Literary Forced Choice
by Mary Harper-Bellis
October/November 2001
Those of us who identify ourselves as Mixed Blood, Metis, multiracial human beings have grown used to the “forced choice” method. Job and housing applications, government forms and even pollsters have helped us to become inured to this survey method developed by psychologists and sociologists decades ago to pretty up statistics made sloppy by people who insisted on marking outside the boxes. For years, we expressed our annoyance privately and just marked the box by the choice we liked best (or the one that seemed the most absurd). Now, a new generation of young Breeds is more insistent than their parents and we were able to choose “more than one race” on Census 2000 for the first time in our history. Yet, being asked the question at all is still annoying.
It goes beyond annoyance in other areas of equal or greater importance in our lives. For instance, can you name three major Mixed Blood authors and the titles of their books, plays, stories, or poems?
The reason that most people cannot identify our Breed writers, artists, poets and thinkers is because there is also a “literary forced choice”. It is pervasive, exclusive and fosters lines of racial demarcation in our most important institutions and industries – education, publishing, and the media.
When the breakthrough writing of James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, and Hyemeyohsts Storm began shattering racial boundaries forty years ago, an interesting thing occurred in American literature. Racial “genres” sprang up like mushrooms after a good rain. These “genres” became “containers” for the most compelling of the “minority” voices.
Overcome with gratitude that we could get anything into print, readers and writers alike welcomed the new sub-categories of African American, Native American, Latin American and so forth. It was no longer sufficient to slice and dice literature along nationalistic lines. After all, these new “minority” writers of the 60s and 70s were American, one and all. Yet, “American” was no longer enough of a descriptor. We had to know the race of these American writers.
University departments for African American Studies, Native American Studies, Chinese American Studies opened in the most progressive schools. We were all so busy celebrating the victory of being deemed worthy of study – and it WAS a huge victory at the time – we failed to discern the subtleties of such flagrant compartmentalization. We stood on the brink of literary forced choice and blindly leaped.
Faced with the forced choice, Giovanni and Baldwin chose African American even though they were both Breeds. It is quite certain that African American was their only choice, really. The choice was probably made for them. American business was not ready to deal with mixed marriages, mixed race children or mixed race writers exposing the FACT of our many centuries of racial mixing.
The one writer from the post-Civil Rights era who recognized the need for a Breed voice on the American literary scene was Hyemeyohsts Storm. Although his now classic book, Seven Arrows, was originally published as the first in a series of Native American writing, Storm spoke of himself as a Breed and wrote in a voice that immediately touched the hearts of the Mixed Blood people of America and, later, Europe.
Seven Arrows told the story of the mixing of Tribes, hearts, and lives as it happened on the plains of America during the bloody time of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century. Storm’s second book, Song of Heyoehkah, is the story of Estcheemah, a tiny Breed woman who became Storm’s most important teacher. Her story is the story of the mixing of Peoples from Mexico to Canada, California to the Mississippi, at the turn of the 20th century.
In his third book, Lightningbolt, Storm writes of his years of learning with Estcheemah and his own education as a Breed person in America. It is a celebration of the mingling of the blood of all of America’s people and our very real connection to this land we all now call home. Storm, who freely admits being enormously influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and, later, the Black Panthers, has been creating beautiful literature for three decades but Lightningbolt has been mysteriously out-of-print for nearly two years.
And, that’s one of the ways that literary forced choice works. The readily available books are those that reinforce racial compartments. Our choices are limited and the limits are clearly defined. You can go to Amazon and punch up a list of African American writers but it is no simple matter to get a list of Breed writers or writers who celebrate the mixing of races. If such a list did exist, it might look a lot like the old Chinese restaurant menus – pick two from each column and end up with a Filipino Irish Tex Mex mystery writer. But, then, who cares so long as it is a good mystery?
Putting writers into race boxes makes it easy for them to be found by people interested in that race. It also makes them easy to avoid. It makes them “niche” writers, only able to reach a small market. The fewer books available that tell the truth about our history, our racial heritage as a People, the longer the shame and secrecy that swirls within our families and communities will continue.
Minority “genre” writing is not mainstream and it is not a big piece of the market share pie. Each racial niche is stuffed full of decent or good writing that will never be read because it is obscure and hard to get. We are forced to choose what is available – fluff.
There have been a tiny handful of successful Breed writers. Hyemeyohsts Storm’s work, Seven Arrows, is recognized in American Belles Lettres – naturally categorized racially as Native American. N. Scott Momaday is widely recognized as the first Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize in literature for his first novel, House Made of Dawn. Of course, Scott is another Breed forced into a choice because it is not enough to say he is a damned gifted writer.
Our best writers and thinkers are forced to choose the same little boxes that are so annoying to the rest of us. Or, someone else makes the choice for them based on their visibility. Momaday and Storm look Native American. Baldwin looked African American. Giovanni was just beautiful but that’s a different matter. And we, as the reading public, reinforce this madness when we pick our books by race. We can dial up Amazon and ask for their list of literature celebrating all races and both genders equally or the list of literature that tells the truth about our history as a nation of multiracial mingling and melting to each other in the arms of love and the embrace of tolerance. It may be a pretty short list to begin with but, if enough people want it, titles will be added.
Imagine how it might have helped us all if W. E. B. DuBois, while founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had written a little something about the fellow from Quebec who gave him a surname or the mulatto woman who birthed him and her tribal heritage. Perhaps he did write that story but couldn’t get it into print. There was no category for French Canadian African Native American Breeds at his publishing house. Poor W. E. B. was forced to settle for “colored” for once and all.
Other writers and thinkers of DuBois’ time learned to “pass” just as some of our own parents and grandparents “passed” and ceased being “colored”. But who writes about that? Where has that been written into the American experience, American history, and American literature? Being forced to “pass” is a symptom of a very serious and pervasive racism. So is being forced into choices we don’t like when it comes to our books.
Hyemeyohsts Storm, the first clear voice in American literature honoring the Mixed Blood people, has been the target of racism on all sides since the publication of his first book. But, he keeps on writing for us because he knows just how important it is to heal the wounds of racism. He knows just how important identity is to our children and he wants our young people to be proud to be American Mixed Blood people – colored like the wild flowers of our prairies.
Mary Harper-Bellis, MS, CPC, CSAC is the National American Metis Association’s second president. She has worked in the fields of education and psychology for thirty years and has based all of her work on the information of the Medicine Wheels. Mary has a Master of Science degree in Rehabilitation Counseling and is working on her Ph. D. in Educational Psychology. She was a founding member of The Institute for Human Development, Comin’ Home Residence for Homeless Veterans, Project Success, VisionQuest, Inc., and Wolfsong Ranch Foundation.
Copyright © 2001 Mary Harper-Bellis. All rights reserved.