Critical Response 2

Annie Kersting
04/14/2015
QS 462/ Driskoll

Critical Response #2

When trying to describe the book Loving in the War Years: Lo Que Nunca Paso por Sus Labios to a family member that was curious, I was surprised when I had a difficult time putting together words to describe the book.  It was an autobiographical, creative, piece analyzing the experiences of being Chicana/lesbian/woman/American into theory.  By the time I had finish talking she was no longer listening.  Though I am known by my family to describe what I want to say from all angles, this experience made me think about Moraga writing a book that did not really have a genre.  It felt very intentional that there was no one label for her book since the book described how she herself was not one identity.

 

Moraga’s piece is not written to be an accessible glimpse into her life.  It is written as an intimate journal might be.  The most obvious way this is portrayed is the combination of language it is written in.  The book is mostly in English, but has several passages in Spanish, especially passages about her family.  When she speaks to her closest friends and family she speaks in the native language of that relationship, “’Mi’jita!’ Pulling my head into the deep bowl of her thin neck, she kisses me.”  Moraga is not translating her experience for the reader that does not know Spanish.  She maintains the integrity of her multi-dimensional self through this choice in language.  In this way Moraga shares a whole and authentic narrative of herself, that is insightful and awakens questions, emotions and insights for the reader.  However, Moraga’s piece is written in a way that her story can only be shared and not taken as one’s own.  It is written without special accessibility to the reader, to reflect an exchange of story from one human to another, instead of a giving of one’s body and experience for the reader’s experience.  So often minority writer’s stories are turned into narratives for the emotional experience of the reader (especially those that experience privilege), without the consequences of life.  Moraga protects herself (and the reader) from objectifying her by creating barriers from making her story especially accessible.  Just like my description to my family member.  She will not know what the book is really about from one rambling sentence that I clump together, but that is the point.

In Malea Powell’s piece Listening to ghosts: an alternative (non)argument, Malea Powell discusses the loss of Native American languages.  Language as a way of naming the world behaves as a worldview.  When a language another language is used to describe a culture is can inherently do an inadequate job, “to reinvent ourselves in English is, then, for many of us already alternative.”