Instruction
1. Chacón’s reader is first struck by the gaudy dazzle of his literary effects. But what the heck is he talking about? Presumably Son of the Storm is, beneath the gypsy songs and simian Satan, a way to grapple with some sort of anxiety or concern. I’d begin with the final scene of the Son of Storm finally being overwhelmed and killed by a disciplined infantry corps. One of the things on Chacón’s mind appears to be the need for (and the costs of) social order. What do you see here—why did Chacón write this?
2. What is the United States to Martí in “Vindication”? Is it a land ‘flowing with milk and honey,’ a magical land of Oz? Alternatively, Is it an evil Empire? Maybe something in between—or perhaps a bit of both? What, if anything, does Martí want from America?
3. Eaton describes repeated experiences of being insulted or excluded, from childhood through her adult life. Recount two or three of these moments—how are the non-Asian Americans depicted, and how does Eaton respond to these affronts?
4. What does “Carved on the Walls” reveal about the Chinese being held at Angel Island? What are their concerns, what is their mood, and how are they coping?
We have heard comparatively little in this session from Anglo-Americans; what was their response to Latinos and Asian-Americans? What can we infer about this Anglo-American response from these readings? The premise of our course is that we want to study contact zones; we don’t want to lose entirely our feel for what the other side was thinking and feeling, even as we gain ethnic voices as we enter the 20th century.