1) Identify the main arguments of B. Mukhejee's short essay "Immigrant Writing" (anthology, p. 107-110) and state whether you agree and why.
2) Choose a small excerpt (up to 5 lines) of Carlos Bulosan's short story "Silence" (anthology, p. 10-11) and analyse what (and everything) you can about it.
In "Immigrant Writing: Give Us Your Maximalists!," Bharati Mukherjee argues that American literature is lacking because it doesn't tell the stories of the "new Americans." The author advocates for a shift in the literary field, to make room for these new experiences.
ReplyDeleteMukherjee starts this essay by describing her experience and the people she saw during her naturalization ceremony. Alongside her, there were hundreds of other "nonwhite petitioners" awaiting their certificates of naturalization. This experience made her think of "the new Americans." On one hand, in the literal sense, given that these people are the most recent American citizens. On the other hand, they reflect the changing demographics of the country and defy what it means to be American.
Because the very definition of American has changed, Mukherjee states that American literature should make way for their voices and experiences. Minimalist Fiction cannot be the vessel for these new stories, as it is too cold and too focused on middle-class concerns and anxieties. Moreover, Expatriate Literature is also too narrow to accommodate the richness of what "the new American" has to tell.
Thus, a new movement must be created. Mukherjee proposes that young writers work with two tools in particular: duality and the present. When they do, American literature will be as chameleonic as its writers, and all the richer for it.
I found this to be quite an interesting proposition. Having read some Minimalist Fiction (Raymond Chandler and John Cheever), I can see where the author is coming from in writing that this type of literature focuses too heavily on a collective sense of fear and anxiety, usually from the perspective of cushy middle-class characters. The experience of the new wave of immigrants probably wouldn't fit here. I also think the "duality" point the author brings up is spot-on. It's this fluidity, almost chameleon-like trait that makes immigrant so interesting, from my point of view.
However, I don't agree with the criticism that this new generation of writers should focus on the present. Exploring inherited stories and folk tales from an ancestral homeland gives immigrant writing its peculiarity and makes it stand out. On top of that, it's to be expected of young diasporic writers (especially those who are second- or third-generation) to imagine themselves in their parents' circumstances back in their "homeland." I believe this is a crucial step in negotiating their identity as both American and something-else. When done well, this can give depth to a novel (such are the cases of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz; and Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler).
— Rita Cunha, nº150913
2) I selected these lines from Carlos Bulosan's short story: "But now he had been alone for five years in this town. He had spoken to the walls until they become deaf with his solicitude and pleadings. He had caressed the chair until it stood mute with pity for him. He had conversed with almost everything in his room, even to the little clock that woke him up in the morning."
ReplyDeleteThis small excerpt displays the most visible themes of the story: isolation and detachment. The protagonist of this story is completely cut off from reality and society. He believes his life has no meaning and his depression is incredibly apparent. Before settling for the house across the town college, the character goes through two other houses but, ultimately, decides to move due to the feelings of not belonging and of being invisible. However, even when he moves to the house near the college he is still dissatisfied. He's incapable of facing reality, instead, waiting for someone else to make a move. He's detached from people and nature as we can tell by the way he talks to inanimate objects. The protagonist obviously craves attention and affection but his depression stops him from acting on those needs.
This state of mind might also be a reflection of the author's; Bulosan was from the Philippines, having immigrated to America in 1930. Surely, the author himself is no stranger to feelings of detachment and segregation and this character might be a result of all these negative feelings. This character acts as a mirror image of the author's fears and anxieties as an immigrant in the 40s America.
- Ana Catarina Narciso nº150886
2)
ReplyDelete"She was his own discovery and creation, and so long as she was in his mind the silence would be quieted. So from then on, he never admitted anyone into his room."
This story deals with the feelings of detachment that one feels when excluded from society, portraying a protagonist that is always trying to run away from the feeling of not belonging, that in this story is represented by the notion of “silence”.
This constant exclusion leads the protagonist to close himself off from the rest of the world, and in this isolated state he longs for something or someone who can free him from his “silence”. And then one day he looks out of his room’s window to find a girl reading in the college lawn. It isn’t the girl herself who frees the protagonist from his isolation, but the significance he attributes to her. That’s why he refers to her as his “discovery” and “creation”. The girl becomes his outlet, something he can immerse himself in, and so he buys curtains to match her sweaters so that he can fully be a part of something and quiet the silence of solitude: “so long as she was in his mind the silence would be quieted.”
However, what the protagonist believes to be the solution to his problem will, without him even noticing, only submerse him further in the silence he so longs to escape. In order not to feel lonely, to keep his secret creation all to himself, the protagonist ends up completely shutting himself off from the rest of the world, as he stops admitting people into his room, and later on stops even going to work.
Therefore this excerpt portrays the problem which is present all throughout the story: one cannot quiet the “silence” by hiding behind more silence. When the narrator stops admitting people into his room just so that he can watch the girl, he puts his life on hold for that feeble sense of belonging that can be taken away from him at any time, as it does in the end of the story when the girl leaves, and the protagonist finds himself completely alone and surrounded by the silence that had in actuality never been quieted.
-Carolina Silva, nº153616
These five lines from Carlos Bulosan’s short story “Silence”, have captured my attention because in few words they describe accurately the main character’s existence. Starting from the first sentence “He became human again. There was a meaning to his life again”, we can suppose that probably he could have lost the person he loved and that is the reason why his life does not have sense anymore. This feeling that is growing inside of him for this girl, that he does not even know, is enough for him to make his life worth to be lived again. This is also a starting point to conduct a reflection on the human condition, so fragile and instable, and how it is easy to gain and lose a balance, mostly for a person that maybe could have lived suffering situations as the protagonist of the story.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the sentence which better describes the new condition of the main character, is the oxymoron “the silence was quieted again”. The silence here, and for the whole text, stands for the loneliness by which he was drown. The girl, in this respect, became the epicentre of his entire world, not only in terms of love, but mostly as the representation of not being alone anymore. This is the reason why he thought that “ as long as she was in his mind there would be no silence” because since she came into his life everything was different, starting from his curtains, now coloured as the colours of her pullovers.
Before noticing her, he was used to sit on the chair and staring at the walls, talking only to the objects which were inside his flat. His loneliness had enfolded him.
Without knowing it, the girl brought light and joy in the protagonist’s existence, which was now not marked by emptiness and silence anymore.
-Sara Malavolta n° 155422
2)
ReplyDelete1st four lines of paragraph 3:
“But now he had been alone for 5 years in this town. He had spoken to the walls until they had become deaf with his solicitude and pleadings. He had caressed the chair until it had stood mute with pity for him. He had conversed with almost everything in his room, even the little clock that woke him up in the morning.”
This extract first relates a process. Indeed, it presents an initial situation (the character's loneliness), several efforts to change that situation (talking to inanimate objects), and the outcome of those efforts (a failure). But this process also has a deeper function, as it gives an overview of the main character's personality.
The character seems to be someone as much rational as emotion driven. This fact can be noticed through 2 graduations that the process stages: a rational and an emotional one. Rational, because he resorts to different strategies in order to achieve his goal. His first one his persuasion, as the past participle “spoken” associated with the concepts of “solicitude and pleadings” implies that he uses words in order to create pity. But here, his attempt ends in failure. That outcome leads him to graduate to his second strategy: seduction. As words did not give him his way, he uses gestures to obtain the attention he is lacking of (“caressed”). Yet, here again, silence is the only answer he gets. According to the beginning of the 4th sentence (“ He had conversed with almost everything in his room”), these failures are only examples of numerous attempts to break the feeling of loneliness. But what pushes him to adopt these strategies despite all these fails is, in fact, an impulse of desperation. Indeed, each strategy result in fail, and each failure amplifies his need to communicate. Hence the emotional graduation.
This concept of communication issue is convey by the way the sentences reflect failure through their syntax. Indeed, the syntactic anaphora in the second and third sentences presents his conversational incapacity as a repetitive phenomenon. The fact he is talking to inanimate objects also portrays him as crazy. Moreover, the “room” he inhabits appears as his own world. It is his comfort zone, in which he can't even find comfort. The main character therefore seems to be alienated at every level in the story – from the outside, from his room, and from himself.
But his failure symbolically takes an even more bitter turn, as it represents a social downfall. This phenomenon can be identified through 2 phases. The first one is the main character´s dehumanization. Indeed, he has no name and is only referred as “he”, which deprives him of an identity. He is not able to communicate with other humans, and is not even worth the time of mere objects. These facts position him as an inferior being. The second phase is identified through the inanimate objects´ personification. The walls and the chair, which have been attributed human features, can therefore embody real person in society. Walls can therefore symbolically be interpreted as men – as their role is to protect –, and the chair can represent women – as its role s to rest. What is more, the sentence “he had spoken to the walls until they had become deaf “ reminds the reader of the idiom “ walls have ears”, implying that someone may be eavesdropping a conversation. This interpretation reinforces the idea of exclusion: the walls, and therefore men, were first curious about his case but have then lose their interest. Thus, the main character wouldn't just have been rejected by mere inanimate objects, but by the society in general.