I recently read a discussion about whether Harry Potter can be considered literature. The forum’s admin admitted that she had “my own, limited definition” of literature. It bothered me, to be honest, because the narrowness of what is considered ‘literature’ is why I stopped being an English major.
You see, all too often in high school, I got these white male English teachers who taught only old white men. For instance, I had an English teacher who assigned us Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad but didn’t discuss any of the racist/colonialist aspects of it. He idolized Edward Abbey and William Faulkner but never discussed work by people of color or females or anything. That attitude alienated me – I wanted to read stories about myself that I could relate to, not stories about “good ol’ boys.” Furthermore, I knew there was something fundamentally wrong about considering one cultural standard to be more “worthy” of the label ‘literature’ than other cultural standards, but I couldn’t exactly articulate it.
Granted, I had an amazing English teacher who acknowledged that the definition of ‘literature’ is too narrow. But he was the exception rather than the rule. That changed in college to some degree – for instance, I took a “women in art history” class that introduced me to an amazing essay that argued that art historians have traditionally excluded the contributions of women artists. The notion of the artist as a ‘great man’ is patriarchal; sexism gets codified when historians and curators decide what work is “worthy” of belonging in the canon of “great art” and exclude women artists.
That essay caused me to realize that the problem that I had with the narrow definition of ‘literature’ and ‘art’ is the fact that prejudices – racism, sexism, whatever – are codified into the idea of ‘art’ and ‘literature.’ If curators, historians, and academics don’t think that the voices of minority people or new ideas are worth hearing, they won’t be included in the canon of ‘art’ or ‘literature.’
And, unfortunately, I did experience that phenomenon firsthand in college.
Before I transferred, I went to a very, very white upper-class college. At first, I enjoyed its focus on academia because I love learning and contributing to an intellectual conversation, but after a while, my problems with it grew and I began to experience negative things. One of the most major negative experiences that I had in college was my creative writing course – it was so negative, in fact, that I stopped writing for a while after that course.
I had many, many, many problems with that course. I’ve talked about it before in this blog, so I won’t dwell on it too much, but one problem that I had with the class was the fact that my professor was an older white female with an extremely narrow definition of what she considered ‘literature.’ She was extremely prejudiced but believed that she was in the right because of the very narrow, specific definition of ‘literature.’ Looking back, I’m not sure if she knew that she was bigoted – maybe she thought she was totally justified in her approach to creative writing because of her narrow definition of literature.
Here’s a story. One day, an African-American student with a very “black” name brought in a first-person story that she had written in ebonics. We all read the stories and peer-reviewed them. When I read her story, my impression was that it was an extremely good story – the characterization was completely natural, the dialogue was superb, the grammar was generally quite good with a few quirks here and there, and the plot itself was very engaging. And her use of ebonics was totally justified – it added to the overall feel of the story and lent it a distinct rhythm/cadence that I enjoyed. It was only the first two or three pages of a larger story, but I wanted to read more.
She never said why she chose to write it that way, but my guess is that, since she had grown up in this specific minority, she wanted to write a story that would immerse the reader in the reality that she inhabited. In that particular city, white people and African-American people had distinctively different speech patterns. She spoke “white” at school, but I’m sure she probably went home and switched into a more natural mode of speaking. She wasn’t a white writer, so why write like one?
That story, however, did not go over well with my professor. The very next day, she gave us an angry lecture – she spoke about the purity of English and how the writing of Shakespeare and a bunch of other old dead white men are the highest standard of literature. She didn’t care whether or not we aspired to write books like theirs – she wanted us to learn how to write like old dead white men (eg, a superior form of writing) before writing in an “experimental” manner.
The fact that our professor got angry, frankly, upset and scared me – her reaction was disproportionately intense and we could all tell that it was fueled by her intense racism/fear. Also, by giving us a lecture immediately after a black student dared to write differently about the value of “great literature” that ignored anything that wasn’t by an old white man, she basically told us that the stories by people of color are worthless. I mean, this girl’s story wasn’t that “experimental” – all she did was write in a pattern of speech and a first-person point of view that immersed the reader in what she had grown up with. This is a well-established tradition – in fact, the first thing that came to my mind was Catcher in the Rye, which academics often consider ‘literature’ and, like this student’s story, also narrates the story in a very colloqual/immersive manner. Furthermore, it’s ironic that she expected us to write like Shakespeare because he was very ground-breaking.
I think that the root of her negative reaction was the fact that the girl’s story immersed our professor in a black person’s reality. And she was so racist that she absolutely did not want to experience that reality. Her attitude was, Who would want to know what it is like to be a black person for a few moments? I can’t imagine how that girl felt about being rejected in this manner.
That class is what alienated me from writing for a while – in addition to witnessing her bigotry, I also experienced it on the deaf and queer fronts. This made me realize that those who oppress other minorities will most likely oppress you, too, even if you’re in an unrelated minority. Like I said in my previous post, I was like, “If there are experts this bigoted in the writing world – agents, publishers, etc – who have the power to dictate the landscape of contemporary literature, how am I going to get my foot in the door? Will my deafness and queerness forever bar me from participating in the writing world?”
Literature is an ever-evolving and ever-changing phenomenon. If students are alienated by the prejudices of an earlier generation and their literary aspirations are quashed, how will literature evolve? It’s like that saying: “We kill the caterpillars, then complain that there are no butterflies.” What is “cutting-edge” today will be a “classic” work of art in a few centuries – historians too often appreciate the contributions of artists long after they’re gone.
Now, I don’t have a problem with the fact that some people prefer certain types of literature over others. If you like As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, that’s great! Where it gets problematic for me is when people act like certain types of literature are superior to others; the novels within their favorite genres (classical 18th century English authors, early-twentieth century American, novels by dead white men, etc.) are the only things that they consider to be ‘literature.’ All too often, adopting a narrow definition of ‘literature’ ends up excluding the contributions of minority writers simply because their stories don’t fit in with the cultural ideals of the academic. And that’s not right.
In the end, who cares what is ‘truly’ literature? There’s no such thing, really – it’s simply that the prejudices of old white academics have been codified into this list of “great” books. We need to set that aside and let young writers push the boundaries of what we consider ‘literature.’ We may end up with something trashy, or we may end up with something truly amazing and groundbreaking.
