Something to Consider in Relation to Huey's Project

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Being Political: Martin R. Delany's Blake or the Huts of America

After I finished reading Martin R. Delany’s Blake or The Huts of America, I had the same thought I had when I first read Timothy B. Tyson’s biography of Robert F. Williams, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams & the Roots of Black Power. I thought, here is a piece of political contestation I have not encountered before and it is powerful. In Radio Free Dixie, Tyson traces Robert Williams’s struggles to remove the oppressive and violent system set against African-Americans in the South, during the mid-1900s. He demonstrates Williams’s efforts and connections to the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and how these two as portrayed in Williams’s life, worked in conjunction with one another and not separately. So what exactly made Delaney’s text so much like Williams’s real struggles? Was it the fact that in Blake, Henry, the protagonist, starts off in the South, then goes North (to Canada), then goes back to the South and eventually travels to Cuba while leading a rebellion? This is probably part of it, as Williams was a civil rights leader who also started out in the South, then travelled north, and in 1961 went to Cuba and broadcasted “Radio Free Dixie.” But reading Andy Doolen’s analysis of Blake helped me understand that, that is not the only reason why I found Delany’s fictional narrative so influential.

In “‘Be Cautious of the Word “Rebel,”’ Doolen shows how Delany’s careful examination of the “pan-African thematics” (156) gave him the tools and ideas to move away from,

the formulaic and political restrictions of abolitionists writing and gave this versatile writer another genre with which to represent the African American experience [and that] No artificial binary between history and fiction can disguise the fact that Delany’s only novel is one of the finest studies available of how slavery corrupted nineteenth-century American language. (Doolen 156)

Here, Doolen explains, that it was Delany’s life experiences and refined studies of the how other abolitionists were writing about freedom and equality that allowed him to create a “transnationalist vision,” which eloquently portrayed the power dynamics of slavery during the 1800s. In addition, Doolen shows how Delany’s visualization of slavery not only captured the power dynamics of the time, but also how U.S. capitalism was highly intertwined in it (165). Delany’s ability to write about slavery from a more nuanced, but also globalized perspective, is what makes his work so similar to Williams’s life. However, I would add that Delany’s vision is also different because it responds to slavery in a political manner.

In Contesting Citizenship, Anne McNevin argues that being political is about creating contestations that allow for a potential change or “transformation” (98). I believe that this is also part of why Delany’s text is so significant, because while it offers many moments of Henry witnessing the violence and horrors of slavery (many re-created from non-fictional accounts), it also permits a new vision for how to overthrow it. The notion of forming a new vision relates to Floyd J. Miller’s response to the fact that readers will never know the actual conclusion of the novel. He writes, “yet the very inconclusiveness of the novel as it now exists—the rebellion in process—is perhaps more relevant today than any ending Delany could possibly have conceived” (XXV).  In other words, the very fact that the texts exists and leaves readers in the building of rebellion is political because it allows us to think about how transformation can occur.

*On a side note, and maybe something we can discuss in class, I am not sure how I feel about the Nwankwo’s use of “cosmopolitan” citizenship, especially when he claims that they can “craft notions of self and community that cross or negate national borders” (584).

Fictions of the Trans-American Imaginary in Edward Judson's Magdalena, The Beautiful Mexican Maid

In “Fictions of the Trans-American Imaginary,” Moya and Saldívar explore new beginnings for the field of American Literature through what they term the “trans-American imaginary.” Equivalent to Alemán’s “inter-American” approach, the trans-American imaginary allows for a re-thinking of what many scholars in American Literature came to view and accept as the “exceptionality of the American experience” (4) as portrayed in the U.S. literary canon. According to Moya and Saldívar, the trans-American approach seeks to

recognize the influence on literature of competing nationalisms (the existence and stubborn persistence of regional voices, popular styles, or minority group identifications) within the borders of the nation. But is also the case that much American Literature responds to ideological pressures from outside the geopolitical borders of the sovereign United States. (4)

They explain that this approach looks for contact zones, and “boundary-crossings” within and outside of the national fictions, with an emphasis on within and outside (as suggested by their use of italics). In other words, this framework can not only be applied to literary fictions outside and in relation to the U.S., but also to American texts which have been produced as a response to U.S. cross-language and cultural interactions. Therefore this approach expands and complicates our understandings of American identities, and includes texts which reveal various levels of hybridity, transculturismo, and translingualism. It crosses both geopolitical and imaginary borders.

In addition, while this framework seeks to expand our knowledge of an American literary canon, it also recognizes the pushing and pulling forces of imagined nationalisms, and their dystopias as “constructed within and from out of utopias” in various U.S. localized fictions (Moya and Saldívar 9, 16).Thus, the trans-American framework becomes a suitable lens to explore works such as, Edward Judson’s Magdalena, The Beautiful Mexican Maid. Judson’s novelette focuses on Magdalena, a Mexican woman of Spanish descent, who falls in love with Charles Brackett, an American soldier of Spanish descent, at the rise of the U.S.-Mexico War. Judson localizes his fiction at the Texas, US-Mexico border and travels as far as Orizaba, Vera Cruz in Mexico. He does so in order to create a fictional tale of the War and the lives of those who occupied the “borderlands.”

*It is important to note that Judson places Charles within the national boundaries by making him an American citizen, and outside by giving him a Spanish heritage. In addition, he places Magdalena in similar terms by making her a Mexican national, but also the daughter of European immigrants. Thus both Charles and Magdalena are of European heritage and “creole” children of immigrants.

The trans-American lens is not only suitable to Judson’s text because it deals with the borderlands, but also because it is a nationalistic text produced in response to the interests of the readers. Johanseen notes, “[novelette authors like Judson] were not artists but professional writers—hacks—whose talents were shaped by the demands of the marketplace” (To the Halls of the Montezumas: A War Literature 189). As Moya and Saldívar argue,

national identities are specific local knowledges. To be an American in south Texas is therefore different from being and American New England, even though there may be continuity between the two locally specific claims to the national identity of “American.” In the Southwest, to be an American means, among other things, not being Mexican. Conversely, in New England being an American has nothing to do with no being English, let alone Mexican […] Mexican is irrelevant for how Americans in the Northeast understand and interpret their own “American” identity. (16)

With this framework in mind, I want to discuss two moments in the narrative which demonstrate the production of the “trans-American imaginary.”

            The first moment occurs early in the narrative. General Taylor is looking for someone who can serve as a spy but will not betray the country. He sends for Captain Walker and, Walker recommends Charles Brackett. General Taylor poses his proposition in the following manner, “Not that I doubt either your bravery or your tact, but you are not dark enough, nor look sufficiently like a Mexican. I must have a man whose looks and knowledge of the language will enable him to pass for a native of Mexico,” Walker then says that Brackett is the right person for the job because he speaks Spanish and is “full as dark” (26). General Taylor then hesitates, and asks,

“Is he faithful, will not his Spanish blood, cause him to lean toward the other side a little?” “If to hate the Mexicans as few can hate; if to thirst for their blood, as the desert thirst for the dews of night; if to live under the weight of a fearful oath to revenge and outrage mother and sister, whose corpses are now moldering in a bloody grave near San Jacinto, will ensure his faith to us, then feel secure that Charles Brackett will never prove a traitor.” (26)

This passage demonstrates that in Judson’s imaginary fiction Americans of Mexican and Spanish descent, like Charles Brackett, have been a part of the Southwest history since before the time of the U.S.-Mexico War. However, they have also been categorized based on the localized competing nationalisms and long established racial hierarchies. This can be seen through the questions about Brackett’s phenotype and whether or not he will be faithful. What is most interesting to notice here is Captain Walker’s response as to why Charles won’t betray them, he says that Charles’s promise to avenge his mother’s and sister’s death will guarantee his loyalty. This goes back to Streeby’s idea of consensus and nationalism, but also to Moya and Saldivar’s point about inside and outside, and dystopias within utopia. So Charles’s loyalty is a form of U.S. nationalism and utopia of a growing and faithful nation, but also one with justified means for violence. This type of nationalism—which justifies violence—strongly  resembles white supremacy, functioning within the state borders, but in response to economic and political conditions of contraction, minority migration, and scapegoating in times of war.

            The second passage which demonstrates Judson’s trans-imaginary is his choice to have Magdalena sing in “Spanish” (32, 33, 53). Magdalena sings, “Se fue el hechizo, Del alma mia, Y mi alegnia Se fué también” (53). The first time Magdalena sings, Alemán and Streeby note that Judson’s Spanish is “imprecise” (290), I would add that, it is English influenced, and written as heard from an Anglophone range. But Judson’s use of Spanish reveals much more than his developing writing skills (in Spanish). His use of Spanish demonstrates what would have been expected from his readership, and the kinds of influences he interpreted as Mexican or Spanish (From Spain, not Latin America). These passages demonstrate the complexities of the American identity as seen through “spelling” the trans-American imaginary. One could also argue that Judson is engaging in translingualism—and to argue this I would end up writing an entire other blog, so I am happy to discuss this in class. One other thing I did not get to discuss here, but would love to talk about in class is how these “hybrid” identities are in flux. For example, Magdalena starts out as Mexican, then moves to Spanish, and then becomes quasi-American and then Spanish and Mexican again.           

Unveiling Empire(s) in George Lippard's 'Bel of Prairie Eden: A Romance of Mexico

            I was glad to re-read Jesse Alemán’s “The Other Country: Mexico, The United States, and the Gothic History of Conquest,” not only for its applicability to George Lippard’s ‘Bel of Prairie Eden: A Romance of Mexico, but also because after having read Lippard’s sensationalist novel I can better understand why Alemán fears the possibility of “reproducing a hemispheric paradigm” (409), and therefore chooses an inter-American approach (which Moya and Saldívar identify as the “trans-American imaginary” (419)). Alemán explains that an inter-American framework allows for the unveiling of how the US and Mexico “share a familial relation that vexes citizenship as much as it troubles their national literary histories, for their confluences indicate how one country is already embedded within the history of the other, because the borders across the Americas are so porous” (410). Alemán argues that through the exploration of US nationalist texts, such as ‘Bel, much of the exposed conflicted history and destiny of Mexico reveals the “fate” and “sameness” of the US (419-20). Thus, John Grywin’s revenge and marriage to Isora not only functions as a parallel to Don Antonio’s and Isabel’s rape relationship, but also as a marker of how John, as a representation of the US, acts in the same manner as Don Antonio.

However, it is also important to note that the “difference” to which Alemán alludes to by reversing Mignolo’s argument about difference and sameness is presented through the rhetoric of justice. This becomes salient when John marks the enactment of his revenge as the day he has sex with Isora for the first time. The narrator tells,

John Grywin comes to Vera Cruz, finds entrance into the home of the sister, and night after night, sitting by her side, with her soft hand within his own, tells her the moving—somewhat melancholy—story of his life, and wins her heart forever…Well, after all his plans are laid, John Grywin, being still in pursuit of justice, brings the threads of destiny together on the night of the 9^th of March, 1847. Look yonder, Father Pedro! Behold the barren Isle of Sacrificios! There, in the sepulchers of the Aztec race, my bridal bed is waiting for me now. (155)

Here the many intersections between Don Antonio’s rape of Isabela, his representation of the Mexican nation, and John’s justification for manipulating and seducing Isadora become visible. In addition, this passage highlights the Mexican nation in relation to its indigenous, but also imperial Aztec roots. This moment in the narrative also demonstrates Lippard’s intentions to construct a violent and impure Mexican history which validates American expansion, but ultimately works to reveal the US’s inherently colonial mindset. 

The idea of Mexican history as constructed by US nationalist written works in relation to Mexico and the Mexican-American War can also be seen through Shelley Streeby’s American Sensations. Streeby centers her argument on the power of Lippard’s sensationalist works, and notes the element of imperialism in the US depictions of Manifest Destiny. She writes, “this fiction’s mode of production, which accounts for its relative immediacy…often has the effect of foregrounding the gaps, contradictions, and seamy underside of the ideological projects of white settler colonialism and Manifest Destiny” (Streeby 40). Through her in-depth analysis of Lippard’s novels, Legends of Mexico and ‘Bel, Streeby demonstrates how the impure depictions of Mexico and the borderlands (in ‘Bel’s case Texas) reveal “the age of U.S. empire-building” (73). Moreover, Streeby notes that Lippard’s literary works do not just show US empire-building by their vanishing of Native Americans (Dippie’s argument) or removal of conquest scenes, but rather by their depiction of consensual agreements between the US and Mexico (73). Compromise or consensual relations become obvious all throughout ‘Bel, not only in the passage that Streeby notes about Isora’s agreement to marry John, but also as the motivator for the narrative which is John’s revenge. Revenge as compromise becomes obvious in ‘Bel when John returns home from the Texas frontier to find out that his father has been murdered and his sister has been raped and John and the others tell the monk “You will confess, Father Pedro, that John Grywin and Don Antonio Marin have a long account to settle whenever they may chance to meet” (Lippard 154-55). This moment shows that even Father Pedro, who demands peace, must accept that revenge will be taken, and through violent means. In other words, that revenge has a justification.