Introduction
In exploring American literature over the past 50 years, it seems relatively clear that the literature has progressively become more optimistic in general, perhaps because of the many voices it is now able to incorporate, even as it retains high literary standards. While literature in the earlier periods was told predominantly from a white male point of view, more and more of the literature produced in the past 50 years has been written by ‘minority’ groups or those who are other than white males even when they are expected to live within the white male rules. This optimistic movement in literature can be traced through the works of James Baldwin in the mid-1960s, Elizabeth Bishop in the 1970s, and Sandra Cisneros in the 1990s.
Main body
James Baldwin spent most of his adult life living in France but is widely recognized as an essential American writer. Having been born and raised in New York’s Harlem district, he was intimately familiar with the sights and sounds that appeared in his stories even though he’d put an entire ocean between them (Goldman, 1974). Inequality and hatred for his race and sexuality drove Baldwin to seek a more forgiving community and he moved to France, a move that would provide him with the distance required to write truthfully about the actual black experience from the perspective of the black man. In stories such as “Going to Meet the Man,” Baldwin presents a pessimistic view of the white man’s perspective as he deals with issues of extreme racism in the south. However, there is a shred of hope as Baldwin works in this story to try to illustrate the importance of each race attempting to listen to the other.
Written with grace and flow that paints an alarmingly clear picture of more than just the obvious words, Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry depends upon the use of adjectives and other literary devices to develop a voice that speaks in a slightly more optimistic tone. In “The Pink Dog,” Bishop offers the dog as a dehumanized metaphor for the physical body. By suggesting the dog should cover itself with a Carnival costume, the speaker in this poem admits that no one can remain completely subjective in the modern-day world. Instead, it is necessary to take on the form and shape of the surrounding culture or “go bobbing in the ebbing sewage, nights / out in the suburbs, where there are no lights” (Bishop, 17-18). Without the costume, the reality of the individual proves too frightening as Bishop describes: “Of course, they’re mortally afraid of rabies, / You are not mad; you have a case of scabies / but look intelligent” (Bishop, 7-9). Through this poem, Bishop suggests that any action perceived as different from the culturally prescribed action of the dominant culture is still considered crazy, different, and undesirable. This would seem to be pessimistic because a portion of the population remains oppressed. However, I see it as optimistic because the crazy, different and undesirable are now encouraged to move around socially, if in costume, whereas they were mutilated and burned alive in Baldwin’s story.
In “Woman Hollering Creek,” Sandra Cisneros’ main character, Cleofilas, grows up watching telenovelas on TV in which the classic Cinderella themes are prominent, reinforcing the white male viewpoint regarding the feminine social role. These stories reinforce Cleofilas’ dreams of what to expect out of marriage, namely, that she would live happily ever after following her childhood of long struggle. While she anticipates some struggle, her main enemy coming out of these stories was the figure of the other woman – the wicked stepmothers and greedy sisters or two-timing husband-stealers from down the street. As a result, Cleofilas was forced to suffer through the increasing violence and abuse of her home with no one to turn to for help or guidance. Although Cleofilas is willing to sacrifice herself, numbly accepting Juan’s unexplained beatings, she gradually loses all misimpressions that things will somehow turn outright. The story ends when Cleofilas is finally able to turn to other women for help and finds herself with a woman who is free enough to holler every time she crosses the creek in recognition of female liberation.
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. “Going to Meet the Man.”
Bishop, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Bishop: The Complete Poems 1927-1979. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983.
Cisneros, Sandra. Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
Goldman, Suzy Bernstein. “James Baldwin’s ‘Sonny’s Blues’: A Message in Music.” Negro American Literature Forum. Vol. 8, N. 3, (1974): 231-233.