Multiculturalism in American Literature: Momaday and Cofer
The Literatures of Multiculturalism: Scott Momaday – The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969) / Judith Ortiz Cofer – The Witch’s Husband (1993)
The 1960s saw a rejection of dominant cultural norms (non-whites, non-males, or non-Anglo Saxons). Social groups were often categorized as dominators and the dominated. Power structures, including language, ethics, and media, maintained the oppression of diverse groups in opposition to a dominant class. This dualism was sometimes referred to as the “Martini Cocktail.” The term “American,” which once suggested cultural homogeneity, was often hyphenated to acknowledge the influx of immigrants (e.g., African-Americans). Minority writings often explored this dual identity. Several factors contributed to this multicultural shift in American literature: immigration (colonists, exiles, slaves), questioning of “Americanness,” new perspectives on national identity based on gender, race, ethnicity, and religion, the civil rights movement giving voice to the silenced, and postmodernism’s questioning of identity and nationhood. The connection to ancestral roots and the preservation of non-American identities manifested in various ways, such as the persistence of ethnic neighborhoods (ghettos, barrios), demonstrating a desire to maintain ties to origins, often through language preservation.
Borders became spaces of negotiation, as Gloria Anzaldúa stated, places to inhabit and resist divisions designed to maintain inequality. American literature had long represented the colonizers and conquerors, while the dispossessed remained silent. Native American themes often retold traditional tribal stories. One example is Scott Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain. Momaday is considered a pioneer of the “Native American Renaissance,” a term coined by Kenneth Lincoln signifying cultural recovery and political empowerment. This movement began in the mid-sixties, fueled by activism that encouraged the publication of Native American voices in articles, poems, stories, and non-fiction. Momaday collected and preserved the oral traditions of his people, passed down through generations, including stories told to him by his father. After his grandmother’s death, he embarked on a process of self-construction of an Indian identity, celebrating blood memory to reclaim the collective racial memory transmitted through oral tradition and to situate himself within his family and nation’s history. The Way to Rainy Mountain is structured as a spiritual journey mirroring his physical journey to his ancestral lands. This journey was not only physical but also historical, mnemonic, and verbal, blending traditional oral discourse with modern techniques like printing and editing.
Form: The book employs a collage technique, juxtaposing different texts. This challenges traditional linear storytelling, lacking a sequential narrative. Postmodern frame-breaking subverts conventional textual practices and challenges singular interpretations of reality.
Structure: The book is divided into three parts: The Setting Out, The Going On, and The Closing In. It includes twenty-four chapters, a Prologue, an Introduction, and an Epilogue. Verse form contrasts with the prose of the prologue and epilogue. Each chapter comprises three distinct paragraphs: a Kiowa story, factual information about the Kiowas, and the narrator’s journey retracing his ancestors’ steps. This structure requires readers to abandon conventional reading habits. Graphical, verbal, and ideological juxtapositions further disrupt sequential reading. Spatial and informational gaps between sections encourage readers to reconsider their approach to literature and history, aligning with the postmodernist idea of readers as co-creators of meaning. By moving from the past to the present, the narrator guides the reader on a personal journey of discovery. The text is bracketed by opening and closing poems. Momaday deconstructs linear time and history, blurring the boundaries between past and present, self and other. The narrator revisits Kiowa stories, learning about his ancestors and himself. While the book doesn’t focus solely on the narrator’s personal journey, it reveals his growth.
Relationship with the Earth: Momaday’s work highlights the environmental consciousness of Native Americans. The Kiowa do not take the earth for granted; they understand their responsibility to care for it. This is exemplified by the devastating impact of the buffalo herds’ destruction, which left the Kiowa without food, clothing, and shelter. Nature writing is a long-standing genre in American literature, but Native Americans do not necessarily view it as a distinct form. Their eco-literature predates European contact, with songs and rituals celebrating the land and their reciprocal relationship with it. Unlike Euramerican writing, Native American literature respects and venerates the earth and the feminine principle associated with it (Mother Earth, Indian Mother). Women’s rituals and symbols (earth, moon, fire, water) emphasize continuity over destruction, survival over extinction. The journey motif is prevalent in world literature, but conventional literature often portrays it as a white, male pursuit of escape or conquest, as Primeau notes. For European Americans, movement often stemmed from separation, while Native Americans were caretakers of the earth, less nomadic, and less focused on conquering space and progress. The Way to Rainy Mountain, in contrast to the white concept of flight and disengagement, celebrates homecoming and reunion.
Narrative Strategy: Only two women speak directly, while others’ voices are conveyed through indirect speech. Although Native American women may have held subordinate positions to men, they played a crucial role in preserving tribal values, culture, and lineage. The narrator uses phrases like “remembered earth” to express the loss of a precious connection while suggesting that imagination can help people recover this communion with the earth.
The Witch’s Husband – Judith Ortiz Cofer. Unlike Momaday’s public history of a community, Cofer explores a family’s private history. Her word choices reflect her biculturalism (mama, bueno, abuela, bodega, mi amor, colorín Colorado, hija, y pues). However, she also incorporates oral traditions passed down through generations, particularly through the matrilineal line. Memory and cultural identity are strongly linked to femininity and language (women were often the keepers of culture in Native American tribes). The story depicts three generations of women (mother, narrator, and daughter) sharing a hammock, reinforcing an invisible bond of solidarity. Abuela tells stories from her childhood. The narrative is presented as something the grandmother heard: “old story I heard when I was a little girl.” However, her final words blur the lines between reality and legend, past and present. The story explores various frontiers (geographical, verbal, gender), challenging them in different ways. Cofer demonstrates an interest in mestizaje, the fusion of opposites and the crossing of boundaries.
The Title: The title focuses not on the woman figure but on her husband. The narration begins with an allusion to the old man’s mental illness and ends with the grandmother’s promise never to leave him. The narrator shifts roles and attitudes regarding gender. Domesticity is depicted as akin to witch-healing practices, with the herb garden (half-hidden) and the grandmother’s knowledge of herbal remedies. The narrator suggests that the grandmother could “entrance” her with stories, implying a power to influence others’ perceptions. Popular culture often casts witches in a negative light, but they historically represented an alternative to male medical practices. The narrator’s initial sense of superiority is challenged by the grandmother, leading the narrator to reconsider her mission of convincing the grandmother to let others care for her husband. In her introduction to the story, Ortiz Cofer suggests that Puerto Rican women often have a “martyr complex,” where a good woman is defined by her capacity for suffering and mothering. Cofer is concerned with gender and nationhood, and this story reflects a particular understanding of feminism shared by Puerto Rican women writers. The narrative bridges two seemingly opposite worlds. The grandmother is initially depicted as confined by sacrifice, but later we learn she traveled to New York and worked as a seamstress. The story is told in the present tense, creating a temporal distinction from the grandmother’s stories, which belong to the past. The past acquires a mythic quality, while the present demands practical decisions. The grandmother’s departure, attributed to “problems of the heart,” is a gender-defying act. The Witch’s Husband is a borderland text that blends South American magical realism with the Gothic tradition in American literature. At the story’s end, the grandmother merges her tale with her own life, suggesting that her husband either forgot she had become a witch or believed he had dreamed it. Another sentence that positions her as the protagonist is her statement that her husband promised never to follow her again (she had left before, but he had found her).