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The question regarding Guillermo Gomez-Pena is, “Is this literary writing or just plain political argument?” When he was talking about his own work he referred to it as “MY literature is as simple as a newscast.” We as a class have discussed the word literature the whole semester. I still don’t think we have come up with a clear definition. Gomez-Pena answered the question at hand the best, it is literature with a political argument. I think his work is written very well and very creatively. It is also obvious that there is a strong political argument. Therefore Gomez-Pena’s work is both literature and a political argument.

The question regarding Guillermo Gomez-Pena is, “Is this literary writing or just plain political argument?” When he was talking about his own work he referred to it as “MY literature is as simple as a newscast.” We as a class have discussed the word literature the whole semester. I still don’t think we have come up with a clear definition. Gomez-Pena answered the question at hand the best, it is literature with a political argument. I think his work is written very well and very creatively. It is also obvious that there is a strong political argument. Therefore Gomez-Pena’s work is both literature and a political argument.

Dagoberto Gilb’s short story “Look on the Bright Side” takes place in Los Angeles. The narrator is a Mexican-American father, who lives in an apartment with his wife and kids. He just recently gpt laid off from his construction job. At the same time his landlady Mrs. Kevovian tried to prematurely raise the rent of their apartment. The narrator tried to pay for the normal rent, but the landlady wouldn’t take it without the increase, so he figured he’d wait it out and let the judge decide. He gathered the family and took a vacation road trip across the boarder to Mexico. After a relaxing vacation, the family headed home. The border stop took longer than expected. The man at the gate gave them a hard time about their trip to Mexico, and then the narrator had to pay a fine for the four bottles of undeclared rum in his car. Once they got back home, they had to go to court for the rent increase (by now he owes many months back rent.) After a couple times at court he receives a judgement letter by mail saying that he only owes 80 percent of his debt. With no phone calls from the landlady, the narrator calls a lawyer and find out that he will physically be evicted in ten days. The family packed the house and the wife and kids moved back to Mexico until the narrator could find work and rent again. The story ends with the narrator arriving at the library a few hours before they open, so he can study for a painters test. He ends up on a concrete bench seeing people come and go in the early morning, and eventually falls asleep with his head one a pile of newspapers, “just until the library opened.”

The quote from Alexie’s narrator can easily be related to Gilb’s story. Gilb’s narrator was very optimistic about his situation. He turned all the bad situations into something good, or at least something that sounds good. A good example is when the family was packing up the apartment he said, “We had a garage sale. You know miscellaneous things, things that you could buy anywhere when the time was right again, like beds and lamps and furniture.” Furniture and beds aren’t something you would normally consider “miscellaneous furniture”, but it is the narrators way to make the situation sound better than it is. His optimism is similar to the part of Alexie’s quote that says “That’s how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like the disappearing.” Another example in Gilb’s text is when the narrator is waiting on the concrete bench for the library to open. A wino named John comes and rambles on to him while he feeds the pigeons. He thinks to himself “I sort of got to liking John. He reminded me of a hippie, and it was sort of nice to see hippies again.” The narrator from both Gilb and Alexies’ stories had a similar outlook on things.

The narrator in Gilb’s story was quite optimistic. How long do you think his optimism lasted? What was the source of his optimism?

Sometime around the stroke of midnight...
I dare you to dish me this and deny me that...
And prefaced and prefaced and prefaced...
and prefaced:
Alexie's narrator describes his craft: "That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like the disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye and no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice" (125). How does this quote relate to the texts by Alexie/Gilb?

Alexia writes like an Indian. He defends a literary tradition with his style. His style though, talks to the white man with white man’s words. He tells sad stories about Indians trying to be white men but only falling down drunk. He thinks he is the puppet of an ancient Indian spirit that drugs him with whiskey and humiliation in front of his family to keep his soul Indian. He is better off drunk and Indian than sober and free (but eventually a white man) to be imprisoned in a white man’s world. His tradition haunts him; he thinks being drunk is the way the Indian has chosen to go… He wakes up at intervals over several years, snapping in and out of month long binges and finds, the second that he awakens… Even after that he still has to be a white man. That is his entire story. His son is a red herring. His son is more Indian than he is and he finds hope in that but (because the Indian in himself is killing him) his son’s very directed statements make a great impression on the narrator and he finds his strength somewhere in between something Indian and magical, and very great, keen, and swanky… in 1966-1974... Written, presumably by the adopted son James. It could be a melding of his own life with that of his fathers’… I think that most of this is self empowering for Native Americans in general. He finds spiritual strength against alcoholism. He uses his son as a support in his day by day fight; his son reminds him to be strong. In the end he is amazed with his son’s tacit acknowledgement of his father’s struggle, “Whiskey on my mind second I was born, baby..” In it there is to be found a spiritual journey, a transformation of thought, a friendship, a father, a son, and the world around them… and that’s the blurb that’s what I’d tout anywhere as my quote for the blood money billboard that’s presumably comin’ to this Injun for his thoughts on the disastrous situation some Americans, some good Americans… are born into. He wrote it to them and he’s going to get that kind of acknowledgement. The savagery at this point in the narrative, “quote.” of what blurb would probably run out the Indians in fear of a witch hunt to every corner of the globe they do not dare go, “Disappearing like the people who climbed on pueblo walls.”

Guillermo Gómez-Peña is a transnational performance artist whose work has appeared on-stage around the world and on National Public Radio, the internet, and unusual locales (e.g. on the actual San Diego-Tijuana border). He grew up in Mexico City but has traveled back and forth into the U.S. as a citizen of his own growing performance universe and repertoire. Throughout his performance texts, Gómez-Peña plays with language to juxtapose political speech against critical, humorous satire. Is this literary writing or just plain political argument? (Note in "Chicanost: Radio Nuevo Orden" where he says "MY literature is as simple as a newscast," on page 78.)

This guy is sensational. He’s on every corner of the street pointing out every damn thing with a four foot finger. That image is performance art. Pena takes a different route. His words are mostly about finding spirituality in the fact that you aren’t like those bastards “in their metal coffins” (Point Break, ‘91) as Patrick Swayze enchants to Keanu Reeves, a movie that comes to mind with more than a slight sense of déjà vu as I am reading “Freefalling Tpward a Borderless Future”. SO in the movie Swayze, the boedy-satva (his name was Bodey or something) leads a gang of surfing, skydiving, drug abusing, hippie generational bank robbers and he also is trying to combat “Yuppie tribes paralyzed by guilt & fear“ by living life on the edge, robbing banks, and following the true path of the dharma in a southern Californian world of beach scum (its actually beach scum that allows Reeves and Gary Busey to profile surfers in their attempt to apprehend the “Former Presidents” bank robber-ring gang (They all wear masks of former presidents (except Reeves).). ßThat got ugly quick. But Pena’s performance lyrics conjure up very pessimistic scenes, he wills society’s collapse and the dispersement of the system because of a perceived?… lack of freedom? He sometimes just comes off as very well informed and pissed off to me. Punk ethic: “Fuck the Man“, but after the masochism, when punk was the alternative that hadn’t been invented. “Standing on the map of my political desires I toast to a borderless future” and then lists the inevitable denationalization of a human body depicting the Americas as a single body {“our Canadian Head“... why would we give Canada the head?} The Twilight Zone “News from Aztlan Liberado” would be interesting if only Republicans could read it. I think for some reason, from a definite political agenda, Pena is trying to empathize but the crimes the “Anglos” commit is just mad-lib and still you read it and you see the most terrible articles,
“35 Mexican citizens have been executed by Anglo gang members.
In an act of random violence, two unemployed corporate executives walked into a luxurious Taco Bell Bistro and fired upon the peaceful fajita-eating customers. Today’s headline in the minority paper, the New York Times reads: “Blood and guacamole all over the walls; a macabre scene.”
And Hispanic gangs never did anything so bad as this and the switch between Anglo and Hispanic makes him sound like some “Harry’s Bistro” was satirically (justifiably almost) blown to smithereens, that there is fear… he wants you to fear him and his ideas… because America is dead in ‘the borderless future’ “ex members of the defunct U.S. Army“… you have no protection.
Do I think it is a political agenda, “Yes.” Is this literary, “Only if the Blakxican-Panthers could publish this shit, man.” Its critical, absolutely. But there are three fingers pointing back at him. It is not subtle enough, but there is probably a blast of house music or videos of Mexican Cossacks to juztapose even his words, right, so you might not even notic

e. But he’s howling on the edge and the edge is where the society he wants to bring down is. When his prophesying yields nothing and calls from an abandoned year, 1996, it empties. Which is to say prophecy is not necessarily literature, of course. Is he a prophet; is this prophecy?
“Chicanost: Radio Nuevo Orden” reaches worldwide with humor and crisis and future appeals. It aims at poignant absurdity “ex-president Bush has been diagnosed with Downs syndrome” and pro-Hispanic hilarity “the Dalai Lama relocates to El Salvador” from “1000 mega jerks above reality” and the quote at the end of the piece after Pena lists all these obscure references you may or may not get (some of them take place in the future?) he dawdles down to the base concept that everything is in front of you and you don’t need to do anything for it to happen “you can listen to the voice of your other selves…”. Does he see this as society right now: people at an art exhibit or on a dance floor listening to words he meant to be heard and contemplated but passed over (he justifies an excuse to regress), “Our syntax has been simplified to meet your psycho-cultural needs”. He caters. Great… every once in a while you have to take a beating.

Dagoberto Gilb’s short story, “Look on the Bright Side,” is a story with many of the usual literary backdrops: the pitfalls of bureaucracy, social injustice, racism, etc. However, unlike many of the novels and stories that we’ve studied thus far, Gilb is turning to these themes in his effort to satirize both the propensity of men to be stubborn and the common tendency of people to place blame elsewhere. In doing so he gives some insight into the life of a “typical” working-class family and the struggles that go along with it. Gilb’s use of humor as a way to deflect pain is evident throughout the story, and is reminiscent of what Sherman Alexie wrote in “Jesus Christ’s Half-Brother is Alive and Well on the Spokane Indian Reservation,” that quote being, “That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like the disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye and no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice.” The protagonist in Gilb’s story loses his job, has to go to court to fight off his landlord that illegally raised the rent on him, gets busted for not claiming four bottles of Mexican rum he bought while on vacation, using all the money he’d be saving by not having to pay rent yet, he has to send his wife and children back to Mexico to live with their grandparents, and so it goes. But throughout this mess, the reader gets the sense that everything will be alright. In comedy, pain is not a representative element. In other words, any pain that would normally accompany a situation is turned into humor, giving the audience the reassurance that whatever may look serious at first will not end up causing real pain to anyone. In this way, Gilb’s protagonist, through humor and cynicism, deflects the harsh gravity of the situation enough so that the reader doesn’t fully believe that any real pain can exist there.

In stark contrast to the style of Dagoberto Gilb, who uses humor to deflect pain, Guillermo Gomez-Pena throws pain in the reader’s face with the use of satire. His major concern of racism as well as poverty, injustice, and corruption are clearly seen from his work, “News From Aztlan Liberado.” In this satire, set in post-Mexican-American-revolution California, the pain of these themes above is pungent to the point that I am embarrassed to read it, as if it was not meant for me (white, middle-class Midwesterner) to read. In this way, with the use of thick satire, as well as the prose that Gomez-Pena uses, it would almost certainly have to be considered literature as well as political banter. His heightened use of the language to bring on such demanding social issues is refreshing, and certainly pertains to American life.

Sherman Alexie’s piece begins on a reservation where a fire takes place. There is a little baby boy that is left in the home and it’s alleged father runs in to try and save him. Although the baby lives, both of the parents pass away and the narrator is persuaded to take care of the baby. James is a special kind of child. He seems to feel no pain or cry as a child. When the narrator takes the baby to the doctor, they tell him that he is just a slow developer, he is “Indian” you know. The remained of the excerpt shows the trails and tribulations of people that live on reservations. This includes when the caretaker is pulled into drinking and ends up in A.A. . The only way for him to keep James is to overcome his addiction. He does this because he knows that even though he took James in when he was only 20, that one day this child would do and say great things to change the world, even if no one else believed him. It ends with his Christmas present being James talking right into his face and saying all the things that he wished he would. It was almost as if the boy didn’t need to talk until he knew everything he had to say.
“Every Indian learns to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye”, is a great quote. Here we see James’s father misdirecting the attention of the struggle of raising a child with his alcohol addiction. When he says this quote he is speaking in regard to the trees that he sees as wise man. I think he is talking about the misconceptions that people have about Indians lives on reservations. I have been studying it this semester and am awestruck. Indians have always been known to be resourceful people being able to adapt to any situation and survive. When you are put in place that makes you miserable, one of the “secrets” or “tricks” is to make something out of nothing. At least it makes the day more interesting. As long as you get through it you may see someone, or James, say something that changes the world.
As for Gomez, his work is very intriguing. I would like to hear him perform it as I think it would take on a whole new meaning. When he claims that his”. literature is as simple as a newscast”, first you have to analyze how complicated news casts are. Okay so all they do is tell you the facts and move on to another story but there is so much more behind the front. The news is monopolized by politics. There is someone who decided what stories to show and what not to say about certain people. This is directly related to their political beliefs. I think that Gomez does the same thing. He tells you things in his own words, but if his beliefs were not in the background why would we believe him? He says things in a way that makes you think and If I remember correctly literature is taking words and making “magic”. Then again ask James how t o make fun of someone politely and he will say to tell them in a joking way or throw back at them just what they said to you. I mean we only say what we think when people will listen right? At least James was smart enough to take it all in before throwing his ideas back out.