Katharine Newman: A Brief Memoir

Although I was not present when MELUS was conceived, I did attend the meeting at which MELUS became a reality. It was held during a Modern Language Association Convention in December 1973. I had received an invitation in the mail asking me to attend. When I arrived in the scheduled room, I met Katharine Newman for the first time. As soon as she saw my nametag, she said, "Oh, Sadakichi Hartmann." I was then the editor of The Sadakichi Hartmann Newsletter, although how Katharine had heard of such an obscure journal I didn't know. But at that time I also had no idea who Katharine Newman was. I quickly found out. The first thing I remember her doing was complaining about the meeting place the MLA had chosen for us: we were meeting in the hotel reserved for foreign languages. As Katharine recognized, the MLA back then could not conceive of ethnic literature being part of the literature of the United States nor could the association conceive of languages like Spanish, Italian, Yiddish, and German being considered languages of the United States. The MLA also did not feel, apparently, that what we were doing was worthy of serious attention as American literature. After all, only so-called mainstream American authors counted, and almost all of them were of Anglo-Saxon descent. Thus, we were, in a sense, exiled to the foreign languages' hotel. At that meeting Ernest Falbo was elected treasurer. He died before he could complete his first term. In a hallway during the 1975 MLA Convention, Katharine asked me whether I would be willing to take Ernie's place. I agreed, having only the vaguest idea what I was getting myself in for. I served, as I recall, as unofficial treasurer for the short time remaining in Ernie's term and as official treasurer for two complete terms, from 1976 through 1979. From the start, Katharine wanted MELUS to be an umbrella organization to include people interested in studying the literature of all ethnic groups in the United States. Long before it was fashionable, she argued for opening the American literature canon to literatures of all people who write or wrote in America, regardless of the language in which they wrote or write. She also argued that items other than printed documents are a part of the fabric of American literature. She felt that many unpublished diaries, letters, other kinds of manuscripts, and oral tales are worthy of serious study as part of our literary tradition. When she told people what she wanted, she was invariably told that she was after something impossible. She was repeatedly told that she could not get scholars from different ethnic groups to work in harmony with one another; in a little time, people studying one ethnic group or two ethnic groups would take over the organization and make it their own exclusively. Then scholars treating other groups would be shut out. Or people would drift off to the organizations that already existed or that were coming into existence to gather scholars of the literature or culture of one particular ethnic group. As for opening up the canon of American literature, that task, she was told, was ridiculous, especially since she wanted to put some American ethnic writers into it. Again and again, she was told that the things she wanted to do were impossible. And they really were impossible. However, a thing's being impossible was no reason for Katharine not to try doing it and actually to succeed. She founded the organization, got it started, kept it running, established its journal, and then, when it had grown into an adult, turned it over to others. She really did create what she called an umbrella organization. At first, she had to drag some people under her umbrella, but once they were there, many decided to stay. She was able to bring together such diverse scholars, creative writers, and editors as Robert B. Spiller, Ishmael Reed, Brom Weber, Nicolas Kanellos, Joseph Bruchac, Werner Sollors, Mitsuye Yamada, Amy Ling, Michael Dorris, and Daniel Walden and show them that they had common interests and thus keep them together. …