Literature, Life-Writing, and Identity

Content Objectives: Equality, American identity, and perspectives on foreign policy

My course level question is, “To what extent does American identity impact its peoples’ interactions in the world?” In order to rethink what it is to be “American,” students will define “American” based on the United States’s hegemonic construction of the term and then redefine the term based on geographical location and an analysis of some non-United States perspectives. Students will then deconstruct what an “American” is and the various reasons people in the Americas do not always feel “American” even though they are living in the geographical location of the Americas. As a class, we will further discuss how the politics of powerful nations have influenced the extent to which people identify as “American” in the Americas and how identity is explicitly related to the global inequality between nations in the Americas. This goal is an effort to compare and analyze the macro to micro systems of inequality and the social evolution of equality. This is why we will start by studying countries’ foreign relations and policies at the beginning of the unit. 

The Americas in Global Affairs

This unit begins with the emergence of the Americas in global affairs. This section of the unit exposes the economic and military inequality between countries in the Americas and also addresses the question of how disparity of wealth between countries may impact the ability of  “underdeveloped countries” to gain equality amongst their own people.  Students will analyze how disparity of power between countries promotes global and domestic inequality. Furthermore, students’ analysis will be guided with the question of whether nations under the hegemonic influence of stronger nations can provide equality to its peoples. Students will also be able to identify and describe the multiple layered, macro to micro, hierarchies within the hierarchies of nations and the societies within nations in the Americas. This will lead to a discussion of the long-term effects of colonialism and imperialism that have led to the further degradation of under-developing regions and their impact on attaining true equality within these countries. This will require a review and synopsis of European colonization of the Americas, the postcolonial emergence of the United States as a superpower, and its imperialistic foreign policy throughout the Americas such as in the Mexican-American War, Spanish-American War, and other interventions in the Americas. 

The understanding of the impact of “American” identity and interactions between countries in the Americas will be guided by the 19th century’s Cuban poet and independence leader, Jose Marti, and his poem Nuestra America (Our America)  that “attempted to define Latino and indigenous America as Nuestra America separate from and opposed to US-American efforts to construct a Euro-American heritage.”² This non-US perspective of the Americas displays cultural and identity differences within the Americas during the end of the 19th century and the significance of the political and economical emergence of United States as a global and imperialistic power.  This component of the unit asks students, “how do people's view of their own ‘American identity’ impact their interactions with others?” Marti’s view of American identity, preserves Latin America’s claim on being American. 

Another non-US perspective that will be delved into is Jose Vasconcelos and his book La Raza Cosmica (The Cosmic Race) that claimed Latin America as a more accurate depiction of “America” because of the diversity it embodies and the attempted cultural inclusiveness of diverse populations such as in various nations” promotion of indigenismo (indigenousness), African, and mestizo as part of national identity throughout Latin America.  Furthermore, Vasconcelos argues against the attitudes that considered the Iberian Americas as a lesser “new world” to the Anglo Americas even though US American “exceptionalism” had made special claims of its own dominance.³ 

“For Vasconcelos, Europe's expansionist project had served as ‘a bridge’ uniting the ‘four racial trunks: the Black, the Indian, the Mongol, and the White.’ An overarching cultural difference remained between the dominant colonizers of the modern period, Spain and England, but more precisely, between ‘Latinism’ and ‘Anglo-Saxonism.’ As a child, Vasconcelos grew up on the US-Mexico border and attended school in Eagle Pass, Texas. Having experienced the United States first hand, he state[d], ‘ideologically, the Anglos continue to conquer us.”⁴ This passage depicts his fears of inequality in the Americas which led to a counter narrative of a theoretical future in the Americas that thrived through its ethnic diversity and not through monoracial exceptionalism. 

These views of “American” identity will be examined along with how personal views impacted these people's interactions or influence in global affairs. Students will also take a look at how identity is formed through self-claiming and imposed labels. Furthermore, “American” identity will be studied from various perspectives in the Americas and will be analyzed by describing who in the Americas has been identified as “American” and what have been the internal and external social, political, cultural, intellectual, and economic forces that impacted their inclusion of identifying as “American.” Students will explore how much of the ‘American identity’ has been claimed, imposed, and denied, what that says about the meaning of being “American”, and how that definition should still be redefined to be more inclusive of all the people that reside in the Americas. Continuing with the theme of equality, students will discuss civil rights movements in various nations of the Americas.  This part of the unit gives another clear opportunity to break down equality and identity through the course level question with writings that explicitly discuss ‘American identity’ and its impact on social and political equality.  This will also further look at how being denied the label of being “American” on the American continent possibly impacts people's sense of equality and being included.

Civil Rights in the Americas: marginalized groups struggle for equality

The challenge of teaching civil rights and the impact of inequality on one's own identity has led me to find impactful literary texts, poems and short writings in my lessons so they can serve as portals into historical events, that hopefully elicit a deeper understanding why the struggle for equality matters on people's identity. One of my unit’s essential question is directly from Langston Hughes’ poem “Dream Deferred”: “what happens to a dream deferred?”⁵  Using this poem will help the unpacking of what African Americans might ‘dream’ for after emancipation from slavery and would include the discussion of various types of social and political equality. Sequentially, this poem will also be used more broadly to analyze what might be the common dream for other oppressed groups in the Americas and discuss how people belong to multiple historically oppressed groups. In this section of the unit I would like to see students analyze how access to the ‘American identity’ prompts the question of how social equality could be attained without “American identity.”  With this question, I hope to further discuss the impact of keeping some people from embracing being “American”. After studying the social history for many marginalized groups in the Americas, we will focus on answering, why might some living in the Americas rather not be called “Americans?”  What does being “American” or America represent to marginalized people who did not want to claim it as a part of their identity? 

Another poem by Hughes that I will have students analyze is “Let America be America Again”⁶ to discuss the ideals of what America has idealistically meant to early European settlers and how those ideas are debased when it is denied to anyone on the continent in the Americas. An understanding of Hughes’ life as a historical actor will help the class understand the origins of his writings and their historical significance more deeply. This would build off of the value of life writings as historical sources and what these can tell us about the past. Other questions that I hope would facilitate discussing the connection between identity and historical study are: How does identity impact a person's writing and what does that reveal about the past?  How do experiences and historical context impact identity? Finally, to begin to reintroduce how writing can be a form of agency I would ask, what were the various purposes of Hughes’ writings and when do personal life writings take on a public purpose?

The historical content of this unit has gone through constant filtering and refinement due to the number of historically significant people and valuable sources that help analyze Civil Rights in the Americans. Just as understanding Langston Hughes’ life helps unpack his writings, students will be prompted to research and understand other historical actors to better understand the origins and historical significance of a source. In the unit, students will have four major sub-unit sections that will entail a civil rights movement in the Americas: women in the Americas, indigenous peoples of the Americas, African Americans, and Mexican Americans. 

These sub-unit sections will set up the context for each of the aforementioned movements and entail historical actors that find themselves within intersections of marginalized groups which in turn led to a cross section of many movements during this time era. The intersectionality of people in many of these movements and identity commonalities will be discussed through the analysis of the historical actors and writings of Cherríe Moraga, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Betty Friedan, bell hooks, Rigoberta Menchú, Zapatistas (EZLN), Gustavo Gutierrez, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, Cesar Chavez, and Luis Valdez. Identity analysis of these people with the question ‘how does identity impact our actions?’ will help students further think about their own identity and how that may have impacted the actions they have taken thus far and actions they may want to take now in the society they live in.

Intersectionality and Feminist Movements in the Americas

The women's rights section will begin with excerpts of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa to begin a discussion on feminism, intersectionality, and the cross sections of inequality⁷--when people are discriminated for being of multiple marginalized groups. This book will help students understand the struggles and concerns of Third World women in the Unites States and exemplify the impact, agency, and necessity these types of writings have in the world. Thereafter, students will read a section of bell hooks’ book, Talking Back, to begin to understand the struggles of African American women in the United States and the discussion of women of color and their initial exclusion from the US feminist movement.⁸  These readings that further detail intersectionality and inclusion in movements will be vital for the remainder of the unit to emphasize the historical continuity of this issue evident in the movements aforementioned.

In continuing to connect  intersectionality and the struggle for civil rights, I will have students watch an excerpt of the play “Sliver of a Full Moon”⁹ by Mary Kathryn Nagle that depicts the history of the North American struggle against domestic violence of Native women.  This film addresses how government agencies such as the US Department of Justice’s Violence Against Women Acts of 1994 has fallen short in many cases in protecting Native women from abuse by non-Native men due to the men’s exemption for being outside of the jurisdiction of these acts. This piece will analyze the struggle for government protection of Native women and the impact government policies have on Native women in the US. Students will also discuss the play’s display of the projected identity by outsiders towards Native women and how this identity projection impacted the US government’s lack of concern for their well-being. Furthermore, we will hold a discussion regarding the extent of how a play as a form of writing helps create change towards fairness and equality for United States Native women. We will also discuss Nagle’s role as a lawyer and Native American rights activist and how that impacted the play’s message and purpose. 

The issues and struggles for equality of United States Native women will segue to a larger discourse on the Women’s movement in the United States -specifically the impacts of Betty Friedan, the National Organization of Women (NOW), the equal protection law clause (1972), and Roe v. Wade. The class will examine the historical narrative that focuses on white women and how this focus impacts the Feminist movement in the US after 1945. What were the concerns and struggles of white women in the US and to what level did their struggle coincide with issues of other civil rights movements? With further examination, students will begin to understand the influences of other movements in this historical context such as the use of militant tactics and public protest.

Indigenous peoples and Civil Rights in the Americas

Following Women's movements, the unit will steer in the direction of indigenous peoples’ struggle for equality in the Americas, focusing first on indigenous people of Latin America between 1945 and 2007. This will include understanding the impact of  Gustavo Gutierrez, Rigoberta Menchú, and the Zapatistas (EZLN) on indigenous people in Latin America. Excerpts from the book A Theology of Liberation by Peruvian and Dominican priest Gustavo Gutierrez will help trace how the Catholic Church in Latin America impacted indigenous rights movements in this region to help promote structural change as a way to gain equal rights. This will also display the impact of Liberation Theology on other leaders in the Catholic Church such as Oscar Romero in El Salvador. Thereafter, this unit would continue to focus on Central America, moving towards an analysis of life-writings by Rigoberta Menchú of Guatemala. In her personal written accounts, Menchú depicts the genocide of indigenous people during the Guatemalan Civil War. She also discloses how the struggle for survival as a people has impacted Mayan identity in Guatemala and how Mayan cultural identity and their very existence was attacked by the Guatemalan government. The Guatemalan Civil War helps unravel the layers of postcolonial attack on indigenous identity that eventually led to the decimation of indigenous peoples in the Americas. Just geographically north of Guatemala in the Mexican state of Chiapas, the predominantly indigenous Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation, or EZLN) guerrilla rebel group had an uprising against the social, political, and economic injustices against indigenous people in the region. Students will read and summarize EZLN’s First Declaration of the Lacadona Jungle, then describe the differences between the identity that the Mexican government was imposing on the people of the region and the identity they were attempting to project onto the world scene.¹⁰   

African American Civil Rights Movement in the United States

Sequentially, students will then investigate and analyze the cause and consequences of the African American Civil Rights movement in the United States during the 1950’s and 1960’s. One of the significant causes for this movement was de jure segregation which institutionalized segregation in public settings, such as schools, through implementation of Jim Crow laws in the southern states of the US. Another cause was the rise of the violent white supremacist group, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which primarily terrorized African American communities with little to no consequence from law enforcement in these states. Students will analyze the turning point of the Emmett Till case (1955) where a 14-year old African American boy visiting from Chicago was brutally beaten to death by a group of white men for allegedly  flirting with a white woman in the state of Mississippi. These white men were acquitted on all counts in Mississippi courts, which led to a public outcry from the African American community that charged the momentum in the struggle for equality. 

This section will focus on the various tactics African Americans took to advocate for their equality, such as pushing for legislative change, conducting boycotts, exercising civil disobedience, participating in non-violent public protests, and taking militant stances. African Americans made headway towards equality through one of the most historically significant legislative victories for everyone’s civil rights, the Oliver Brown v. Topeka, Kansas Board of Education Supreme Court case. This 1954 case overturned the earlier 1896 decision in Plessy v Ferguson by declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional under the “Equal Protections Clause” of the 14th Amendment. Students will then discuss the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) role in the Brown v Board of Education case and the process of desegregation in the South that had multiple consequences on United States society. Thereafter, students will evaluate the impact of historical actors like Rosa Parks in de facto social conditions that resulted from desegregation and the African community organizing the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott that promoted civil disobedience against the Jim Crow laws of the South. In conjunction, students will examine non-violent public protest tactics that were promoted by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the historical impact of pivotal non-violent public protests for African American civil rights such as the protests in Birmingham, Alabama and the 1963 March on Washington D.C.  In contrast to the non-violent protest movements, students will also analyze the militant Black Power movement with groups such as the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party. Students will analyze Malcolm X’s criticism of the non-violent protest movement and also the Black Panther Party’s 10-point plan¹¹ to understand the various tactics and goals of these groups. 

Mexican American Civil Rights Movement in the United States

Similar to African-Americans, Mexican-American groups used many different methods to fight for equality such as non-violent strikes, militancy, and the use of writing as a form of resistance to make change. Students will discuss the impact of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers’ non-violent strikes against grape growers in the central valley of California. Students will describe to what extent Farm Workers’ actions impacted their inclusion into US society. Students will then compare this movement with the Alianza Federal de los Pueblos that took a militant approach to reclaim land lost in the Mexican-American War of 1948 through occupation and violence. Finally, students will look at various forms of protest through the arts and literature specifically analyzing the impact of Luis Valdez’s theatrical production, “Teatro Campesino,” which displayed the struggles of farmworkers in California; and also Rudolfo Gonzales’ poem “Yo Soy Joaquin” that expresses the Chicana/o’s struggles of confusion, history, identity and call to action.¹²

Structure and Examples of Writing for Change

The Civil Rights era continued to grow the new postcolonial narrative that questioned the depictions of the most oppressed during Western imperialism and other white supremacist capitalist influenced societies around the world. A section of this unit will cover postcolonial Historiography and the change in focus of historical narratives. This section will discuss controversies such as W.E.B. DuBois’ attack on the racist character in Anglo-American historiography (Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 [1935]); Edward Said’s critique of the Western view of the orient and its impact (Orientalism); Howard Zinn’s People's History of the United States and debated historical narratives in academia; Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s research methodologies on decolonizing research methods to gain a truer narrative; and the Texas history textbook controversy that teaches the struggle for implicit and explicit language in historical narratives. Class discussion of these issues will lead to the historiographical questions of: Where does the truth lie? What is at stake? Can historians be objective?  How can we understand and value limitations of writing through understanding the identity of a person? What are the social, political, and economic impacts of these historical writings? How does understanding purpose, value, and limitations of sources help one be a better historian?