From: heath@athena.cs.uga.edu (Terrance Heath)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 15 Aug 92 20:46:57 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens


     I held my peace for while after reading this post, mainly to
allow myself time to think about my response before posting. ( I find
that electronic correspondence often lends itself to immediate, rather
than reflective, response.

In article <14287@mindlink.bc.ca> Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
>I've been reading Terrance's comments with a mixture of fascination, enjoyment
>and despair. Like him, I grew up in a minority within a minority--the American
>Communist families who moved to Mexico in the early 50s to evade blacklisting
>(not very successfully, I might add)--and one result of that experience was
>what I eventually came to call "disculturation": a sense of not belonging to
>any particular culture, least of all the one that was paying FBI agents to
>harass my dad and granddad and make sure they didn't work anywhere for very
>long.

     Well, I'm not going to play "disculturation-oneupsmanship" on
this one. However, I assume that you did return to the states sooner
or later, where you would no longer be in a racial and cultural
minority. If so, then you were able to return to a home where you
stood a better chance of feeling that you belonged (though political
values may have lessened that feeling to a degree). However, I don't
think it compares to the situation an African-American finds himself
in, that is being a part of a culture absorbed from birth but in which
one is also in the position of a racial minority, and where one's
intelligence, humanity and right to be are questioned and challenged
on a daily basis.  It is a feeling of belonging and not belonging.
Some black authors have refered to it as a sense of "dual identity".
     Being born into an American society which is heavily influenced
by western culture an thought, I am very much a part of western
culture and it is a part of me. However, I am also part of a
stigmatized minority group which has, historically, maintained a
culture of its own, a merging of cultures which is correctly called
"African-American", and which contains values that are the opposite of
those contained in western culture.  This causes tension in individual
identity. Thus many African-Americans do not feel wholly American
(Western) or African, and seek a foudnation in one or the other or (in
my opinion the best option) both.  It is difficult to feel that I
completely "belong" in western culture, because some its history and
some of its basic assupmtions (such as standards of beauty) deny or
challenge a part of my identity. I am not completely at home until I
am able to shore-up and validate that part of my identity which is
challened by the norms of the culture, and find value in  thos things
that the culture does not value in me.

>
>So I wonder how black readers and writers can be so uniform in *their*
>experience and attitude that only other black writers can mean much to them. I
>think of a black colleague at my college who grew up in a small Nova Scotia
>town; a fifth-generation black British Columbian forestry instructor; a Haitian
>cab driver in Montreal; an Ethiopian cab driver in Winnipeg; a host of others
>who all happen to be genetically coded for melanin production, but who have
>very little else in common.

     My focus is particualarly African-American. Certainly it means
different things to be black in Egypt, or Britan.  There are no real
universals of race. I find the category is relative to ones location
an culture.  However, I believe there is such a thing as the
African-American Experience, contains its own diversity, but which is
distincly American and African.

>And I wonder what kind of vicarious pride a black reader is supposed to get
>from reading a black writer. 

     I find it gratifying to read the work of someone who has faced
the same challenges in the culture that I face on a daily basis
myself. Such reading is even more rewarding when juxtaposed against
the canon, the homogeneity of which serves to reinforce the culture
along with all of its assumptions.  It signifies to me that there is a
choice, and that I do not have to sacrifice one part of my identity
for another in order to find a place for myself within the society I
was born into and which I ought to be able to honestly call "home". It
signifies that synthesis is possible and preferable. But before there
can be synthesis, there must be two distinct parts and I must
understand both of them within myself before I can fit them together.
The canon only gives me half of what  need to define my culture and my
place in it.

>I also worry about any attitude that says your race and sex are the most
>important aspects of your personality--the very things you can't control--and
>that your personal achievements are important only insofar as they make your
>racial or sexual colleagues Look Good. Shelby Steele, in the July Harper's,
>makes a very strong case against this kind of "New Sovereignty." It seems to me
>to entrench the very racism and sexism it purports to oppose.

     I would be nice to believe that we already lived in a world where
race and sex, etc. did not matter or effect how our society values
individuals. When that day comes I will be availible for celebrating
it. But pretending it is not so, or simply ignoring that it is so will
not make it happen. My personal acheivments are first and foremost my
own, but they may also serve as an encouragement to somone who faces
the same cultural hurdles I have made it over myself. It is not about
making ones race, etc. look good, but about leaving something for
those who will come behind to face the same cultural challenges. It is
about doing what was done for me by so many others who have written
works that I have read and have taken to heart; works which include me
rather than imply me, and in which I can see myself plain rather than
between the lines.

>If I am mistaken, I'm sure someone will come to my rescue.

     If it helps, I offer my hand.


-- 
"Black men loving black men is THE revolutionary act!"
			-Joseph Beam_
Terrance Heath 
heath@athena.cs.uga.edu
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