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Manuscripts submitted to MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
Spirituality but not Shame: The Conversion Narrative as

Social Critique in Andrés Montoya’s The Ice Worker Sings
and Other Poems
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Journal: MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
Manuscript ID: MELUS-2013-166
Manuscript Type: Original Manuscript

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Keywords: LATINA/O LITERATURE

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Latina/o < Ethnic Group, American Studies < Methodology, Cultural

Specialties: Studies < Methodology, Psychoanalysis < Methodology, Race Theory <
Methodology, Women-s Studies < Methodology
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Page 1 of 30 Manuscripts submitted to MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
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6 Spirituality but not Shame: The Conversion Narrative as Social Critique in Andrés
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8 Montoya’s The Ice Worker Sings and Other Poems
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Helena Viramontes in a recent visit to ----- University spoke of how she became a
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writer. As a MFA student in Creative Writing at the University of California, Irvine, she
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21 presented a story she had written about her youth in East Los Angeles, California to her
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24 professor who decried, “Why do you [Viramontes] insist on writing about Chicanos?”
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26 You should write about ‘people’ instead.” If Chican@s were other than those he
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28 esteemed as “people,” what then were they in his epistemology?1 What conditions of self
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31 and/or of life led him to perhaps unconsciously consider Chican@s as other than people?
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33 His comments are not altogether unusual. Pulitzer-prize winner Junot Díaz in a
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35 recent speech told a very similar story where prospective publishers made analogous
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38 comments regarding Latin@s in letters of rejection of what was to become his first
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40 renowned collection of short stories entitled Drown (1996). How Latin@s are other than
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‘regular people’ is not only a question of ethnic character or human physiognomy. What
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45 conditions the enterprise of writing a Latin@ story is the circumstance of living amongst
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47 deleterious social attitudes from which these constructed codes of human difference
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50 emerge. These experiences show the kinds of pressures Latin@ writers are under to
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52 develop characters who are knowable or like mainstream subjects. Such writers may not
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54 find literary conventions—whether character, genre, or aesthetics—adequate to tell their
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57 stories. In fact, literary conventions can be quite limiting.
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Manuscripts submitted to MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Page 2 of 30
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Returning to Viramontes’s story, feeling dejected by such crass unfairness, she
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6 left the creative writing program for ten years in what I would conjecture was a state of
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8 shame. When Viramontes decided to return to UCI and finish what she had begun some
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11 years before, she wrote the collection of stories The Moths and Other Stories (1985),
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13 some of which have been anthologized 44 times to date.2 Like Díaz, Viramontes’s
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15 obvious success may seem to thwart the relevance of her professor’s comments, but I
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18 believe these stories present the persistence of racism that is institutional--in the
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20 academy, in the publishing industry—but also discursive. When approached from a
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22 postcolonial perspective, the problem of these unfortunate stories of racism and writing
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connects racism as a form of social violence to the question of whether or not
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27 Viramontes’s story could survive the violence of the novel as narrative genre.
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Violence of literary form has been a question of scholarly inquiry as part of
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32 postcolonial analysis, raising the issue of textual analysis in relationship to the study of a
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34 text’s ideological formation in society.4 Textual analysis contributes in familiar ways to
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the significance of theme, style, and historical importance, among others, while analysis
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39 of a work’s social impact recognizes a text as a commodity of leisure with the power to
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41 intervene in American culture. Postcolonial critic Guari Viswanathan points to the
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44 importance of such consideration speaking directly of the novel, but her words are also
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46 true of other genres:
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… studies of the novel have reached a point of crisis. The sense of crisis is
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50 not an altogether unhealthy one, as it derives from a historicist refusal to
51 accept literary form apart from its ideological derivation. The location of
52 the novel in society, as well as a study of its power relations, has enabled a
53 shift away from genre study -- a study of what the novel is -- to a study of
54 what novels do. (237)
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Viswanathan distinguishes two types of critical approach--what a text is and what
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6 a text does—both of which intervene in cultural production. These analyses need not be
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8 mutually exclusive, when we consider Latin@ literature, we must look at how Latin@
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11 writers approach form. The creative project begins with the marginalized writer’s belief
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13 that her desired expression is discursively producible in a genre. This endeavor is
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15 complex for reasons such as those argued by Homi K. Bhabha of perpetuating
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18 colonialism in nationalist projects of cultural production where the subject is asked to
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20 distill her sense of the world through the rules of a genre. Bhabha unveils the hidden
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22 contours of political dynamics of narrative for the colonial subject but still more binding
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is the political foundation of the genre itself. The logic of the novel for example is often
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27 the plot of the emergence of the hero who, in the end, tends to adopt the status quo. In
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this way, the novel of the hero also reifies the status quo of the social real. Poetry, on the
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32 other hand, often challenges the reader’s linguistic and philosophical complacency
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34 through syntax, perspective, and/or thematic dissent and so, in this way, poetry presents
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itself in contrast to cultural hegemony.
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39 Latin@ writers must maneuver through the politics of genre while they also must
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41 consider how their work will be received by the publishing industry, a bulwark of control
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44 for cultural incorporation in its adjudication in the buying, producing, and promoting of a
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46 text that, in the end, materializes an artifact of American culture. In the case of Latin@s,
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both actors—the writer and the mainstream publishing industry—must do the imaginative
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51 work of thinking open a social space for the subaltern text to be sanctioned by publication
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53 and so become incorporated into American letters. Nevertheless, the writer, her
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community, and the text may be received as contentious, deviant or unsavory, and even
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threatening. The production of a text does not necessarily affect the level or degree of
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6 tension between politically competing sectors of nativists and immigrant rights activists
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8 for example. On occasion, a text, a writer, and her/his vision of community may in fact
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11 exacerbate these tensions. Still, the manufacture and sale of a novel does not give it a
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13 particular standing in American letters, but it does materialize its ipso facto incorporation
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15 into American literature. Such that what a text is and what it does are more intimately
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18 related than they may initially appear.
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20 The connections between racism, discourse, and the nationalism implied in the
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22 term American literature causes me to question as to what a Latin@ text does rather than
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what it is, and leads me to ask two questions that I propose to answer in this study. One,
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27 how does a Latin@ voice incorporate her/his expression codified by racial politics into a
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literary form that has been revered primarily for the expression of hegemonic
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subjectivity?5 Two, when we look at Latin@ published texts, can we think through how it
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34 is exactly that they are “American”? Given the complexities of culture, politics, and the
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nature of oppression, I put forth the conversion narrative as a genre that is particularly
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39 well structured to achieve two goals for the writer: expressing dissent in the same gesture
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41 that it petitions social acceptance. As I will argue below, the conversion narrative has
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44 been deemed resolutely American such that Latin@ texts assert their Americanness by
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46 employing the conversion narrative, the prototype of American letters, itself. Writing in
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such a strongly identified American form creates a sympathetic readership with which
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51 Americans practice their Puritan roots to play judge and jury of the self. As a result, the
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53 publishing industry may find these Latin@ texts more palatable to American literary
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tastes. Let me begin by mapping out how the conversion narrative became American, to
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then turn to how it has serviced civil rights projects of racial equality, to then discuss one
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6 Chican@ collection of poetry, Andrés Montoya’s The Ice Worker Sings as an example of
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8 the conversion narrative in the hands of a Latin@ writer.
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11 The Conversion Narrative in American Letters
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13 Modern America has come to celebrate the repentant and rehabilitated in the literary form
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15 of the conversion narrative. Prominent scholars such as Patricia Caldwell, Lewis Rambo,
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18 and others have argued that the conversion narrative is an American genre par excellence.
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20 Beginning in the 17th century, the Puritan experience of leaving England for the
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22 northeastern colonies and incorporating into the growing New England Puritan
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population was documented in public statements referred to as conversion narratives.
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27 These took the form of either written declarations or oral performances presented to a
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church membership not so much to garner empathy or support but to “testify,” or provide
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32 evidence of the individual’s conversion. What is the most interesting aspect of Caldwell’s
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34 study is that she notices how the Puritan conversion narrative registers underlying
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discontent and unease with American society.6 These writers had believed that
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39 immigration to the New World would have created the social circumstance for spiritual
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41 realization and a peaceful life. Instead, the Puritans found an indomitable human and
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44 physical environment which left them feeling uncomfortable despite their enhanced
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46 social standing in that newly forming Puritan local governance. What Caldwell reveals in
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her study is that Puritan conversion narratives showed causes and concerns typical of
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51 immigrants. Threatened by hostilities of the unknown, immigrants were tested in their
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53 adaptability to their new environment. Their narratives show a self under reconsideration.
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Who they knew themselves to be in England did not altogether serve these authors in
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their adopted country, a predicament that has since come to typify the immigrant
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6 experience. Caldwell focuses on the social unease registered through these narratives,
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8 thus situating the alienated immigrant as the subject of the Puritan conversion narrative,
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11 which Caldwell considers to be the first American literary expression.7
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13 The disquieted immigrant is one such way this genre became American as well as
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15 the ways in which it differed from its English antecedent. During this period in England,
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18 the successful convert ended her narrative in a state of comfortable spirituality whereas in
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20 the American form, there is seldom an expression of comfort or completion in this sense.
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22 Even though the subject knows him/herself to be saved, the subject often feels unsure of
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where to go from there, uneasy of how to conduct her/himself now “saved.”
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27 The project of conversion relies on shame to do its cultural work. During the
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Puritan period, the genre structured a public detailed confession which produced the
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32 subject as shameful in front of clergy members who judged its spiritual veracity. Therein
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34 laid the possibility that the clergy members could decide one’s conversion narrative was
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insufficiently compelling, and thus could bar one from church membership as sometimes
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39 happened. In his discussion of the phenomenon of social shaming in America, professor
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41 of psychology Stephen Pattison also points to 17th century Puritan New England wherein
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44 “an overtly religiously dominated society in which exposure and public humiliation were
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46 main tools of social control … [an indication that] Christianity has been centrally
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implicated in the inculcation and fostering shamed personalities and identities…” (270-
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51 71). Here we notice an early inscription of shame as a qualitative dynamic that has come
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its reception. The Puritan conversion narrative traces the foundation of shame as a de
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facto condition in the formulation of a national psyche–which is what we have willed it to
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8 Scholars have shown the conversion narrative as also at the heart of what Fred
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11 Hobson calls “racial conversion narratives.” His seminal work studies white southerners’
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13 path from racists to racial egalitarians from 1940-1970. Southern whites often sought
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15 written discourse and orally delivered speeches to give form to what Hobson describes as
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18 a secular conversion. Adapting the genre initiated in America with the Puritan conversion
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20 narrative, whites publicly denounced themselves as racists to then put forth their
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22 characterological reform. Although Hobson doesn’t discuss the issue, these works
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continued to frame their reception for a white adjudicating body in this secular project. In
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27 this way, the progressive aims of the racial conversion narrative figure a hegemonic
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readership, reifying their position and authority at the same time the racial conversion
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32 narrative seeks to model a self-interrogation and shift in perspective of its jury. Why
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34 weren’t these narratives written for Black Americans as they would have been the
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appropriate judge to ascertain the passage to an egalitarian viewpoint? The goal was not
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39 to prove racial egalitarianism to the Black community. The objective was to interrogate
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41 the white racist community, and because the challenge was so emotionally laden and
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44 politically charged, these authors chose the conversion narrative which had rhetorical
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46 latitude to criticize at the same time it reified the status quo in its deferment to a white
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hegemonic body. Hobson notes the structural adherence of these texts to the form set
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51 forth by 17th century Puritans with the requisite performance of shame and so used the
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53 Puritan conversion narrative as a challenge to southern racism and racial practices,
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pedagogical and well as philosophical. Why the Puritan conversion narrative and not
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another kind of expression? As an American tradition, the Puritan Conversion Narrative
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6 that begins with the Puritans is a rhetorical form that asks for empathic listening, that
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8 mitigates skepticism, and ultimately pursues communion with its listeners/readers.
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11 While the intention of the Puritan conversion narrative is to compel church
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13 members to believe that the narrator had in fact received the sign of salvation and so gain
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15 acceptance into the church, the racial conversion narrative sought to expose white racial
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18 norms where the stipulated conversion reframes racism as an offense against God. These
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20 texts were also pedagogical in providing a model of conduct to follow in the sections that
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22 comment the experience of post-racist whiteness. From the trajectory discussed thus far,
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I argue social shame is an important feature of American expression—historically and
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27 qualitatively—that discursively marks stress and disconnection from society.8
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That these two diverse social situations across time and space have sought this
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32 genre to do their respective cultural work demonstrates the utility and social credence of
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34 the form of registering social unease and varying levels of dissent in the US, while
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demonstrating simultaneous incorporation into the cultural body. Both moments of this
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39 literary expression situate the subject as inherently shameful whose shamefulness must
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41 undergo public arbitration. These narratives place the subject in a deferential position vis-
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44 a-vis a judging body with the hope of social rehabilitation and incorporation into social
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46 respectability. In these ways, the conversion narrative differs from other forms of
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personal and social repentance like the Catholic confession and the juridical confession in
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51 that these latter two forms intend to procure compassion and forgiveness from a jury or a
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Structurally, most critics agree that the religious antecedent to the more general
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6 conversion narrative begins with a narrative of the life of sin told in significant detail for
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8 the degree of sin would meet with equal measure of salvation. The errant life then leads
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11 to an intense questioning of an alternate path where one is unsure how to change. At this
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13 point, there enters the possibility of Christian redemption, which then describes the
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15 process of redemption where the subject seeks a sign from God indicating her/his
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18 salvation. The conversion is complete with the delivery of the sign. Assuming jurors were
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20 equally convinced, the newly saved celebrates incorporation into the Christian corpus.
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22 These steps are usually presented in the form of an autobiographical essay that follows a
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linear trajectory beginning with the uninitiated sinner and ends with redemption. 10
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27 Conversion Narrative and Latin@ Writers
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Turning now to the case of Latin@ writing, we see diverse implementations of the
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32 conversion narrative. The deployment of the conversion narrative varies in form from
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34 trope to plot structure as it crosses into varied genres.11 Often it is expressly a political
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awakening in many Latin@ autobiographies, such as Piri Thomas’s Down These Mean
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39 Streets (1967) and Oscar Zeta Acosta’s The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972).12
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41 There are instances of religious conversion or religious deepening such as John Rechy’s
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44 The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez (1991; 2001), Helena Viramontes’s Their Dogs
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46 Came with Them (2007), and among them, the late Andrés Montoya, poet of The Ice
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Worker Sings Songs and Other Poems (1999), the text I will discuss here. Undergirding
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51 specific plots, these texts all explore and challenge the situation of being Latin@ in
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53 America, a categorization of otherness predicated on shaming a physiognomy and a
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culture such that, Latin@ writers’ use of the conversion narrative is a complicated and
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compelling literary enterprise. In these Latin@ texts, the shame structural component of
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6 the conversion narrative meets the shame emotion that racialization and racism seeks to
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8 impart.13 Of the Latin@ texts that employ a version of the conversion narrative, I will
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11 study Montoya’s collection which is among the most stylistically innovative and most
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13 acclaimed. I believe The Ice Worker Sings is a good choice to look at the convention of
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15 the conversion narrative and its social negotiations because of its unique address through
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18 poetry.
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20 Posthumously awarded the American Book Award, the late Andrés Montoya’s
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22 collection The Ice Worker Sings also won first-prize of the University of California,
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Irvine’s Chicano/Latino Literary Prize.14 What is more, The Ice Worker Sings has
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27 influenced three generations of poets including his contemporaries, renowned poets
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Daniel Chacón and Tim Z. Hernández. Montoya’s The Ice Worker Sings was the primary
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32 inspiration of the anthology In the Grove: An Homage to Andrés Montoya where thirty-
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34 two writers-–many young published poets, Montoya’s contemporaries, and two of his
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poetry teachers, Pulitzer prize winner Philip Levine, and Garret Hongo, Pulitzer
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39 nominee—contribute poems, essays, and remarks as beneficiaries of Montoya’s work
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41 (10). His poetry also motivated the establishment of the biannual Andrés Montoya Poetry
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44 Prize at the University of Notre Dame, as well as a scholarship founded in his name
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46 awarded by California State University, Fresno.15
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The moving collection of poems describes the life of a young Chicano living in
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51 the urban slums of Fresno, California. The poet guides us through the stark persona of
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53 the ice worker of the title to counter the harshness of his labor by attending to his soul
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with his song. The emotional rigor of Montoya’s poetry reveals a subjugated underclass
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dispossessed: a capitalist system that leaves behind the uneducated, impoverished and so
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6 left to fend for itself. Yet, without fail, the poet's voice seeks out in the most desperate of
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8 circumstances moments of poignant beauty and grace. The emotional rigor of Montoya’s
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11 poetry defiantly exposes a barrio’s heart of darkness put in place by a capitalist system
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13 that leaves millions of people uneducated, emotionally broken, and impoverished.
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15 Unrelenting, the voice finds in each poem a moment of beauty, of tenderness, of
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18 spirituality in the most decrepit of circumstances. Given Montoya’s untimely death
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20 before publication, scholarship on his work is understandably scant to date but is known
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22 for its quality of spirit that meets a strident political reformist agenda—these in
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Montoya’s mind were one and the same (Chacón 10-13). Montoya’s teacher, renowned
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27 poet Garret Hongo agrees stating, “[Montoya] brooked no compromises—in politics or in
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poetry—and wanted from both that they work for practical change in the lives of the
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32 oppressed” (166). Montoya is described as a poet in love with justice and art (13), who
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34 in his own words, wrote “for God” (12). Poetry journal editor and poet Rigoberto
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González makes the following declaration: “In this generation, The Ice Worker Sings
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39 should be known as the finest book of poetry to come out of [the Chicano] community”
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41 (38). Montoya’s work has been clearly impactful, inspiring as well a nascent promotion
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44 of Latino religious poetry,16 however the reading of the collection as a conversion
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46 narrative has not been critically analyzed to date.
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We can see the form of the conversion narrative at work in The Ice Worker Sings,
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51 a collection divided thematically into four numbered parts. Part I is the most political in
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53 tone. Here, the voice situates itself within the encumbered project of Aztlán of the 1960s
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as it plays itself out in the 1990s. Montoya humanizes a much maligned figure in the
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mainstream American imagination by using verse to hear the confession of a cholo living
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6 la vida loca on the streets of Fresno, California.17 These verses take the determinants of
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8 place, poverty, racism, sexism, and violence to show their devastating effects on the
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11 human soul. Part II examines different events in the life of the poetic voice that speak to
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13 the inanity of brown-on-brown violence, and of the ways that hatred of the Other become
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15 internalized and propagated by its victims. The poetic voice is explosive in its self-
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18 reckoning of evil deeds, dying spirit, and apathy. The interpersonal relationship is a
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20 bridge of hope and connection for the subjects in part III made up mostly of letters. The
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22 “I” is more reflective here, questioning everyday tragedy of barrio life. The “I” that
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pleads for redemption looks to a Christian god in part IV to give meaning to the cruel
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27 world in which he lives and, in some ways, perversely enjoys. Parts I-IV show a subtle
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adaptation of the conversion narrative structure, the subtlety largely made possible by
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32 employing poetry to tell his story, the importance of which will soon be addressed.
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34 With this paradigm in mind, The Ice Worker Sings is striking in its disavowal of
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stipulated chronology. The critical moments of the conversion do not follow the
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39 normative steps of the genre; rather these are presented in confluence. For example, three
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41 pivotal moments of the conversion narrative--the sinner’s confession, the quest for
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44 redemption, and his state of deliverance--are presented together in several poems such as
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46 “The Ice Worker in Love” of part I, and the group of nine poems under the heading
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“Contemplations from Concrete: Nine Movements” of part IV. Really, one can find at
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51 least two junctures of the conversion narrative in nearly every poem of the collection.
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53 However, there seems to be only one poetic address of the arrival of the sign, the one
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awaited for in anguish, the divine sign by which God confirms the postulate’s acceptance
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by Him as one of the proverbial chosen. The importance of the sign must be appreciated,
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6 for despite the desire for salvation, acts of contrition, and the like, without receiving the
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8 sign, one has not been saved as modeled in the Puritan tradition on which the American
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11 conversion narrative has evolved. For this reason, the poem in which the “I” receives the
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13 sign is of utmost importance to read the collection as a conversion narrative. The sign
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15 serves as the structural and thematic element, without which we would instead read a
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18 memoir, an autobiography perhaps, or a diary, but not a conversion narrative. As such, I
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20 will focus my remarks on the poem where the sign appears entitled “The Ice Worker in
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22 Love,” a poem written in six stanzas. The sign generally narrated towards the very end of
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a conversion narrative occurs in this instance in the fourth poem of part I. However more
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27 unconventional are the conditions through which the sign is received.
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In “The Ice Worker in Love,” a man proclaims to love a woman called Sofía, a
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32 sex worker, who is ignorant of his affections. She unknowingly introduces the poetic
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34 voice to the possibility of a Christian life, but will nevertheless charge him eighty dollars
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for three hours of her time (11). As we will see, this comic element gives way to
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39 something other than irony.
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41 he is in love.
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44 friday nights before work
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46 he sees his woman.
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they are not married
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51 and she doesn’t know
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53 that he loves her.
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he tells her
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6 her hair is like water
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8 and her skin smells of dew.
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11 and she tells him
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13 it’ll still cost the eighty bucks
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15 for the three hours
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18 in the crusty motel
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20 that smells of smoke. (1-14)
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22 Perhaps it is not surprising that an ice worker tropes love with aqueous adjectives
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like “dew” (13) and “water” (12). The descriptive fluidity of the second stanza contrasts
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27 with images of liquids turned solid whereas sex work contributes to the physical
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ambiance described as crusty and smoky (13-14), alluding to a hardening of body fluids,
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32 spilt booze that, like the ice that he stacks, suggests an analogy to masculinity. I like the
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34 way in which texture becomes a modality for describing gender not because of its
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stereotypical deployment of hard versus soft or solid for loose but because she, Sofia,
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39 who is written as soft and physically yielding, is also the messenger of “the good news,”
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41 the message itself firm and unyielding in many American traditions of Christianity.18
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44 The adjectival phrase “same every time” in reference to the pair’s itinerary each
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46 Friday plays with previous iterations of the “sometimes” of digressions like occasional
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drug use, the two phrases set apart the scene of “always” which is reserved for their
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51 religious exchanges. These graduated temporal cues connote an assuredness of the
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53 proverbial ageless wisdom of the Word for Christians in contrast to the relative value of
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the occasional.
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sometimes they smoke week or crack,
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6 sometimes they do lines of crank.
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8 always, though, they lie naked
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11 next to each other when they are finished
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13 …………………………………………
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15 the conversion is the same every time.
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18 do you ever think of God? she asks. (21-31)
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20 Temporal cues contest the speaker’s heterosexual love fantasy and proverbial sin to
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22 reveal the deeper yet simple joy of being alive, of their intimacy and companionship
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which transpires irrespective of social judgment and reaffirmed in the closing lines, “he
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27 only knows that he can smell life in her breath/behind the stale stench of the room’s
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desire” (46-47). Here, bodies and togetherness are at their most basic elementary
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32 material expressions of life.

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34 Despite the ludic frame of romantic love and sex work, their physical coexistence
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creates a particular type of communication. Lying naked next to another brings to bear
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39 the implicit intimacy of their bodies. Sex in all its varieties whether fantasy, business
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41 transaction, or as an expression of love, is a physiological act of undeniable communion.
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44 Consider line 26 where the pair is described post coitus as “sweaty and both feeling a
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46 little guilty” where the two luxuriate in each other’s “breathing” (28-30). The poetic
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rendering of the feeling of and listening to the breath of the pair post coitus makes the
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51 tactile, the auditory, and the olfactory present in the reader’s mind. This focus on the
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53 experience of physical proximity delineates a kind of sensorial knowing as the body
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continuously communicates its state to the self as well as to the other. The constancy and
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15
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persistence of the physical experience in this poetry imparts knowledge like the Biblical
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6 “always” noted earlier. In this way, their bodies commune at a parallel level with the
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8 divine. I will soon discuss the importance of this odd equivalence as evidence of the sign.
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11 In the third stanza, we enter the speaker’s fantasy of intimacy where he professes
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13 to love a woman even though he doesn’t even “know her real name” (5). The “one day”
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15 shows the relationship will have continued into a future already passed at the time of
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18 writing, where the “she” announced in line 17 will tell him the truth that she is not Sofía
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20 but Alex, putting his fantasy in tension with the reality of sex commerce. The religious
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22 truth that Alex is about to impart will be as much revealed by her alias Sofía as it will be
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by the Word itself. “She” conveys to him the solidity of God’s law in the Bible stories
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27 read from the motel’s nightstand, stories referred to as “her stories” (45). He simply
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listens to her read, and we come to understand he is beginning his religious conversion, a
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32 physical act that suggests his enjoyment of her voice before its Biblical content. From
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34 this physical communion of sex, smell, and sound, the speaker then shares what has
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piqued his curiosity: the story of a man persecuted and killed who in turn forgives his
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39 executioners.
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41 This man is of course Christ who goes unnamed throughout the poem. What
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44 Montoya writes as the initial step on a Christian path comes about by the similarity of the
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46 Christ story to the poetic “I”’s own life in the barrio where killing and random violence
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are everyday acts. Instead of Christianity serving as the hierarchical discourse that marks
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51 the distance between him and his community from the divine, Christianity becomes a
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53 hermeneutic to explicate barrio life. This is an inversion of referential power that we will
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see in other poems like “A Letter to KB” where the poetic “I” reframes his brother’s
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death as an intimate instantiation of Christ’s death, and the “I” recasts himself as a Judas.
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6 In so doing, the poetic “I” integrates the Christian frame in an almost syncretic way
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8 where barrio life as relayed by a self-proclaimed gangbanger is never excused, but rather
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11 understood in sacred terms:
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13 i found my brother, one day, behind a door, arms spread wide
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15 like Christ on the cross, laid out on the floor over a pile of colorful
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18 clothes ready for wash, the sad slashes at his wrists weeping
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20 into the stench of state cigarette smoke and poverty that held captive
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22 that room, his eyes deep dark wells wet and begging for the logic of death.
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(“A Letter to KB”, 14-20)
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27 Like seeing Christ in his slain brother, this syncretism occurs throughout the collection.
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In fact, in “The Ice Worker in Love,” stanzas 1-5 are aesthetically built on this premise as
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32 we have seen. However, syncretism is a post-conversion aesthetic. The conversion really

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34 begins with a colon that concludes the line “…[T]his is why he loves her:” (32).
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The colon arrests the flow of the poem bringing the reader to a halt. It also asks
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39 the reader to consider what is to follow as of particular importance. In Montoya’s poetry,
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41 it is an aesthetic that begins with a declarative statement that precedes the colon that
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44 promises to define why he loves this woman.
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46 …[T]his is why he loves her:
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she reads him stories from the Bible
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51 found in the dresser and he is fascinated. (32-34)
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53 The promise finished with the colon calls the reader’s attention to take what is to follow
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as definitive rather than descriptive, and therefore, conferring it with a heightened truth
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value. The colon introduces her story telling, the context and content of which has
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6 already been discussed. What is silent to us but audible to the speaker is the hardness of
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8 the story itself, a story of accusation, betrayal, and murder followed by the yielding of
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11 forgiveness.
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13 sometimes she tells him about a man murdered
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18 forgiving everyone, even his own killers.
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20 this is when she cries, and he feels he too should cry,
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22 that he must cry for the murdered man who forgives,
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only he doesn’t know how yet. (39-43)
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27 This softening of “her story” (45), her speech act that contains his story, the story of
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Jesus’s crucifixion, is followed by tears, returning the reader to the physical body and the
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32 adjectival play of liquids. She is moved to tears by the Christ story, the tears themselves a
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34 type of physiological and psychological redemption. A bodily acknowledgement of the
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taking in of love and wisdom, and a letting go of guilt, apathy, and dejection; the tears
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39 evidence the entrance into the “spirit” of the Word. With the bodies still in their ambiance
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41 of connection, the poetic “I” contrasts his reaction to hers believing “he feels he too
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44 should cry…only he doesn’t know how, yet” (43, emphasis mine).
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46 This “yet” tells so much. The adverb yet indicates the conversion has already
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occurred, that we are reading the story of his conversation as a fait accompli.19 The
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51 conversion narrative is written as a testimonial of the conversion and so returns to the
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53 time before conversion to explain how it occurred. It also tells of his eventual ability to
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soften into tears, to embody eventually the range of expression of the human heart with
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its metaphoric display expressed in aqueous adjectives from ice to tears. That is to say,
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6 “yet” signals that we are reading a conversion narrative.
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8 In the scene put before us of communion, her tears, his awareness of his emotive
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11 limitations, and “her” stories, it is important to remember he holds his sex partner in his
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13 mind as Sofía. What has been revealed as her job alias reminds him that their relationship
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15 is contractual, their love falsified through commerce and duplication. That she is really
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18 Alex betrays his fantasy of intimacy and exclusivity, however it is no coincidence that
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20 she is presented and preferred as Sofia–Sophia, the divinity of knowledge in the Gnostic
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22 tradition. Sophia is described as the inspiration of a theological tradition of Sophiology
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described as “the perfect unity between the divine and human realms, which as at first
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27 achieved in Christ and destined to be perfected in the entire creation” (Iacob 9). Sophia
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does not act as “the divine nature itself nor as a mythological individual, but as an aspect
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32 of the divine in action, in relation” (Iacob 35). Montoya may have been influenced in his
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34 emphatic reference to Gnostic Sophia as an admirer of the religious poet, Noble prize
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recipient Czeslaw Milosv, who also contended with the problem of narrative space given
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39 the dilemma of how to write for a late Capitalist audience grown immune to the
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41 religious.20 What seems limited to the emotional delusion of “love” in the first stanza
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44 grows into the “I”’s first experience of the feminine counterpart to Christ that he will read
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46 post-conversion as the embedded sign of his awakening into salvation. The appearance of
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Sofía/Sophia compels reading Montoya’s collection as a conversion narrative. Montoya
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51 directed his readers to read the collection “as one long poem” (Chacón 10) written “with
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53 the Holy Spirit of language” (Chacón 13). As such, the declaration set up with a colon
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announces the presentation of the sign. Sofía is the sign.
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Montoya’s well-known admiration for Czeslaw Milosz likely inspired Sophia’s
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6 configuration as the Christ spirit in the collection, but for certain, Sofía/Alex, paid sex
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8 partner and spiritual initiate, is an archetype of Sophia, the feminine divine, who appears
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11 throughout the collection in everyday women. Like his mother who, in the poem “Hope,”
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13 expresses this connection between the human and the divine through the simple resolute
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15 joy in her eyes, Montoya’s grandmother continues steadfast in her faith as age and the
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18 stresses of poverty weigh her down in “Luciana: This Is How I See You.” Sophia is also
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20 evident in the figure of the ‘crazy woman’ who in the poem “Denial” spews the word of
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22 God from between “…yellow-green / teeth…” (84-85), ignored and repulsive on a street
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corner. Although she is misunderstood in this pre-conversion poem, “he” will come to
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27 emulate her post-conversion, singing religious poetry street-side. Though “he” is cited for
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public disruption for what is seen as proselytizing in “The Ice Worker Explains to the
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32 Judge” of part II, the “I” in the end sings the praise of God; song, a sensory expression of
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34 both hard and soft like the Gnostic figure of Sophia herself, a figure of the harmony of
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the Word, thus returning the reader to the collection’s title The Ice Worker Sings.
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39 How tragic, beautiful, and honest is this expression! How pointedly does this
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41 poem and the collection as a whole upset the expectation of the conversion narrative to
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44 rectify his wrongdoing! Nor does it compel a change in his moral compass. In this poem
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46 and equally true as a collection, the tone is one of striking human frailty however with
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little focus on judgment or self-recrimination, where social circumstances and the
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51 predicament of layered oppressions are lamented but do not excuse injurious decisions
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53 taken. Self-deprecating actions—they are never only self-deprecating. They are actually
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the condition through which the poetic voice experiences religious conversion.
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Montoya’s engagement with the genre skips the requisite posture of self-loathing usually
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6 found in the American conversion narrative. Instead, Montoya opens the form up,
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8 broadens it, creating a discourse where Montoya can write his vision of his community
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11 into the poem.
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13 What drives and convinces in this collection is the affective register of shame
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15 with which the poet makes his poetry a mitigated act of contrition, and ultimately, an
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18 emancipatory celebration of his conversion. It is the veracity of shamefulness registered
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20 through bodies and languages that has the capacity to evince the belief that religious
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22 conversion has occurred. If it is pleasure he felt when beating his brother in the poem
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“The Ice Worker Considers Mercy and Grace” (41-51), it is the genre of poetry that
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27 allows for pause, and reflection to be able to contextualize the divine in the midst of this
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abusive action. Montoya responds to the problem of narrative form through his
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32 conversion narrative of poems, but I believe Montoya engages the display of shame
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34 structurally built into the conversion narrative to allow him to express the experience of
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shame in racism .
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39 Let me discuss what shame is in order to elucidate what shame does in American
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41 culture and then, in American racism. Shame is a particular affect, one that has the
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44 special emotive character of placing a heavy social weight on its sufferer. Shame, like a
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46 stigma, is scripted as evidence of one’s inferiority and defectiveness. Functionally,
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shame is a social indictment. We can look at shame as as much a physiological condition
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51 as it is an emotion, the complexities of which I discuss in the book I am preparing on the
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53 subject. I will limit my argument here to the way in which shame is a forced
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internalization of emotion that produces a characterological condition; one that develops
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through the genre of the conversion narrative itself. Where the form of the conversion
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6 narrative posits “an experience of the self by the self”, as a social dynamic shame is “an
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8 experience that marks us as both inside and outside the community” to quote Timothy
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11 Bewes in The Event of Postcolonial Shame (22). When accepted, shame produces a
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13 devastating emotion where one internalizes a critical eye onto oneself (Morrison 273).
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15 The critical eye is reflected graphically in the extensive use of the lower case “I”
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18 through out the collection which shows a graphic stylization of subjective smallness at
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20 the same time that the present progressive indicated by the almost exclusive use of the
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22 grammatical present tense that together, create this unending sense of despair of shame,
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“fix[ing] the self in a sense of unending present where past and future are forgotten”
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27 (Kaufman 25). Although theorists describe shame as an experience largely outside of
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language (74), the word shame only appears once in the collection (“A Letter to KB”,
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53). Despite this exception, Montoya eclipses any overt discussion of shame.21 Montoya
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34 has a literary antecedent in Rousseau’s refusal to repent, a refusal which doesn’t omit
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guilt but demonstrates a rhetorical shift to put sin outside the frame of spiritual
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39 culpability. For Rousseau, religious guilt misdirects the “real” faith in reason, etc. Even
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41 St. Augustine who is supposed to tell us of his sins, never quite gets around to the
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44 confession element of the conversion narrative.22 He signals to it, acknowledges how
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46 egregious his appetite for sin has been, but never produces the details required of the
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Puritans and American conversion narrators since then.
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51 Shame theorists refer to this technique as bypassing shame where, instead of
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53 introjecting shame, the shamed one takes a defiant stance, often expressed as aggressive
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rage and so sidesteps the shaming project put upon her/him (Pattison 74). But what it also
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does is bypass the requisite self-production as inferior through the racialized body. To be
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6 more precise, Montoya’s collection grapples with the assignment of race as phenotype,
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8 but bypasses the script of assumed inferiority. There is a promise of social
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11 accommodation in the acceptance of the shame script whereas defiance casts one as
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13 socially suspect, with facile passage to the semantic realm of deviance and criminality.
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15 For us to appreciate this choice, Montoya could have eliminated discourse regarding race
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18 and simply presented his conversion narrative via poetic form. Readers might likely still
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20 assume Montoya to be Latin@ because of his Spanish name. However, without
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22 disclosure of the speaker’s body as brown, the body would have been discursively
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produced as a site of sin devoid of race and so decontextualized from the convert’s
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27 inscription in social hierarchies and thus conforming somewhat more to the American
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conversion narrative.
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32 In bypassing shame, Montoya chooses a different option. There is rage expressed

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34 by the poetic “I” but this rage is mitigated by the choice of the conversion narrative itself.
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His conversion allows him to reassess rage and misdeeds with the causality of social
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39 injustice, drawing parallels between Christ’s redemption and his persecutors and the
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41 Chican@ community, positioning the poetic voice amongst the latter. He assumes not the
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44 voice of the ashamed so much as the voice of the formerly lost and forlorn, a near
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46 casualty of late capitalist America. This is like a prognosis he extends to everyone in his
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community, thus relinquishing the conversion narrative’s mandate to individualize before
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51 God to speak of the coming salvation of a collective “we.” While stylistically replete with
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53 emotion as we have seen, his poetry does not sentimentalize communal redemption.
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Montoya artfully detracts from romanticizing poverty, oppression, and crime, taking
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responsibility for the “I”’s actions and imposing culpability on his neighbors.
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6 Nevertheless, Montoya’s aesthetic is skillful in demonstrating his Christian conversion
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8 while circumventing the dictate to shame, personal or communal. This aesthetic could be
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11 called one of profound acceptance of the position of the one shamed who may be
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13 regretful, but not ashamed. Montoya dismantles some of what the conversion narrative
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15 typically does in reifying individuality and instead posits a collective subject of salvation.
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18 In so doing, Montoya asserts the subject’s contextualization in social articulations of race,
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20 class, ethnicity, and gender. Montoya foregoes the step of judgment, offering instead his
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22 imbrication in a communal identity. Part of the success of his text as a conversion
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narrative is due to his choice of poetry as opposed to essay, the genre normally
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27 employed.23 Unlike the prosaic conversion narrative, poetry allows Montoya an out from
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a strict chronology, linear structure, formalisms of cause and effect, and the rhetoric of
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32 declaration. The aesthetic of varying and combining key moments of the conversion
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34 narrative across the collection and generating a very nuanced but emphatic revelation of
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the sign without the requisite performance of shame significantly contributes to the
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39 American conversion narrative while it equally disrupts racist discourse.
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41 The Puritan conversion narrative traces the foundation of shame as a de facto
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44 condition in the formulation of a national psyche–which is what we have willed it to
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46 become as a culture. While the racial conversion narrative has been used in the 20th
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century as a method that pressures a collective remediation of social ills, in this Latin@
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51 use of the genre, the conversion narrative calls for a reprisal of shame itself, making plain
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53 the contours of its dastardly oppressive social psychology visible. In the Latin@ iteration,
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shame becomes a central mode to revitalize the ethical. Shame so exposed is presented as
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an expression of ethics in the case of the Latin@ conversion narrative, not in the sense of
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6 personal ethics but in the denunciation of shame and its power to indoctrinate and cajole
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8 submission to hegemonic will.24 Timothy Bewes furthers this position in Postcolonial
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11 Shame when he states, “…in the twentieth century, the ethical appears as a permanent
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13 rendering inadequate of form” (19) thus making the conversion narrative in a collection
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15 of poetry a considerable choice. The distress registered in the conversion narrative in the
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18 hands of Latin@ writers is fairly American as we see. This is not to suggest that its
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20 contributions to the genre and to American literature are any less–the kind of conversion
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22 that Montoya puts forth in his collection radically challenges notions of the righteous
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Christian while, from an aesthetic point of view, The Ice Worker Sings is exquisite as is
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27 hopefully evident at this point.
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Like the Puritans, the Latin@ conversion narrative both reifies the power
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32 structure at hand by virtue of its deference to Christianity and the kinds of hierarchies it
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34 supposes in US culture , while it marks a social critique, of personal and social
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dissatisfaction, leaving the conversion, in their case, complete but messy. The Ice Worker
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39 Sings participates in the expressly American conversion narrative as a subset of Latin@
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41 texts, twisting the form to tell a different story of grace, one that does not have to
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44 disavow his community or deprecate himself. When we consider how this Latin@ text
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46 does its cultural work, we see the cogent adaptation of genres without submitting to their
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respective logics.25 Montoya finds a way to imagine his expression in using both genres
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51 but finds in each the way to deliver a vision of self and community, sidestepping the trap
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53 of self-loathing stipulated in the conversion narrative. Montoya instantiates shame for
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social critique and in so doing, redefines how and what conversion can mean. In its
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participation in the broad social construction of the American as shamed subject,
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6 Montoya’s collection presents a community of the humbly divine, among the anointed,
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8 just as they are.
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14 Notes
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16 Chican@ is a preferred way to simultaneously denote Chicana and Chicano.
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18 Viramontes relayed this conversation during an address at the First Biennial of Latina/o Literature, John
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20 Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York City, New York, March 6, 2013.
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22 From a review of Cultural Institutions of the Novel edited by Deidre Lynch and William B. Warner
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24 (2000).
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26 Here, I understand that different cultures have had different agents of the development of the novel. So, it
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28 may be more apt to speak of how the novel again functions in such categorizations of valor as “the Great
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30 American novel” that supposes a strong relationship between content and circulation, interpretation, in
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32 formation or express reification of US culture which I believe occludes the express reification of projects of
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34 US nationalism.
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36 Caldwell uses the ethnic marker of American in a context of legacy when she speaks of the Puritan
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38 conversion narrative as the first American literary form. However, it must be noted that during the time of
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40 these writings, a slippage of the term occurs where “American” occludes the peoples and cultures of the
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regions concerned. This elision is not helpful in appreciating the complexity of pressures on all parties
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concerned.
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The Puritan conversion narrative gave form to the organization and expression of Puritans’ experience as
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immigrants.
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That is, the dejection of the Puritan subject felt as immigrant in this early period of American society, and
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51 in the racial conversion narrative, the white subject’s inability to ever stop being white identifying one in
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53 that space and time as most probably racist shared the discursive marking of stress and disconnection from
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55 of American society; these along with shame have come to be defined as “American” expression.
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4 10
The spiritual autobiography is a genre of writing that, depending on the critic, is a breadbasket term for
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many forms of life writing that concern the spiritual, which can even slide into the psychological. While
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some critics include the conversion narrative as a version of spiritual autobiography, others consider the
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10 conversation narrative to be a specific form. (See genre discussion in the works of Battista, Hindmarsh, and
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12 Payne).
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This discussion is worthy of separate address.
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16 12
It may be helpful to consider this use of the conversion narrative in the European tradition in texts by
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18 such luminaries as Jean-Jacques Rousseau who also employs the conversion narrative for other means as
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20 Patrick Reilly explores in his wonderful monograph, Character and Conversion in Autobiography:
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22 Augustine, Montaigne, Descartes, Rousseau, and Sartre. Latin@ writers are often influenced by European
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24 writers as they are Latin American writers. Nevertheless, their texts circulate as American texts and so
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26 submit to their contextualization within American letters and society.
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28 13
The cognitive category of other uses shame to condition a sense of inferiority, a subject I am preparing in
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30 a book-length manuscript.
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32 See Stephanie Fetta’s Chicano/Latino Literary Prize: An Anthology of Award-Winning Fiction, Poetry,
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34 and Drama (2008).
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36 Montoya came from an artistically distinguished family. His uncle José Montoya is considered a
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38 godfather of Chicano poetry, his father is the celebrated visual artist and University of California professor
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40 Malaquías Montoya, and his brother Maceo is a poet.
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42 His spiritual poetry inspired younger poets like Veronica E. Guajardo, co-editor of unpublished
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44 manuscript The Second Coming (Chacón 2008: 13).
45
17
46 Cholo refers to a Latino male involved in a gang, and the gang lifestyle is often referred to as la vida
47
48 loca.
49
18
50 Through my personal correspondence with Daniel Chacón, I have learned that Montoya was involved in
51
52 a Pentecostal storefront church in Fresno to a limited degree. While his experience there may have
53
54 influenced his poetry in some way, it is clear that it shares more with the American literary tradition of the
55
56 conversion narrative more than contemporary Pentecostal practice, insofar as the emphasis is on the
57
58 conversion moment rather than spiritual baptism, and imbued with a Sophiological religious tone.
59
60
27
1
2
3
4 19
The temporal development of the conversion narrative establishes the “I” at the time of writing as already
5
6
converted.
7
8 20
Czeslaw Milosz also complained of the difficulty of writing religious poetry in the 21st century for an
9
10 audience for whom a religious episteme no longer had/has relevance (Faggen 1994).
11
12 21
There is one instance of shame mentioned in the poem “a letter to kb” where the sentence, “i was
13
14 ashamed” begins the fifth stanza of six. While the admission of shame is noteworthy, it is tucked in as if it
15
16 were amongst a larger frame of refusal to repent as argued earlier. It is also somewhat tucked away in the
17
18 poem itself. Nearing the end of the poem, it does not set the frame of the poem nor does shame emerge
Fo
19
20 thereafter as an investigated theme. The collection is dominated instead by the locura [craziness] the “I”
21
22 grapples with experienced alongside (at least in retrospect) as the Sophiological presence of God in life’s
r
23
24 very treachery.
Re
25
26
27
28 23
Montoya’s conversion through poetry is the only poetic conversion I have considered. There may be
vi
29
30 others of which I am unaware.
31
ew
24
32 Social structure under late Capitalism situates an underclass who generally suffers political and social
33
34 disenfranchisement. This structure creates in turn the conditions of privilege for others.
35
25
36 And perhaps, how else to write religious poetry in a largely post-religious world? This reading harkens to
On
37
38 Montoya’s affinity for Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz who complained of the difficulty of writing religious
39
40 poetry in a largely post-religious world. Milosz explains by way of a conversation with the late Pope John
41
ly
42 Paul II who commented that in Milosz’s religious writing, Milosz "make[s] one step forward, one step
43
44 back." Milosz responded, "Holy Father, how in the twentieth century can one write religious poetry
45
46 differently?" to which the Pope smiled in acknowledgement. Montoya’s conversion of sits and starts
47
48 perhaps pays homage to his literary idol (Faggen 1994).
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
28
1
2
3
4
5 Works Cited
6
7 Battista, Fabio. “Spiritual Autobiography in Seventeenth-Century England: Trends in
8
9 Literary History and Criticism, 1948-2012.” Status Quaestionis. 3 (2012): 155-
10
11
12 180. Web. 10 Feb. 2013.
13
14 Bewes, Timothy. The Event of Postcolonial Shame. Princeton: Princeton U P, 2010.
15
16
17
Print. Translation/Transnation.
18
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge P, 1994.
Fo
19
20
21 Print.
22
r
23
24 Caldwell, Patricia. The Puritan Conversion Narrative: The Beginnings of American
Re
25
26 Expression. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1985. Print. Cambridge Studies in
27
28 American Literature and Culture.
vi
29
30
31 Chacón, Daniel, ed. In the Grove: An Homage to Andrés Montoya. Spring 16. Fresno,
ew
32
33 CA: Pakatelas P. Print.
34
35 Faggen, Robert. “Czeslaw Milosv: The Art of Poetry.” Interview. The Paris Review 133
36
On
37
38 Winter (1994). Web. 15 April 2013. Web. 13 Jan 2013.
39
40 Fetta, Stephanie, ed. Chicano/Latino Literary Prize: An Anthology of Award-Winning
41
ly
42
43
Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Houston: Arte Público P, 2008. Print.
44
45 Haygood, Atticus G. Brother in Black: His Freedom and His Future. New York: Phillips
46
47 and Hunt, 1881. Print.
48
49
50 Hindmarsh, D. Bruce. Evangelical Conversion Narrative. Oxford: Oxford U P, 2005.
51
52 Print.
53
54 Hobson, Fred. But Now I See: White Southern Racial Conversion Narrative. Baton
55
56
57 Rouge: Louisiana U P, 1999. Print. The Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in
58
59
60
29
1
2
3
4
5 Southern History.
6
7 Iacob, Radu. “Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Eastern Political Theology in the
8
9 Sophiology of Sergei Bulgakov.” MA thesis. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
10
11
12 Faculty of Theology, 2011. Academia.edu. Web. 4 Feb. 2013.
13
14 Kaufman, Gershin. Psychology of Shame: Theory and Treatment of Shame Based
15
16
17
Syndromes. 1st ed. New York: Springer, 1989.
18
Lynch, Deidre and William B. Warner, eds. 1996. Cultural Institutions of the Novel
Fo
19
20
21 Durham and London: Duke U P, 1996. Print.
22
r
23
24 Milosv, Czeslaw. “Czeslaw Milosv: The Art of Poetry.” Interview with Robert Faggen.
Re
25
26 The Paris Review 133 Winter (1994). Web. 15 April 2013. Web. 13 Jan 2013.
27
28 Montoya, Andrés. The Ice Worker Sings and Other Poems. Tempe: Bilingual P, 1999.
vi
29
30
31 Print.
ew
32
33 Morrison, Andrew P. “The Eye Turned Inward: Shame and the Self.” The Many Faces of
34
35 Shame. Ed. Donald L. Nathanson. New York and London: The Guilford P,1987.
36
On
37
38 Print.
39
40 Pattison, Stephen. Shame: Theory, Therapy, Theology. Oxford: Oxford U P, 2000. Print.
41
ly
42
43
Riley, Patrick. Character and Conversion in Autobiography: Augustine, Montaigne,
44
45 Descartes, Rousseau, and Sartre. Charlottesville: U Virginia P, 2004. Print.
46
47 Viswanathan, Guari. Rev. of Cultural Institutions of the Novel. Eds. Deidre Lynch and
48
49
50 William B. Warner. Durham: Duke U P, 1996. Research in African Literatures.
51
52 31.2 Summer (2000): 236-237. Web. 4 Jan. 2013.
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30

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Manuscripts submitted to MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States

Spirituality but not Shame: The Conversion Narrative as

Manuscript ID: MELUS-2013-166

Manuscript Type: Original Manuscript

Keywords: LATINA/O LITERATURE

Latina/o < Ethnic Group, American Studies < Methodology, Cultural

32 material expressions of life.

32 we have seen. However, syncretism is a post-conversion aesthetic. The conversion really

32 In bypassing shame, Montoya chooses a different option. There is rage expressed

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