What Good Is Literature in Our Time? Rudolfo Anaya The millennium is just around the corner, and on a personal, world, and cosmic level we sense the movement of time as it enters a new era. We live in a time of transition, a time in which the human spirit can either be crushed or in which it can be transformed into a new level of consciousness. Because books incorporate time and history and therefore become signposts of our humanity, we sense an urgency to provide meaning and direction in our stories. According to many prophecies an era of time is ending. Human history is being transformed. On the one hand postmodern history, by erasing our rituals and ceremonies, has forced us to enter a linear time, a time which promises no renewal, no rising from the ashes of a new awareness. We wonder if we can ever live again in the cycles of time that, though they ended, always held in their completion the promise of a new cycle. By time, of course, we mean not only the days accumulated on the calendar of history, but the spiritual evolution of humanity. Time and its consequences are incorporated into the human spirit; we are what we have created. Time has cosmic dimensions, but our concern here is more particular: life as we know it on the planet Earth. For a linear-bound humanity, the coming into being of the new era will not be easy. Around the world we see the signs of disruption in the human spirit and in nature, and we appear helpless. The accumulation of wealth and violence seem to go hand in hand. We are burning forests for power, burning coal and gas and oil to go faster and faster, burning the rain forests far beyond their means to replenish. We live for the moment in a chaotic era we have created. Coming to the end of time may mean coming to the edge of that human-made chaos. The next step is crucial. But unlike archaic man and woman, we have lost touch with the rituals that once gave meaning to the crossing. As writers, we need to address this depletion of spirit. We need to include social and environmental problems in our stories. If we do not engage the issues of our day, then what good is
472 What Good Is Literature in Our Time? literature as we face the chaos which threatens to engulf us? Writers must provide a clear sense of meaning and direction in the stories we write. As postmodern humans we have lost the inherent sense of sacredness which literature once transmitted to us. This meaning is missing from life, and it is missing from much of our literature. From the beginning of time, rock carvers worked to create a sense of meaning in their lives. Glyphs gave meaning to the gathering of seeds, the hunt, the gods, fertility, and the efficacy to stave off the ghosts in the bush. Scribes followed, recording in hieroglyphics the stories of their gods and creation, and thus they offered meaning even as eras of time ended. Knowing their myths of origin allowed those ancient people to understand that time ending meant moving into a new awareness. Those scribes understood the cycles of time the Earth is heir to. I think of those ancestors from around the world, the writers who have recorded the end of their time in their stories and myths. Ages arrive and blossom to fruition, then they wither and die, but inscribed in rituals was the hope that something new would be born from death. Today we sense little of renewal in our art. We yearn for the written word to give meaning to our age. We sense that between the prior cycle of time and the time being born, there is a space of transformation. In that space we can use history and art to complete theflourishingof a new consciousness. Themes in our literature must include a sense of this incredible age of transformation through which we are living. Conflicts and human emotions drive our stories, and we particularize those conflicts to character. But characters live in a context. Our context happens to be a time of great wrenching of the human spirit. To give meaning and direction to our time should be the task of every writer. Literature and art have always provided direction. The great myths of the past teach that eternal return is possible for the individual and for the community. We have been constantly reborn, and each new awareness pushed us not only to be masters of new technologies but toward knowledge of the transcendent in our lives. Through initiatory rituals we connected ourselves to our Earth origins; myths spoke of our heroes and of cosmic (transcendent) origins. We used to speak to the gods, and they provided direction. Can we do so today? There are serious writers today who are describing the age of transformation in which we live. In many cases the descriptions are alarming, for any account of the depletion of our natural resources can only be alarming. What is more alarming is the depletion of our spiritual resources, the disrespect we show for
American Literary History 473 human life, the widespread violence and use of drugs. To describe our age is to describe a loss of the center, a loss of harmony with nature, a desperate consumerism that seems to find hope only by consuming more and more. Is there hope, or have we capitulated to the forces of consumerism which are creating the good life for a very small percentage of the Earth's population while the rest suffer? During an age of transformation chaos struggles to drag down the forces which provide meaning, harmony, and direction. We see this happening today, so we understand the context. We know what's going on in the world, if only subconsciously or subliminally, and that knowledge is internalized. We know what's going on, and as writers we either give in to chaos or we choose to use our literature as a guide to renew the Earth and its people. All good literature has done this in the past. It is the responsibility of writers to write stories that contain meaning and a sense of direction. The scribes, after all, have always been on the side of the gods and the telling of creation stories. How we came onto this Earth compels us to write of our relationship to each other, to the Earth, to the cosmos. Our bodies and spirit seek internal rhythm, balance, and harmony. Living in an era of transformation, that time when human consciousness can crash or move to a higher plane, creates new dimensions of responsibility, especially in those of us who write. Or will history record that we, too, were swept up in the age of commercialism and consumerism to such an extent that we did not recognize the spirit of the time? We did not see the possibility of disaster or the possibility of rebirth. The birth of the twenty-first century will be known (if history extends that far) as the blossoming of the age of information. We satisfied ourselves with dreams that technology could cure everything, as long as we got enough information. We indulged in the information age, but thought little of the value of the information we were getting. What was our role on Earth? a few writers asked. Did we write about the waste and destruction around us? When violence swept around us and we lost our youth to drugs, did we write meaning and direction into our stories? Or were we too swept up in a cynical stance at the end of the century? Some of us have found meaning and harmony within our own, smaller communities. Even as the world grows more global, we recognize a need to find direction in more intimate, particular communities. Communities we know. Perhaps it is in the particular region that one finds a truer relationship with community. It is in the particular community that one finds a sense of power Living in an era of transformation, that time when human consciousness can crash or move to a higher plane, creates new dimensions of responsibility, especially in those of us who write.
474 What Good Is Literature in Our Time? and meaning. The global village, after all, is being created by forces far beyond the control of most of us. Falling back into the circle of our own communities may be the first step in saving the individual, and as we save the individual we hope to save the group. From the security of the place we recognize, we may be able to communicate across frontiers, the frontiers we only imagined had been erased by the World Wide Web. So the creation of meaning within one's smaller, particular community may be a necessity for the individual to grow and be heard. It is there people speak to their ancestors and guard their knowledge. I find this sense of meaning and direction in the socalled Third World writers. Writers in the disfranchised communities of the world describe themselves with a strong voice, and at the same time they describe a sense of direction and meaning the rest of us can internalize. Salman Rushdie's work, as complex as it is, comes to mind. So does Michael Ondaatje's recent novel, The English Patient (1992), whose powerful theme is really about the end of time we have created by building atomic/nuclear bombs. We find the spirit of history in the magical genius of a Garcia Marquez. Writers from Latin America, China, Africa, and the Third World writers also come to mind. In our own country we learn more about the spirit of survival from the so-called ethnic, regional, and gender writers than from the old establishment, the so-called oligarchy of American intellectual life. There is no one generation of writers in this country; perhaps there never was. Prior generations of writers have been defined by academics, and that process left many out. What we see happening at the end of our century in this country is the "discovery of the voices" of our distinct communities. We have discovered our diversity. Writers from the diverse communities of our country have insisted that literature can be created from the rich histories of their places, and small press editors have brought their stories to light. The once voiceless communities have now spoken; in art, poetry, story, dance, and murals, the dispossessed have spoken. Our heritage is diverse, and so our literature is diverse. But there is more than just the acknowledgment of diversity at stake; there is a wonderful sense of discovery afoot. Why? Because it is the writers from our diverse communities who truly mirror the state of literature in our country, and it is in those writers that we find that sense of meaning and direction we so urgently need. I am a product of this flowering of our literature in the 1960s; I am a writer from one of those communities. In the 1960s the Mexican-American writers in this country created a literary
American Literary History 475 movement. Much of it escaped notice by the editors and critics of the establishment. Initially we spoke and wrote only for our community, out of an impulse to give direction to our group, but the truth is, and the meaning of diversity is, that we wrote not only for ourselves, we spoke across frontiers. We breached gaps. Some heard us, in this country, around the world. Some began to ask: Who are these Chicanos? What are they saying about meaning in their lives? How does the meaning in their lives affect mine? Meaning is the greatest gift we can give life. To help center the individual or the community is, for me, a primary reason for art. The purpose of the Chicano literary movement was to give meaning to our lives. Mexican-American history in this country had been nearly lost. It was so neglected in the schools that generations of Chicanas/os began to believe they did not have a history or a literature. We were disconnected from the continuity of our history. The way of the ancestors was nearly lost. What saved us from complete negation of self? How were we able in the '60s to create an artistic movement out of so many centuries of neglect? I think it is because our language and folkways had been kept alive at home, in the villages, in the barrios. There we existed within the familiar circle of the values of our ancestors. We heard the stories, we spoke Spanish to our parents, we kept the flame of our particular existence alive. A foreign world had encroached, and some of the meaning of our past was lost, but it was not completely erased. This keeping of one's particular history is not a new phenomenon. It is the course of human events. It is not the flowering of communal histories that should alarm us, but their suppression. Even after centuries of suppression, the voice of all distinct histories will be heard. We would be wiser to honor those histories than to think we can forever erase the past of any community. Many communities in this country found their voices in the '60s. A struggle for independence ensued not only in the black community and with women's liberation, the struggle also took place everywhere. We Mexican Americans in the Southwest US called it the Chicano Movement. We created our voice and named it. While not as potent or long lasting as the black civil rights movement, it nevertheless helped to define us as we searched the archives of our folk for meaning. Inscribed in the art of the Chicano Movement was an aes- thetic that took its meaning from the people. Plays depicted the lives of the campesinos, the farmworkers. Murals depicted historical heroes, poets, artists, the daily life, and the Mexican warriors of the revolution. Chicana writers discovered Frida Kahlo and
476 What Good Is Literature in Our Time?. the Virgen de Guadalupe because in such figures the feminine spirit was acknowledged and examined. They discovered their own feminism and how to give it voice in poetry and story. A revolution of liberation was made from that empowerment. Chicana/o poetry used the real multilingual language of the street, the music and rhythm of a Spanish-speaking community who had learned English. Our poets mixed into it the black American lexicon and swing, and the patois of the pachuco. The poetry of the Chicano Movement returned to the epic, using the personal search for identity and the overthrowing of oppression as its motifs. Epic poetry was written by poets who just yesterday had learned the power of the word. It spoke to the oppressed masses, as epic poetry should. A social, economic, and spiritual revolution sounded in the literature of the time. In an age of transformation our writers did provide meaning and direction, and most potent was the unveiling of our spirit. A liberation from shackles is, after all, spiritual. Novels and stories depicted our homes, communities, the folk. Suddenly our grandparents, neighbors, farmworkers, folk healers were the protagonists of our stories. In the early days of the movement our community looked in the mirror of the work we had produced and applauded. They liked what they saw; they saw themselves. Those outside our community who read our poems and stories also took notice. The age of transformation was upon us, and one way to save ourselves was to become the protagonists in our art. That movement in various particular guises was happening around the world. That liberation of spirit is what characterizes the end of our century. As we turned within we dealt not only with the oppression in our lives, we rediscovered our folklore and mythology. It flooded our art. Mesoamerican mythology found its way back into our worldview as we searched for meaning. We found our Native American roots. We dug out indigenous myths and stories and the meaning they held, and we claimed them as part of our inheritance. I worked with groups of writers from many communities in those days. What Chicanos and Chicanas were creating in the Southwest was happening elsewhere. Meeting the writers of this country was an education. These were not just the writers published by the Eastern publishers, but writers who sprang from the earth of their region, the people of their community. A diversity of voices was being heard in the US, and it was great. The literary history of the latter part of this century can no longer be written without taking into account this phenomenon of diversity. Whether or not the Chicana/o writers of this genera-
American Literary History 477 tion have made an impact on the larger intellectual community remains to be seen. The media still controls the image, and it still doesn't encourage a meaningful, vibrant role for Mexican- American literature in the broader intellectual life of the country. A great deal of our contribution has been spread by small presses, through word of mouth, by one person handing another a book, by attending readings, by a network of seekers of knowledge. A slow process, but it has spread. It is perhaps, even in the age of the Internet, the way all liberating revolutions are spread. The contact is from one human to another. How will history record our age of transformation? Will it be just one more cycle in the growth of trade and commerce? Will we use the technology of the Internet only to create consumers and label our progress only in terms of gross national product? Or will we be able to say that looking back at the end of our century we read in the works of writers a sense of the change, signposts for the road ahead? A warning that we had to repair the human spirit. At the most extreme we can say we almost lost the way. We retreated into our specific communities so deeply we feared those not like us; we created the "Others" and blamed them for the problems of the world. We found the strength in the center of our community, then didn't share it across frontiers. We used ancestral wisdom only to empower ourselves. I believe in another vision. We can write that we entered our particular community to find the meaning and direction we needed in the face of a chaotic world. We entered our circle seeking ancestral meaning, and centering ourselves in that inheritance we found direction. We learned we could shape our destiny even in the era of transformation. We wrote that meaning and direction into our stories. The end of one cycle of time has within it the seed from which a new era will be born. We are that seed. Literature can have meaning in our time.