The premise for this class is that race and ethnicity are social constructions that materially impact our lives and every aspect of the world(s) in which we live. Another premise for this class is that literary texts can provide particularly important insights into formations of race and ethnicity. As we read texts written in the US during the past several decades that centrally engage with issues of race and ethnicity, we will consider how this literature, in doing so, reflects on, resists, and provides alternatives to dominant narratives about the founding of America; its status as a democracy and as a “nation of immigrants”; and the wars it fights within and beyond its expanding borders. We will consider ways the literature engages specific contexts that include, for example, WWII; nuclear war; the 1965 change in immigration law and shifts in U.S. racial demographics; the civil rights movements; 9/11 and the war on terror; the Black Lives Matter movement; the US’s illegal overthrow and occupation of Hawai‘i; the contemporary sovereignty movement in Hawai‘i; and US-Israel relations. We will read literature by Black American, American Indian (Laguna Pueblo), Kanaka Maoli, Domincan American, Palestinian American, Filipino, and Korean American writers. We will analyze similarities and borrowings as well as differences among the literary traditions in which these authors work. As well, we will identify differences in authors’ responses that we can trace to each group’s distinct history and processes of racial formation in the United States. By putting the texts in dialogue with one another, we will think about how anti-colonial and immigrant struggles work together and at times at odds, and about how attempts to make the US more inclusively multicultural articulate with the struggles of indigenous people for decolonization. As we attend to representations in the texts of race and ethnicity, we also will think about how these are inextricable from those of region, nation, class, gender, sexuality, and other identity markers.
ASSIGNMENTS: Two midterms. A final with a take-home essay component. Short writing assignments and frequent quizzes. Attendance is mandatory; missed classes will negatively impact your grade.
Texts (ordered through Revolution Books)
Ta-nahesi Coates, Between the World and Me (2015)
Juno Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her (2012)
Remi Kanazi, Before the Next Bomb Drops (2015)
Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker (1995)
R. Zamora Linmark, Rolling the Rs (1995)
Toni Morrison, God Help the Child (2015)
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1977)
Haunani-Kay Trask, Night Is a Sharkskin Drum (2002)
Shorter readings (short stories, poetry, and articles providing historical and political contexts for the literature) will also be posted to Laulima.