*Pictured at the right "Diversity". Also, a gay man*
Well the class is. Not so much Non-Western literature as a whole. I rather enjoy reading something that hasn't been shoved down my throat for years. Although I love my English classes, I was getting entirely sick of reading "Beowulf" and "The Tempest" over and over again. So, I took Non-Western Lit last semester.
I should have known it was going to be a problem just by virtue of all my other classes not being a problem. I always have that one class that just doesn't work out. Intro to Diversity ("You're Racist!), Debate (You're Racist!), Critical Interpretation ("You're Racist and can't tell the difference between Synecdoche and Metonymy). Note, there's a bit of a theme here. My teacher told me that I was too closed minded and that I could learn from my classmates. Protip: The right answer is not "I do not pay tuition to learn from 20 people with associate's degrees. I pay tuition to learn from the person with all of the fancy letters after her name." Maybe I'm wrong. It's happened plenty of times before. It will most likely continue until I go to that great Chicken Wing Shack in the Sky.
Every book we read was coming from a Post-Colonialist point of view. I really didn't have a problem with this but as the semester wore on and on, it was hard to see the Non-Western Lit part of view. It was just like reading western literature that was sprinkled with brown people occasionally. I never walked out feeling I had a sense of culture. Rather, I walked out sensing how western culture has affected others.Example: If we read about India, the stories might have an Indian or two, but the majority of the characters were white or were trying to escape browness and assimilate into the White world. I am also pretty ok with that. If I lived in a place where being brown was a problem, I probably would too...oh wait....
We read two stories out of ten that I considered to be western literature. One was about the Biafra war in Nigeria. The other was about the cultural revolution in China. None of my classmates knew anything about the events and they all hated these stories. I can cut some slack for not being hip the the Biafra war simply because our schools focus narrowly on what is considered to be important history. Clearly, we only learn about the popular genocides (Of course, my classmates could only name one genocide. Two if you count the class debating on if Rwanda actually counts). However, not knowing about the Chinese Cultural Revolution (any of them much less the one we tend to be familiar with) was a bit much for me.
I entirely lost it when I had to sit in a class of 20 something young mostly white (although I can't say with 100% certainty they were all white because I have plenty of members of my own family that can pass for white) young people discuss what people in a genocide should have done instead of being geocided to death.
"I would have just left the country": Of course! No one ever thought of that! And it was just as unlikely that if they did think of it that other countries might turn them away or not want to deal with refugees.
"I would have never eaten dead animals from the roadside.That's so gross": You also wouldn't have survived long with that attitude.
"They would pry my rights from my cold dead gun-toting hands": Which is pretty much what happened to a lot of people. Grats for being ahead of the curve?
"I am so glad we don't have that kind of intolerance here. Third world countries have so much work to do." : I know what this person was trying to say but it was ludicrous coming in the middle of a conversation of these young people looking down on how people survived. Also, since they were only really familiar with one genocide, I wanted to point out that particular genocide happened in a non-third world country and wasn't full of the silly misguided brown people but I thought if I opened my mouth it might come out like "Hisssssssssss *incomprehensible shrieking*"
I already knew that in nearly everything I would read in an English program is going to be pretty White and Pretty Western. I love my glorious (dead) white overlord-authors. However, I was mildly confused by every story in my non-western literature class being heavily white and western. Pointing out the fact that our stories were still heavily western (The last story we read was by a guy in the United States. He says right in the front of the book he was writing a historical fiction and in no way shape or form intends to speak for the people, he was just fascinated with the culture) literature got me labeled as a racist. At least this time it was coming from white people. Normally, it's my own brethern and semi-brethern accusing me of being a self-hating brown folk.
Our last story was about the Marshall Islands. As you all may know, the United States did some serious nuclear testing there. The people in the area have issues with cancer, reproductive issues, and other health issues. A member of my class said "It's so refreshing to see people who don't blame the United States and white people for all of their problems. We even took care of them and gave them 11k per person."
Now that I have written this out, I don't think my problem was mostly with the class at all. I still do not consider the class to be western lit but the literature was memorable and touching. I think my problem is with stupid people. At least I have the good common sense to keep my stupid opinions out of the classroom and post them on the internet instead. If you folks will excuse me, I am off to sign up for non-western lit part 2. My degree path requires for me to be a well rounded individual and I am failing miserably.
