Renata Reich

English Language and Literature

2
nd
Year, MA

1

Multiculturalism as the Dominant Culture in the USA

Literature in any form and shape, whether it is read or written, is a quest
for the Truth. We read literature in search for the truth about ourselves, about
the way it is best for us to perceive the world we live in, starting with the things
that are in our near proximity: the people we most care about, then the
community we belong to, the country we live in, in hope that, in the end, we
will find our place. The same is equally valid for those who are writing
literature, as writing (not so much as a process, but as the world-view it
transmits) can be seen as a quest in finding both individual and cultural identity.
The literature of women writers belonging to different ethnic and/or gender
minorities is highly relevant in what regards finding the truth about America
1

and American culture in terms of cultural identity and, as Renato Rosaldo
alleges, cultural citizenship. Their literature helps us understand the
characteristic that lies at the heart of the American culture: its diversity, which
was achieved throughout history by the differences between the various ethnic
and/or gender minorities. This fact is quite paradoxical if we consider that the
set of differences between communities is the common denominator which
divides, but also connects the minorities among them and with the dominant
culture. This set of differences transformed America into the multicultural
nation we see today. Theoretician Morris Young (2004) alleges:
America can maintain its cohesion as a Nation only if it can organize its subjects in
ways that account for their differences, but also subsume those differences, either by
minimizing (assimilating) difference or by maximizing (exposing) difference. (Young
p. 49)


1
America in the sense used by Kouwenhoven, J. (1961), The Beer Can by the Highway: Essays on Whats
American about America , New York: Johns Hopkins University Press
Renata Reich
English Language and Literature
2
nd
Year, MA

2

One way in which American culture
2
is organized today is by maximizing those
differences through the voice of Feminist critique, which tries to retrace and
reread the literature belonging to women writers from various ethnic
backgrounds.
First, the relevance of the literature written by women writers belonging
to various ethnic minorities resides in the fact that it answers to questions
regarding the very definition of American culture by showing us the way ethnic
identity is perceived and constructed in terms of the dominant culture as
opposed to the classifications based on race, ethnicity, gender, class and
sexuality. Individual identity can be defined as the narratives, the stories we tell
ourselves about our place in the world. Identity is also constructed by the way
others see us. Michelle Foucault suggests that we label and put people in boxes
in order to understand who we are. Thus, the American dominant culture
defines itself in comparison to the other, to a different culture. Lorde (1988, p.
116) speaks of a certain mythical norm, which in America is defined as white,
thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure. Renato
Rosaldo calls this mythical norm the dominant claims of universal citizenship
[which] assume a propertied white male subject. Thus, identity is formed in the
view of the differences of race, gender, sexuality or ethnicity.
In what regards the matter of race, Omi and Winant (1994, p. 55) explain
that racial formation is the sociohistorical process by which racial categories
are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed. They also explain that race
is a matter of both social structure and cultural representation (p. 56). The
literature written by the minority groups is a form of cultural representation, a
way in which cultural identity is interpreted and represented by the writers
belonging to the respective culture. Toni Morrison (1992) ascertains that

2
Culture= the way in which subjective experience is organized (Henry Nash Smith)
Renata Reich
English Language and Literature
2
nd
Year, MA

3

cultural identities are formed and informed by a nations literature (p. 39). She
also provides a set of dichotomies that describe the way in which the identity of
the American dominant culture is constructed, as opposed to the African-
American one:

Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but
free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed and powerful; not history-
less, but historical; not damned, but innocent; not a blind accident of evolution, but a
progressive fulfillment of destiny. (p. 52)


An example of this kind of (failed) identity construction can be found in Nella
Larsens Quicksand, where Helga Crane is the mixed-race daughter of a
Danish mother and a West Indian black father. He abandoned her mother and
Helga soon after she was born. Unable to feel comfortable with her European-
American relatives, Helga lives in various places in the United States and visits
Denmark, searching for people among whom she feels at home. As C. Ann
McDonald (cited in Champion & Nelson, 2000) suggests:

Quicksand is a novel that fully explores both the search for an identity that is
characterized by race, class, and gender and the inevitable failure to find that identity.
Throughout the novel, Helga Crane fashions herself according to other peoples idea
about race, class and gender, only to find out that none of the identities she adopts
satisfy her longing to belong. (p.187)


Helga Crane did not manage to find her place in the world, mostly because she
tried to adopt only one identity at a time and she disregarded all the other parts
of who she was. So, as do many white women writers, she did not recognize the
differences that set her apart from the other African-American characters in the
book.
The importance of recognizing difference and its relevance to the
American culture was analyzed by Audre Lorde, in her essay entitled Age,
Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference:
Renata Reich
English Language and Literature
2
nd
Year, MA

4


The literatures of all women of Color recreate the textures of our lives, and many white
women are heavily invested in ignoring the real differences. For as long as any difference
between us means one of us must be inferior, then the recognition of any difference must be
fraught with guilt. To allow women of Color to step out of stereotypes is too guilt
provoking, for it threatens the complacency of those women who view oppression only in
terms of sex. Refusing to recognize difference makes it impossible to see the different
problems and pitfalls facing us as women. (Lorde)

One cannot speak of cultural diversity without taking into account the
differences between the world-views, sets of principles and values, and the
representations of these world-views. Thus, women writers belonging to various
ethnic groups describe the way in which differences regarding gender, class,
race and ethnicity helped them define who they were, where they belonged to.
The narratives they have written are not just about simple characters facing the
world, but about the womans place in the world. They also showed that
difference is not something to be hidden, but something to be acknowledged,
since it helped shape the American culture as it is today.
A second reason for which women writers belonging to various ethnic
groups are an important part of the American culture is the fact that they helped
shape the American democracy (primarily characterized by the freedom of
expression), by asserting their subordinate aspirations for and definitions of
enfranchisement (Rosaldo). Literature was their way of giving a voice to their
ethnicity, to their traditions and cultural inheritance. This is the case with
women writers belonging to the Native American tradition. Writers such as
Leslie Marmon Silko or Marilou Awiakta managed to weave into their
narratives their cultural inheritance through the means of storytelling and by
using stylistic devices specific to the oral tradition which is rooted in their
memory as a culture. For instance, in Silkos Lullaby, Ayah remembers a
time when she was still in her mothers womb through the way tribal memory is
passed on from one generation to the other:
Renata Reich
English Language and Literature
2
nd
Year, MA

5


She felt peaceful remembering. She didn't feel cold any more. Jimmie's blanket
seemed warmer than it had ever been. And she could remember the morning he was
born. She could remember whispering to her mother, who was sleeping on the other
side of the hogan, to tell her it was time now. She did not want to wake the others.
The second time she called to her, her mother stood up and pulled on her shoes; she
knew. They walked to the old stone hogan together, Ayah walking a step behind her
mother. She waited alone, learning the rhythms of the pains while her mother went to
call the old woman to help them. The morning was already warm even before dawn
and Ayah smelled the bee flowers blooming and the young willow growing at the
springs. She could remember that so clearly, but his birth merged into the births of the
other children and to her it became all the same birth. They named him for the
summer morning and in English they called him Jimmie. (Silko 721)


The aesthetic and cultural value of the Native American literature resides in the
fact that it is based on a cyclical patterning
3
: the past always meets the present
or has some sort of a direct consequence upon the present, which is probably the
reason for which the works written by Native American writers do not have a
specific ending, they do not give their readers the sense of closure. Memory,
history and the individual experience seem to be intertwined within the
literature of the Native Americans.
In what regards citizenship and enfranchisement, Lisa Lowe in her study
entitled Immigrant Acts speaks about cultural citizenship, enfranchisement
and the way the literature of the Asian-American women writers helped retrace
not only the history of Asian American citizens, in terms of political and
cultural citizenship, as well as in terms of gender formation, but also the way
they played their role in the construction of the American nation as a
simulacrum of inclusiveness. (Lowe 5) In terms of citizenship, the American
citizen has been defined over against the Asian immigrant, legally,
economically, and culturally. (4) Once again, the American dominant culture
tried to marginalize those who played such an important role in creating the
nation, by immigrant exclusion acts and laws against Asians in 1882, 1924 and

3
Gordon Henry, qtd. in Blaeser
Renata Reich
English Language and Literature
2
nd
Year, MA

6

1934. In what regards gender formation, Lisa Lowe explains the way even white
women were disenfranchised and lost their citizenship if they married an alien
ineligible to citizenship and the fact that any legal rights or laws were given in
favor of the Asian male, not the Asian woman. (11)
This conflict between the Asian (traditional) and American (Western)
sides is portrayed by Asian American writers such as Amy Tan, who tried to
depict the generation gap between the patriarchal culture of the mothers as
opposed to that of the daughters born and raised in America.
In the end, the truth about America is that its cultural diversity stems from
multiculturalism, while this multiculturalism is represented by the work of the
writers belonging to various ethnic end/or gender groups. The literature written
by these women shows us a different side of America, retraces a different
history than the one we learn in our Western, Eurocentric textbooks but, in the
end, they are all part of and belonging to the Nation called America.














Renata Reich
English Language and Literature
2
nd
Year, MA

7

Works cited:

Champion, Laurie, and Emmanuel S. Nelson. Nella Larsen by C. Ann
McDonald. American Women Writers, 1900-1945: A Bio-bibliographical
Critical Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000.
Blaeser, Kimberly M. Like Reeds through the Ribs of a Basket: Native
Women Weaving Stories. American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 4
(Autumn, 1997), pp. 555-565.
Kouwenhoven, John A. "What's American about America." The Beer Can by
the Highway; Essays on What's American about America. Baltimore and
London: John Hopkins UP. 39-72. Print.
Larsen, Nella. Quicksand. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2002. Print.
Lorde, Audre. Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference
1984
Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham:
Duke UP, 1996. Print.
Morrison, Toni. "Preface", "Part I: Black Matters" and "Part II: Romancing the
Shadow" Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992. Print.
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Lullaby from Storyteller
Omi, Michael and Howard Winant., Ch. 4: Racial Formation, from Racial
Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd ed.
London & New York: Routledge, 1994
Young, Morris. Minor Re/visions: Asian American Literacy Narratives as a
Rhetoric of Citizenship. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2004.