DOCUMENT RESUME FL 027 348 ED 465 296 Tawake, Sandra AUTHOR Bilinguals' Creativity: Patricia Grace and Maori Culture and TITLE Values. 2002-00-00 PUB DATE NOTE 23p. Descriptive (141) Reports PUB TYPE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. EDRS PRICE *Bilingualism; *Cultural Differences; English; Foreign DESCRIPTORS Countries; *Language Usage; *Maori; *Maori (People); Uncommonly Taught Languages *Language Contact; *Pacific Islands Literature IDENTIFIERS ABSTRACT Contemporary Pacific literature represents one of many bodies of new literatures written in English that have emerged from cultures They contain a of former colonies of European empires (contact literatures) . blend of two or more linguistic contexts and a range of discourse devices and cultural assumptions distinct from the ones associated with native varieties of English. Two recent novels by Patricia Grace, "Cousins" (1992) and "Baby No-Eyes" (1998) exploit such linguistic adaptations of standard English as untranslated words in the indigenous language and Maori speech patterns. Grace creates innovative narrative voices and structures to tell her stories in ways that reflect Maori experiences and expectations. Grace's novels reveal a number of features of bilinguals' creativity. Close examination of some of these features and the effects they have on analyses of interpretations of the literature highlights the limitations of a European literacy theory in explicating and evaluating literature written by bilinguals in a bilingual society. By exploiting creative innovations in her use of English as well as innovations in traditional Eurocentric fiction's narrative voice and structure, Grace creates an expression of Maori life and values in language that is only obliquely related to the standard English of the colonizers. (Contains 30 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Bilinguals' Creativity: Patricia Grace and Maori culture and values Sandra Tawake EDUCATION U S. DEPARTMENT OF PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND Improvement Odide ot Educational Research and DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS INFORMATION IUCATIONAL RESOURCES BEEN GRANTED BY CENTER (ERIC) reproduced as This document has been organization received from the person or trAlauXKE, originating it. been made to CI Minor changes have improve reproduction quality. TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES in this Points of view or opinions stated INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. BLE BEST COPY AVAI 2 1 Bilinguals' Creativity: Patricia Grace and Maori culture and values Contemporary Pacific literature represents one of a number of bodies of new literatures written in English that have emerged from cultures of former colonies of European empires. These literatures have been characterized as contact literatures by Kachru (1985). The concept of contact literatures is an extension of contact languages. A language in contact with another is two-faced. It has its own face and the face it acquires from the languages with which it has contact. Such is the character of contact literatures written in English. They contain a blend of two or more linguistic contexts and a range of discourse devices and cultural assumptions that are distinct from the ones associated with native varieties of English. These literatures have occasioned debate among linguists, literary critics, and teachers regarding their place in the literary canon and their value as texts suitable for study in the classroom (see e.g. Quirk & Widdowson,1985; Fiedler & Baker,1981; Dasenbrock,1987; Bhabha,1984; Tawake,1990; Sowel1,1999; Subramani,1985). A number of states in the U.S. have adopted requirements for state-wide, end-of-course testing in the public schools that focuses on literature from non-western cultures (Educational Testing Service, 2000). The reason usually given for studying such literatures in the classroom is that in the process students learn about cultures and values other than their own. But students may also gain perspective on how writers from outside the inner circle of societies that use English as a primary language have adapted English for their own purposes. Kachru has characterized these adaptations as the bilingual's creativity (1986) and has designated among other things stylistic and linguistic innovations in literary texts written by bilingual writers as an area of research that needs further investigation (see Kachru 2000). The outcome of such research, in addition to revealing the workings of the bilingual's code repertoire, may also promote emancipation from cultural and 3 2 linguistic enthnocentricism that has marked both linguistic and literary studies in the past (see e.g. Ashcroft, Griffiths,& Tiffin, 1989). Studies of bilinguals' creativity may also promote the use of postcolonial literary theories as appropriate perspectives from which to examine contact literatures in the new millennium (Tawake,2000). The idea of a postcolonial literary theory emerged from the inability of Europeon theory to deal adequately with complexities and varied cultural contexts of postcolonial writing. Leading postcolonial theorists generally agree that the common ground they share is their response to the depiction of the colonized as always situated as "other" and unable to assume the necessary role as self. Prominent postcolonial theorists include Edward Said (1978); Homi K Bhabha (1984); Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1987); and the "Empire Writes Back" school that includes Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (1989). The Empire Writes Back takes its name from Salman Rushdie's piece "The Empire Strikes Back with a Vengeance," and emphasizes what it terms "hybridization," through which indigenous traditions combine with imperial remnants to create something newly postcolonial. By examining contact literatures from the perspective of the creativity with which the bilingual/multilingual writers have adapted Standard English for their own purposes, we focus on those very elements of hybridization that postcolonial theorists emphasize and address. These elements include the postcolonial rejection of a simplistic insider point of view that is privileged or "authentic" in Sharrad's terms (1993:1) because it emanates from a native or "insider" vision. Postcolonial critic Trinh T Minh-ha (1995:218) expresses the rationale for such a rejection, For there can hardly be such a thing as an essential inside that can be homogeneously represented by all insiders;...questions like "How loyal a representative of his/her people is s/he?" (the filmmaker as insider), or "How 4 3 authentic is his/her representation of the culture observed?" (the filmmaker as outsider) are of little relevance. When the magic of essences ceases to impress and intimidate, there no longer is a position of authority from which one can definitely judge the verisimilitude value of the representation..."1" is not unitary, culture has never been monolithic...Differences do not only exist between outsider and insider--two entities--they are also at work within the outsider or the insider--a single entity. Another element of hybridization addressed by postcolonial theory that is uncovered or highlighted by studies of bilinguals' creativity is an emphasis on the use of variant dialects of English to express the importance of practice--the way language is actually used by speakers in the society--over the standardized code. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (1989:7-8) make the point that one of the main features of imperial control in the colonies was through language, The imperial education system installs a standard version of the imperial language as norm and marginalizes all variants and impurities. Language then becomes the medium through which imperial power is perpetuated. However, such power is rejected when an effective postcolonial voice emerges." (7-8) Several writers from the Pacific publishing fiction in the 1970's represent the beginnings of just such a postcolonial voice, one that exhibits linguistic adaptations in the use of English in order to convey its writers' cultures and identities in a language different than the Standard English used by colonizers. Best known among fiction writers from the Pacific are Albert Wendt (Samoan), Patricia Grace (Maori), and Witi Ihimaera (Maori). These writers have incorporated untranslated words in an indigenous language into their literary texts [see Tawake (2000) and Ihimaera & Long (1982)1. Albert Wendt used detailed accounts of Pacific island characters' use of non-verbal strategies for communication in his novel Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979) e.g. of seeing see Tawake (1991). And Patricia Grace's story "Parade" (1975) develops a metaphor through the eyes of outsiders or taking the point of view of non-Pacific islanders as a means of 4 conveying the outsider condition of island people who have been silenced or made invisible through the influence of a colonizing presence in their islands (Tawake, 2000). These works seem to be amenable to explication from the perspective of postcolonial theory. Two recent novels published by Patricia Grace in the 1990's Cousins (1992) and Baby No-Eyes (1998) exploit some of the same linguistic adaptations of Standard English as her earlier work (and the work of other Pacific island writers) including untranslated words in the indigenous language and Maori speech patterns. In addition to using untranslated Maori words and Maori speech patterns in her new novels, Grace also creates innovative narrative voices and structures to tell her stories in ways that reflect Maori experience and expectations. Grace's narrators and the structures of their narratives mimic the way that the older Maori had of telling a story and mark that story's deviation from the linear form of beginning, middle, and end that is For discussions of ways in which non-western characteristic of traditional Eurocentric fiction. organizational structures differ from Eurocentric linear structures , see Kaplan (1966), Ostler (1987), and Ferdman, Weber, and Ramirez (1994). Grace creates Maori voices in her recent fiction to express on the psychic level the differences between Maori and Pakeha in their attitudes toward land, ancestors, family, cycles of life and death, and regeneration. In Baby No-Eyes, Shane, the father of Te Paania's unborn child takes his wife home to visit their extended Maori family back in the village. In a powerful exposure of Pakeha ignorance and arrogant cruelty, Grace has Shane's grandmother Gran Kura recount a story from her own childhood, which she tells in response to Shane's outburst against the old folks when he demands to know his Maori name. Shane is obsessed with what has been kept from him, his Maori heritage; he demands to know his Maori name, his tipuna name. He says, Shane...It's a movie name, a cowboy name...a name for Pakeha, a name for Pakeha teachers to like. To make me be like them. Where's my tipuna name? (p.26) 6 5 Gran Kura answers him, To protect you. Like Riripeti, called Betty. (p.26) Shane is drunk and rails at his family for attempting to protect him, while Gran Kura tries to pacify him, You think I need that? Protection? Not to be real, not to know, have it all hidden? You all think you got to whisper in case we hear, in case we know? Every generation has its secrets to bear. What good is knowing? What good nothing? Shane said, 'Nothing, nothing, nothing, alleluia. Look at this black face. Look, look.' Shane step-danced his silly arms and legs, showing us himself, his black face pushed forward in a fury...But what to go with it? Black, but what to go with it? Shane for a name. Shane, Shame, Blame, Tame, Lame, Pain. Nothing to go with this. How can I be Pakeha with this colour, this body, this face, this head, this heart? How can I be Maori without...without...without what? Don't even know without what. Without what?' (p.26-27) Grace's use of the Maori word tipuna (for maternal forebears, Mother or Grandfather in this case) to describe what Shane is demanding from his family performs a function like the function of poetry: it acts out what it names. Literally, what Shane is asking for is his secret family name, the name of the Maori part of him that has been replaced by the Pakeha-friendly name Shane. Figuratively, Grace uses tipuna to stand for the whole of Shane's Maori heritage, the mystery of his being that cannot be named in English, something that has been denied him; and the denying ultimately cost him his life since it is the evening of Shane's outburst as he and Te Paania return to Wellington that Shane crashes the car killing himself and and his and Te Paania's unborn child, who becomes the title character of the novel, Baby No-Eyes. It is in response to Shane's outburst that Gran Kura tells a story from her childhood about her teina (little sister, in Maori but in Pakeha categories of relationships, the two girls are 7 6 first cousins--the father of one of the girls is the brother to the mother of the other girl). Gran Kura was tuakana (big sister, in Maori) to Riripeti (called Betty for Pakeha teachers). In Gran's story, Riripeti was sent to school for the first time in the care of her big sister (cousin), Kura. On the first day at school, the teacher spoke to Riripeti in English asking her who she is, telling her to stand up when she is spoken to. Riripeti did not know what the teacher was saying, did not recognize Betty as her Pakeha name. She was only five. She smiled and looked to her tuakana for guidance. The teacher told Riripeti to get the smile off her face that it was no laughing matter. The teacher made Riripeti stand in the corner "until you learn better manners" ( p.31). No one was permitted to speak Maori in school, and so Riripeti was marched to the corner and smacked for not following the teacher's orders, none of which she understood. Every day Riripeti was punished, shaken for not speaking loud enough, for being afraid, for not following the rules. Her tuakana was not allowed to speak to her or help her understand what was expected because speaking in Maori was not allowed. After a while it was only Riripeti who went to the bad corner. It became her corner. She smelled like an animal and spoke like an animal, had to go to the corner until she stopped being an animal. I could see that she was getting smaller and that it was only her eyes and her teeth that were growing... Her spirit was out of her, gone roaming. Her hair was as dry as a horse's tail, rough and hard, her eyes were like flat shadows, not at all like eyes. I had seen a dying dog look like that, which made me think it might be true what the teacher said, that my teina was changing into an animal (p.34). One morning, Riripeti sat down by the track on the way to school and said she could not go to school any more. Every day, she would say, 'Kura, Kura, he puku mamae, (in Maori, my stomach hurts) and she'd hold her stomach and bend over' (p.33). Riripeti began waiting in the woods until school was over and then returning home with the other children. 7 The following year after school vacation when Riripeti had somewhat recovered her spirit, Kura was moved out of Riripeti's classroom to a higher grade. On the first day, Riripeti clung to Kura begging her tuakana to stay with her. Riripeti was caned in front of the whole school so that everyone would learn how bad it was for them to speak Maori. During her third year in school, Riripeti died. 'Killed by school. Dead of fear' (p.38). In Gran Kura's story, Grace uses Maori words to express feelings and relationships within characters and within the extended family that have no equivalent in English. In using these untranslated Maori words, Grace emphasizes the difference between Maori family ties and Pakeha relationships. At the psychic and emotional level, Riripeti was more than sister to Kura; she was teina. My heart broke for my teina. Oh I cried. She was mine, she was me, she was all of us. She was the one who died but we were the ones affected, our shame taking generations to become our anger and our madness. She was my charge, my little sister, my work that I'd been given to do, mine to look after (p.38). Gran Kura's story about Riripeti responds to Shane's demand for his tipuna name, and it foreshadows Shane's death later that same evening in the car crash. Much of the power of this episode in the novel derives from Grace's use of Maori words to express what may be inexpressible in English because the psychic experience of life for Maori and for Pakeha is so different. Shane's death, foreshadowed in Gran Kura's story by Riripeti's death, is linked to Gran Kura's story overtly when Gran uses the story to explain why Shane has a cowboy name. But Shane's death in the main plot is linked to Riripeti's death in Gran Kura's story by the same cause of death operating in both narratives. Both characters, Shane and Riripeti, die because they are forced to live apart from their own identities, from their life force, their Maori heritage. 8 8 In addition to using untranslated Maori vocabulary and Maori speech patterns in her new novels, Grace also creates innovative narrative voices and structures to tell her stories. These innovations are designed to mimic the way that the older Maori had of telling a story and end that is middle to mark that story's departure from the linear form of beginning characteristic of traditional Eurocentric fiction. In Baby No-Eyes, Grace seems to call attention to her creative innovations in the story telling process when she says, There's a way the older people have of telling a story, a way where the beginning is not the beginning, the end is not the end. It starts from a centre and moves away from there in such widening circles that you don't know how you will finally arrive at the point of understanding, which becomes itself another core, a new centre. You can only trust these tellers as they start you on a blindfold journey with a handful of words which they have seemingly clutched from nowhere...(p.28) In Potiki (1986), Grace alluded to a manner of story telling that seemed to draw the extended family (whanau) back together and to help incorporate the members into each others' stories. ...stories became, once more, an important part of all our lives, the lives of all the whanau. And although the stories all had different voices, and came from different times and places and understandings, though some were shown, enacted or written rather than told, each one was like a puzzle piece which tongued or grooved neatly to one another. And this train of stories defined our lives, curving out from points on the spiral in ever-widening circles from which neither beginnings nor endings could be defined. (p.4.1) 1 0