Jeff Bryant

English 3130
Dr. Colley
December 5, 2017
The Lonely Voice of Ethnic Outcasts: The Modern American Short Story as a Means of

Exploration of Ethnic Duality

The short story format has proven to be a versatile means for ethnic minority authors to

explore their racial identity. Due to the format’s penchant for brief and engaging stories, it has

proven to be the optimal medium for exploring their unique cultural experiences as they relate to

the mainstream American nationality. This particular literary format has often served as a

proving ground for the talents of modern ethnic minority authors such as Sandra Cisneros,

Sherman Alexie, and Junot Diaz, writers who articulate unique insights on their experiences as

members of various dual cultures. As short story writers, they use their backgrounds to enhance

unique characteristics of the medium.

One of the key characteristics of the short story format that minority writers commonly

incorporate into their texts is the exploration of identity. As a product of two different cultures,

many ethnic minorities struggle with the interplay of their American and non-white identities. As

an important part of their collective voice, many ethnic minority writers use short stories to

depict the concept of what W.E.B. Dubois coins double consciousness. Though initially a

concept used to describe the African-American experience of his time, Dubois’s concept equally

resonates among many different minority groups in the United States. In her article, “Double

Consciousness and the Racial Self in Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories”, Britta Gringas

elaborates on idea as applicable to Native Americans. Essentially, the elements that comprise the

idea consist of the belief that: The American world’s denial of ethnic others’ sense of true self-
consciousness. This clouds the perception an ethnic group has of itself, fragmenting the group’s

identity tearing it between how it sees itself, and how others see the group. This tension creates

an unreconciled two-ness where the group must navigate its own expectations of itself in

conjunction with the expectations the larger external group has of them (Gringas 83). In their

stories, Cisneros and Alexie are especially proficient at using this concept to explore how their

characters are outcasts trapped between the influences of both their restrictive cultural

environment and the larger mainstream community more aligned with their American identity.

For the protagonists of many of these short stories, the double consciousness effect

combines with what Frank O’Connor calls a “submerged population” to produce a character who

is haunted by their inability to relate to the community that birthed them. Sherman Alexie’s

works often depict such characters struggling with the trappings of Native American life on the

Indian Reservations.

The writer Frank O’Connor describes the unorthodox nature of the short story protagonist

as one of the genre’s strongest features, one that separates it from the novel. Just as Edgar Allan

Poe attributes Nathaniel Hawthorne as being a master of the short story’s ability to harness the

potency of a single effect, Frank O’Connor similarly reveres Gogol, the author of the famous

Russian short story “The Overcoat”. Using this story as the base of his explanation for the

archetypical short story, O’Connor celebrates the representative of what he calls the “submerged

population” in saying; “There is no character here with whom the reader can identify himself,

unless it is that nameless horrified figure who represents the author” (O’Connor 86). Minority

authors in the short story genre often use this same sense of the alien and unrelatable, but also

endeavor to bridge that same gap with unique twists on familiar storytelling elements.
 A common feature of the ethnic minority protagonist is the tendency to witness the

character develop in their struggle against the environment that antagonizes them. Many other

types of works that deal with similar ideas of social isolation and familiar, yet unrelatable

characters, have a tendency to objectively present the character in their milieu with little offer of

a workable solution for the character. For instance, Cheever’s The Swimmer concludes with the

character facing the reality of his blissfully ignorant pursuit of youth being torn away, the

expense of his lifestyle—the loss of his home and family—leaves him rudely awakened to his

misspent time. Likewise, Anton Chekov’s “The Girl With The Little Dog” ends with the

protagonist coming to grips with his adulterous relationship slowly turning into what appears, in

his reality to be a genuine love affair, despite the foreboding suggestion otherwise. Such stories

normally endeavor to place the reality of the protagonist versus the world that would challenge,

and perhaps ultimately reject their idealism. For the protagonists of these stories, the inability to

escape their worlds is the tragedy. For the protagonist of minority stories, that escape is the very

hope embedded in the narrative.

Among the first and most important of these storytelling tools is the bildungsroman

narrative. Amy Sickels refers to how Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street makes its

own unique use of this classic element that centers on the journey of maturity and development.

She points out that “In bold contrast to individualistic introspection of many canonical texts,

Cisneros writes a modified autobiographical novel, or Bildungsroman, that roots the individual

self in the broader socio-political reality of the Chicano community” (Sickels 43). Cisneros

accomplishes this by emphasizing the stories of not only Esperanza, but by featuring several

smaller stories involving other characters in her neighborhood, thus establishing not just the

character journey, but also the role that the setting plays in shaping her lead character as well.
 The setting of minority short stories also presents a breeding ground for conflict not

found in most other short stories. Many famous short stories present interpersonal conflict, but as

part of the bildungsroman narrative, minority-centric short stories have the opportunity to cast

the environment that produces such characters in both positive and negative lights, thus

accentuating the lead character’s desire to pull away from such a place, but also hold a reverence

for it at the same time. Mango Street concludes with Esperanza expressing her intention to both

leave and return, closing with her stating in narration “They will not know I have gone away to

come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out.” (Cisneros 110).

The Native American short story writer Sherman Alexie also depicts the theme of self

discovery against the backdrop of a hostile environment that is also one’s home. Tammy

Wahpeconiah describes the situation of many of Alexie’s characters in describing their

relationship with the reservations they grew up in as “held together by what destroys it: Alcohol

and poverty” (92 Wahpeconia). Her article “Postmodern Magic, Traditional Rage: The Critical

Reception of Sherman Alexie’s Work” goes on to further explain that “complications arise

because these characters exist within and around a dominant culture that values the individual”.

This clashes directly with the emphasis that Native American culture places on the communal

which contextualizes the individual (92-93). In this manner, dual-cultural writers explore not

only the struggle of a niche group “us” submerged within a mainstream “them”, but also presents

the individual pitted against the “us” group while striving for some level of acceptance to the

“them” group.

The inability to connect to the limited world of their circumstances, combined with the

frustrations and anxieties of not being able to connect to the world of their potential is met with a

certain tenacious ingenuity on the part of protagonist. The ability to comprehend and speak the
languages of both of these worlds presents the hope of mobility between them. the protagonists

of minority literature often exhibit an ability to navigate both worlds by moderating aspects of

their connection to either world.

As a part of the struggle with dual cultures, many of the protagonists struggle with love

and hatred towards their home environment. The culture that has raised them is also one that

does not understand them, and in many cases limits them. In a sentiment reflected throughout

many of his other works, Alexies, “Lone Ranger and Tonto” also has a protagonist who struggles

with the threat of stagnation from that remains at home versus the potential to flourish should he

find the strength to leave. Alexie’s character says, “I was one of those Indians who was supposed

to make it, to rise above the rest of the reservation like a fucking eagle or something. I was the

new kind of warrior” (Charters 18). This same sense of potential and hope is also present in

Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. Her protagonist, Esperanza—a name that literally

means ‘hope’ in Spanish—is not sealed in her fate of being trapped in her world, but also bears

the potential to escape. Upon her Aunt Lupe’s deathbed, the dying woman tells the girl, “You

just remember to keep writing, Esperanza. You must keep writing. It will keep you free…

(Cisneros 61)

The short story format is especially conducive to the types of tales these authors wish to

express. The medium itself lends well to a more poetic and creative approach to storytelling that

many of these authors take advantage of using to stylistically enforce the themes of hybridity.

Alexie takes the approach of incorporating popular culture into his works, a trend especially

apparent throughout his short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

This approach has opened his work to multiple forms of critical interpretation, most notably

serving to respond to the mainstream society’s perceptions of Native American Indians produced
by media forms such as contemporary television and movies (Wahpeconiah 99). This

reclamation effort represents a struggle for self-definition against a media system that prefers for

defining Native Americans as a conquered people (99). Alexie challenges this by incorporating

cultural references to both mainstream and Native American culture in a way that “creates

community and new traditions out of both past and present, Native and Euro-American” (99).

Likewise, Cisneros incorporates a hybridity into the format and presentation of her work

by presenting it as simultaneously enigmatic, but also accessible. Commonly identified as a short

story cycle, critics still yet debate as to whether her story is to be seen as fiction, or

autobiography, poetry, or prose, or even some combination of the dualities (Sickels 49). Cisneros

herself is credited as describing her intentions for such a unique format as a means to greater

accessibility, stating a desire to “write a collection which could be read at any random point

without having any knowledge of what came before or after” (49).

In his article, The Lonely Voice, O’Connor argues that the protagonist of a novel is

meant to be relatable to its reader based on the expectation engaging the reader for a larger span

of pages. However, due to its brevity, the short story format, he believes, thrives on the opposite.

The reader does not have to relate to the short story protagonist as intimately as they would with

the protagonist of the novel whom the reader is required to engage with for a much longer span

of pages. Due to such brevity, the reader is meant to come to the verge of understanding, enough

to see the familiar. He opines that “the novel is bound to be a process of identification between

the reader and the character” (O’Connor 85). Similarly, minority protagonists face the similar

gulf between being strange and familiar. However, through certain narrative techniques and

common writing decisions among their respective authors, it could be argued that while the

typical protagonist of a short story begins as familiar and moves towards marginalization, the
character in a minority-centric short story flows in the opposite direction. Through the use of

familiar narrative structure such as the Bildungsroman, and even the use of common, relatable

vernacular in dialogue and narration that also includes references to mainstream popculture, the

structure and protagonists in the short stories of Sherman Alexie and Sandra Cisneros are

particularly designed to evoke a movement from the unknown or preconceived to the familiar

and identifiable.

Though this pattern is not completely absent in stories told from the point of view of

ethnic minority characters, the narrative focus shifts. It is often the struggle that takes center

stage, as opposed to the world that contextualizes it. For the characters of minority literature, that

very potential for escape becomes the source of conflict. In these stories, the protagonists often

exhibit an admirable, if sometimes subtly tragic ability adapt to their worlds at the expense of

their natural self. Alexie references such an image at the conclusion of his short story “The Lone

Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven” as the story’s narrator says “I wish I lived closer to the

river, to the falls where ghosts of salmon jump” (Charters 19). This desire to connect to the past

is softly woven into many of Alexie’s works.

The preference for the short story format is a common choice among several minority

authors. In tune with the fragmentation of identity, short stories, particularly those compiled in

collections, create a certain accessibility in the fragmentation that give a reader a chance to

become familiar with the unfamiliar at a more controlled pace. The use of this particular format

as opposed to the novel can also be seen as a statement of returning to the roots of storytelling,

particularly along the line of oral traditions that were important to the history of the cultures

represented in most ethnic writers’ stories. James Nagel opines that “The short story cycle in

twentieth-century American literature is decidedly a multiethnic tradition, perhaps because the

brief narrative has its origins in the oral tradition and descends through cultures in every part of

the world, uniting them in a legacy of universal storytelling.”

This reach for the universal, and the call for others like them to consider their own

journey of self-discovery and coming to their voice is also prevalent in both the stories that are

written, and as a concern among the authors themselves. Ethnic minorites have a tendency to use

the short story as a means to tell personal stories thinly veiled through author surrogates. [who

does it] [why—opinion

A literary trait shared by many minority authors who explore the themes of identity in

their short story works is the insertion of their own. Many of these authors struggle with the

pedigree of a largely white literary canon being the source of their instruction; one that fails to

find reconciliation with their identity as other. At the displeasure of several Native American

critics, Alexie identifies his literary pedigree as being mostly white, citing influences such as

Whitman, Hemingway, Stenbeck and Faulkner (Wahpeconia 88). As writers who are essentially

pioneering their representation, having few if any peers who mirror themselves, minority writers

such as Cisneros, Alexie, and Diaz rely on the compact nature of the medium to literally share

their own life stories in small digestible portions. Trends in more conventionally established

literary studies for forms such as the novel tend to refrain from readings inclined toward the

biographical. The short story, due to its postmodern leanings, instead embraces such readings.

Pertaining to Sandra Cisneros, "Critics have also differed over whether [The House on Mango

Street] ought to be approached as fiction or as autobiography. Though Cisneros has maintained

that it is a work of fiction, she has acknowledged that some of the story lines in Mango Street

stem from her own experience and childhood memories" (Sickels 49).
 Most literary short stories have the underlying focus on the ordinary becoming the

marginalized, emphasizing the path of the protagonist shifting from more relatable to woefully

unique. In shaping his definition of what the short story entails, O’Connor holds to the belief that

the short story holds “at its most characteristic something we do not often find in the novel—an

intense awareness of human loneliness.” (O’Connor 87). As a part of its hybrid nature, ethnic

minority short stories can both adhere to that powerful sense of loneliness, but also reach

outward in a manner that is unashamed to acknowledge a need for unity and understanding.
 Works Cited

Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. Vintage Book., 1984

Gingras, Britta. “Double Consciousness” and the Racial Self in Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian

Stories. Undergraduate Review, 6, 83-86.

http://vc.bridgew.edu/undergrad_rev/vol6/iss1/17.

Nagle, James. "The American Short Story Cycle". Columbia University Press. Columbia
Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story; 2000,
https://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=d2cc5bf3-3c16-45ec-950c-
362cadfbf132%40sessionmgr102&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0
ZQ%3d%3d#

O’Connor, Frank. “The Lonely Voice” p83-93.

Sickels, Amy. "The Critical Reception of the House on Mango Street." Critical Insights: The

House on Mango Street, Salem Press, Oct. 2010, pp. 36-55. EBSCOhost,

ezproxy.mga.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=lfh&AN=57353702&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Wahpeconiah, Tammy. “Postmodern Magic, Traditional Rage: The Critical Reception of

Sherman Alexie's Work”. Salem Press. Critical Insights: Sherman Alexie; 2011, p87-105,
19p. https://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=28eb48d6-0cd6-41cd-
9df0c5b8547b17df
%40sessionmgr4006&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d