didn't notice the author's name? 

lots of figurative writing, metaphors like hurricane

inconsistent metaphors, but can create interest

metaphors catch off-guard, require re-reading

"Trials"--confusion of perspective, reference

But talks in others' voices; doesn't identify

Intended audience: requires enlightened audience; feeding a dog vs. feeding a giraffe

emphasis on storytelling or storytellers

plus flashbacks; breaks away to provide helpful information

lack of close relationships; damaged culture, lack of close unity

alcoholism, broken dreams (loss and survival)--rebellion or victimization?

people bond on large issues but divide on smaller ones (49)

dream and nightmare aspects, hallucinatory

American Indian life not romanticized or prettified; Indians as "losers"; burst bubble

sarcasm potentially undercuts depth of style

irony

humor:

52 Jesus best point guard in Nazareth

62 colloquial style

65 Norma was a warrior

66 clown = trickster?

66 [incongruity]

71 ashes = big man

72 jackrabbit suicide [incongruity] [+ things have will of their own]

anticlimax: 61, 65, 69

99 "Order in the f-ing court."

131 how tell, let you go: dumb & dumber

Amerind narrative: loss & survival

storytelling

65 Norma dragged them all over to some tipi and made them listen to some elder tell a dusty old story

48 a reservation hero is remembered, a hero forever, status grows over years as stories told and retold

61 Thomas was a storyteller

62 so many stories

63 tell me a story

73 I have only my stories

75 hear a new story

93 a storytelling fetish

132 the gift of storytelling > change the world

134 stories had the power to teach, to show how this life should be lived

49 Indians need heroes

50 [x-progress]

74 he will rise

75 nothing stops

97 wept and wanted to admit defeat

97 not going to submit without a struggle

98 refusal to admit defeat

Conclusions re Alexie's humor and style:

American Indians not simply tragic figures frozen in time, weeping over lost world--not somber, humorless wisdom-speakers--

rather, they're more human: playful, ironic, sarcastic, resilient, remembering

Style isn't even necessarily Indian--hip style embodies "90s style," full of irony and distancing, regardless of ethnicity

Bundy's web highlight on subject

assignments

Monday, 9 April: conclude selections from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven;

Read the following selections: "Imagining the Reservation," "Indian Education," "Family Portrait," "Somebody Kept Saying Powwow," "Witnesses, Secret and Not."

Poetry presentation(s):

Peter Blue Cloud, “Crazy Horse Monument” UA 179-180.

Reader: Jessica Zuniga

Poetry presentation(s):

Louise Erdrich, “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways” UA 26-27

Reader: Talli Ortiz

Web highlight (research reports or final exams regarding American Indian literature): Rhonda Fisher

Discussion of Lone Ranger & Tonto

Continue discussion of Loss & Survival theme + Trickster, Syncretism (obj. 3b)

Complete American Indian literature: What stands out from reading experience?

Compare African American literature; "The Dream" and "Loss & Survival"

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Monday, 16 April: handout: “The Virgin of Guadalupe”;

begin Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima (through p. 50 or chapter Cinco)

Poetry presentation(s):

Luis J. Rodriguez, “We Never Stopped Crossing Borders” UA 6

Reader: Veronica Kreuder

Web highlight (research reports): DeConnia (Dee) Lott

Web highlight (final exams regarding Mexican American literature): Amber Buitron

review terms

purposes of terms in literature: common ground > shorthand for discussion.

Terms can be exclusive to those unfamiliar with them, but for those familiar with them, they serve as quick references for networks of ideas.

In study of Literature, terms are often used loosely, applied analogously or by extension

purposes of such terms for this course:

potential problem of minority literature: Dominant culture will sometimes deprecate study of minority literature on several grounds:

*off-track from established canon of great writers (e. g., instead of Douglass, Goines, Angelou, Alexie, we should be reading T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Pynchon.

*minority literature may be criticized as divisive: "Why can't we all just be Americans?" If you talk about African American or Native American literatures, what happens to "American literature?" Or should we start studying "White literature and culture?" Does multicultural literature subdivide a great national project into lots of smaller principalities or niches?

Challenge to teachers, education: recognize and celebrate diversity, but also continue to build structures of unity.

terms / concepts as potential unifiers

Objective 3. American Dream and its variants

Objective 3

To compare and contrast the dominant “American Dream” narrative—which involves voluntary participation, forgetting the past, and individuals or nuclear families—with alternative narratives of American minorities, which involve involuntary participation, connecting to the past, and traditional, extended, or alternative families.

3a. African American alternative narrative: “The Dream”

("The Dream" resembles but is not identical to "The American Dream." Whereas the American Dream emphasizes immediate individual success, "the Dream" factors in setbacks, the need to rise again, and a quest for group dignity.)

3b. Native American Indian alternative narrative: "Loss and Survival"

(Whereas immigrants define themselves by leaving the past behind in order to become American, the Indians were once “the Americans” but lost most of their land along with many of their people. Yet Native Americans defy the myth of "the vanishing Indian," choosing to "survive," sometimes in faith that the dominant culture will eventually destroy itself, and the forests and buffalo will return.)

3c. Mexican American narrative: “The Ambivalent Minority”

("Ambivalent" means having "mixed feelings" or contradictory attitudes. Mexican Americans as a group may feel or exemplify mixed feelings about whether they are a distinct, aggrieved minority group or another immigrant culture that will assimilate. culture as individuals or families who come to America for economic gain but suffer social dislocation. On the other hand, much of Mexico's historic experience with the USA resembles the experience of the Native Americans: much of the United States, including Texas, was once Mexico. Does a Mexican who moves from Juarez to El Paso truly immigrate?)

All cultures have languages

All peoples tell stories or narratives

Most of the terms we're using below may be applied not only to American Indian literature, but also to African American and Mexican American literature and even to dominant-culture literature

orality & literacy

oral or spoken culture / literate or written culture

Ong, Walter J.  Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word  (London: Routledge, 1982)

7 Of the some 3000 languages spoken that exist today only some 78 have a literature  

9 primary oral cultures, those untouched by writing in any form

11 secondary orality of present-day high-technology culture, in which a new orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television, and other electronic devices that depend for their existence and functioning on writing and print.

Native American Origins & Tales

Amerind creation / origin / migration stories

Creation stories from around the world

"Sacred Narratives"

significance of origin / creation stories:

Andrew O. Wiget, "Native American Oral Narrative" in The Heath Anthology of American Literature 3^rd edn., v. 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 24-27.

Origin and Emergence stories are complex symbolic tales that typically dramatize the tribal explanation of the origin of the earth and its people; establish the central relationships among people, the cosmos or universe, and the other creatures (flora and fauna) of the earth; distinguish gender roles and social organization for the tribe . . . . 

            Several different types of origin tales are prominent in the Native American canon.  The two most common are the Emergence story, found throughout the Southwestern United States, and the Earth-Diver story, which predominates throughout Canada and the eastern region. The Earth-Diver story tells of a great flood that covered the earth and of beings who are borne upon the water until, after several failed attempts, an animal brings up enough mud from beneath the water to begin the magical creation of the earth. . . .

            The Biblical stories of Genesis, which most Europeans believed, functioned in a similar manner for the [American] colonists. Yet a comparison of Native American origin tales and Biblical stories illuminates profound cultural differences.  Generally speaking, Native Americans traditionally did not believe in a single supreme, autonomous, and eternal being who established the conditions under which all beings must exist.  Nor did they consider humans as having a radically different nature from the rest of earth's inhabitants, which they conceived of as intelligent, self-willed, and communicative. . . .

            Perhaps most importantly, no Native American origin myth identifies anything at all analogous to the Christian belief in a sin or a fall from the grace of a god.  That is, there is no evil pre-condition, no lost harmony and balance, in the Native American interpretation of origin.

broader application of origin / creation stories:

This course is concentrating on "origin stories" at this point because Native American origin stories offer the best "textbook" examples of origin stories--they often concern the actual physical creation of the world or its phenomena, for instance, and they take place within a spiritual or religious context. They can be appropriately compared to other creation stories from around the world.

The course also features "origin stories" for its two other ethnic minority groups, African Americans and Mexican Americans.

LITR 4332: American Minority Literature

distribution of readings

Also implicit: the "creation story" for American dominant culture is the immigrant narrative of a young person coming to America with nothing and going from rags to riches.  

How do the African American, Mexican American, and dominant-culture origin stories differ from yet resemble the Native American origin stories?

1. Difference: They do not concern the actual creation of the world itself or of a natural phenomenon. Analogy: they concern the creation of a new social phenomenon, a new race of people.

2. The religious significance of these creation stories may be less far-reaching. The Virgin of Guadalupe certainly has religious dimensions as the mother of Jesus, and all of the slaves grapple with religious issues or questions, but these events are more human-level than actual creation of the world or parts of the world. (Religion seems optional in the Immigrant Narrative. Most immigrants come to America for economic opportunity rather than religious freedom, but there are plenty of exceptions. Some immigrants express gratitude for freedom of religion, but often implicit is a gratitude to be in a society without an enforced state religion.)

Upshot: If we call the slave narratives and the Virgin of Guadalupe story "creation" or "origin stories," we're using the term loosely or analogously, admitting that the term may not be a perfect fit but asserting that the benefits of such an analogy outweigh its costs.

Benefits: All the creation stories deal with original relationships and the stories that grow out of those relationships. Such stories often create a ground for other stories or expectations for the ways society should be, both structurally and morally.

Example from current popular culture:

Evangelical Christians arguing against gay marriage will often say, "It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."

A believer in evolution might reply, "Heterosexual marriage has been a powerful human institution for growing population and structuring society, but the social environment can change, and human institutions can adapt accordingly."

Two different creation stories

Two different sets of attitudes toward the nature of time, the structure of society, and the moral values that follow from these stories.

Question: distinguish creation stories from origin stories?

Examples of origin stories in popular culture, especially "hero stories."

Batman (+ Joker as trickster)

Superman (+ Lex Luthor, Mr. Mxyzptlk as tricksters)

Spiderman (Green Goblin as trickster)

missionary to Ethiopia brings back goatskin with "the story of coffee" written in pictures.

syncretism in creation / origin stories

45 [Indians invented basketball]

134-5 Coyote creation story

back up to 132, 134

Leftover notes from previous classes

Possible solutions:

Integrate minority literature into major literature surveys; e. g.,

LITR 4232: American Renaissance

Or special courses like LITR 4332: American Minority Literature

but how to keep minority literature from being "ghettoized?" (e. g., teaching African American history during "Black History Month," but ignoring it the rest of the school year?")

3a. African American alternative narrative: “The Dream”

("The Dream" resembles but is not identical to "The American Dream." Whereas the American Dream emphasizes immediate individual success, "the Dream" factors in setbacks, the need to rise again, and a quest for group dignity.)

3b. Native American Indian alternative narrative: "Loss and Survival"

(Whereas immigrants define themselves by leaving the past behind in order to become American, the Indians were once “the Americans” but lost most of their land along with many of their people. Yet Native Americans defy the myth of "the vanishing Indian," choosing to "survive," sometimes in faith that the dominant culture will eventually destroy itself, and the forests and buffalo will return.)

3c. Mexican American narrative: “The Ambivalent Minority”

("Ambivalent" means having "mixed feelings" or contradictory attitudes. Mexican Americans as a group may feel or exemplify mixed feelings about whether they are a distinct, aggrieved minority group or another immigrant culture that will assimilate. culture as individuals or families who come to America for economic gain but suffer social dislocation. On the other hand, much of Mexico's historic experience with the USA resembles the experience of the Native Americans: much of the United States, including Texas, was once Mexico. Does a Mexican who moves from Juarez to El Paso truly immigrate?)

n the best stylists, there is a meeting of "how" and "what." For instance, with Hemingway, his careful, understated style conforms to his subject matter of grace under pressure. I haven't read Rice, but her subject matter is probably complemented by gothic tones of shadows, forbidden desires, etc.)

We don't need to push Alexie this hard . . . .