Sui Sin Far Journal

By Jessica Granse

January 30, 2009

“The Little One looked up into his mother’s face in perfect faith. He was engaged in the pleasant occupation of sucking a sweetmeat; but that did not prevent him from gurgling responsively,” (880).

This is an example of Sui Sin Far’s style of writing and ability to describe, by describing beautifully how Little One interacts with his mother.

Sui Sin Far is not only known as a talented and wonderful writer, she’s also known as the first Eurasian writer to try to bring the experiences of the Chinese immigrants of the nineteenth century to life in a way that the people of America could really see what they’re going through and where they come from. Although it was hard to do this and be published, she stuck to her identity, even though some told her she needs to cash in on her nationality. They wanted her to “act more Chinese”. As it was put in an excerpt from “Sentimentalism and Sui Sin Far” I found online, “Perhaps it was because some ‘funny people’ saw Sui Sin Far, the earliest known American author of Chinese ancestry to write in English, struggling to survive and publish that they advised her to ‘trade upon’ her ‘nationality.’” Luckily, she didn’t follow this advice or we wouldn’t be able to get the insight into the experiences of these immigrants that we do in works by her such as “In the Land of the Free”. The thing that makes her work so interesting is that it comes with a big piece of history from it. Rather than simply hearing what happened when the Chinese were immigrating here, you get to witness one case first hand in this piece. It also has the subtle message, at the beginning, that you can’t judge someone from another country right off the bat because you really don’t know what they’re going through or who they are. At the beginning of “In the Land of the Free”, Lae Choo is speaking to her son in Chinese. She talks in a way that’s more on the elegant side, such as when she says, “’Yes, my olive bud; there is where thy father is making a fortune for thee. Thy father! Oh, wilt thou not be glad to behold his dear face. ‘Twas for thee I left him,’” (880). She has the air of Shakespeare and is able to talk very smoothly and soothingly. One she arrives in America and tries to speak English, her language becomes more choppy- and less intelligent-sounding, “’No, you not take him; he my son too,’” (881). This is simply due to the fact that she knew little English. Hom Hing, on the other hand, understood and spoke English very well, so his responses were more beautiful such as, “’When my wife told to me one morning that she dreamed of a green tree with spreading branches and one beautiful red flower growing thereon, I answered her that I wished my son to be born in our country, and for her to prepare to go to China,’” (881). This may also be because at this point he was still trying to reason with the officer, while Lae Choo didn’t really understand what the problem was and was fearful also due to her maternal instinct. She hadn’t been away from the son for a whole night since he was born. It seems as though this is to say, although one may not speak the language well, if you speak to them in theirs, it might be some of the most beautiful stuff you’ve ever heard. When it comes to Sui Sin Far, she has learned the language so well that she is able to write just as she would in a native tongue, thus the reason she is able to write so beautifully herself.

Cahan Journal

By Jessica Granse

january 29, 2009

“’You know that I have on my tongue what I have on my lung, Tamara. I mean what I say, and we want no match-makers. America is now treife to me,’” (803).

Asriel is having problems with Shaya and Flora’s want to conform to American ways.

“The Imported Bridegroom” is obviously much about the hardships of moving from one culture to a completely different one. It includes hardships like homesickness and learning the new language and concepts, but the most prominent subject seems to be that of cultural identity. I found an article that gives a discussion of it in more complicated terms and more depth, so I would like to take the idea of interpreting it in terms of interior identity and public identity, but in a much simpler way. The main point from the article on the Article Archives website, “Marvels of Memory: Citizenship and Ethnic Identity in Abraham Cahan’s ‘The Imported Bridegroom’” is explained in one particular sentence, “Particularly in the central character of Asriel Stroon in "The Imported Bridegroom" can we see the narrative of a lost interior identity, but we can also delineate a recuperated public identity through Asriel's son-in-law Shaya.” Now, the first question that came to my mind was why we were studying Asriel and Shaya but not Flora. Easily, I figured out that in order to have a real discussion about the separation of identity between interior and public caused by the move from Pavly to New York, they would have had to experience this move. Flora, however, was born in America and thus did not first have the exposure to living in this really Jewish culture in Pavly and then being removed from it and put into this American society. Instead, all of her experience of Pavly was secondhand through her dad. He reinforced values of the Jewish religion upon her and her friends also followed these values by taking these broken English-speaking men from Pavly as their husbands. The thing he fails to remember is that they are now in America. They’re in a different place and there’s a different norm. In America, it is allowed for a girl to marry any man, of any religion, of any occupation, as she chooses. Alternatively, within this Jewish culture, a girl of one social class, depending on her father’s occupation, is to marry a man of that same class and occupation as well as for him to be Jewish. This is unimportant to Flora. Instead, it’s more important to her that the man is an American doctor than that he’s Jewish. Flora is dealing with more of an independence issue than identity, because she wants the ability to think for herself, while her father wants her to stick to tradition. Shaya and Asriel then are what we’re left with. Shaya must choose whether to go with his new passion and in turn obey Flora, or stick to tradition and obey Asriel. He is burdened with the difference between what he was and what he wants to become. Asriel has no confusion between whether he wants to stick to tradition or change, because he’s all for tradition. He does however have a confusion stemmed from Shaya and Flora’s want to conform to American ways.

Zitkala Sa Journal

By Jessica Granse
January 23, 2009

“Even nature seemed to have no place for me. I was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; neither a wild Indian nor a tame one,” (Page 1118).

This quote is only one of the times in Zitkala Sa’s biography writing that she expresses her feelings of isolation, which is the reoccurring and main theme.

The works by Zitkala Sa that were biographical were stories about a culture and about the wrongs done to that culture, but ultimately they were stories of isolation and loneliness. At the beginning of Impressions of an Indian Childhood, she’s a very happy girl. She enjoys spending time with her mother and hearing Indian tales. It all changes with the introduction of the missionaries to her life. Her excitement over the red apples and going on the “iron horse” with them leads to the first disappointment in a line of letdowns. Her first feeling of isolation in this book seems to be when all of her friends are able to go East, but her mother doesn’t want her to. She is isolated from her friends in this sense, but only temporarily. When she finally is able to go in The School Days of an Indian Girl, she is stared at by the white people, or palefaces, as she likes to refer to them, making the ride not so easy. Due to the way she’s dressed, their stares announce her isolation from white society. Within the first day she’s isolated because she doesn’t know the routine and what the bell means in the classroom. The isolation from the whites seems to continue while she’s at that school, although she seems to find some friendly faces among the Indian children. The isolation doesn’t pause when she goes home. On her visits, she is set separate from her mom because she is taught to speak, read, and write English, while her mother doesn’t know any English. Also, when her brother goes to a party and she isn’t invited. She even feels as though nature has isolated her, as expressed in the above quote. The isolation seems to be a theme for the full length of these short biographies. In college, it’s because of her being called a “squaw”, although she does get a little more inclusion from the oratorical contest. Even as a schoolteacher she is alone in the sense that she understands what it means for an Indian child to be Americanized, while the white people who come through the school are amazed at the productions these supposed savages produce, but are unable to understand the pain they had to go through in order to become so “civilized”. Zitkala Sa is pulled from her culture in an attempt to teach her a separate culture and she ends up being all alone in her personal mixture of the cultures. In American Narratives by Molly Crumpton Winter, found on the google book search, she discusses the fact that this was normal for the Indian children in the boarding schools at this time. This isolation was a normal feeling among these children. This whole big group of people were all forced to feel alienated just for the goal of making them more “white”.

Winnemucca Journal

By Jessica Granse
January 22, 2009

“And by-and-by the dark children grew into a large nation; and we believe it is the one we belong to, and that the nation that sprung from the white children will some time send some one to meet us and heal all the old trouble,” (503).

This is a small part from where Winnemucca’s grandfather is telling the creation story about how the whites and the Paiutes came to be separated. In the story, there was a boy and girl that were white and a boy and girl that were Indian. Due to their bickering, they were separated by their father, so the whites were considered the long-lost siblings of the Paiutes by this story.

Winnemucca’s story is basically an Indian’s account of the disturbance that took place when they met with the white men. In telling this, she also gives you a sense of the Indian traditions she was raised with. Something very popular with pretty much all cultures, is the idea of creation stories. We went over some of these in the last quarter, such as one from the Iroquois culture and another from the Pima culture. The Bible also presents another creation story. I don’t know if you can really refer to this specific story as a creation story because it more talks about the separation of the races at the beginning of the world, but it is close to the same basic genre. One of the things I found most interesting about this particular one is that, while you can find all the other creation stories we went over last quarter somewhere online, I’ve found that this one is more obscure. The other ones are known stories past down through the culture they are a part of and you can find information on several sites for each of them, but I’ve tried searching online for this one that Winnemucca presents to see if I could find any interesting information about it, but I was unable to find it anywhere online, unless it was referring specifically to Life Among the Piutes. This leaves the question of whether this is a popular story of their culture or whether it was more of a story important to her because her grandfather was the one telling it. Also, there is the question of her credibility. When we talked about her in class, we discussed the probability that she could be adding some fiction to her story, possibly to give her side more of an authentic, stereotypical Indian view. According to wikipedia, there are some who don’t believe she has credibility in her writing, “Like many people of two worlds, she may be judged harshly in both contexts. Many Paiutes view her as a collaborator who helped the U.S. Army kill her people. Modern historians view her book as an important primary source, but one that is deliberately misleading in many instances.” As you can see, which side she’s on seems a bit obscured. Her choice is not only between white and indian, but maybe this is the pull between whether she’s on her dad or her grandfather’s side. While the grandfather, supposedly believing in this story, believes that the white men are their long lost brothers, the father has the horrible dream about the emigration. While it’s obvious the father’s side was true because they were forced to reservations, it’s possible that the grandfather was too in the sense that the grandfather’s view respresents how it should be, while the father’s dream is how it is in reality. I believe in this case, the view of why she’s told this story is more important than any other aspect you could relate to it. The reason she told this story, in my opinion, is for her trying to, as someone who is an Indian and has assisted the whites during the Bannock War, she tries to present both views.

Du Bois Journal

By Jessica Granse

January 16, 2009

“The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North- her co-partner in guilt- cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold,” (910).

Near the end of chapter three of W. E. B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, he discusses his theories on how the discrimination of African Americans can be solved, but when doing so he personifies the South as a woman, as you can see in the above quote. Is this possibly his own prejudice against women?

The Souls of Black Folk contains Du Bois’ thoughts regarding the issues of race during the time. After the Emancipation Proclamation, although African Americans were then free from slavery, they still were barred from other rights. When Du Bois discusses what he believes should be done, he says that the South needs be led and criticized to be better and make up for the wrongs it has done African Americans. He does this is personifying the South as a female, saying the South must “assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging.” Is it possible that in his search to correct the prejudice done to his race, he belittles the whole race of females? We must consider why the South is considered a woman in his eyes. In doing this, we must remember that the South was the one most discriminating against the African American race. One possibility for this statement is that he’s making a statement on the efforts from the women of their race not being as great as that of the men. It could also be a slant at women due to his own prejudice. If you look at the Personal Life section of W. E. B. Du Bois’s on Wikipedia, you’ll see that a biography about him be David Levering Louis presents evidence for the possibility of Du Bois having affairs and refers to him as a “priapic adulterer”. Although there is another biography by Raymond Walters in which this possibility is doubted due to “lack of direct corroboration” from those said to be his lovers. Although there is some doubt, this shouldn’t be ruled out as a possibility. This would then provide some support for Du Bois being discriminative against women because if he cheats on women, it shows that he doesn’t respect them. I do believe that it’s likely for him to be discriminating against them because at this time there was so much emphasis on the race issues that American had yet to approach the sex issues. Because of this, women were still looked down upon. Another possibility is that there’s only two genders, so it’s a fifty-fifty chance he’d choose to use she rather than he and this time he happened to be she, but I still believe that it was thought out and put down on purpose.

Booker T. Washington Journal

Jessica Granse

January 13, 2009

“’Cast down your bucket where you are’— cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded,” (681).

Much like Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream”, this quote from Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Exposition Address was the most famous line of his speech, more specifically the line saying “Cast down your bucket where you are”. You could consider it his catch phrase.

Booker T. Washington was one of the fathers of the progress for the African American race. His Atlanta Exposition Address was his most famous speech with the line “Cast down your bucket where you are”. There can be endless discussions about this one line. He said it in order to encourage his race and give them hope that they can contribute to the progress. Although this line was no doubt meant for this purpose, there still seems to be a little interpretation to do for it. One meaning you could get from it would be that you need to get started where you are. You can’t wait for someone’s help and you can’t wait for the time to be perfect. You must “cast your bucket”, or start your efforts, where you are. In this case, the people must start their new free lives and they must make the changes right there in the South. If they don’t it will never make them fully free. Another variation of the meaning for this line would be that one explained on The Booker T. Washington Inspiration Network’s blogspot, “Dr. Washington uses a true story, here, as an analogy of a truth he understood regarding how one may miss the life saving nourishment or answer when it is right in front of them.” They mean that you need to open your eyes to what’s right in front of you. The opportunity for change is right in front of them. The slave’s have been freed. What Washington believed was that in time the African Americans would eventually acquire all the same privileges that are already granted to the white people, but they need to take it slowly and not try to fight hard for all of it at once. Instead, they needed to open their eyes to and be happy for the freedom that’s right in front of them, rather than complaining right off the bat about the freedom’s they have yet to have gotten. In the analogy, it’s just like the seamen’s need to open their eyes to the fresh water right in front of them. This could also simply mean you need to stop worrying about changing your situation and you should be happy to enjoy the one you’re in. They need to enjoy their freedoms and work slowly at the rest rather than trying to acquire them all at once. Although there are these few variations at the line, it is still obvious of what Washington is basically trying to get at. He’s trying to make sure that all the African Americans are happy with their new freedoms and that they realize that all the freedoms don’t come at once, but they need to acquire what’s important first. Then worry about getting full equality after the more important rights are granted.

Gilman Journal

Jessica Granse

January 08, 2009

Journal #2

“And what can one do? If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency – what is one to do?” (808).

In “The Yellow Wall-paper,” Gilman illustrates the incredible amount at which women were trapped in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She did this through showing the mental illness that she herself suffered in which her treatment involved the advice of her never writing again. She was told what to do and told nothing was wrong, against her own suspicions.

Although she never suffered hallucinations, Gilman did have nervous breakdowns, as she announces in “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wall-paper’”. Though Gilman’s breakdowns weren’t quite as severe as the character in her story, she tries to use these severities to show just how mad one can go when they’re told to isolate themselves and resist from doing anything intellectual or productive just because they’re a woman. It was believed that women suffer from hysteria due to the sole fact that they’re women. As it says on the second footnote of page 808, hysteria and uterus come from the same Greek root, so it was believed the reproductive parts of women were their source of mental illnesses. The doctor she was sent to, Dr Silas Weir Mitchell, explains this theory as quoted in Deborah Thomas’ paper “The Changing Role of Womanhood: From True Woman to New Woman in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wall-paper’” from the ALRA site,
“American woman is, to speak plainly, too often physically unfit for her duties as woman, and is perhaps of all civilized females the least qualified to undertake those weightier tasks which tax so heavily the nervous system of man. She is not fairly up to what nature asks from her as wife and mother. How will she sustain herself under the pressure of those yet more exacting duties which nowadays she is eager to share with the man?”
Mitchell isolates American women as those that are unfit for their duties. He thinks that if women are already taxed by their own duties as wife and mother, there is no way they’ll be able to do the tasks that even trouble men. I would like to bring up the point that that’s not all Gilman was trying to do. Her biography from the Norton Anthology mentions about her first marriage, “She entered into the marriage reluctantly, anticipating the difficulties of reconciling her ambition to be a writer with the demands of being a wife, housekeeper, and mother,” (807). Gilman was trying to take on something that was considered one of “those weightier tasks which tax so heavily the nervous system of man”, writing. She was trying to be successful at her ambition and this was not a time in which women were very welcome to have any ambition beyond motherhood and wifehood. She was taking this on as well as the traditional duties assigned to women by society. Society, at that time, put more emphasis on the mother and wife’s role in the family and they were to take on the responsibilities of caring for the children. Maybe if there was less work automatically assigned to them around the house and the man of the house took an equal part in those responsibilities, women could have had a fair chance at their ambitions. To me, this seems like just a result of the fear of men having more competition. If women were able to compete with them in the world outside of the house, there would be twice as many people they had to compete with. Instead, they’d rather get all the glory by having the wife stay at home and all the household duties be done for them. They just weren’t ready to share the glory, so they made up a cure for these nervous breakdowns caused by the woman’s actual stress of not just following her ambitions but having to do all the housework, care for the children, and cook for the husband. This cure would also cure them of their fear of having to share the rest of the world with women: just make them bedridden. This was no cure at all, though. Instead, it made them feel isolated and useless.

Abrose Bierce Journal

By Jessica Granse
January 08, 2009

"He gave the struggle his attention as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!-what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo!" (Page 363, Bierce).



As Farquhar struggles to free the cord from his hands, Bierce describes it with this metaphor of someone watching a juggler, then is applauding his effort in a way that sounds almost sarcastic due to his exclamations sounding a little over-the-top.



As we discussed in class, there were several instances where the author, Bierce, changed the point of view. He starts just as describing the scene on Owl Creek Bridge, then he is able to look through the eyes of Farquhar, and eventually is able to get in his mind, then in his skin. Just as he changes the point of view, he just as easily changes his tone. Most of the story, his tone seems serious and descriptive. It’s pretty much manner-of-fact type of narration, such as when he describes Farquhar, "Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause," (page 362, Bierce). Notice how he simply tells the facts. He provides nothing of a personal opinion and in that way, stays uninvolved and emotionless for the most part. Then, this tone switches and he seems playful and almost sarcastic. The way he describes the struggle seems jokingly. First, he chooses the metaphor of a juggler, "He gave the struggle his attention as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome," (page 363, Bierce). A juggler is someone whose job is to entertain and someone who is amusing because they’re silly. It’s also a curious way to describe it. Farquhar is struggling for his life, trying to escape the cord around his arms. Why would he give his attention "without interest in the outcome"? You’d think he’d give this his complete and undivided attention. An idler observes a juggler in a half attentive, only slightly amused way. Anyway, this sets the sarcastic tone of him next over-applauding Farquhar’s attempts at escaping, "What a splendid effort!-what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo!" (page 363, Bierce). He describes it so over-the-top, saying Farquhar has superhuman strength. It seems funny that he starts with a metaphor, describing his efforts as being "without interest in the result" but then switches to saying he give a "splendid effort!" In this way, he changes his tone twice at this part. First, from his initial tone to almost uncaring with the metaphor about the juggler, then from this metaphor to joking about how magnificent Farquhar’s escape was. Switching the tone is fine, but he seems to refuse choosing one description for the escape. First, he says Farquhar has no interest in the outcome then he discusses the magnificence of the escape, implying that it was this huge effort. It almost is cause for him to lose his credibility, but only almost.