Self-Expression and World-Expression: Critical Multicultural Literacy in Maxine Hong Kingston and Sandra Cisneros

Speaking the word is not a true act if it is not at the same time associated with the right of self-expression and world-expression, of creating and recreating, of deciding and choosing and ultimately participating in society's historical processes.

—Paulo Freire

Since slave narratives and early immigrant autobiographies, literacy has been featured in United States literature as a major issue in minorities' struggle for power and equality. Some minority writers, such as Native Americans Zitkala-Sa and Simon Ortiz, have depicted the acquisition of dominant literacy as a forcefully imposed method of cultural assimilation. At the same time, Sa and Ortiz have acknowledged the fact that English proficiency, both oral and written, allows Native Americans to communicate their struggles for physical and cultural survival to wider audiences. For many Native American writers who publish in English, the use of dominant language to express indigenous content is an act of political activism and cultural preservation.¹ Other minority authors, most notably Frederick Douglass and Richard Wright, have rendered English literacy as an effective instrument for self-empowerment and social integration. Exposing the systemic practices of denying or segregating education on the basis of race, their autobiographies have emphasized the importance of equal access to formal education in minority Americans' struggles for emancipation. As young men, both Douglass and Wright quickly comprehended the link between knowledge and power and pursued literacy/education as a means of reclaiming control over their lives.² Revealing the meaning of literacy policies as deeply embedded in specific social arrangements and ideologies, these approaches counter the dominant view of literacy as a neutral, autonomous practice.

In more recent literary works, US minority authors have gone further to question Western literacy/education as a monolithic ideological concept, exposing its failure to recognize the existence and validity of non-Western forms of knowledge. In their contemporary approaches to the meaning and practice of education in minority contexts, literacy is often presented in relation to cultural difference, hybrid identities, and political agency. For instance, contemporary US Latino/a writers have stressed the importance of bilingualism in their portrayals of bicultural experiences, linking the concept of bilingual literacy to Latinos' cultural and political rights in the United States. Integration of Spanish and/or Spanglish in their writing in English serves not only to develop distinctly Latino settings and themes but also to interrogate homogenous definitions of modern American culture. Reflecting their strong commitment to cultural diversity and equality, the performance of multicultural literacy allows US minority writers to present non-dominant cultural practices, values, and symbols as meaningful parts of national culture. These interventions also communicate demands for multicultural models of knowledge: as they themselves participate in the creation of such models, minority writers strive to ensure that members of their communities in general are allowed to transform and create literacies.

Because traditional definitions of literacy cannot fully convey marginal experiences, new conceptions are being produced and embraced as necessary modes of self-expression. The noted Asian American author Maxine Hong Kingston affirms this idea when commenting on her unique style of writing: "I am trying to write an American language that has Chinese accents; I write the American language the way I speak it. So in a way, I [am] creating something new, but at the same time, it's still the American language, pushed further" (qtd. in Rabinowitz 182). Sandra Cisneros, a prominent Mexican American writer, points out a similar linguistic polyphony in her work: "What I am especially aware of lately is how the Spanish syntax and word choice occurs in my work even though I write in English" ("Ghosts and Voices" 72). To tell the story of their communities, minority authors like Kingston and Cisneros recognize that inserting marks of otherness into the English language enables them to present the uniqueness of their ethnic traditions while also claiming their place in America's culture and language. This conscious process of adapting dominant literacy to create new literary models reflects a democratic understanding of culture, elucidating the need for inclusive and diverse literacy practices...