Inscrutable Zoot Suiters and Civil Rights Ambivalence in Flannery O’Connor and Toni Morrison

Alison Arant uses the zoot suit—an outfit that is simultaneously conspicuous and difficult to interpret—as a way to put the fiction of Flannery O’Connor in conversation with that of Toni Morrison. In their fiction set in the 1940s and 50s, including one unpublished story by O’Connor, both authors create zoot suited figures who are not quite visible to those around them. Arant reads O’Connor’s and Morrison’s works in the context of the zoot suit riots of 1943 and argues that both writers use these inscrutable zoot suiters as a way of exploring the fears, promises, and limits of racial integration. Together these texts demonstrate the persistence of white ideology, which persists both in individual minds and in social systems that purport to be free of it.

Luis Valdez’in Seçilmiş Oyunlarında Chicano Kültürü Yansımaları

Luis Valdez, tarım işçilerinden oluşturduğu tiyatrosunun temellerini Chicano kültürünü referans alan üç sacayağı üzerine kurmuştur: daha çok politik içerik taşıyan doğaçlama kısa oyun anlamına gelen actos, Maya ve Aztek mitoloji ve efsanelerini yansıtan mitos ve de oyuna müzik, şarkı ve dans yorumu getiren corridos. Bir Chicano kimliği yaratıp, Chicanoların öz kültürleri ile bugünkü yaşamlarını içselleştirebilmeleri Valdez’in oyunlarında yer alan temaların en çok öne çıkanlarından birisidir. Bu makalede, Valdez’in, Zoot Suit, Bandido! ve I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges! isimli seçilmiş üç oyunu ele alınmıştır. Bu oyunların incelenme nedeni, her birinin bir yandan toplumdaki Chicano önyargısını hicvederken, diğer yandan oluşturulmaya çalışılan Chicano kimliğinin şekillenmesine yardımcı olmasıdır. Bu amaç doğrultusunda Valdez’in neredeyse tüm oyunlarında, en az ana karakter kadar sahnede varlığına işaret edilen Chicano olmak “düşünce”sinin, “eylem”e dönüşümündeki süreç irdelenmektedir. Hâlihazırda var olan Chicano kimliğinin ve Chicano topluluğunun varlığını reddeden kesime tanıtılması halinde “varlık,” bir olgu olmaktan çıkıp bir eyleme yani “olay”a dönüşür. Bu bağlamda, tiyatro okuruna/izleyicisine, Chicano Tiyatrosu’nun Amerikan Tiyatrosundaki yerini özellikle sosyokültürel ve politik mesajlarla göstermeye çalışıldığı gözlemlenmektedir. ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH Reflections of Chicano Culture in Selected Plays of Luis Valdez Luis Valdez established his theater consisting of farm workers on a trivet, taking Chicano culture as a reference: actos improvised short play with more political content, mitos reflecting Maya and Aztec mythology and legends, and corridos bringing music, song, and dance interpretation in play. Creating a Chicano identity and internalizing their mother culture and present lives is one of the outstanding themes in Valdez’s plays. This paper discusses three of Valdes’s selected plays, Zoot Suit, Bandido!, and I Don’t Have To Show You No Stinking Badges!. The reason why these plays are analyzed is that each of them helps to shape the Chicano identity, while satirizing the Chicano bias in society. For this purpose, in almost all of Valdez’s plays, the process of transforming the “idea” of being Chicano, which is indicated at least as much as the protagonist’s presence on the stage, into “action” of becoming Chicano is scrutinized. In the case of introducing the already-existing Chicano identity and community to those who deny its existence, “being” turns from being a phenomenon into an “action”. In this regard, it is observed that it is tried to exhibit Chicano Theater’s place in the American Theater especially with sociocultural and political messages.

Early Identity, Environment, and Experience

Josefina Fierro de Bright served as a political and social activist in the 1930s and 1940s through her participation in the Mexican Defense Committee, El Congreso (the National Congress of Spanish-Speaking Peoples), and the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, as well as her important efforts to end the violent attacks on ethnic Mexicans in Los Angeles during the Zoot Suit Riots. Fierro participated in organizations focused on human, civil, women’s, and labor rights. She contributed to a cross-cultural “politics of opposition” determined to create a world where true equality might flourish. She used American nationalist and transnationalist approaches. In the United States, Fierro networked with activists, celebrities, and political leaders who supported many of the same causes that she did. Her transnational approach materialized in the form of collaboration with the Mexican consulate, which also sought to secure the human rights of ethnic Mexicans living in the United States during a time of strong anti-Mexican sentiment. In order to understand why and how Fierro emerged as a leader willing to challenge the racism undergirding the segregation and mistreatment of ethnic Mexicans in California in the 1930s and 1940s, this study examines her family’s history of social activism, the fluid sociocultural environment of an American Left in which women played central roles, and her bold and charismatic leadership style.

Embodying the Background

In the summer of 1943, race riots stirred waves of violence across several US cities, the largest taking place in Detroit, Harlem, and Los Angeles. During wartime, patriotic anger was aimed not only outward at the Axis powers, but also inward at US citizens. This article focuses on Los Angeles’s Zoot Suit Riots, exploring how in a surprising number of accounts of the alleged riot, movie theaters serve as backgrounds alongside white, Mexican American, African American, and Asian American women, who appear as minor, nameless characters. Finding instances in work from Beatrice Griffith and Carey McWilliams, in fiction from Fernando Alegría and Chester Himes, and in the canonical Chicano films Zoot Suit (1981) and American Me (1992), the article traces the supporting roles women and movie theaters serve in these diverse narratives, and how both come to visually and discursively represent dangerous wartime boundaries.

Roots, Rebellion, and Reform

This chapter closely examines three of LA’s biggest violent disturbances—the 1943 Government Riot (popularly known as the Zoot Suit Riots), the 1965 Watts Rebellion, and the 1992 Rodney King Uprisings. Each section begins with a brief recounting of the circumstances of the outbreak of each disturbance. Following this, the authors discuss the preconditions of each event: from the social, economic, and political changes to the role of LA police and government in each period. Each section culminates in an analysis of the reports produced by each “riot commission.” The final section highlights what the authors found. Tracing LA’s history of violent disturbances, they show that community governance discourse has time and again been used as part of a larger public confidence-building project.