Wednt book analysis

Tyler Szabo

Dr. Ellis

Post-Colonial Lit

10/14/15

Sex as Interpersonal/Social Transcendence and as Power

            Sex is at the forefront of Sons for the Return Home in many different forms.  These forms are not only unique to the cultures presented in the novel, both New Zealander and Samoan, but also to the individuals.  How each group views sex not only reflects the views of the group/individual, but it also reflects their goals and hopes for the future. 

            The New Zealanders view cross ethnic sex in two primary ways, as purity and as domination.  Sex, as a means of procreation, is seemingly looked down upon by the population when it comes to cross ethnic sex.  This seems assumed from the beginning of the book, but we don’t get our first real taste of it until the girlfriend brings the main character to the pakeha party.  After dancing for a bit they return to their drinks and a pakeha male asks the narrator’s girlfriend to dance.  She says no and when he inquires why, only to learn that she was dating a Samoan, he is disappointed with her and disgusted with him.  Though this is simply the view of one, it seems to be the belief of the majority.  The other major belief about sex is that of subjugation, in this case subjugating Samoan men with pakeha women.  This is evident very early on while our narrator is in high school.  His first time was after a dance and a pakeha female had sex with him, only to gloat to her friends the next day and dehumanize him as a prize she won.  This is also seen after the narrator has his first mini “break up” with his soon to be girlfriend, before he decides to commit to her.  While on the bus a pakeha woman brushes up against him and he follows her to her apartment where she gives him a strip tease, before having sex with him, and jests that he loves pakeha women and would be more than happy to fuck her.  Though this is an act of validation for the pakeha woman, it is validation through having power over the narrator, even if it was just pity sex for him.  I believe these two beliefs about cross ethnic sex are very much intertwined, as there is power directly derived from having this dominating form of sex, but also an indirect power by saying that even though you are worth having sex with, having a cross ethnic baby is out of the picture, thus dehumanizing the Samoans.  Samoans actually have similar beliefs, but for some different reasoning.

            The Samoans in New Zealand have cross ethnic sex primarily as a defense and as a form of validation.  The defensive side of cross ethnic sex derives from the dominating idealisms of the pakeha.  The narrator, after being dominated by his first pakeha woman and dehumanized, decides to preemptively have sex with the other pakeha women that ogle him in order to gain the upper hand and ignore them, thus dehumanizing them and not the other way around.  This is also reflected in the idea of not becoming connected with other individuals in any way, especially in love, as the narrator talks about after being questioned as to why he didn’t help the injured man who was thrown out of a car.  The other belief in cross ethnic sex is doing it as a form of validation, which I also find as a reaction to pakeha sex beliefs.  The narrator, while at Oriental Bay, recalls talking to his brother about his conquest over a sun tanning pakeha woman by gloating that he had a permanent sun tan all the way to the tip.  By pakeha women lusting over the men because they have Samoan features, it makes them proud of their Samoan heritage, when in actuality the women are most likely having sex with them as a conquest and couldn’t care less about them.  These may be the majority, but there is a young minority that has a more positive light of sex.

            Though still products of their environment, there is a young minority, as expressed through the main couple, that sees and uses sex as a way of transcending ethnic boundaries created by society.  By having sex with others because of a physical attraction or because you love the other individual, it negates the importance of ethnicity for these young individuals.  This is not to say that the main couple is color blind, far from it.  They not only see ethnicity, but they seek to understand each other through both physical oneness and through communication.  This is in contrast to the majority, which seeks to use the opposing ethnicity through sex instead of using it as a common language for communication.  This is best stated after the narrator’s girlfriend grabs his cock and saying, “It’s gentle and understanding; it talks very fluently and it can overcome all racial barriers. Or any other barrier that needs overcoming” (65).  This statement, and as an extension the cross ethnic views sex according to each group, shows us the different views of the future and how the future may turn out. 

            It is obvious that the old blood of society, The New Zealanders and Samoans, do not seek to progress society in a mutual fashion, they either want to progress it in their favor or keep to their own entirely.  The new generation, not all of them but a significant minority, is where a hope for a better tomorrow lies, which comes through their sexual openness.  Frivolity in and of itself is not an automatic pathway to mutual progress, but sexual desire as seen through our main character’s relationship, is.  To choose to become one with someone with a time without the worries and opinions of the world allows a one on one connection between the two people with a common “language” that transcends every barrier.  It is in this erotic faith in one another that we may achieve a oneness with each other and progress mutually instead of selfishly. 

Racism, Assimilation, & Immigration

I think it's very interesting that Wendt writes about a cross-cultural, interracial relationship in his work, Sons for the Return Home. I liked to think of the relationship between the Samoan boy and the Papalagi girl as a metaphor of the struggles that post colonial countries and European colonizing countries would face if they came to enter a loving relationship with one another. As we can see from the romantic relationship in the book, there are a lot of issues that would have to be worked out in order for them to sustain their relationship. This is both within and outside their relationship, their different cultural backgrounds threaten their bond. The Samoan boy has a lot of hatred and contempt in his heart for all white people, and he has his reasons, he reminds his parents, "have you forgotten all the humiliations we've had to suffer since we've been here? Have you forgotten how they treated my brother? He only spent a year at that school and he wanted to leave. they called him a 'dirty coconut Islander', and when he beat up the kids who called him that, the Principal [...] called him in front of the whole school and called him 'a brainless Islander who should be deported back to the Islands. Have you forgotten that?" (Wendt Kindle location 199). The Samoan boy has never forgotten the violence done to him, his family, and his people in New Zealand. He intends to hold all white people responsible for the hurt done to him and other Samoans. Until he falls in love with a white girl, perhaps, in his mind, one of the most treacherous things he could do. In many ways, he reminds me of Okonkwo's extreme cultural loyalty; the Samoan boy will not assimilate. As the story develops, and certainly after his return home, he balances his view of white people, when he becomes more aware of himself and the reality that he isn't just Samoan. He is a the result of two worlds in contact with one another.

I think that this reading of the novel pairs well with Wendt's, Nuana, which I did read before reading his novel, and to be frank, read like the complete opposite. However, it seems like the Samoan boy does come to see things as Wendt does by the end of the novel, perhaps not as profoundly though. Wendt's radical position that colonization has reared some good in addition to its negative, is centered around his refusal "to support the outmoded and racist theories, such as the fatal impact theory, which underpin most colonial literature about us. According to these theories and views, we, the indigenous, have been hapless victims and losers in the process of cultural contact and interaction; our cultures have been ‘diluted’ and ‘corrupted’; we have even ‘lost’ them. All cultures are becoming, changing in order to survive, absorbing foreign influences, continuing, growing" (Wendt 3). I hear what Wendt is communicating, and I feel that I can relate to it well.
As a first generation African American, many times both black and white American will assume things about where me and my family come from that are simply untrue, and often times, absurdly insulting. And yet, the thing that gets to me the most is this idea that Africa is some poor place in need of saving. I don't like to think of my homeland or my culture as some lost land or pathetic loser. For this reason, I found myself relating very well to the Samoan boy who took pride in his homeland and his culture. I also felt that Wendt really was taping onto something that all people in the diaspora can relate to, this idea that one's culture is becoming diluted. I think my one qualm with Wendt is I still don't know where, or if he even believes that this concern is a legitimate one. It is a fact that we have lost languages, cultures, and even ethnic groups in the world, and I kind of felt as if he wasn't bing sensitive enough to that reality.

I can't help but think of a conversation I had with a French woman where we were talking about school systems, and I explained to her that although my maternal and grandfather spoke fluent Susu, the languages of their respective homelands, Sierra Leone and Guinea, Krio, Temne, and even some religious Arabic. They were forced to learn both English and French if they wanted to advance themselves in their own native homelands because that was the only way to advance. They had to have some way of communicating and keeping up with the foreign powers still at work in their 'Independent" countries. Forced assimilation of a culture isn't the same thing as a culture organically growing.

Systematic Racists

We return again to the New Zealand sea with Albert Wendt’s Sons for the Return Home which tells the story of a Samoan boy living in a predominantly Papalagi society. His black skin color is like a burn mark for all the world to see and he must face the hardships and ridicule that come from being born outside the norm. The idea of the inferior black skin is prevalent in a number of different cultures throughout the world. In my motherland of South America, the darker skinned people are holed up in mountains and small towns while the fairer skinned upperclass lives in the major cities. The black skin itself is a testament to the scorching heat our forefathers labored in for centuries, while the fair skin finds its pride in never having been blemished. Interestingly, this forms an interesting dynamic between the two: while the fair skin is superior to the dark in terms of status, the darker skinned people are strong after their many generations of laborers. They are physically stronger yet still lack the necessary power to meet their contemporaries as equals. It is a perpetuation of the class system that keeps the top on top despite their inadequacies.

Just as Wendt’s protagonist is aware of his being a minority, so too is the majority concerned with the racial implications of his character. Being black, he is seen as a well-endowed nymphomaniac and this is made clear when he confronts his girlfriend’s ex. This is but one example of the racial guidelines to which society adheres to. There are a million descriptions for the minority which can be made without even meeting them face-to-face. It is enough to be widely accepted by society, the people need nothing more than that.

What we can observe in any instance of systematic racism is a moving toward a cultural paradigm to which all functioning members of a society may subscribe to. By ostracizing a minority, the majority ensure their exclusivity and all of the benefits that come with it. But it is not in their ultimate interest to continue hating these people forever. Its really quite frightening, but these societies are heading towards a final solution just as Adolf Hitler did in Germany. Not to say that systematic racism will eventually evolve into genocide, but one must realize Hitler’s rationale. He was aware of the racial discrimination against jews but instead of going through the usual widespread racism, Hitler took his Germany and bypassed all of that. He began mass genocide in order to move his people into the cultural paradigm that could only exist by destruction of the minority. 

It is interesting the way the minority interacts with the majority. Here in the United States, the minority forms the backbone of the American labor force. The laborers unseen by the people, but working tirelessly for an opportunity in this country. Yet we discriminate when an illegal migrant does not speak English. They are not the way we think they ought to be, they exist outside of our system and adhere to a different set of rules that we can only perceive as stereotypes. We try to be accepting of all cultures, but truly what we desire is a perfect American society. Racism is simply a response to what we perceive as an imperfect reality.

Adaptation

        We have discussed the concept of colonization and the way in which different cultures have adapted to or not adapted to the changes and harsh realities of colonialism. We talked about how Okonkwo’s inability to adapt led to his death and therefore Achebe believes that one must adapt to live. We journeyed with the Maori people as their lands were taken from them forcefully despite their attempts to fight back. Wendt’s Sons for the Return Home describes a child who must adapt to a new culture and then readapt to his old culture. In Grace’s short story, “Ngati Kangaru”, a Maori family, that has adapted to the ways of the colonizers who took the Maori land, decide to take back the land that was stolen from them. The satirical tone that Grace gives the story reveals to the reader that the Maori family has become so integrated with another culture that they have lost their sense of culture and have become just like the colonizers they hate. This idea is contrasted with the other excerpt we read this week, Wendt’s Nuanua introduction, in which he praises and glorifies the Pacific groups that have managed to preserve their culture despite adaptation through art, language, politics, and most importantly literature. 

        If we connect Grace’s Potiki with her short story, we see things have come full circle. The crazy and unbelievable plot of the short story, in which the Maori family steals the luxury homes and gives them to returning Maori people without getting caught, is a mirror of the way in which the New Zealand company stole the land from the Maori people to begin with. It shows how unfair and ridiculous the taking of Maori land was in Potiki. However, in the same way, it creates a sense of loss, because Billy and his family are committing the same outlandish crime as the New Zealand company. The family uses the same words and phrases as the colonizers used, against them. Billy is inspired to create his “company” while reading a book which explains the tactics used by the New Zealand company. It is especially different from the way that the Tamihana family attempts to preserve and save their culture in Potiki. Grace seems to be saying that too much adaptation can be detrimental to a culture. If Billy and his family were truly trying to restore the Maori culture to their land, they would not have done it in the way that they did. They were not thinking about preserving culture, rather they were thinking about making money and scamming people. In this case the family has become so adapted that they have lost their love for their culture. 

       In Wendt’s piece we see a very opposite view on adaptation. He is bursting with pride that the Pacific people have preserved and saved their culture despite having to adapt when colonized. The book Nuanua was made for the purpose of spreading the culture and the literature of the Pacific people, to disprove stereotypes, and to prove that despite being adapted they still treasure and hold their cultural values to a high standard. Sons for the Return Home evokes the idea that adaptation is a good thing but one must find a way to compromise and keep ones original culture and tradition alive. It is interesting to see these two different opinions on adaptation and how they fit in to our course as a whole. 

       In our study of homelands, we have seen forced adaptation, refusal to adapt, and welcome adaptation. In our world today, we see adaptation as a necessary part of life. When we move somewhere new or make new friends etc, we must find that common ground where our new environment and our old environment coexist in harmony. When I lived in Denmark, I felt very comfortable, like I belonged. It took some time to figure things out and find a rhythm, but once I did, I felt at home. That does not mean that I lost my American nature. It meant that I found a way to exist comfortably in a new culture without losing the old one. 

Racism in Wendt's "Sons for the Return Home"

Sons for the Return Home is an interesting look at yet another cultural facet present in New Zealand. After reading Grace’s Potiki, this novel offers a modern look at racism and difficulties experienced by the Samoan people. I enjoyed this book for multiple reasons, but mainly because of the narration style. In telling the story through the voice of an impassionate, unbiased third-party, the book achieves an allegorical success. It becomes a metaphor in and of itself, and makes reading it all the more engaging. In some respects, the narration style is risky, but it works. It allows the action to flow freely and smoothly while at the same time manages to make the reader uncomfortable. For example, chapter two begins with the arrival of the author’s family to New Zealand. Like the rest of the novel, the action is related to us through the voice of someone acting as a spectator: “Their first morning at sea the boy screamed and clung to his mother when they ventured from their cabin. His father tried to soothe him with caresses and whispered affirmations that there was nothing to be afraid of. The boy screamed louder. Some of the other passengers and crew gathered to see what was wrong” (Wendt 5). This section is compelling because we as readers feel like the other passengers all gathering around to watch the tantrum. We have been given almost zero information concerning this boy’s origins or why he is afraid, which makes us third-party spectators. We see this boy and feel sympathy for him, but we do not know all that much about him.

            This novel touches on multiple adolescent fears and troubles, but it ultimately rises above those issues and becomes a very powerful statement about mixed relationships and the stresses of love. The mixed relationship becomes an even bigger problem in the face of racism and close-minded approaches from the other characters. It is a fascinating examination of a contemporary issue and I found myself drawn to the narrative as it progressed. It directly relates to problems in the Loyola community, as well as in the United States as a whole. There is still racism present in this country and biracial couples face discrimination and prejudice even today.

            The article, Nuanua, is a look at languages and colonialism’s impact on oral and written traditions. Colonialism was responsible for eradicating numerous indigenous languages, including those developed by the Aboriginal people of Australia and the Hawaiian natives. Oral and written traditions were stamped out by the Europeans, and this is rightly suggested by Wendt in the Introduction: “That literature was by Europeans who had supposedly ‘discovered’ us and traders, missionaries, colonial administrators, development experts…Colonial literature assumed, whether consciously or unconsciously, that the coloniser’s language was superior to ours and part of saving and civilising us was therefore to convert us to that language” (Wendt 2). The prose works selected represent the vast cultural “flora and fauna” amongst New Zealand’s indigenous people. The anthology is a triumph in its depiction of oral and written traditions and manages to rise above the influence of colonization by demonstrating a knack (by its various authors) for storytelling.

The Intimate Turned Alien

The readings done for this week provided fascinating perspective into ideas of post colonial society and, if taken in conjunction with Patricia Grace’s Potiki they can even more adequately inform one’s notion of what postcolonial literature and postcolonial society really means.

For instance, after reading Potiki any discussion or thought surrounding colonialism can’t help but be of a narrow view for in the novel one is presented with two extremes, those who seek to destroy a culture and those who refuse to capitulate under any circumstances. However, Wendt (in his introduction to Nuana and his work Sons for the Return Home) and Grace (in her short story Ngati Kangaru “The Sky People”) each discuss a more moderate view of society, one that acknowledges the ills of colonialism (particularly in Sons and Ngati Kangaru) but also its benefits and addresses the effects it has on the psyche of those who are forced to assimilate into or at least adapt towards a new, overbearing society. Thus, a more dynamic view is formed of how hostile takeovers performed by bigoted western Europeans shifted the cultures of indigenous people.

The first work I read was Sons for the Return Home and after reading the other two pieces it struck me as a melding of the ideas put forth in Nuana and Ngati. To begin: consider Nuana. Wendt, initially seems to be almost praising the postcolonial world. He refuses to support theories that submit that those cultures that were colonized were diluted or corrupted, in fact he calls them “racist and outmoded” (Wendt 3). He considers them changed and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Faulkner, Yeats, Hemingway and other masters were introduced to the indigenous people because of colonialism and, perhaps more importantly Pacific Islanders were introduced on a broader stage. In the postcolonial world they managed to find a voice, to normalize or rather humanize themselves and at least attempt to present an image that does not propagate racist stereotypes by depicting them as exotic or as like curiosities.

Ngati though addresses a different view. One may duly note the cunning of the Maori protagonists, their willingness to stoop to fraud in order to take back their lands from those who took it. Of course the question that must be begged, before any criticism is leveled at them is: why must they take back their lands in the first place? And, as an extension of that inquiry, is it their fault that they are forcing people out of vacation house and home? Are they not merely using the same tactics to which they were subjected to? The message therefore, is clear. Colonialism inspires an inhumanity to one’s fellow man and a postcolonial world reaps the “benefits” of such action.

In Sons, as has been previously mentioned, the reader bears witness Wendt meditating over how the vices and virtues of colonialism and how they are enacted in a postcolonial world. His nameless protagonist adapts to the world around him but struggles with the distance he feels towards others, initially towards whites but later towards those of his own homeland. In many ways yours truly could relate to the struggles of relation to others felt by Wendt’s protagonist. Even the family dynamics are similar. A venerated, anguished deceased patriarch of a grandfather, a strong willed, loving mother with a huge extended community of family surrounding the smaller circle of immediate kin. Hence, the issue of how does one emerge from the womb of the home, replete with all of its idiosyncrasies and definite worldviews and adapt to the larger universe but then maintain the capacity to relate in any way to the womb that was just vacated. Cultures change and adapt to survive as Wendt states in his introduction. But when one branches out and begins to forge ahead and change on one’s own, it becomes a struggle not to become an alien to the home that was once so familiar, a stranger in a strange land. Further complicating the matter is that I don’t think the protagonist views himself as any less Samoan just as I don’t view myself as any less a member of my family in spite of the increasing distance in worldviews and desires for my life should be lived. One risks becoming an island, ostracized, to an extent, from the motherland. A worthy notion to consider, though is whether or not this is a bad thing. I suggest that it is not particularly if one has nothing to regret and nothing to look forward to in the way of Wendt’s protagonist. And so when the goddess crosses her legs one can be happy in death.

Society's Inherent Racism

 Today's readings reflect the prevalence of racism and its capacity to transcend various cultures. Albert Wendt's Sons for the Return Home tells the story of a young Samoan living in New Zealand among a primarily papalagi-composed society. The Samoan family is subject to racism and discrimination of various kinds throughout the novel. As a minority group, the children experience ridicule and harassment at school from their peers, teachers, and principles. The treatment of Samoan characters throughout the novel conveys the inevitability of racism and discrimination, as it occurs wherever a marginalized group lives among a more prevalent group with a substantial degree of power. Numerous other examples occur in literature and illustrate the perpetual struggle of those who live in demeaning societies.  Countless works portray African-Americans struggling to thrive in spite of their harrowingly racist surroundings. King's letters from Montgomery prison express his disdain for the mistreatment of his people, as well as his hatred for those who do nothing to combat segregation and discrimination. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and various other works such as Role of Thunder Hear My Cry, and A Lesson Before Dying portray racism as it occurs in the American South against the African-Americans. These instances of racism are significant because they exist as the prevalent white southerner mindset, as their society actively promotes discrimination. Townspeople, teachers, and police in all three novels demonstrate racist tendencies that often result in the abuse and in some instances death of African-Americans. Other works of literature exemplify the prevalence of racism in any given society. Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner    depicts a society founded on racial tension in Afghanistan consisting of the dominant Pashtun and minority Hazara ethnic groups. The Hazaras suffer persecution and eventual genocide at the hands of the Taliban.

Racist cultural norms cultivate in nations with colonial history due to the contact points between differing cultures. The very act of colonization necessitates the exploitation of a weaker ethnic group by a stronger "powerhouse nation." Such exploitation occurs over extended periods of time through multiple generations, thus cultivating a society that marginalizes its different or less prominent members. Racial and cultural tensions deteriorate as time progresses due to the inevitable homogenization and integration of any given society's ethnic composition.

The novels covered in this unit reveals that every society consists of marginalized individuals to some extent. While traveling abroad I've observed marginalized groups and prejudice social dynamics that parrallel those of the United States. I learned that many Western Europeans such as Germans and Austrians marginalize and dislike Eastern Europeans such as Serbians, Albanians, and Armenians. Teenagers in Innsbruck explained that Eastern Europeans are disliked because they steal Austrian jobs and are notorious for criminal activity. While exploring the city I crossed into an impoverished "Serbian Ghetto" with low-income housing and a reputably more dangerous atmosphere. I noticed many similarities between European and American discrimination of minorities. Both cultures marginalize immigrants and minorities on the basis of ethnic discrepancy.