An American Experience: A Reflective Essay of My Scholarly Work

Jaime Puente

I started attending the University of Houston-Downtown in the fall of 2000. Within a

year and a half I had already stopped attending. Working and partying was the most important

thing to me at that time. When I returned in 2006 I came determined to push myself to new

horizons of intellectual inquiry. Pursuing a degree in English, specifically English literature, I

knew that I wanted to focus on American Literature, but also American history and philosophy. I

wanted to know who and what I was in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001 and both

the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. I wanted to know why it was so easy for people in our society

to homogenize themselves and others when pressed by fear. Most of all, I wanted to know why I

was so angry with my government, my family, and myself, for not being able to articulate my

own identity. Am I Mexican, am I American, am I neither or am I both? These questions drove

my desire to return to school and take a multi-disciplined approach to finding some answers.

Slowly but surely, my scholarly work took shape. While not represented in this portfolio,

two introductory classes informed my work and course of study, Introduction to Philosophy and

Introduction to Literary Theory. These two classes exposed me to a wide variety of theoretical

perspectives. Literary Theory set the foundation for my ability to apply philosophical,

sociological, and psychoanalytic, theory to literary texts, while the philosophy course opened

doors to more nuanced understandings of such theories. What is found in this portfolio is a

concerted effort to engage in scholarly discourse from three distinct perspectives, the literary, the

philosophical and the historical that seeks to tease out the meanings of identity. My studies are

informed in part by modernist thinkers such as those in the school of Marx, Freud, and

Nietzsche, but more recently by, what I like to call, post-thinkers. By that, I mean scholars

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such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Edward Said, whose post-structuralism and post-

colonial ideas are represented in my essays in both the citations and methodology. While my

understanding of such dense theoretical positions is still in its infancy, I have always made the

attempt to wrestle with these ideas in my work.

The first essay in this collection is a final essay written for Dr. Jane Creightons ENG

3322 Mexican American Literature class. Titled, Caught Between Two Worlds: the

Predicament of Antonio Cuitla in Amrico Paredess The Shadow, this essay discusses the

effect of the so-called American Dream on Antonio Cuitla, the protagonist of the novel The

Shadow. Paredes creates a hybrid character in Cuitla that is at once Mexican and American, but

the latter only in spirit. I argue that the storys protagonist is haunted, not by the ghost of his

dead compadre, but the ghost of his identity as a Mexican person. This essay is a good

representation of my ability to discuss a work of fiction and elaborate on its meaning through the

use of critical and historical texts. The study of identity and Cuitlas duality drove my essay, and

it marks a beginning of a chain of thought that spans the course of my upper level course work.

The next essay is also a critical examination of a novel, and again, it was written for a class

taught by Dr. Creighton.

In the spring of 2009, I registered for ENG 4311, Contemporary Literature being taught

by the cooky yet brilliant Jane Creighton. My essay that semester discussed a novel by J.M.

Coetzee, titled Waiting for the Barbarians (1980). In The Double Face of Empire I use

Coetzees novel and the deconstructive theory of literary scholar Susan Van Zanten Gallager to

argue that in the empire-colony dichotomy even the most innocent colonizers are culpable in the

actions of the state. I discuss the use of torture in the novel as a way to describe the transfer of

information between colonizers and colonized through pain inflicted upon the body. In this essay

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I engage in a theoretical discussion and explication of Coetzees novel using literary criticism

that is founded in post-modern theory. While the discussion of transferring knowledge and

experience through torture is extremely compelling, the next essay I am submitting is an example

of being able to fuse my lust for pop culture with my academic endeavors.

One of the most amazing educational experiences Ive ever had happened in Dr. Chuck

Jacksons ENG 4314 Major Authors: Richard Wright and James Baldwin class. We were reading

Wrights Native Son (1940), and the second or third day of discussion I made my way to school

listening to an album called Straight Outta Compton (1988). During class our discussion of racial

hegemony, as discussed by sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant, and Bigger Thomas

in Wrights novel reminded me of lyrics from songs I listened to that morning. The nihilism I

perceived in Wrights character Bigger corresponded to that being expressed by a group of kids

rapping on an album in 1988, singing Whos the man with the masterplan?/ A nigga with a

muthafuckin gun . Dr. Jackson encouraged that train of thought, and I produced an essay called

Whos the Man with the Masterplan?: Bigger Thomas and the Trope of the Angry Black

Man. This is one my finest essays because it shows my ability to historicize, contextualize, and

connect a narrative across time, space, and form. I synthesize and critique the sources I use to

show continuity between Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and rap groups such as N.W.A. My

final essay written for a class in the English Department, is also the most recent.

I am currently in Dr. Antonio Garcias ENG 3387 Modernity and the Avant-Garde. After

registering for it the second time around, I am very happy I am in this class. Discussing

Modernism from the perspective of Charles Baudelaires 1863 essay The Painter of Modern

Life I wrote an essay titled, The Filth and the Fury of Baudelaires Modernism. Using the

work of Walter Benjamin I argue that the shocks of experience Baudelaire relied upon by living

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in the city informed his perspective of what it means to be beautiful and modern. Writing this

paper I had to rely on my philosophical and theoretical background to understand the ideas

Benjamin used to explicate how Baudelaires experience influenced his thinking. While

discussing Baudelaires use of shocks, as Benjamin called them, I also helped solidify my

comprehension of European modernism as an artistic and literary movement. Written for

literature or theory courses the previous four essays all have a close connection to the next two

essays because the history and philosophy papers are examples of my belief that a basic

foundation in all three fields is necessary for a better understanding of how identity is

constructed.

As a supplement to my English courses, I took several philosophy and history courses.

The two being represented here are for Dr. Theresa Cases HIST 4305 History of the New South,

and Dr. Jeffrey Jacksons PHIL 3305 Contemporary Philosophy classes. The first is a study of

Mexican Americans living in Houston during the Great Depression. Titled, Mexican Americans

in Houston: Facing Adversity and Becoming American during the Great Depression, 1929-

1939, the essay is a historical research paper that is founded on primary material, and argues

that Mexican Americans in Houston fought to be recognized as American to escape the

discrimination aimed at Mexicans. I discuss the idea that some Mexican Americans embraced

their ability to be considered white as a way to gain access to certain privileges. This essay

helped me understand better the history of the people whom I identify most with, and provides a

necessary context for any study of my identity and context in socio-historical time.

The one philosophy essay I am submitting is an argumentative essay that engages the

existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartres idea of radical responsibility to freedom and Dr.

Cornel Wests argument that Democracy Matters (2004) to argue that the borderzone between

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the United States and Mexico poses the greatest risk and most promise to the future of American

democracy. This essay is an example of my belief that being a critic is not enough. I must try to

offer solutions. It also shows that I can use theoretical arguments and apply them to real world

problems because I believe as scholars we must engage in the world around us. As an aspiring

literary scholar it is important to me that I also engage in serious philosophical thought.

This collection of work from the last three years has been a labor of love, torment, and

redemption. Writing these essays, I have tried to explore myself through the works of others, and

in all three fields, literature, history, and philosophy, I have done just that. Each essay that was

written for a literature class engages identity in some way, and it has become an interconnected

theme throughout my work. The history and philosophy essays are important to include in this

collection because it speaks to the multifaceted perspective from which I approach a text. In each

essay there are elements, bits and pieces of theoretical insights peppered across pages that are

informed by modernist and post-modernist thought. This portfolio, and the essays it contains, are

not only examples of my academic achievements, but my ability to better understand with

whom, how, and why I identify those I do.