Racism and Ethnocentrism in Literature

Overview

During the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and after, American writers, critics, and readers grew more attentive to the issue of racism, blatant or subtle, in literature. In a nation with a history of enslavement according to race and of war against its indigenous population, the United States has a long literary history regarding racism and ethnocentrism. Works by African Americans, Asian Americans, European Americans, Jewish Americans, and Latino Americans, among others, have protested racism and ethnocentrism in what has always been a pluralistic society.

African American Authors

In Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940), Bigger Thomas is a young man from the tenements of Chicago who works as a chauffeur for a wealthy white family. He smothers a white woman in an effort to quiet her, in order to prevent his being found in her bedroom, where he brought her from the limousine he was driving. Intoxicated, she was unable to get to bed by herself. Bigger disposes of her body in the furnace of the house. When the death is detected, Bigger flees, and the police and press machinery of Chicago gear up against him. He is described as a rapist as well as a murderer, the assumption being that he raped his victim. Bigger kills Bessie, his black female companion, as he is hiding, fulfilling the racist depiction of him as a murderer. Bigger is found, brought to trial, and sentenced to execution. The novel is a powerful indictment of white racist society, which creates such people as Bigger Thomas, whom Wright, with bitter irony, calls a native son. Wright’s Black Boy (1945) is his autobiographical account of growing up in the South, where the dominant white culture’s racism left its mark upon him. Wright shows how racism was so common and ingrained that it was everyday, banal, and overlooked. When Wright, as a boy, tries to earn a little money by doing chores in a white household, he is questioned by the mistress of the house about his intentions for the future. Wright naïvely responds that he wishes to become a writer.

The woman glares at him furiously, and Wright, sensing her anger, quickly tells her no when she asks if he said that he wanted to be a writer. After his reply of no, the woman calms down and shows her relief, stating that she had thought he said he wanted to become a writer. This everyday incident shows the white racist condemnation of aspiration in blacks. Wright would later, in his preparation to be a writer, read library books borrowed with a white man’s card.

Margaret Walker’s book of poetry, For My People (1942), militates against racism. Gwendolyn Brooks’s A Street in Bronzeville (1945) is a book of poems showing racist treatment of blacks by whites. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) is a classic of modern American literature. The book shows black experience in the growth and development of a young black man. Ellison’s novel follows the protagonist’s years in college in the South, his move to work in a paint factory on Long Island (where he is involved in labor violence), his sojourn with the Communist Party, and finally his descent to a cellar, where he becomes a recluse. He chooses to become an underground man after having tried to work in American society and having tried to become a leftist. These efforts have failed to find him a place in American culture because of his blackness, which is also his invisibility, so he decides to steal electricity through a tapped line from Monopolated Light and Power to illuminate the 1,369 light bulbs in his hermitage. Recalling Bigger in Native Son, the invisible man acts out the script American society has written for him as a black man. In the cellar, he writes poetry to unite black with white and thus triumphs over the depths to which he has been assigned.

James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) is a novel that recalls Baldwin’s Harlem boyhood, which was presided over by his father, a preacher in a storefront church. Young John Grimes must revolt against the stern religion of his father in order to obtain selfhood. John, after a religious conversion in his father’s church, realizes how he must seek his identity. The novel’s devastating portrait of Gabriel Grimes, John’s stepfather, has as an implicit theme of the effects of racism on the human psyche. Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name (1961) are collections of his journalistic work in which he writes against racism and appeals to his readers’ conscience. In 1963, he published The Fire Next Time, a powerful indictment against white racism.

Amiri Baraka’s play Dutchman (1964) evokes outrage at the effects of white racism. The change in black sensibility from the aesthetic of 1959, when Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun was acclaimed, to the aesthetic of 1964, when the militant Dutchman appeared, can be described as an end to patience, on the part of black writers, with the inhumanity and violence engendered by racism. The 1960’s engendered great social ferment in America, and the literature of blacks testifying to that upheaval includes Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land (1965), Malcolm X’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968), Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice (1968), Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), Bobby Seale’s Seize the Time (1970), George Jackson’s Soledad Brother (1970), Donald Reeves’s Notes of a Processed Brother (1971), and Angela Davis’ Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974). These works touched the American conscience and helped further the struggle for an end to racism.

A powerful twentieth century novel about slavery is Beloved (1987), by Toni Morrison. The survival of the escaped slave Sethe testifies to the strength, endurance, and courage of blacks in the face of the nightmare of racism, a nightmare symbolically that is branded on Sethe’s back in the form of a tree. The brand was put on her back by slave owners, and burned not only onto Sethe’s skin but into her mind, never to be erased or forgotten. Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

In Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016), the titular network is not just a metaphor, but an actual secret railway system of tunnels and tracks running underground. The narrative follows Cora, an enslaved woman on a Georgia cotton plantation, and Caesar, an enslaved man from Virginia, as they flee their bondage and would-be captors via the literal Underground Railroad. Whitehead’s novel won the 2016 National Book Award and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.

Asian American Authors

Asian Americans have produced an abundant literature, one of the most popular forms being the autobiographical narrative. Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart: A Personal History (1946) anticipates Maxine Hong Kingston’s widely read The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976), a work of fiction that is also classified as autobiography. Other autobiographical works are Lee Yan Phou’s When I Was a Boy in China (1887) and New Il-Han’s When I Was a Boy in Korea (1928), both written a considerable time before their publication and both conforming to American curiosity about Asian American culture. Lin Yutang, the interpreter of Chinese culture for a generation of Americans, published such works as My Country and My People (1937), which was very popular in Europe and the United States, despite Chinese criticism of Yutang’s failure to depict the daily struggles of Asian Americans. Younghill Kang’s East Goes West (1937) is also autobiographical and portrays the life of exiles from Korea, their dreams of finding a permanent home in America, and their exclusion. Pardee Lowe’s Father and Glorious Descendant (1942) and Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter (1945) are autobiographical works that depict aspects of Chinese culture. Toshio Mori’s Yokohama, California (1949) does not argue for assimilation, as do the works of Lowe and Wong, whose writings were more readily accepted by publishers and readers. In 1953, Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter, an autobiographical work, was published. The novel portrays the extent to which Japanese Americans experienced dislocation and disruption in their settling in the western United States.

The success story, always popular among American readers, is a part of Asian American literature. Among such stories are Daniel Inouye’s Journey to Washington (1967, with Lawrence Elliott) and Daniel Okimoto’s American in Disguise (1971). In contrast, No-No Boy, by John Okada, published in 1957, was not well received because it shows the bitter effects of racism against Japanese Americans. Okada’s work calls literary portrayals of Japanese Americans only as long-suffering hard workers into question. Okada’s work makes a direct and unflinching portrait of the dislocation and suffering caused by the Japanese internment.

Racism and its effects are often submerged in Asian American literature. Mori in Yokohama, California and in The Chauvinist and Other Stories (1979) presents Japanese American life among immigrants and Nisei of all sexes, ages, and occupations. Hisaye Yamamoto’s short stories show life as experienced by immigrant parents and their American-born children; under a placid facade of harmony, there appear tragedy, suffering, violence, and death. In Seventeen Syllables (1949), Yamamoto tells the story of a mother’s dark past through a daughter-narrator. Milton Murayama’s All I Asking for Is My Body (1975) attacks Japanese American authoritarianism in Hawaii in the time before World War II. Yutang’s Chinatown Family (1948) earned popular and financial success, although it portrays life in Chinatown in unrealistic ways, without the problems and struggles of Chinese American life as seen, for example, in Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961). Since the 1970’s, Asian American writers have tried to mend generational ruptures, seeking to restore and celebrate Asian American culture. David Henry Hwang’s play The Dance and the Railroad (1982) is about the Chinese railway workers’ strike of 1867; the play seeks to connect past and present Asian American experience.

Chicano Authors

Chicano literature can be described as originating at the end of the Mexican American War in 1848. After the war, many people who had been Mexicans living in northwestern Mexico found themselves to be Mexicans living in a larger southwest portion of the United States. These Mexicans were given the option of remaining in the United States as citizens or returning to Mexico. Many remained in the United States, becoming Americans but retaining Mexican culture, language, and traditions. The oral tradition is vital in Mexican American literature, and many of these oral forms, such as the folktale, folk drama, legend, and corrido were popular and artistically significant. The corrido is a ballad form that often is used to render contemporary social issues. Beginning in the 1850’s, corridos were sung about the border violence in south Texas. The corrido has proved itself to be long-lived; during World War II, corridos were composed about General Douglas MacArthur in the Pacific. César Chávez was celebrated in corridos in the 1960’s. The form continued into the late twentieth century, at which time corridos were sung about violence in the border region, immigration, romance, unemployment, drug traffic, and other social issues.

New Mexico was the center of Chicano literary activity at least until World War II. Las primicias (first fruits), a collection of lyric poems, was published by Victor Bernal in 1916, and Obras (works), a collection of poems and fiction written by Felipe Maximiliano Chacón, was published in 1924. Nina Otero’s Old Spain in Our Southwest was published in 1936; Angélico Chávez wrote New Mexico Triptych (1940) and Eleven Lady Love Lyrics and Other Poems (1945). Otero’s and Chávez’s works further the cause of affirming the Latino heritage. In 1947, Mario Suárez published stories in the Arizona Quarterly about Chicano life. In 1959 José Antonio Villarreal published the widely read Pocho and stimulated further Mexican American literary production. In 1967, Quinto Sol, a publishing house, opened in Berkeley, California; its only purpose was to publish Mexican American writing. Quinto Sol writers include Jose Montoya, who blended English and Spanish, as in his poems “Pobre Viejo Walt Whitman,” “El Louis,” and “La Jefita.” Prose writers published by Quinto Sol include Tomás Rivera, Rolando Hinojosa, and Rudolfo A. Anaya. Rivera published . . . y no se lo tragó la tierra-And the Earth Did Not Part in 1971 (rev. ed., 1977; also translated as And the Earth Did Not Devour Him), which is a collection of related stories and sketches about Mexican American immigrant farmworkers. Hinojosa’s Estampas del valle y otras obras-Sketches of the Valley and Other Works (1972) and Generaciones, notas y brechas-Generations, Notes, and Trails (1977) have as heroes Mexican Americans who endure hardships and triumph over them. Anaya’s best known work is his first novel, Bless Me, Ultima (1972).

After the demise of Quinto Sol, Mexican American literature grew in diverse ways. Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez: An Autobiography (1982) argues in favor of assimilation. Oscar Zeta Acosta’s The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972) and The Revolt of the Cockroach People (1973) are an indictment of American culture. Mexican American feminist works include Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street (1984), Lorna Dee Cervantes’ Emplumada (feathered, 1981), and Cherrie Moraga’s Loving in the War Years: Lo que nunca pasó por sus labios (1983).

Mexican American poets of the 1980’s and 1990’s include Omar Salinas and Gary Soto. Darkness Under the Trees: Walking Behind the Spanish (1982), by Salinas, confronts his inner being with honesty, and Black Hair (1985), by Soto, shows the poet’s identification with his people.

European American Authors

Upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, President Abraham Lincoln is said to have described her as the little lady who started the big war. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Or, Life Among the Lowly (1852), with its portrayal of the miserable condition of slaves, generated many imitations and adaptations of her work and aroused the indignation of thousands of readers against slavery. Another highly popular work of fiction in the nineteenth century, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) shows in a scathing (rather than in Stowe’s sentimental) tone the American mentality about slavery. Huck befriends the runaway slave Jim on a raft as they travel down the Mississippi, although Huck knows that to do so is against the laws, customs, and perceptions of the Southern culture in which he was bred. When Huck decides that he will “go to hell” for resisting the institution of slavery and tears up the letter to Miss Watson that would result in Jim’s return to slavery, he places himself on the side of those who recognize slavery as an evil. Another example of Twain’s depiction of racism is the passage in which Huck is questioned by a white woman about his boat. When Huck explains that a cylinder head was blown out, the woman asks if anyone was killed. Huck replies that no one was hurt and that a Negro was killed. The woman replies that it was lucky because sometimes people get hurt. Huck is pretending to follow the assumptions of this conversation. Twain’s depiction of the friendship between Huck and Jim, humorous as it is most of the time, shows Twain’s contempt for slavery and any racist morality that would uphold it.

William Faulkner, in writing about his fictional Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi, created a fiction that is unsurpassed in its portrayal of racism. Two of Faulkner’s novels, The Sound and the Fury (1929) and Light in August (1932), show the effects of racism in the South in an explicit way. In The Sound and the Fury, Dilsey, the black servant of the Compson family, is taken for granted by her white employers yet holds the Compson family together. Dilsey provides the center to a family split by conflicts, greed, and self-absorption. Dilsey gives her patience, emotional stability, and care to the white family, although she is regarded as inferior. Her values are implicitly honored by Faulkner in contrast to those of the Compson family.

Light in August shows the evils of racism through the portrayal of the conflicts, inner and outer, in the life of Joe Christmas, a mulatto. Joe’s struggles end with his castration and death at the hands of the community in general and one Percy Grimm (whom Faulkner later described as his first portrayal of a Nazi) in particular. Miscegenation, so hated and feared, haunts the book and is the cause of Joe’s death. Joe, born of an illegitimate mixed union, has a sexual relationship with a white woman, Joanna Burden. Joe, whose name and whose brutal death recall Christ, finally becomes part of the community that tortures and kills him. The community does not lose the memory, Faulkner writes, of Joe’s death, at which he was serene and triumphant. The source of Joe’s calm is his utter hatred and contempt for those who are killing him. After Joe dies, his mythical presence remains in the community. Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949.

Jewish American Authors

Although Jews first arrived on the North American continent in 1654, they made relatively little cultural impact on North America until large-scale immigration began in the 1880’s. Predictably, the literary impact of American Jewry began with the generations that were born of the immigrants. These generations (in a pattern similar to that recalled in many works of Asian American literature and in such Chicano works as Pocho, for example) were reared in the new nation, spoke the new language, and thus experienced difficulty in establishing identities that bridged the old and the new cultures. Writers of these generations include Delmore Schwartz, Saul Bellow, Isaac Rosenfeld, and Norman Mailer.

Jewish American literature in English began to flower after World War II. Early postwar works include Rosenfeld’s Passage from Home (1946), Lionel Trilling’s The Middle of the Journey (1947), Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949), Mailer’s Barbary Shore (1951), and Bellow’s The Victim (1947) and Seize the Day (1956). Jewish American writers produced a literature often characterized by dispossession. Examples of this literature of this period include Bellow’s Dangling Man (1944), Bernard Malamud’s The Assistant (1957), and E. L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel (1971). Another theme of Jewish American literature is Zionism; works on this theme include Meyer Levin’s My Father’s House (1947), In Search (1950), and The Obsession (1973).

In 1976, Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Other novels by Bellow include The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Herzog (1964), and Humboldt’s Gift (1975). Another Jewish American writer who has won the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1978) is Isaac Bashevis Singer. Extremely prolific, Singer has published autobiographies, journalism, novels, plays, and collections of short stories. Novels include The Family Moskat (1950), which was his first publication in English. Singer writes in Yiddish and is the towering example of the literature of American Jewry in that language; this literature began with the large-scale immigration of Yiddish-speaking Jews to the United States in the 1880’s. Gimpel the Fool (1957), a collection of short stories, is perhaps Singer’s most widely read work.

Native American Authors

The first Native Renaissance in American literature spanned the 1960s to the 1990s, and included writers such as N. Scott Momaday, best known for his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel House Made of Dawn (1969); novelist Leslie Marmon Silko, author of Ceremony; novelist Louise Erdrich, author of Love Medicine, Tracks, The Beet Queen, The Bingo Palace, among others; poet Joy Harjo, who was named poet laureate of the United States in 2019; and Sherman Alexie, author of the story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. In 2018, Terese Marie Mailhot, author of the memoir Heart Berries and novelist Tommy Orange, author of There There, were described by reviewers as members of the new Native Renaissance.

Bibliography

Allport, Gordon W. The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979. A classic work on the topic.

Bone, Robert. The Negro Novel in America. Rev. ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1965. An authoritative, critical study considered by many as an essential guide to the African American novel.

D’Souza, Dinesh. The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society. New York: Free Press, 1995. A controversial best-seller about what to do to end racism.

Gayle, Addison, Jr., ed. The Black Aesthetic. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972. Defines the goals to which black artists should aspire.

Hoffman, Daniel, ed. Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979. A critical survey of American writing since the end of World War II, with chapters on black literature and on Jewish literature.

Kazin, Alfred. Bright Book of Life: American Novelists and Storytellers from Hemingway to Mailer. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973. A critical study of American fiction by a leading American writer and critic.

Noisecat, Julian Brave. Tommy Orange and the New Native Renaissance.” The Paris Review, 29 June 2018, www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/29/tommy-orange-and-the-new-native-renaissance/. Accessed 30 Sept. 2019.

Petersen, Anne Helen. “These Writers Are Launching a New Wave of Native American Literature.” BuzzFeed.News, 22 Feb. 2018, www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/dont-f-with-tommy-and-terese#.padDzlpK2. Accessed 30 Sept. 2019.

Rose, Peter I. They and We: Racial and Ethnic Relations in the United States. New York: Random House, 1990. A leading work by a leading scholar.