American Ethnic Literature

The word pagan de nones or derives from distinctive ways of documentation created by a group of people. Hence, American cultural books must be influenced by the cultural or cultural ties of an ethnic American occasion, and must reveal to some extent the distinctive ways of living practiced by the ethnic group that the author represents. Biographical criticism entails a deeper comprehension of an authors work by knowing the essential details of his or her life.Because writers are real people, the literary productions that they write generally contains strikeions of themselves, the kinds of people they encounter in their lives, and the circumstances that they face. Not all people in the unite States belong to the white European race. The Indians were settled on our land before the European whites came on to change the history of the land for ever. Africans were initially brought by the European whites to work as slaves on plantations. The Hispanics and the Asians similarly e ntered the land as immigrants.Still, the dominant community in the United States, in terms of population, is that of the European whites. Theirs is the paramount glossiness in America, and their literature is known as mainstream American literature. At the same time, the Native Americans retain some of their ancient rites, in spite of Americas predominant culture of the European whites. The African Africans continue to be influenced by the music that their ancestors made on the ships that brought slaves to America (McBride, 2007). The Hispanic Americans and the Asian Americans too maintain aspects of their culture through their distinctive languages and foods.Unsurprisingly, these cultural differences must reveal themselves in American ethnic literature as compared to mainstream American literature. American heathen Literature 2 All of the different groups representing the Americans straight off are maintaining their ethnic differences, even if many of their members feel that they are one with the mainstream culture. As a involvement of fact, it is but natural for the various ethnicities representing America in our time to be maintaining cultural differences, while difficult to fit into the mainstream culture.As mentioned previously, the culture of different ethnic groups must reveal itself in the writings of ethnic American writers. When an American ethnic author does non reveal his or her distinctive culture in literature, however, it is mediocre to claim that the persons writings represent mainstream American literature. Zane, for example, is an African American author of tingling fiction who is writing mainstream American literature. Although the author belongs to an American ethnic group, her writings do not bound her ethnicity.She sometimes uses middle-class African American characters in her novels, but she also employs white American characters. plane so, an American writer of European descent may also be expected to do the same. Besides, Z ane does not make references in her books to her own race as opposed to the Americans of European descent, and neither does she complain slightly the problems that the Africans have gone through in America. Rather, the characters in Zanes erotic novels could be people belong to any number of races (Zane, 2001 Zane, 2005).One of Zanes novels, Afterburn, is ab protrude a chiropractor in Washington D. C. who visits his local bank because he is interested in one of the employees of the bank. He believes that she is too beautiful to be a single woman, which is the rationality why he has never asked her fall out. When American Ethnic Literature 3 he does, however, he finds out that she has a history of disastrous relationships. He, too, has a broken heart. And so, the dickens of them finally get together (Zane, 2005). magic spell forming their bond, the man and the woman have to meet a variety of characters who add spice to their relationship.The woman has a fickle minded arrest, th e man has got playboys as buddies, and then there are lovers from the past that keep stressful to disrupt the wise relationship. Nevertheless, Zane manages to turn the relationship into a tie of deep love and longing (Zane, 2005). or so importantly, she creates a story that could happen in anybodys life. Because Zane is an American, her literature must be considered mainstream American literature. She is an African American, but her literature cannot be considered American ethnic literature seeing that it does not solely reflect the culture and values of the African Americans.Instead, Zane is one of those ethnic American writers who appear to have totally amalgamate into the mainstream American culture. On a similar note, Jamaica Kincaid (1990) in her novel, Lucy, presents a nineteen year old youthfulness woman by the name of Lucy Josephine Potter who is trying to forget her roots in the west Indies. In the process, no doubt, the girl is trying to blend into the mainstream Amer ican culture. Kincaid is an American ethnic writer who was born in the West Indies (Benson & Hagseth, 2001). A biographical critic might assert that Lucy, the girl who came to North America as a nanny, is a reflection of the author.Regardless, Kincaids novel approximately Lucy may be considered American ethnic literature only because it contains glimpses of the authors ethnicity. Lucy hated her old home, a British colony and yet memories of her mother continue to haunt her, taking her back to West Indies. Her mother acts as a symbolisation for Lucys motherland. The American Ethnic Literature 4 girl feels emotionally unattached to her mother, and finds a give away motherly model in the United States by the name of Mariah, who acts as a symbol for the new land the girl has come to occupy.Mariah replaces Lucys mother with respect to the kinds of feelings people are taught by character or nurture to feel for their mothers. Moreover, Kincaids novel establishes a clear difference bet ween Lucys mother and the character of Mariah. For example, Lucys mother was emotionally dependent on her daughter, to the point of becoming an emotional pain. The mother was also neglectful of the needs of her unfledged daughter. Mariah, on the contrary, treats Lucy as a grownup. She exposes Lucy to the museums of America, and gives her presents.She also looks out for the well- universe of the young Lucy during the time that she is adjusting to the new environment (Kincaid). Lucy feels far from her roots in West Indies. She would not read her mothers letters that arrive in the mail. She wants to avoid the emotional pain that her mother brought into her life, by being oppressively reliant on her daughter. Furthermore, Lucy is trying to leave colonialism behind. She had shown rebellion in West Indies toward the oppressive invasion of the British. She had ref apply to sing in her school choir, Rule, Britannia Just as her mother keeps on being brought to mind, colonialism surfaces in young Lucys flashbacks of West Indies. She wants to get away from it all. In America and on her own, the young girl would give care to be an individualist, able to make her own decisions, and forgetting all that was painful and negative about the past (Kincaid). Because the focus of Kincaids book is the girls desire to blend into the mainstream American culture while forgetting the past, the novel may also be termed mainstream American American Ethnic Literature 5 literature.Given that it describes the authors ethnicity thoroughly, however, it must be considered in part American ethnic literature. Amy Tans (1989) The Joy Luck Club is similarly part mainstream and part ethnic American literature. Containing sixteen stories that rove around conflicts between old-fashioned mothers who are Chinese immigrants, and modern daughters who have been raised in the United States, the novel describes the mainstream American culture in addition to the Chinese culture. Tan is an Asian American a uthor, and so her writing should have been ethnic American in its entirety.However, her writing reveals that an Asian American author feels like an American before she can relate to the Asian experience. Additionally, although the writer tries to bridge the gap between the two cultures that she is supposed to represent by having her characters travel to China, it is a fact that the American experience cannot be discounted by any means. The only ethnic American authors who write American ethnic literature must be ones who reflect solely on their ethnicity in their works, showing utter disregard for the mainstream American culture.The following public life describes some of these authors During the years preceding the Civil War, Americas ethnic and racial minorities began to publish novels, poems, histories, and autobiographies that explored what it meant to be an outsider in a predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant society. The result was a unique body of ethnic writing chron icling the distinctive experience and changing self-image of ethnic Americans. One of the earliest forms of African American literature was the slave narrative, graphic American Ethnic Literature 6first-person accounts of life in bondage, written by occasion slaves, including William Wells Brown, Frederick Douglass, and Josiah Henson These volumes not only awoke readers to the hardships and cruelties of life under slavery, they also described the ingenious strategies that fugitive slaves used to escape from bondage. William and Ellen Craft, for example, disguised themselves as master and slave Henry Box Brown had himself crated in a box and shipped north. Native Americans, too, produced firsthand accounts of their lives. Among the mostnotable is the Life of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-she-kia-Kiak or Black Hawk (1833), a classic weird and secular biography, in which the Sauk warrior explains why he resisted white efforts to seize Indian land in northwestern Illinois during the Black Hawk War (18 32). William Apes, a Pequod, published one of the earliest histories from an Indian advantage point in 1836. John Rollin Ridge, a Cherokee journalist, published the first novel by an Indian in 1850, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, which recounts the heroic adventures of a Robin Hoodlike bandit in California who protects Mexican Americans from white exploitation. Much more than a simple adventure story, this novel is also a lightly veiled protest of the treatment of Native Americans by someone who had personally experienced the removal of the Cherokees from their tribal homelands in Georgia (American Ethnic Literature, 2007). Such is truly American ethnic literature. It focuses solely on the ethnicity of the author, while disregarding if not rejecting the mainstream culture.On the other hand, novels by ethnic American authors that reveal the differences between mainstream American culture as opposed American Ethnic Literature 7 to the authors respective ethnicities are n ot true American ethnic literature. This is due to the fact that the authors as well as their characters have essay to blend into the mainstream culture by getting rid of their ethnic identities to a large extent. American Ethnic Literature 8 References American Ethnic Literature. (2007). Digital History. Retrieved September 24, 2007, fromhttp//www. digitalhistory. uh. edu/database/article_display. cfm? HHID=646. Benson, K. M. , & Hagseth, C. (2001). Jamaica Kincaid. Voices from the Gaps. Retrieved September 24, 2007, from http//voices. cla. umn. edu/vg/Bios/entries/kincaid_jamaica. html. Kincaid, J. (1990). Lucy. New York Farrar, Straus and Giroux. McBride, J. (2007, April). Hip decamp Planet. National Geographic. Tan, A. (1989). The Joy Luck Club. New York G. P. Putnams Sons. Zane. (2001). Addicted. New York Atria Books. . (2005). Afterburn. New York Atria Books.