English 766

Dr. Kenneth Sherwood

9 November 2005

Leon Stennis

Final Project to Focus on Cultural Blending

What has been the cultural impact, over the course of time, of interracial marriages and close relations in general among some African Americans and Native Americans, Hispanic Americans and African Americans, and former African slaves, Indians, and people of Spanish descent in the Caribbean and South America?

That question seems like a complicated one and most likely that is true. Nevertheless, I will take at lease one case from the three situations and explore them in depth to give the reader some idea of the kind of cultural blending that takes place when families have two or three cultural traditions in their it heritage and they make conscious efforts to honor those traditions.

My tentative plans call for a look at the culture blending of families with a Puerto Rican-African American heritage, a an African American-Native American heritage, and a Spanish-Indian-African heritage (from Cuba). The research for my 15-20 page paper will also look at other situations in the United States, the Caribbean, and South America.

Specifically, I will be looking at cultural forms such as language, religion, dance, music, rituals, etc. I will explore how the families’ multicultural backgrounds have affected their lives in general, but also how it has affected their educational experiences, socialization, relationships with other family members, etc. In exploring the experiences of these families and writing my paper I will apply some of the knowledge and use some of the resources from our class on ethnopoetics.

Readings Drive Home the Importance

Of Points of Total Performance

The reading assignments for today do a pretty good job of driving home the importance of total performance in ethnopoetics, something that Dr. Sherwood and some

of the other authors have been stressing all along.

For example, the “Breakthrough into Performance” essay by Dell Hymes notes that, “The notion of performance is central to the study of communication” (1). The writer not only believes this but (he or she) goes on to prove this doing a through analysis of three performances in the essay.

In his essay “By ear, he sd’: Audio-Tapes and Contemporary Criticism” Michael Davidson makes some strong points about why he believes “the authority of the detached literary artifact” and the “critic of postmodern poetry” should be challenged (1). Some of the reasons are Charles Olson’s demand for language as the “act of the instant,” Robert Duncan’s emphasis on registering the physiological energies in the poem, the emergence of ethnopoetics and “sound” poetry, the growth of varying forms of confessionalism, and the continued significant of poetry readings. All of this sounds to me like another way of emphasizing the importance of analyzing a performance in its totally.

Likewise, Jerome Rothenberg and Dennis Tedlock’s “Alcheringa Ethnopoetic Selections” and Tedlock’s “Learning to Listen: Oral History as Poetry” call, not literally but in actuality, for the reader to read carefully and analyze, not the performances, but the texts of the performances presented. Otherwise, there can be no comprehension. For example, the “Alcheringa Ethnopoetics Selections” piece is loaded with poetry with varying forms and titles, like the Aztec poem titled “Poem to be Read Every 8 Years While Eating Unleavened Tamales.” One has to get totally enmeshed or absorbed in the reading to draw any meaning from it.

Another example where total absorption of the text performed is necessary on the part of the reader is the “From Anthropologist to Informant: A Field Record of Gary Snyder.” Apparently this is a transcription by an anthropologist. In order to get the gist of the anthropologist’s findings the reader has to do a complete analysis of his performance. The same follows for what Tedlock is advocating in “Learning to Listen: Oral History and Poetry.” He translates everything that he picks up from listening and writes it in sort of a free verse form, or the way that he thinks it would be most accurately interpreted by the reader.