Post-Nationalist American Studies

Syllabus: Race and Gender in American Autobiography

POST-NATIONALISM IN ETHNIC STUDIES 219 Syllabus RACE AND GENDER IN AMERICAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY Instructor: Barbara Brinson Curiel In this class we will explore life writings that address the issues of culture, race, gender, class, and nation. We will read a selection of texts and examine the possibilities and the limits of biographical and autobiographical forms. We will look at how authors establish credibility in the eyes of their readers, as well as how authors challenge their readers’ preexisting views. We will also contrast the varying representations of what culture, race, class, and gender mean in the author’s narrative rendition of his or her life. Finally , we will examine the shifting and expanding definitions of “America” and “American” reflected in these texts. TEXTS Behar, Ruth. Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story. Boston: Beacon, 1993. Wolff, Tobias. This Boy’s Life. New York: Harper and Row, 1990. Campbell, Maria. Halfbreed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973. Haley, Alex. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Random House, 1965. Note: Many other titles could be rotated into this course. Some I have taught include: Ernesto Galarza, Barrio Boy (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1971); Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (New York: Random House, 1979); Fatima Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1994); Anna Lee Walters, Talking Indian: Reflections on Survival and Writing (Ithaca, New York: Firebrand Books, 1992); Sara Lawrence Lightfoot, Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1988); and Michiko Tanaka, Through Harsh Winters: The Life of a Japanese Immigrant Woman (Novato, California: Chandler and Sharp, 1981). Texts I would like to teach in this course in the future include Dianne Walta Hart, Undocumented in L.A. (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 1997); and David Mura, Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei (New York: Anchor Books, 1992). I usually find beginning with Behar indispensable to laying a critical framework for the other books.] TOPICS AND MATERIALS FOR EACH TEXT Translated Woman Other Materials Timothy Dow Adams, Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990). Ruth Behar, “Writing in My Father’s Name: A Diary of Translated 220 BARBARA BRINSON CURIEL Woman’s First Year,” in Women Writing Culture, ed. Ruth Behar and Deborah A. Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). James Clifford, “Introduction: Partial Truths,” and “On Ethnographic Allegory,” in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George Marcus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). Topics and Questions What is the relationship between “fact” and “fiction” in narrative? What is the relationship between autobiography and therapy? What are the structural and thematic elements of Esperanza’s story? Of Ruth Behar’s? How does the bilingualism of the text influence its reading? What many kinds of “border-crossing” are referred to by the title? What are the interrelationships between Esperanza’s narrative and the author’s? How does Ruth Behar evolve in the narrative from a “good gringa anthropologist ” into a “bruja gusana?” This Boy’s Life Other Materials Bonnie Lyons and Bill Oliver, “An Interview with Tobias Wolff,” Contemporary Literature 31, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 1–16. Peter J. Bailey, “ ‘Why Not Tell the Truth?’: The Autobiographies of Three Fiction Writers,” Critique 32, no. 4 (Summer 1991): 211–21. Geoffrey Wolff, The Duke of Deception: Memories of my Father (New York: Random House, 1979). Copies of Boy’s Life magazine. Suzanne Pharr, “Homophobia as a Weapon of Sexism,” in Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study, ed. Paula S. Rothenberg (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995), pp. 481–90. Topics and Questions How does Wolff’s representation of geographical movement speak to other treatments of this same theme (e.g., Pilgrim’s Progress and Manifest Destiny)? How does Wolff’s treatment of guns, homosexuality, and male violence constitute a critique of hegemonic masculinity? Since the narrator is an admitted liar, how does the reader interpret the truthfulness of his story? According to this text, what is the true character of identity? How does this text challenge core American myths of class mobility, selfinvention , and heroic citizenship? How does this book constitute a critique of the Vietnam War? How does Wolff’s narrative complicate concepts of ethnicity? POST-NATIONALISM IN ETHNIC STUDIES 221 Halfbreed Other Materials Michael Omi and Howard...