Enemies of the State

 While In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez, and When the Emperor Was Divine, by Julie Otsuka, address very different political conflicts at different points in history, there is an important similarity between the main characters—they are considered to be enemies of the state.  The circumstances of the Mirabal sisters, however, strike a deep contrast to the situation of the father in When the Emperor Was Divine. 

            In the Time of the Butterflies details the true story of Patria, Minerva, Dedé, and Maté Mirabal, four sisters who, with their husbands, were involved in the revolutionary movement to overthrow Dominican dictator el Trujillo.  When the Emperor Was Divine is a pure novel, based only on the collective experience of the thousands of Japanese-Americans who were internally displaced to internment camps in the Western United States after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.  There are four members of the protagonist family: the mother, the father, a young girl, and a younger boy.  The mother and the children are sent to the Nevada desert, while the father was arrested and imprisoned.  Like Minerva and Maté Mirabal, the father was tortured for information to such a severe degree that there were permanent physical scars, not to mention deep emotional wounds.

            Ultimately, these sets of characters experience disparate outcomes, for a number of reasons.  Perhaps most importantly is the difference in how the characters became involved in the respective conflicts.  The Mirabal sisters, led by Minerva and heavily influenced by Leandro, among others, chose their own paths.  While the girls certainly felt, on a moral level, that they had no choice but to act, they were still free to either actively join or avoid the resistance movement.  The Japanese-American father in Otsuka’s story, however, had no such choice.  Simple because of his ethnic heritage and upper middle class status that enabled him to work and travel, this love father and faithful husband was dragged from his home by force in the middle of the night.  Unlike Minerva and Maté, he was not in prison to take an ideological stand against gross abuse of human rights; instead, he was stripped of all dignity for no reason.  This does not in any way reduce the significance of the horrific torture that the Mirabal sisters were subjected to.  It does help to explain, however, the state of being for the dad versus the sisters after being declared enemies of the state.

            The Mirabal sisters were fighting for something that they truly believed in.  They also had each other, and their husbands.  Even in jail, Minerva and Maté were in the same cell with other women, and therefore had someone they knew and trusted to watch over them. The father, on the other hand, was completely alone.  His only connection to his previous life was the letters from his family, who had a very limited idea of what was being done to him. His torture was entirely based on falsities that he had done nothing to invoke.  Upon his return home to Berkley, the father in Otsuka’s novel was far more broken than the Mirabal sisters, who had something to keep fighting for.  Their support system had not been completely decimated, as the father’s was, and they had a place to go home to, rather than a broken memory that needed complete rebuilding. Additionally, the girls and their husbands were seen as underground heroes, not social and cultural lepers. Finally, of course, there is the way in which the stories end: the three Mirabal sisters most involved in the conflict were killed.  This is horrific by any and every standard; however, the father in When the Emperor Was Divine faces perhaps the most difficult challenge of all: returning to his life and facing the daunting task of restoring some normalcy to his existence.  Again, there is nothing good about the deaths of Las Mariposas, but these story’s endings helps to articulate the differences that defined their experience, versus the fathers, as an ‘enemy of the state.’

The Role of Water... Part II

Like Naomi Shihab Nye did in 19 Varieties of Gazelle, Julie Otsuka uses a traditional symbolic element—water—in a non-traditional capacity. 

Earlier in the semester, I wrote a blog post comparing the role of water in three different poems in Nye’s collection.  In these short pieces about life as a child of Middle Eastern immigrants, water represents both loss of and resolve in maintaining identity, distance between people and cultures, and the distances that must be traversed to feel anchored in a place.

Otsuka’s novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, addresses many of these same themes, albeit in a vastly different capacity.  The main characters of the book, despite remaining unnamed and therefore deprived of an individualistic identity in the eyes of so many, are of a foreign heritage and suffering prejudices and abuses because of it.  The author looks deeply at this idea of identity and individual humanity, and how it can be given and taken away by certain powers, particularly the government.

However, unlike the main characters in Nye’s poetry—particularly herself and her father—the family in When the Emperor Was Divine does not leave their home and life by choice.  While Nye’s father left his home to move to the United States and form a sense of self outside of his cultural capacity alone, Otsuka’s characters are very American and being stereotyped and driven away to an internment camp because of their foreign heritage.  In a sense, these are inverse experiences—one representing struggling to overcome stereotypes and understand the American ways that are so different from his culture, the other representing a truly American family that is subject to torment only because of its background, with which the members are very disconnected.

Despite the similarities and differences in the experiences written about in these two works, the role of water remains crucial.  Otsuka ultimately uses water to represent regret, desolation, illusion, and hope.  In the early chapters of the novel, there are multiple references to rain; they young boy is upset when he is unable to pack his umbrella.  Arguably, this is representative of the fact that, after leaving his home, the boy (and his family) will have no mechanism of defense against the storm ahead.  Meanwhile, however, water is noticeably absent in many situations.  For example, on the train from Tanforan to the internment camp in Utah, the train runs out of drinking water for passengers.  The train also travels by Intermittent Lake, which is full at times and empty at others.  At the camp, there is no running water, and because it is in the desert, there are no naturally occurring bodies of water nearby.  This represents water as a fantasy and symbol of hope—while the boy wishes there were oases, as he had always expected there to be, it is his dreams of water that seem to give him some hope for the future, despite the despair he often feels in their wake.  The mother’s story about her last night with her husband, before his arrest, is the best representation as water representative of regret.  He had asked her for a glass of water, and because she was so fatigued, the mother asked him to get it for himself.  There is such deep despair and regret when the mother tells her son this story; however, again, it seems to be the hope that maybe, just maybe, one day, they will be back together that keeps her going.  The mother wants only to get that cup of water for her husband; ironically, however, this also contributes to her deteriorating mental health, because she struggles to bear the grief and remorse.

The mother’s loss of identity, however, segues into Otsuka’s most non-traditional use of symbolic water.  In so many cases, water represents cleansing and new beginnings, usually in a positive light.  Here, however, that cleansing and new beginning is the opposite of positive.  The family is being cleansed of their individuality, and their new beginning is life behind a fence, monitored and restricted in every way.  And so the aforementioned absence of water from its usual places is not representative of resolve and stability but of dilution and emptiness.

As does Nye’s poetry, Otsuka’s novel never completely lets the readers feel that human resilience will fail.  However, having read up to the end of the boy’s chapter, the future for this family seems bleak.  They are less close, less well, less connected than they were initially.  It is my hope, as I continue reading, that, again, like in Nye’s poetry, the sense of identity is regained by these individuals—that their resilience is not entirely washed away.     

The Power of Fear

For so many reasons, World War II played a significant role in shaping what would become the landscape of 20^th century America. 

For obvious reasons, the tragedies and consequences of World War II must be taught. It is given high priority within American History curricula and is the subject of many written documents, fiction and non-fiction alike.

However, for (pick your adjective) reasons, there are certain parts of this conflict that are glossed over or even completely ignored.  After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. government ordered that many Japanese and Japanese Americans be either arrested or sent to an internment camp.  Some families were held at these camps for several years, being told that it was “for…protection…in the interest of national security…an opportunity…to prove…loyalty” (70).  Conditions, however, were far from ideal, and all individuals living at the internment camps were trapped, fenced in, deprived of many basic freedoms.

In 2011, despite the fears and prejudices that still exist in society, it is not difficult to ask, with incredulity, why such an act was allowed to take place.  How is it that the American public did not cry out in defense of their Japanese and Japanese-American neighbors, their friends, their co-workers, many of whom were American citizens living very Americanized lives?  

In her novel When the Emperor Was Divine, Julie Otsuka addresses this very issue, early on in the book.  The mother, one of the four main characters, is trying to prepare, as much as possible, for the mandatory trip she will be taking with her children the next day.  She stops by the local hardware store, where she interacts with Joe Lundy.  From this one short scene, several things are apparent: Joe respects the woman and thinks highly of her.  He is also embarrassed; even without pictures, it is possible to imagine Joe avoiding eye contact with the woman as subtly as is possible.  This is also indicative of his shame—it is clear that Joe, in his heart, knows that it is wrong for this woman and her children to be forced from their homes, but he knows full well that he has done nothing to protest their fate.  Joe was not alone in this behavior.

However, Joe still attempts to show his solidarity with the woman; his voice and actions in the book almost imply that, because he too has no control over the situation, he just wants her to know that he does not think of her as the government has stereotyped her.  In asking about her leaky roof, talking about the weather, and identifying the pragmatism of using a bucket to collect the intruding rain water, he is conveying that he sees her as she has been—a town resident, a mother, a homeowner, or whatever other role he has known her in.

David Guterson’s novel Snow Falling On Cedars was also written to expose the cruel treatment of so many Japanese and Japanese American individuals during this time, and he too paints a picture of how the relationships between white Americans and Japanese Americans changed and were strained.  Because his book is based around so many different characters, however, and narrated from multiple perspectives simultaneously, he shows a much wider range of emotion and behavior.  There is one scene, for example, that takes place on the morning that the Japanese residents of San Piedro Island in Washington are taking a boat to the mainland to get a bus to a holding camp.  A man runs down a hill by the docks, calling out to his fiancé and hurling a bouquet of blood red roses into the steely gray, foaming ocean.  Others reacted more like Joe, pursuing ‘normal’ conversations and offering to watch out for properties while the owners were away.  But, then, there were those who reacted with violence, defacing properties owned by those singled out by the U.S. government.

And so, despite the subtle kindnesses expressed by Joe and the more overt displays of desperation displayed by the fiancé in Guterson’s novel, it is essential to note the role of fear in driving human behavior—and likely, the role of fear in the general public’s response.  With a government rhetoric encouraging the idea that any Japanese individual could be a spy or a traitor, many Americans—like the woman’s neighbors—did not actively question the internment, allowing their anxieties to be manipulated and their fears to take control.

Why?

When discussing In the Time of the Butterflies earlier in the semester, our class determined that one of the most important aspects of understanding any story is to understand both why its characters are where they are, and why they go on a journey, whether that journey is actual/physical, emotional, or spiritual. 

In the novel Push, by Sapphire, it is not hard to see that the main character, Precious Jones, embarks on all of these types of expeditions.  At the beginning of her story, Precious exists in a place of self-doubt, danger, instability and uncertainty; none-the-less, she starts to travel—into motherhood, into school, into a new home, into a new pattern of behavior—and over time, she experiences profound and truly monumental change.  In a sense of the word, she arrives. Given the circumstances of Precious’ youth, however, ‘why’ becomes a very difficult question to even contemplate.  Readers are left asking a much more rhetorical ‘why’ than in most cases.  Why does this young woman have to experience the horrors of rape and incest, of abuse and maternal molestation, of ridicule and judgment? Why do we exist in a world where these abuses can take place? Why doesn’t anyone intervene on this child’s behalf?

Arguably, there is no answer to these questions—it is nearly impossible to comprehend the devastation of Precious’ treatment from an outside perspective.  Additionally, there is a clear explanation for why Precious undertakes learning to read, living on her own, and being a mother—somehow, this young woman, with such an inner well of strength, saw no choice other than to break the cycle of abuse, of being uneducated, of being categorized by the system. 

Therefore, to truly comprehend Precious’ story, one must focus not only on why, but what this young woman actually achieves.  The last paragraph of the novel is in Precious’ own inner monologue, while she is sitting with her son, Abdul:

“It’s Sunday, no school, meetings. I’m in dayroom at Advancement House, sitting on a big leather stool holdin’ Abdul.  The sun is coming through the window splashing down on him, on the pages of his book.  It’s called The Black BC’s. I love to hold him on my lap, open up the world to him.  When the sun shine on him like this, he is an angel child.  Brown sunshine. And my heart fill.  Hurt.  One year?  Five?  Ten years?  Maybe more if I take care of myself.  Maybe a cure.  Who knows, who is working on shit like that? Look his nose is so shiny, his eyes shiny.  He my shiny brown boy.  In his beauty I see my own.  He pulling on my earring, want me to stop daydreaming and read him a story before nap time. I do” (139-140).

            What a difference from the Precious that readers meet on the first page.  She talks about the sun, the warmth of which she was unable to feel under her mother’s oppression.  She is teaching her son to read, having evolved from student to mentor.  She sees her own beauty, after having ridiculed herself for years for not looking more like the white or skinny women she sees as beautiful and deserving of love.  She has a moment to daydream, after living in a nightmare.  And, perhaps, more remarkably than anything else, she says, “I do.”  This phrase is active, and it indicates that she has earned some control in her own life and, if nothing else, is no longer failing herself.

            There are so many people and institutions that failed Precious while she was growing up; her mother, father, grandmother, neighbors, the police, the hospital all allowed, whether directly or indirectly, facilitate the abuse that she suffers.  Even Precious’ own body, which becomes pregnant under circumstances outside of her control and experiences biological arousal despite the revulsion she feels about her father’s sexual behaviors, seems to betray her.  But her mind and her soul, those other two pieces of self that she maintains, enable her to move forward.  Against all odds, she goes to school, learns to read and write, and finds the capacity to be a caring mother.  She becomes less defensive as she develops these skills, acting out less and broadening her perspective with the help of her new found friends. Indeed, she goes on a journey that truly epitomizes the human capacity for hope and resilience.

Learning to....

As Precious learns about the world around her, how do her views on race and sexuality change? Do her friendships help her lose her biases and see beyond stereotypes? What factors contribute to the way Precious sees the world in the beginning of the book, and what factors make her reconsider?

There is a certain inevitability to the role that each person’s earliest experiences play in shaping their worldview.  In the case of Precious Jones, this occurs to an extreme.  As a young child, the main character of Sapphire’s novel Push, experiences sexual, emotional, physical, and psychological abuse at the hands of her parents.  Through their added negligence, and Precious’ volatile time at school, she is sixteen years old before she even begins to learn her alphabet.

The isolation that Precious experiences as a result of her situation leaves her feeling as though she is the only person to have been raped by a parent, born a child at a young age, or beaten for no reason; she associates this with her race and her physical appearance, believing that if she were not black and overweight by fair skinned and thin that she would not have suffered the abuses of her parents and the system.

This begins to change, however, when Precious connects with Ms. Rain and her peers at the Each One Teach One school, an alternative place of learning.  But it is much more than learning to read and write that initiates the broadening in Precious’ perspective.  For the first time in her life, she actually experiences love, friendship, and predictability.   Ms. Rain always writes back in her journal.  Her new friends are always there for her.  While she remains skeptical early on, Precious starts to believe that she is actually capable of being loved.

It is this love—and the friends that share it—that lead Precious towards her largest revelation: she is not alone.  When Rita takes Precious to the ‘Survivors of Incest Anonymous’ meeting, Precious sees for the first time that other girls—even those of other races, other skin tones and hair colors, other body types—have been subject to the horrors that she herself has lived.  Precious narrates, “She look like a movie star! Slim, long hair, eyes like stars, red lips. ‘My name is Irene. I am an incest survivor.’ My mouth fall open. Someone like that” (129). She cannot believe that someone so beautiful, so seemingly ‘perfect’ from her point of view, has been victimized as she has.

This particular event captures the drastic change that Precious undergoes through her teenage years, and it demonstrates the true power of human connection.  As a child, Precious was shut off from the world, by her mother, her teachers, her father, and even her own confusion about the things that happened to her.  But as she gets out into the world, becomes a true friend, student, mother, community member, she begins to see that her situation is not entirely unique; because of that, she is able to start revising her stereotypes and perceptions of the world around her.

Precious.

            Not having seen the movie Precious or having read the book Push before, I was unsure of what to expect when I began to read.   What unfolded was a story of courage and hope, of the deepest desperation and the most genuine yearning. 

What I do expect, however, especially when reading a book for class, is to look for some theme or recurring symbol that reveals the author’s purpose for writing.

With Push, I had an entirely different reading experience.

Push is a young woman’s story. Even though the book, written by author Sapphire, is a novel, it is based on reality, on real life, on the horrors that are being lived every single day and on the fortitude with which so many endure.  As Sapphire explained to National Public Radio in a 2009 interview, all of the elements that combined to create Precious Jones’ story were ones that she saw in her students.  While she worked as a remedial reading teacher in New York, she “encountered girls like Precious… overweight girls who didn’t fit into the confines of our society’s beauty paradigm, girls who were essentially ‘locked out’ of the broader culture” (Norris, 2009).

And so I found myself unwilling to even think about themes and other basic aspects of literary analysis.  Theoretically, the topic of Push can be related to other books that we have read this semester.  But while I was reading, I was asking myself: what right do I have to analyze someone else's story?  I have not lived what she has, and in a story narrated so personally, and that allows each reader to experience, albeit from a far, far distance, just a bit of what she did, I felt as though I was dismissing the essential parts of the human experience by looking at this as a purely literary work.  Instead, I have felt devastated but inspired by Precious thus far, reminded of the true resilience of human nature.

 This is not to say that the other books we have read so far this semester have not been personal or revealing—but Sapphire writes in such an honest way, it is like sitting with someone and listening to her tell her story out loud, not for analysis, but for herself, for sharing.

Norris, Michele. Sapphire's Story: How 'Push' Became 'Precious'. "Listen to the Story." All Things 
     Considered. National Public Radio. November 6, 2009. http://www.npr.org/templates/story
     /story.php?storyId=120176695