Many previously colonized peoples continue to mediate double consciousness as they hear perspectives of their history from both the colonized and the colonizer. Tyson explains that double consciousness is, “a consciousness or a way of perceiving the world that is divided between two antagonistic cultures: that of the colonizer and that of the indigenous community” (421).
Although these various post-colonized peoples struggle with different cultural identities stained by European hands, they share certain qualities of pride and defense of their origins. Two very different populations, the Amerindians and the Irish, both faced unfair atrocities due to the British. Poets from both populations juxtapose the British interpretation of history with their internal thoughts. Native American poet Sherman Alexie and Irish poet Eavan Boland both advocate for their people’s voices, point out cruelty that was inflicted upon them by the colonizer, and bring voice to the silenced narrative of their people through poetry, Alexie via “On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City,” and Boland via “In Which the Ancient History I Learn is Not My Own.”
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Both hear the history of their land and what took place on the land from a British perspective. They reform the voices that they hear mentally with their perspectives on the Eurocentric documentation of history, the dirtying of their land, their acceptance of the history, and their rewriting of history. Alexie and Boland tell similar stories about hearing their history told incorrectly, and their parallel accounts highlight the connection that many post-colonized peoples share in a collective battle against the colonists’ attempts to form a master narrative through silenced double consciousness.
Both poets analyze the British teachings from a Eurocentric perspective, and they acknowledge that the colonizers truly think they improved the colonized peoples’ livelihood. The poets understand that from this view, each of their nation’s “true history” began when British actions took center stage. Boland explains this perspective from the seat of a history class. As the London teacher lectures on English figures and battles, Boland states that she is “learning to recognize/ God’s grace in history” (23-24).
God’s grace is the arrival of British influence and the beginning of a history worth studying, so from the English perspective, English battles in Ireland are appropriate to be studied under the course title “Ancient History Class” (39). Alexie points out the same Eurocentric mindset that civilized history, also known as history worth documenting, began when the British infiltrated North America. He narrates an encounter with a woman on a train who is describing what she perceives to be the rich history of the land.
She exclaims, “look at all the history, that house/ on the hill there is over two hundred years old” (2-3). He mentally retorts, “we should all know of the tribal stories/ whose architecture is 15,000 years older” (8-9). Both poets are being taught the British perspective either intentionally or through general societal beliefs. They hear what is being said, and then they counter it with much earlier history that they wish to celebrate. Though they celebrate different histories, they share historic pride.
The two poets challenge the “objective’ history penned by the white man that is taught within the classroom and publicly shared. They give voice to the argument that the oppressor is not always right, and that change doesn’t equate to progress. They challenge the history books with their personal experiences that don’t align with the text. Patricia Hagen and Thomas W. Zelman advocate for the marginalized poets who raise their voices against objective history, arguing that they have, “an ethical obligation to de- and re-construct those constructions that shape literary tradition, bearing witnesses to the truths of experience, suppressed, simplified, falsified by the ‘official’ record” (443).
These poets propel the deconstruction of written history by both raising issues that history ignores and by challenging what is not taught. Alexie states that contrary to the one Walden Pond that history concerns itself with, “there are five Walden Ponds/ on my little reservation out West/ and at least a hundred more surrounding Spokane/ the city I pretended to call my home” (14-17). The “objective” history of white men glorified the pond that they saved, but the ponds that didn’t bring glory to their restoring hands elude the history books. Also, Sherman points out that Spokane, the address that history books assign to him, is only his pretend home.
Boland also alludes to her ability to challenge the history books’ explanation of what she considers home. While she listens to her teacher lecture, she reflects, “where exactly/ was my old house?/ Its brass One and Seven./ Its flight of granite steps./ Its lilac tree whose scent/ stayed under your fingernails/ for days” (66-72). Actively wondering about where her home was shows that she refuses to forget her history. She will remember her own history and not rely on history books to tell her from where she came. The memories of her home will stay with her as the scent of lilac stayed under her fingernails. History books cannot change how Alexie and Boland view their land, and they defend their personal knowledge with their writing.
Not only do Sherman and Boland challenge the objectivity of history, they deliberately expose how colonizers in both instances try to claim ownership of lands and minds that they, from the perspective of the poets, ruined. Alexie listens to the woman on the train praise the restoration of Walden Pond. She does not even consider that the colonizers had to restore it because they dirtied it. Alexie silently thinks, “if Don Henley’s brothers and sisters/ and mothers and fathers hadn’t come here in the first place/ then nothing would need to be saved” (23-25).
Boland describes the dirtying of Ireland in broader terms with the description of a linen map made by the Irish that was “shiny/ and cracked in places./ The cracks were darkened by grime” (3-5). The map was once clean when it was in the hands of the Irishmen who made the linen, but it grew dirtied in the hands of British institutions. Alexie describes the literal ramifications of the dirtying of his land, and both Boland and Alexie describe the dirtying of their people’s consciousness through the colonizer’s education. They illuminate what the the colonizers consider progress and purification as detrimental to the colonized land and psyche.
Based on their behavior and actions, Boland and Alexie are both recognized as civil by the colonizer. Boland is accepted by her London teacher, and a white woman sees Alexie as a satisfactory conversation partner. Both poets feel the influences of the colonizers: neither of them share the colonizers’ view that history before European infiltration should not be taught, and they both want to fight it. Boland states her longing as she listens to her teacher lecture on the map by thinking, “suddenly/ I wanted/ to stand in front of it./ I wanted to trace over/ and over the weave of my own country./ To read out names/ I was close to forgetting” (57-63).
Her double consciousness is evident as she learns the name of the English battles, and yet longs to be reminded of the names that her native people gave to the lands. Alexie sits quietly as he listens to the woman talk about “her country’s history” (33). Alexie rejects her version by stating that it is her history and not his. However, he lives in the same county and shares the ramifications of the history that she speaks. The history that the poets hear is simultaneously both their own history and foreign. Although they hold separate histories, they collectively share the unacceptance of a foreign, colonial perspective.
Boland and Alexie also experience the pressures of double consciousness with the desire to revive knowledge of their people’s history without stirring up conflict. Although they take pride in their native history, they want to live without additional repression. They both leave their situations with unresolved irritation. Boland listens to a lecture on the Delphic Oracle and explains that people who asked the Oracle about the future left with as ambiguous direction as she maintains for the readers of her own poem. Alexie says nothing to the woman on the train; he only makes plans like all Indians do about, “what I would do and say next time/ somebody from the enemy thought I was one of their own” (36-37). He desires to stay true to his people while remaining civil. Jennifer Gillan explains that Alexie is, “concerned with the entwined experiences and identities that position him within cultures with different demands” (94). Both Alexie and Boland feel set apart from the colonizers, uncomfortable, yet they only think to themselves about what they want to do. The colonized sit in different places, in different times, sharing the aggravation of hearing history told incorrectly. These poets express the internal argument that colonized people have as they balance a known culture and history with the one that dominates their land. Outwardly, both the Irish student and the Amerindian sit in silence, blending into the English culture, but internally they band together, waving the banner of native history.
Although they may not challenge the voices of Ethnocentrism verbally, Boland and Alexie retort in ink. Not only do Boland and Alexie show their disagreement with the documentation of history, they also share their unique histories with the readers. Their individualized narratives add to the overarching chronicle of their people’s histories. In an interview, Boland describes the everyday experiences as “the sort of incidents that I deliberately use” (Reizbaum and Boland 473). Their writings criticize what is recorded and replace it with individual honest accounts of their lives. Alexie explains how he experienced double consciousness: as he grew up in a world exposed to both a pre-colonized and post-colonized culture, he felt alienated from his own culture. He saw his own people as a stereotype through the eyes of the British. He explains his feelings in an interview: “Growing up all I got exposed to was Mother Earth Father Sky stuff, or direction stuff. That’s how I thought Indians wrote. I didn’t know I could actually write about my life…. I could write about fry bread and fried bologna” (Newton 414). Alexie had to realize that he could write for his people in a contemporary way. By expressing his individual experiences, he both demolishes stereotypes and constructs a documentation of honesty. His life is a true record of history, his history.
Alexie and Boland are two individual poets that tell individual stories that align with one another in their post-colonized states. Together they present two drops in the bucket of a master narrative of what postcolonialism looks like for the marginalized. Their specific stories give voice to not only their own situations, but also to the situations of thousands. They use specific daily accounts to challenge the recorded history, questioning what is called right and wrong and how progress is defined. They leave behind a history book of their lives in the form of poetry, a documentation of their experiences that will outlive their short lives and add to the master narrative from all perspectives of an event. As Patricia Hagen and Thomas Zelman eloquently explain, “art - poetry, painting, history - outlasts human lives; its images offer us a sense of the past which allows us to view and situate ourselves, individually and collectively, as heirs to tradition” (443). They artistically document everyday encounters that portray their honest experiences in life. Alexie and Boland wear no blindfold as they negotiate double consciousness and listen as the colonizers describe history. They mediate the lessons they hear about the refurbished Walden Pond with the murky red pool of water that they see to contribute their individual experiences to the master narrative of marginalization.
Works Cited
Alexie, Sherman. "On The Amtrak From Boston To New York City - Poem by Sherman Alexie." PoemHunter. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Aug. 2016.
Boland, Eavan. "In Which the Ancient History I Learn Is Not My Own." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 25 Aug. 2016.
Gillan, Jennifer. “Reservation Home Movies: Sherman Alexie's Poetry.” American Literature 68.1 (1996): 91–110. Web.
Hagen, Patricia L., and Thomas W. Zelman. “"We Were Never on the Scene of the Crime": Eavan Boland's Repossession of History.” Twentieth Century Literature 37.4 (1991): 442–453. Web.
Newton, John. “Sherman Alexie's Autoethnography.” Contemporary Literature 42.2 (2001): 413–428. Web.
Reizbaum, Marilyn, and Eavan Boland. “An Interview with Eavan Boland.” Contemporary Literature 30.4 (1989): 471–479. Web.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today a User-Friendly Guide. 2nd ed. Hoboken: Routledge, 2006. Print.
