Common Ground : Reading and... | Buy

PREFACE

iii

(18)

ALTERNATE TABLE OF CONTENTS: CULTURAL GROUPS

xxi

1 Reading and Writing about America's Cultures

(25)

DEFINING THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

(3)

EXPLORING CULTURAL IDENTITY

(2)

READING CRITICALLY

(1)

WRITING AS A PROCESS

(17)

LAWRENCE OTIS GRAHAM

"THE `BLACK TABLE' IS STILL THERE"

(8)

THOMAS J. TOGNO

"ASSIMILATE VS. SEGREGATE" (DRAFT)

(4)

STUDENT VOICE: THOMAS J. TOGNO, "HIGH SCHOOL U.S.A."

(4)

2 Culture and Personal History: Recounting Experiences

(62)

CULTURE AND PERSONAL HISTORY

(4)

STUDENT VOICE: JEAN-LIONEL REMISE, "MY MOTHER'S LIFE"

(3)

RECOUNTING EXPERIENCES

(56)

HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.

"A GIANT STEP" "In Appalachia, in 1964, `overachiever' designated a sort of pathology: the overstraining of your natural capacity. A colored kid who thought he could be a doctor--just for instance--was headed for a breakdown."

(6)

ELIZABETH WONG

"THE STRUGGLE TO BE AN ALL-AMERICAN GIRL" "I thought of myself as multicultural. I preferred tacos to egg rolls; I enjoyed Cinco de Mayo more than Chinese New Year."

(4)

AUDRE LORDE

"THE FOURTH OF JULY" "The waitress was white, and the counter was white, and the ice cream I never are in Washington, D.C., that summer I left childhood was white...."

(6)

ROGELIO R. GOMEZ

"FOUL SHOTS" "As teen-agers, of course, my Mexican-American friends and I did not consciously understand why we felt inferior. But we might have understood if we had fathomed our desperate need to trounce Churchill. We viewed the prospect of beating a white, north-side squad as a particularly fine coup."

(5)

MAYA ANGELOU

"GRADUATION" "The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren't even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises."

(14)

MARY CLEARMAN BLEW

"THE UNWANTED CHILD" "Or...she can abandon the baby and the husband and become really successful and really evil. This is the more attractive version of the plot, but she doesn't really believe in it. Nobody she knows has tried it. It seems as out of reach from ordinary daylight Montana as Joan Crawford or the Duchess of Windsor or the moon."

(16)

WRITING ABOUT CULTURE AND PERSONAL HISTORY

(1)

3 Culture and Environment: Describing One's World

(66)

CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT

(3)

STUDENT VOICE: MOLLY WARD, "FINDING AZARIEL"

(2)

DESCRIBING ONE'S WORLD

(61)

JEANNE WAKATSUKI HOUSTON

"MANZANAR, U.S.A." "As the months at Manzanar turned to years, it became a world unto itself, with its own logic and familiar ways....The fact that America had accused us, or excluded us, or imprisoned us, or whatever it might be called, did not change the kind of world we wanted. Most of us were born in this country; we had no other models."

(7)

ISHMAEL REED

"MY NEIGHBORHOOD" "I've grown accustomed to the common sights here--teenagers moving through the neighborhood carrying radios blasting music by Grandmaster Flash and Prince, men hovering over cars with tools and rags in hand, decked-out female church delegations visiting the sick."

105

(11)

JUDITH ORTIZ COFER

"SILENT DANCING" "Even the home movie cannot fill in the sensory details such a gathering left imprinted in a child's brain. The thick sweetness of women's perfumes mixing with the ever-present smells of good cooking in the kitchen: meat and plantain pasteles, as well as the ubiquitous rice dish made special with pigeon peas--gandules--and seasoned with precious sofrito sent up from the Island....the flavor of Puerto Rico."

116

(10)

N. SCOTT MOMADAY

"THE WAY TO RAINY MOUNTAIN" "A single knoll rises out of the plain in Oklahoma, north and west of the Wichita Range. For my people, the Kiowas, it is an old landmark, and they gave it the name Rainy Mountain."

126

(7)

JOAN DIDION

"MIAMI: THE CUBAN PRESENCE" "Fixed as they were on this image of the melting pot, of immigrants fleeing a disruptive revolution to find a place in the American sun, Anglos did not on the whole understand that assimilation would be considered by most Cubans a doubtful goal at best."

133

(11)

MICHAEL NAVA

"GARDENLAND, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA" "Early on, I acquired a taste for reading history, particularly ancient history. I suppose that pictures of ruined Greek cities reminded me of the crumbling, abandoned houses in the fields of Gardenland."

144

(9)

WRITING ABOUT CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT

153

(1)

4 Culture and Custom: Explaining Processes

154

(36)

CULTURE AND CUSTOM

155

(4)

STUDENT VOICE: HEIDI WENGERD, "THE MENNONITE FOOTWASHING CEREMONY"

156

(3)

EXPLAINING PROCESSES

159

(30)

MALCOLM X.

"MY FIRST CONK" "This was my first really big step toward self-degradation: when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh to have it look like a white man's hair."

163

(7)

MOURNING DOVE (CHRISTINE QUINTASKET)

"MARRIAGE CUSTOMS AMONG THE SALISHAN" "When a bride moved in with her mother-in-law, she took over all the hard work of the tipi. The older woman retired from heavy work...while the daughter-in-law worked continuously. If the new bride was inclined to be lazy or was unwilling to get up mornings after the old woman called, the mother-in-law would beat her legs and feet."

170

(7)

RAMON PEREZ

"THE DAY OF THE DEAD" "In our village, the festivals of the dead last two or three days, during which no one works. But here in the United States there's no great celebration....[D]uring what is called Halloween...people dress up...so that they can get together with friends, dance, and drink beer. That kind of celebration seems simple and cold, to my point of view."

177

(5)

WHITNEY OTTO

"HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT" "Take material from clothing that belongs to some family member or lover (if you find yourself to be that kind of girl). Bind them together carefully. Wonder at the disparity of your life."

182

(7)

WRITING ABOUT CULTURE AND CUSTOM

189

(1)

5 Perceptions of Culture: Discovering through Examples

190

(38)

PERCEPTIONS OF CULTURE

191

(4)

STUDENT VOICE: MIRIAM CASIMIR, "LOOK AT ME"

193

(2)

DISCOVERING THROUGH EXAMPLES

195

(32)

BRENT STAPLES

"JUST WALK ON BY" "Women are particularly vulnerable to street violence, and young black males are drastically overrepresented among the prepetrators of that violence. Yet these truths are no solace against the kind of alienation that comes of being ever the suspect, against being set apart, a fearsome entity with whom pedestrians avoid making eye contact."

199

(6)

SHANLON WU

"IN SEARCH OF BRUCE LEE'S GRAVE" "I had sought an Asian hero to emulate. But none of my choices quite fit me. Their lives were defined through heroic tasks--they had villains to defeat and wars to fight--while my life seemed merely a struggle to define myself."

205

(5)

JACK G. SHAHEEN

"THE MEDIA'S IMAGE OF ARABS" "To a child, the world is simple: good versus evil. But my children and others with Arab roots grew up without ever having seen a humane Arab on the silver screen, someone to pattern their lives after. Is it easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a screen Arab to appear as a genuine human being?"

210

(5)

DAVID MURA

"BASHED IN THE U.S.A." "To dig out the roots of racial resentment, Americans must come to terms with their subjective vision of race. If someone of another color gets a job you're applying for, is your resentment more than if a person of your own color won the job? When you hear the word American, whose face flashes before your mind?

215

(5)

JUDITH ORTIZ COFER

"THE MYTH OF THE LATIN WOMAN: I JUST MET A GIRL NAMED MARIA" "Mixed cultural signals have perpetuated certain stereotypes--for example, that of the Hispanic woman as the `hot tamale' or sexual firebrand. It is a one-dimensional view that the media have found easy to promote."

220

(7)

WRITING ABOUT PERCEPTIONS OF CULTURE

227

(1)

6 Society and Culture: Exploring Causal Connections

228

(47)

SOCIETY AND CULTURE

229

(4)

STUDENT VOICE: RUEL ESPEJO, "LEARNING TAGALOG"

230

(3)

EXPLORING CAUSAL CONNECTIONS

233

(41)

MELANIE SCHELLER

"ON THE MEANING OF PLUMBING AND POVERTY" "In the South of my childhood, not having indoor plumbing was the indelible mark of poor white trash....Poor white trash were viciously stereotyped, and never more viciously than on the playground. White- trash children had cooties--everybody knew that."

238

(6)

MARITA GOLDEN

"A DAY IN APRIL" "[T]he voice of an announcer interrupted the program to say that Martin Luther King had been shot in Memphis, Tennessee. My mother struggled upright and grabbed my arm...The flutter of her heart echoed in the palm of her hand and beat in spasms against my skin. Then fear crawled into the room with us."

244

(6)

GENE OISHI

"IN SEARCH OF HIROSHI" "I began to realize that I did not need to defend or apologize for the evil deeds committed even by Japanese. The Japanese were capable of evil because they were human, and human beings of every race have committed unspeakably cruel and violent acts throughout history....I was as free to choose between good and evil as anybody else and my race was no cause for shame and despair."

250

(7)

GARY SOTO

"THE SAVINGS BOOK" "My savings book is a testimony to my fear of poverty--that by saving a dollar here, another there, it would be kept at bay."

257

(6)

MARY CROW DOG

RICHARD ERDOES

"CIVILIZE THEM WITH A STICK" "It is almost impossible to explain to a sympathetic white person what a typical old Indian boarding school was like: how it affected the Indian child suddenly dumped into it like a small creature from another world...."

263

(11)

WRITING ABOUT SOCIETY AND CULTURE

274

(1)

7 Across Cultures: Comparing and Contrasting

275

(57)

ACROSS CULTURES

276

(6)

STUDENT VOICE: TIFFANY NGUYEN, "BEFORE AND AFTER: TWO SNAPSHOTS"

278

(4)

COMPARING AND CONTRASTING

282

(49)

CHIEF SEATTLE

"A CHANGE OF WORLDS" "Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun."

286

(4)

KIM ODE

"A FARMER'S DAUGHTER" "I'll never live on a farm again. I know that. Still, that doesn't stop me and a girlhood friend from regularly mourning the fact that we aren't living our mothers' lives--that we're rushing off to jobs instead of canning peaches, or making after-school treats, or sharing a second cup of coffee with our husbands on weekday mornings."

290

(6)

JULIA ALVAREZ

"HOLD THE MAYONNAISE" "I am the foreign stepmother in a gringa household. I've wondered what my husband's two daughters think of this stranger in their family."

296

(5)

BRENT STAPLES

"A BROTHER'S MURDER" "The desolate public housing projects, the hopeless, idle young men crashing against one another--these reminded me of the embittered town we'd grown up in. It was a place where once I would have been comfortable, or at least sure of myself. Now, hearing of my brother's forays into crime, his scrapes with police and street thugs, I was scared, unsteady on foreign terrain."

301

(5)

JADE SNOW WONG

"PURITANS FROM THE ORIENT: A CHINESE EVOLUTION" "Traditional Chinese parents pit their children against a standard of perfection without regard to personality, individual ambitions, tolerance for human error, or exposure to the changing social scene....Unlike our parents, we think we tolerate human error and human change. Our children are being encouraged to develop their individual abilities."

306

(11)

MARIANNA DE MARCO TORGOVNICK

"ON BEING WHITE, FEMALE, AND BORN IN BENSONHURST" "The story as I would have to tell it would be to some extent a class narrative: about the difference between working class and upper middle class, dependence and a profession, Bensonhurst and a posh suburb. But...I do not imagine myself as writing from a position of enormous self-satisfaction, or even enormous distance. You can take the girl out of Bensonhurst (that much is clear), but you may not be able to take Bensonhurst out of the girl."

317

(14)

WRITING: ACROSS CULTURES

331

(1)

8 Categorizing Cultures: Classifying and Dividing

332

(38)

CATEGORIZING CULTURES

333

(4)

STUDENT VOICE: ALEX NOLAN, "STEREOTYPES"

335

(2)

CLASSIFYING AND DIVIDING

337

(32)

MARY MEBANE

"SHADES OF BLACK" "Because of the stigma attached to having dark skin, a black black woman had to do many things to find a place for herself. One possibility was to attach herself to a light-skinned woman, hoping that some of the magic would rub off on her. A second was to make herself sexually available, hoping to attract a mate. Third, she could resign herself to a more chaste life-style...."

341

(7)

AMY TAN

"MOTHER TONGUE" "I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language--the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade. And I use them all--all the Englishes I grew up with."

348

(8)

ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ

"LEARNING ABOUT ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE REAL WORLD" "Soon a pattern began to emerge. The students who got the best jobs were the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants....[T]he lowest-ranking Wasps got better job offers than the higher-ranking Jews. Some Jewish students--a very few--near the top of the class did receive job offers from the elite firms, and I simply didn't understand this apparent break in the pattern."

356

(6)

SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS

"THE MEN WE CARRY IN OUR MINDS" "Warriors and toilers: those seemed, in my boyhood vision, to be the chief destinies for men. They weren't the only destinies, as I learned from having a few male teachers, from reading books, and from watching television. But the men on television...seemed as removed and unreal to me as the figures in tapestries."

362

(7)

WRITING: CATEGORIZING CULTURES

369

(1)

9 Culture and Identity: Defining Terms

370

(42)

CULTURE AND IDENTITY

371

(4)

STUDENT VOICE: HANAN ABDELHADY, "MY PALESTINIAN-AMERICAN IDENTITY"

373

(2)

DEFINING TERMS

375

(36)

GLORIA NAYLOR

"MOMMY, WHAT DOES `NIGGER' MEAN?" "Words themselves are innocuous; it is the consensus that gives them true power."

379

(6)

ROBERTO SANTIAGO

"BLACK AND LATINO" "Puerto Ricans identify themselves as Hispanics--part of a worldwide race that originated from eons of white Spanish conquests--a mixture of white, African, and Indio blood, which, categorically, is apart from black. In other words, the culture is the predominant and determinant factor."

385

(4)

KESAYA E. NODA

"ASIAN IN AMERICA" "I come from a people with a long memory and a distinctive grace. We live our thanks. And we are Americans. Japanese-Americans."

389

(10)

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ

"THE FEAR OF LOSING A CULTURE" "Hispanics fear losing ground in any negotiation with the American city. We come from an expansive, an intimate culture that has been judged second-rate by the United States of America. For reasons of pride, therefore, as much as of affection, we are reluctant to give up our past."

399

(6)

BARBARA EHRENREICH

"CULTURAL BAGGAGE" "Throughout the 60's and 70's, I watched one group after another--African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans--stand up and proudly reclaim their roots while I just sank back ever deeper into my seat."

405

(6)

WRITING: CULTURE AND IDENTITY

411

(1)

10 Culture and Diversity: Taking a Stand

412

(69)

CULTURE AND DIVERSITY

413

(5)

STUDENT VOICE: LEONA THOMAS, "BLACK AND WHITE"

415

(3)

TAKING A STAND

418

(59)

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

"I HAVE A DREAM" "I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream."

427

(7)

JI-YEON MARY YUHFILL

"LET'S TELL THE STORY OF ALL AMERICA'S CULTURES" "Educators around the country are finally realizing what I realized as a teenager in the library, looking up the history I wasn't getting in school. America is a multicultural nation, composed of many people with varying histories and varying traditions....America changed them, but they changed America too."

434

(5)

ISHMAEL REED

"AMERICA'S MULTINATIONAL HERITAGE" "When I heard a schoolteacher warn the other night about the invasion of the American educational system by foreign curriculums, I wanted to yell at the television set, `Lady, they're already here.' It has already begun because the world is here. The world has been arriving at these shores for at least ten thousand years...."

439

(6)

ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR.

"THE CULT OF ETHNICITY, GOOD AND BAD" "If a Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan wanted to use the schools to disable and handicap black Americans, he could hardly come up with anything more effective than the `Afrocentric' curriculum. And if separatist tendencies go unchecked, the result can only be the fragmentation, resegregation and tribalization of American life."

445

(6)

A. M. ROSENTHAL

"A HAITIAN FATHER" "Where are all the American Jews, and Poles, and Irish, and Balts, and Italians who can remember a parent or a grandparent who came to this country looking for work...? Don't they ever feel like getting on their knees and thanking God that at least their folks never had to crawl into stinking, pitching boats out of fear and hunger?"

451

(5)

JAKE LAMAR

"THE PROBLEM WITH YOU PEOPLE" "As one of the children of the civil-rights movement assigned with integrating society, I've spent a good deal of time among the sort of white people...who pride themselves on their fair-mindedness and lack of prejudice, the well-intentioned `color-blind.' Like the rest of white America, they are struggling with pesky nonwhites who refuse to stay in their place. The color-blind are just more reluctant to admit it."

456

(9)

ARTURO MADRID

"DIVERSITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS" "Given the changing profile of America, will we come to terms with diversity in our personal and professional lives? Will we begin to recognize the diverse forms that quality can take? If so, we will thus initiate the process of making quality limitless in its manifestations, infinite in quantity, unrestricted with respect to its origins...."

465

(12)

WRITING ABOUT CULTURE AND DIVERSITY

477

(4)

INDEX

481