It’s What Poets & Ethnographers Do: “Utter Mutuality” Through Literary Ethnography

1. It’s What Poets & Ethnographers Do: “Utter Mutuality” Through Literary Ethnography ONE CHILD POLICY by Kuo Zhang When Ms. FengJianmei was senven months pregnant in a remote village in Shannxi province, local officials forced her to have an abortion since she failed to pay the fines for violating China’s one-child policy. ---The New York Times, June 26, 2012 They said my boy shouldn’t be born because I already have a girl. They took me into custody. I couldn’t afford the 40,000 yuan fine. They gave me an injection of anesthetic and poison. Then my seven-month son stopped kicking and giggling in my womb. They didn’t inform my husband about the surgery. Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor with Kuo Zhang KUO’S FIRST ATTEMPT by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor So nervous I almost forget key to my boyfriend car. He know best way to get there on Chinese time: early. Wait room still full, at least 10 American in line at DDS I so nervous, I almost forget key on plastic chair. My boyfriend tease me, say I forget right from left way, urge me think in Chinese all steps before say hello to White Lady. She famous on immigrant blog, detest foreigners. I so nervous, forget turn key for ignition. I look boyfriend way, freeze when she say blinker or braker, I make guess to move. Boyfriend in backseat whisper Chinese word. You fail! she say. You learn for speak English first! She not even give me chance for pass test. So nervous, I almost forget key rule on U.S. road: don’t speak Chinese. Introduction Questions concerning the ethics of representation are not new to either the fields of anthropology or creative writing. Anthropologists (e.g. Denzin, 1997; Lather, 2008) and creative writers (e.g. Quigley 2011; Saje, 2009) alike have focused attention to issues related to privilege and power and the fine representational line between recognition and commodification of the “Other” in any kind of writing that involves asymmetrical power relations between the representational writer and the subject whom is being written about. • Two Forms of Knowledge---Ethnographic and Poetic • Ethnographic knowledge • Preselection phenomenon for study • Systemic data collection (e.g. interviews, recordings, photos, etc.) • Analysis of data sets with grounded theory • Poetry knowledge • Craft & compression (e.g. diction, line, tone, meter, figuration etc.--most meaning in the fewest and most musical words) • Rupture and expansion upon traditions • Articulation of emotion, taboo, and the unexpected. • Shared: observation, note-taking, rigorous reflection, ethnical considerations, micro-macro factors, make the ordinary strange & the strange ordinary, publish. Objective: Utter Mutuality This research draws attention to the ethical pitfalls and possibilities inherent in literary anthropology (poetic inquiry in particular), to identify qualities of practice that are responsible, humble, and reflexivewhich advance the project of “exquisite mutuality” (Boyle, 2013) in multicultural education. Through poetry and creative scholarly prose, I (Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor)) recount my scholARTistry, guided by both ethnographic and poetic principles to increase understandings of multicultural education in teaching preparation. I examine poetry writing as a method and representation of ethnographic inquiry, looking at my own writing of a dramatic monologue in the voice of Kuo Zhang, a Chinese graduate student and research participant in my teacher education inquiry project. I also examine Kuo’s use of the dramatic monologue in the context of a poetry course for TESOL educators. Poetry Workshop with Tom Lux LUX: is her broken English, plausible, believable? She knows a fair amount of English, like a lot of us in foreign languages, she doesn’t have the grammar straight. POET: I think you have a problem trying to read something like this out loud because if you’re going to have to say the Rs like Ls, so you have to really go for it if you’re gonna do it LUX: That’s an interesting question, do you really have to do that but then we’re bordering on parody that could be stretched to racism. You know “flied lice” stereotypes; we would have a hard time with their sounds too….It is the artist’s job to write in other people’s voices. I remember someone asking a senior Czech writer who’d written a novel from the point of view of a 15 year old girl in a concentration camp who was raped and someone asked him [how he could do that] and he said, “You know, ‘that’s my job. that’s my job to do that.” It’s the writers job to embody other people. • Research Questions • What do anthropologists and poets share and what might we learn from one another regarding the ethical and aesthetic considerations of writing in, about and for the voice of the “Other” in writing that crosses cultural, linguistic, and racial differences among others? • What are the risks and what are the possibilities of such writing? What considerations must be attended to by those whose aim is both ethnographic and poetic within the literary turn in ethnography?