October 8-10, 2014
University of Maine at Augusta
Colby College
Holocaust & Human Rights Center of Maine
http://hhrcmaine.org/exploring-womens-testimony/
Franco-American Women: The Literary Situation and the Deprivation of Story for the Generations--Past, Present and Future--Who Stands to Lose?
By By Rhea Côté Robbins
Intro: pieces of testimony and reason why...
Thank you to the organizers for this opportunity to speak here today.
This is my hometown [Waterville, Maine]. I am mindful that my ancestors are buried here: my great-grandparents, my grandparents and my parents as well as a brother. So my roots go deep.
This conference started in Maine with the testimonies of the survivors and liberators of the Holocaust and now it ends in Maine with my talk on the Franco-Americans of Maine and beyond.
I am one to present myself with an artistic problem to solve and this talk is a result of that process.
Why are we talking about the Franco-American women writers and their literary situation here today? Their absences of presence and when present, absent.
A little background as to the pre-conditions in society in regard to the French and their presence on this geography:
1.—Eugenics movement, Hitler learned that from us, the U.S. and the U/Vt has an extensive website that gives the statistics of the practice of eugenics in the 50 states. Sterilization was practiced. Jodi Picoult writes of this in her novel, Second Glance.
"Groups Targeted and Victimized
Poor and socially ostracized families were targeted for investigation of the three D’s (delinquency, dependency, and mental defect). These families usually lived “outside the accepted moral or social convention of middleclass America” (Gallagher, p. 37). The three D’s were used to target the poor, the disabled, French-Canadians, and Native Americans. Women were targeted more than men. French-Canadians and Abenakis were seen as a foe and threat to the early colonial settlers of Vermont. They represented “an insidious and continuous invasion” of Vermont and were therefore targeted (Gallagher, p. 45). Studies done on degenerate family lines were often traced back to French Canadian or Native American ancestry and were used to target these groups (Gallagher, pp. 80-82)."
Eugenics: Compulsory Sterilization in 50 American States. http://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/VT/VT.html
and
"HYPERLINK "http://www.uvm.edu/%7Elkaelber/eugenics/" \t "_blank"
2.—KKK and Maine
Uncomfortable History
HYPERLINK "https://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/1418/page/2082/display"
3--From the 1920s until 1960, state law required that English be the only language used for teaching school subjects in the public schools of Maine (Bélanger-Violette, 1973: 131).
HYPERLINK "http://acim.umfk.maine.edu/language.html"
4.—Michèle Lalonde - Speak White
HYPERLINK "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCBCy8OXp7I"
5.—Franco-American Women’s Institute
HYPERLINK "http://www.fawi.net/"
6.—Living centuries legacy of wars, conquered people from the late 1700s—both the Quebecois and the Acadians transmitted to the immigrants in the U.S.
7.—Named the Quiet Presence, and I reject that…I say Franco-Americans are a Silenced Presence.
-----------------------------------------
My Presentation [some of this paper was not read due to time constraints, but I am publishing the full paper here]:
Relativism is the bad faith of the conqueror, who has become secure enough to become a tourist.
--Stanley Diamond 2004 [1974] In Search of the Primitive New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers page 110
Ruby: Every piece of this is man's bullshit. They call this war "a cloud over the land" but they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say "Shit, it's rainin'!" (See: Cold Mountain, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000250/?ref_=tt_trv_qu )
I needed a paper to present on the Franco-American Women’s Literary Situation.
What is the point of desperation when what we’ve been doing as a group has been going on for centuries. (See: Four French Women, Austin Dobson, 1895-- Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis; Madame de Staël) In the middle of a shit storm. Always a shit storm brewing; some war, or wars, going on. Women defining their lives against men’s wars. Every one of the other presenters, I thought to myself, if I am to assess their loci, are working in War Zones. Women in war zones and how do they fare; none too fair, I say.
Which presents a set of questions, based on the Tillie Olsen manner of inquiry into writing and women’s lives (See: Silences, Tillie Olsen, Delacorte, 1978, reprinted, Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1989)
--Who are women afterward or before the killing fields?
--And do the battlefields change shape; mutate in other kinds of war zones?
--Am I going to just talk the talk, tell story, about the Franco-American women’s literary situation in the middle of war zones?
"When Elephants Fight, It's the Grass That Suffers" Kikuyu Proverb
--How do the ethnics lose when the power players, fight, dance or divide up their turf?
--Or reduce and erase their contributions, notices in the newspaper—both good and not so good, or absent from the conversation about writers representing a geography?
--The spirit of the story is like the wind because the wind is everywhere.
--We are all part of the body of story and war makes that so difficult to see.
--If I do not speak the language, or the container of my thoughts/ideas clash with the ongoing stories/cultures…of current wars…never mind the past, forgotten wars.
--If I just speak to the issue of the invisible literature, then what?
--Write popular genre stories and watch the money roll in?
--Settle my spirit and come to rest on the moment?
--Stop fighting the current, swim across the current to the other side.
--Land on the shore of being that I can step onto and away from the currents that are too strong to resist.
--Set up my camp and be focused. Keep my eyes on the prize.
--There is no rescue; everyone has to do the hard work to know who they are in the literary landscape. Or, are there short cuts to the knowledge of the cultural self?
--Accept that fact, and be on my way.
--If they do not wish to hear the story, not my problem. They being the larger cultural milieu.
--What is lacking in the Franco-American, French-heritage, cultural women’s world are apparent (present tense) bombs—men’s wars. Therefore the subject is seen as boring--compared to men’s wars. (See: War in the Gulf, Rhea Côté Robbins 4-21-97, http://www.fawi.net/PoemsandEssays/War/warinthegulf.html)
--Without men’s wars, I wonder if women know how to define themselves as a general rule.
--Inadequate? Who says?
--I want to see any man, male get here without a woman…
--If anyone is going to call someone inadequate, that would be the war mongers.
--Since death is inevitable, war is artificial, premature, God/Allah/etc.--playing.
--But, in the absence of crazy men bombs in the Franco-American, French heritage culture, and that I am to give a talk, let me bring up the case of what type of “war” the Franco-American woman/women meander in order to write or publish.
--Or, never publish. Do not even bother to write. Or, stop writing after awhile. The classic one-book wonders or seen as the minor/original literature of the times. (See: Race, Ethnicity and Publishing in America, Editor, Cecile Cottenet; Chapter Four: "Franco-American Writers: In-visible Authors in the Global Literary Market" by Peggy Pacini.) Pacini states:
“This chapter raises issues regarding the conditions that prevent Franco-American writing from becoming national, transnational and global. Evoking cultural conditions operating in maintaining Franco-American literature visible on a purely regional scale or partaking in condemning Franco-American literature to a local and communal success is thus essential.”
--Unless, and there is always an unless, they write to just write. Not to appease the best seller myth/lists.
--The other factors of the atmospheres, and these are several layers, can be attributed to the inherent, internalized in-society prejudices against women--times the layers of adherence to one’s culture—sometimes two to three layers deep down.
--Writing literature in an un-literary place of one’s origins…a disconnect from one’s literary heritage, both for the self and the other—both in the culture and not. A Literature misunderstood.
--Those conditions, of themselves, are a precursor or a mark of a war zone, undeclared war, but a war zone nonetheless.
Because the reality is that a literature and a literary tradition exists.
--Value and worth of one story taking precedence over another. Stories falsely valued by the going market price of popularity.
Story, literature, oral story, song belongs to everyone. To create for themselves. Before market interference or printing presses decide which story is our story. Rather, we all own story; the falseness of the best seller line of belief telling us this is the ONE, true story confuses the landscape.
But, inevitably, there are those, and there have been those women who write despite the less than welcome atmosphere towards the women who write. Examples being the women in the French landscape, the literature of poverty, Qc-style, to modern times when Jodi Picoult speaks for the lack of reviews for women writers in the leading papers.
Or, writing a literature of the poor? (See: Des Idées en revues - La littérature québécoise, un art du pauvre?, 11 juin 2013, Mathieu Bélisle, Le Devoir
HYPERLINK "http://www.ledevoir.com/culture/livres/380398/la-litterature-quebecoise-un-art-du-pauvre"http://www.ledevoir.com/culture/livres/380398/la-litterature-quebecoise-un-art-du-pauvre) Read passage here:
In many ways the history of our literature, Saint-Denys Garneau in Gaston Miron through Gabrielle Roy, Jacques Ferron and many others, is that of a long meditation on our original poverty, raised to the dignity of a cultural identity or fact. Ambiguous legacy! In him turning his back too casually, it may repress shameful awkwardly from ourselves and to believe naively that there will remain no trace. But to claim it too complacently, we risk falling into the opposite illusion, which is seen as a virtue, a state whose common sense, not to mention the sense of reality, we would want to get rid. Hence the thorny issue raised by this issue of Disadvantage: how, in what tone, by what literary or philosophical means, our writers have they succeeded in the past (or will they succeed in the future) to transmute our poverty into wealth?-- "L’héritage De La Pauvreté." L'Inconvénient. L'Inconvénient Littérature, Arts Et Société
HYPERLINK "http://linconvenient.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/heritage-de-la-pauvrete/"http://linconvenient.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/heritage-de-la-pauvrete/
So. For centuries, the women’s voices, coming from the French heritage have struggled to be heard.
Not to confuse, but to define, the Franco-American culture has an automatic connection, often disconnected, to the literature of the women of Quebec, French Canada, France and the outlying former territories and colonies. Post-colonial texts. This literature belongs to the elite.
The majority of the Franco-American women are not aware of their literary tradition, and also do not participate in this literary tradition from their own base of power. But at the same time, there are some who do write and promote their voices in their writings. They are in the process of developing their aesthetic in regard to the literary situation as it exists in regard to the French heritage literature, be it in English, French or Creole—all viable languages. High, medium and low art also need to be taken into consideration.
Which also brings to the front the issue of what are the subjects of the French heritage women writers and what constitutes, qualifies one to claim or adhere to the French heritage women’s literary tradition?
(See: as a comparison/contrast see: “This Indian Does Not Owe You,”
“Just because you’re curious about my ancestry, my beliefs, and my experiences doesn’t mean I owe you answers.” Elissa Washuta, BuzzFeed Sept. 22, 2014
http://www.buzzfeed.com/elissawashuta/this-indian-does-not-owe-you)
Does the subject need to be dictated as of a certain milieu to qualify or be judged as authentic? Authenticity always a dangerous play—bordering on essentialism vs. the demand from those outside the culture, or the appropriators of the culture, for the writers within the culture to produce recognizable stereotypes.
Stereotypes that keep the literature on the surface level only—often in a sentimental or romanticized story line. One type of story “allowed” by the dominant cultural standards. A standard that is not open to realism, or problem solving, creative nonfiction, etc.
It is difficult to develop an aesthetic and serious literature in an inhospitable atmosphere.
Unless one ignores the current reigning definition of what it means to be Franco-American of French heritage, bordering on re-enactors as the modern definition and the writer goes beyond the ghetto, “les petite Canadas,” in order to achieve their aesthetic, their literary quest, their art as a modern day French heritage person, fulfilling their writing—to be read, studied, critiqued, understood. And most of all, part of the larger, literary landscape on the geography upon which the French heritage people live.
Given the percentage of the population who are of French heritage, there should be many more writers on the geography whose writing/literature that should have risen higher in the writing/publishing world.
And for those who have, to be more visible to the reading and critiquing world.
Reasons why there are so few writers in the mainstream might shed some light on the situation, but also with the silencing of the women’s works and the reasons that happens—what is lost in the process?
Some possible reasons:
Identity stated as a problem rather than as an asset.
Referencing the article on QC literature being a literature of poverty—etc. As in a literature of the poor…and who wants to own that back story?
And does the Franco-American, French heritage literature of the U.S. follow suit…a literature of the poor, disenfranchised, etc. Not of the manor borne…
Colonized voices doing the work on behalf of the silenced voices or as a man said to me about my own writing/literature, ‘down the Plains,’: “I never thought I’d see that story in a book.”
And the bibliographies, the collections/accumulations of texts, proof of the existence of the French heritage literature on the geography and going beyond the need to do politics on behalf of the group, going toward developing an aesthetic.
That would be a goal, for the “market” leadership to broaden their horizons. Both in and out of the culture to value the voices of the literature.
To include a full-bodied aesthetic, as in the sense of the French feminists—l'écriture du corps—and not the stilted, church, male-controlled, stereotypes of the predictable sentimental, romanticized story—but writing past the taboos.
Learning/knowing the multiple writers that do go beyond the stereotypes and do write their aesthetic as artists, full-bodied, mature and exemplary in their art.
That would be my critique—the culture as a whole—stands to lose their larger storied landscape when the voices of the “ethnicities” are silenced by the surrounding mechanisms that control the literary landscapes.
Publishing, agents, marketing, reviews, library collections, popular reading selections—studied in schools/colleges/universities, reading lists, etc. do not include the published works of the writers grounded in the Franco-American, French heritage culture—in great numbers.
How do we manage to belong to the cultures we are steeped in if we are not reflected in the literature?
Where are the guide books of how to be?
Our way of being us with the uniqueness of what it truly means to be Franco-American and femmes? And why is it important? To learn one’s self beyond the confines of the ghetto…but the ghetto is also where one receives their story power.
The ghetto of the mind as well as figuratively, but not to exclude the lessons taught and learned there, only to become unrecognizable—relativist.
Also, writing all the levels of society—not just the mill culture.
Becoming a modern self in literature while participating in the mainstream culture—a type of resisting the blandifying or stereotyping essentialism.
Restorative works AND resisting clichés. With a full knowledge, collected as a whole, of the women toiling in the field of literature, broadly defined, and without these stories, society as a whole loses a sense of the distinctive, literary landscape.
Reconstituted bibliographies, library collections or international border crossing brings knowledge and insight into the cultural variation/diversity/understanding.
Learning and understanding, plus diversities, are lost to one another via a shared culture, history, language, etc. that goes far beyond borders/boundaries—even stereotypes.
One’s life goes beyond the single dimensional of the one-size fits all story of the French. heritage people.
Problematical, complex, colonized, post-colonized and in absentia suffering from literary amnesia—without a sail or a rudder—to begin to understand the literary landscape. Shuttled between seasons of Downton Abby as a stand-in.
Downton Abby . Not our story. But what else is there? Where are the epic French heritage landmark stories to share across the continent?
Is this a tragedy of earth-shattering proportions for the literature not to be known or collected into a coherent body—even as there are many who are trying to achieve a collective, critical mass, of bibliographies, libraries, etc.—private and public?
Lack of cohesion in the literary landscape is the issue due to many barriers, challenges, etc.
Think of the lack of a literature not supported in the usual venues as a type of book burning in absentia.
Where are the blue prints of an entire language/cultural/literature of the French heritage people on this continent left untold for centuries? Why are the stories/literature left untold and not celebrated at the same level as other cultures’ stories—for example, such as Downton Abby? Would the French manor tale be as valued in the mainstream?
This is the point where one changes the channel. Difficult to be a writer in an inhospitable landscape where one’s “culture’s” story is unwelcome. Even more so for women.
Or, as is often the case, many do not even realize their loss. Lack of knowledge; less varied storied, literary landscape.
As Lucy Lippard says: "Ironically, and sadly, access to information about [their] global art [language, history, culture, folklore, etc.] is more available to the educated and well-traveled...than to most of the heirs of those dehistoricized cultures." (Lippard 26) (See Lippard: Lippard, Lucy R. Mixed Blessings New Art In a Multicultural America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990.)
One size fits all literary landscape defined/designed by the victors of the wars so, so many years ago. So long ago we’ve forgotten and think we live at peace when in reality voices are being silenced due to that long-ago victory that demanded allegiance. (See: Peggy Pacini in “Franco-American Authors in the Global Literary Market.” Race, Ethnicity and Publishing in America, Edited by Cecile Cottenet, July 2014, Palgrave Macmillan).
Pacini quotes in her research: “Aside from being a small literature, which is Dubois’ theory, Normandeau states Franco-Ameican literature is a banned literature subjected to censorship and also a regional literature…cut off from the dominant centers of production and distribution and from the decisively consecrating bodies.”
What emerges as a literature is not as full-bodied…the aesthetic does not develop as it should or could due to the marginalization and repression of the culture by forces seen and unseen; historical and modern. I wish I had something more hopeful to relay, but the literary landscape limits the diversities and as a result is less than what it could be in its dimensions.
An identity based on problematic rather than celebration. Or inquiry. Or acceptance. And such an atmosphere is a game changer in terms of literary outcomes or output.
Does one write the commercial, predictable best seller or does one choose to be relegated to the “small” literature, exiguous literature as Pacini quotes and terms the current and continuing situation—problematical to be published, represented, marketed, etc. as a branded Franco-American author. (See: François Paré Exiguity: Reflections on the Margins of Literature, January 1997.).
Self-perpetuated ignorance prevails to the point that the group psychology of ingested self-hate is seen as the norm and translates to a stilted, compromised, romanticized, sentimentalized lacking full-body access to subject.
Replicated in the market via shame-based identity playing out as the reason why a book cannot be included in a particular market due to the exclusion myth being the norm also.
Or, if one does write the unsentimentalized story…public shaming as a critique by those who have not done the hard work of reclaiming their identity.
Barriers to the literature need to be addressed, overcome, resisted. Storied landscapes expanded. That would be my assessment as a writer/author/editor/publisher/professor/etc. in the French heritage/language culture.
Based on my own research and inquiry, I have been deprived of my literature/heritage/knowledge. A substitute put in its place—and I am in the process of regaining, for myself, and for my audience, a sense, knowledge, of my literature.
I have written my story, exiguously, with full knowledge that the story is much larger than the critique of the literature of the culture as a whole.
I would like to read a brief excerpt from my work, ‘down the Plains,’ as a conclusion to my presentation.
Works Cited
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Healthy
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