Item Number 000257 - Original Query
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 1994

Next semester I am teaching a survey course in World History (1500-present) for the first time.Conceptualizing the course and narrowing its focus have, of course,confounded a novice such as I but I have decided to approach it through the lens of love in the world since 1500. I would, therefore, greatly appreciate suggestions for short, readily available and easily readable works--biography, memoirs, or novels--dealing with male/female relations in five world areas--North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Ideally, I would like a single work for each of the five centuries covered, one from each area for a total of five. Class analysis of these readings will center around what each relationship tells us about gender, race, and class in that particular culture. For example, I have thought of using John Smith and Pocahontas or Cortez and Dona Marina for the Americas, as relationships which explore the encounter of europeans and natives as well as the phenomenon of women as cultural mediators. I can't find anything on either of these couples however. Since world history is not my particular speciality, I defer to the experts. HELP!

Susan Eacker, Visiting Asst. Professor, Miami University, saeacker@miamiu.acs.muohio.edu

Item Number 000260 - Reply #1
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 1994

To Susan Eaker of Miami U. Love in History! For Africa, let me suggest one for a starter. It's by Okot p'Bitek and it's called _Song of Lawino_ and _Song of Ocol_ -- published together between one set of covers by Heinemann Educational Books, African Writers series. It's a translation from the author's indigenous Acholi and, with the clever use of a row between a wife and her husband, explores Westernization vs. traditional values, male vs. female, etc.

Another one might be Elechi Amadi's _The Concubine_, which explores several themes, including relations between the sexes in a precolonial West African setting.

This should make a good start. If you want others, you can reach me by e-mail at,

Randall L. Pouwels
RANDYP@cc1.uca.edu

Item Number 000261 - Reply #2
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 1994

Susan Eacker,
Brilliant way to organize a world history syllabus.

For Africa you will want to explore the literature of Nigerian novelist Buchi Emecheta.

Additionally, you will definitely want to view a film produced by Cameroonian Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 1992, entitled QUARTIER MOZART, distributed by California Newsreel; In French, subtitled in English. The film explores the sexual politics of love and life in a "middle-class" quartier of Yaounde, Cameroon. Bekolo's first film (age 26), Quartier Mozart is a Spike-Lee-esque (I think explicitly so) production, and fascinating, although perhaps a little too confusing for beginning students.

Cheers and please remember to share your final syllabus with us when it is together.

Pier M. Larson
History Department
Penn State University
PML9@psuvm.psu.edu

Item Number 000262 - Reply #3
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 1994

Additionally Susan Eacker might be interested in a court case not so much about love as about marriage, gender, ethnicity, "tribal" authority versus individual autonomy, which was argued recently in Nairobi, Kenya. Well, it IS about the politics of love. A prominent Kenyan lawyer, of the Luo ethnic group, died on December 20, 1986. A fight ensued between his wife, of the Kikuyu ethnic group, and the lawyer's clan over burial of the dead body, which raged over several months in court, on television, and in public debate between conflicting rights, duties, obligations of wives, husbands, clans, ethnic groups.

I provide you two citations:

Book: David William Cohen & E.S. Atieno Odhiambo, BURYING SM: THE POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF POWER IN AFRICA (Heinemann, 1992). This is probably too difficult for beginning undergraduates, although short (100 p), but cast a glance at it.

Article: Patricia Stamp, "Burying Otieno: The Politics of Gender and Ethnicity in Kenya" SIGNS 16,4 (1991), 808-845.

Pier M. Larson
History Department
Penn State University
PML9@psuvm.psu.edu

Item Number 000263 - Reply #4
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 1994

Susan Eacker wrote:

>Next semester I am teaching a survey course in World History >(1500-present) for the first time.Conceptualizing the course and >narrowing its focus have, of course,confounded a novice such as I but >I have decided to approach it through the lens of love in the world >since 1500. I would, therefore, greatly appreciate suggestions for >short, readily available and easily readable works--biography, >memoirs, or novels--dealing with male/female relations in five world >areas--North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

I would caution against focussing exclusively on male/female relations. Same sex "relations" are also relevant to the history of love.

Also, a relevant reference may be: Henry Abelove "Some Speculations on the History of 'Sexual Intercourse' During the 'Long Eighteenth Century' inEngland" in *Natioanlism and Sexualities*, ed. by Andrew Parker, et. al.

Item Number 000266 - Reply #5
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 1994

If you decide on Cortez and Dona Marina, you will need to be very careful. Much that people think they know about that relationship is the result of post-independence Mexican myth-making that began in the 19th century. Whoever wrote the entry for D.M. for the Encyclopedia Britannica fell for the whole myth.

D.M. did NOT go to Spain, was not received in court, did not have a palace in Chapultepec. She did not have multiple children by Cortez, did not kill her child(ren) because he left her to go to Spain/take them to Spain. Etc.

When there was a discussion recently about using literature in teaching World History, I was tempted to post something about a recent book (Malinche: Slave Princess of Cortez. By a woman named Duran, published last year by Linnet books.) It claimed to be anthropologically and historically informed. Thanked Michael Coe, the Yale anthropologist, in the acknowledgements. Has a "pronouncing glossary" in the back. Snowed the New York Public Library, from which it received a designation as one of the year's recommended books for adolescents.

It was only because the book is pitched to teens rather than the 18-22 year old reader that I didn't mention this earlier.

The book is a crock, and I am sure Michael Coe would be embarrassed by it. It is profoundly ignorant of the context of contact in 1519-1526. Except for the trip-to-Spain, reception-in-court myth, it buys everything that has been invented about D.M. in the last couple of centuries.

The pronouncing dictionary is also ignorant. The precontact world Duran describes is full of things (bananas, mangos, malaria) that were introduced post-contact. The education of young women and the motives and emotions of D.M. are straight gothic romance.

Since Mexican independence from Spain, D.M. has been the handy scape goat for centuries of colonial rule. After all, she is female, indigenous, and long-dead. It was independence that created the context for the concept of malinchismo, the betrayal of one's own in pursuit of the foreign. D.M. was immediately trivialized through sexualization. For close to two centuries Mexicans have been unable to mention her without calling her "the mistress of Cortez." Frans Blom called her "a tender morsel." Octavio Paz called her "la chingada," (the fucked one).

I did my best to separate the historical person from the myth in Between Worlds (Rutgers, 1994), and I have taken a more interpretive tack in "Rethinking Malinche" (to appear in a volume on Mexican Indian women, edited by Susan Schroeder and forthcoming from U.of Oklahoma Press).

I don't think romantic love had much to do with D.M. and Cortez, or if it did, we can't know anything of it at this remove and with this little documentation. She left no texts herself. Cortez mentions her only twice in his letters, only once by name. Bernal Diaz del Castillo claims she said she was proud to have borne Cortez a son and was content in her marriage to his lieutenant Jaramillo.

She had been ripped from context and changed hands at least twice befor she was given to Cortez, so she had nobody to betray. She certainly had few choices. And there is no evidence that she was subject to blind lust for white men. In fact, she was in the hands of both Maya and then Spanish men for a surprisingly long time before she was impregnated. One possibility is that she was so valuable as an interpreter that Cortez protected her from sexual usage, because pregnancy would have made her less available for work. He had, by the way, children by several other Mexican Indian women.

I don't think there is a love story here.

Frances Karttunen
LIAR457@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu

Item Number 000268 - Reply #6
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 1994

For a premodern love story you cannot overlook The Return of Martin Guerre.

Peter Holloran, Pine Manor College
pch@world.std.com

Item Number 000271 - Reply #7
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 1994

There's a rich literature in China and Japan on this topic. For China I would suggest the selection from *Red Chamber Dream* (also knowna s *STory of the Stone*) in Cyril Birch, ed., *Anthology of Chinese Literature,* vol. 2, pp. 203-258. This is an 18th-century novel, the chapter deals with an upper-class man taking a concubine and trying to keep it a secret from his wife. For Japan, try Chikamatsu Monzaemon's play "Love Suicides at Sonesaki" or Ihara Saikaku's "What the Seasons Brought to the Almanac Maker," both in Donald Keene, ed., *Anthology of Japanese Literature." Both are late 17th-early 18th century. Chikamatsu's play (less than 20 pp. in length) is a tragedy about a love affair between a shop apprentice and a prostitute; Saikaku's stories are usually more comic than tragic.

Robert Entenmann
St. Olaf College
entenman@stolaf.edu

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