For your discussion board assignment this week, you are required to respond to one of the required readings and evidence your argument with ONE other scholarly source. This assignment serves two purposes. First, it tests your analysis of the material, and two, it sets you up in a solid direction for creating your mid-term paper.
Before you respond, ask yourself some guiding questions: what do the authors want the audience to learn, and how can we review the information as a cultural artifact—i.e. how is Silko’s excerpt or Castillo’s interview a representation of their own peoples’ experiences in America? In other words, are they providing the audience with a new and specifically minority “history”? (Remember, think within the context that narratives can be cathartic.)
For this week, we will address texts by ‘double minorities’ in order to ground our examination in a sub-group within a sub-group. Gloria Anzaldua defines such a label as both a woman and woman of color. Therefore, the person is placed in a position that implies two types of inferiority within the greater social context: they are not male and not Caucasian. Where then does Our/Their America exist? Does it exist? For some, it can only occur within the confines of literature and theory. With that idea in mind, the required reading this week includes secondary pieces on Leslie Marmon Silko and an interview with Ana Castillo. Furthermore, the theoretical article required is specific to how stories can heal, but we need to think more complex than “healing”; we need to think in terms of communal catharsis: the ability to not just purge but deal with pain, subjection, etc. via its appearance in art—literature, in this case.