Tribals and Tribulations: Choctaw and Chinese Americans Fight Cultural Suppression and Identity Confusion Through Tradition

Abstract

Mainstream American society has a history of suppressing minority voices and censoring ideas contradictory to the “American way.” This means silencing indigenous voices, such as those in LeAnne Howe’s Shell Shaker, and ones of Chinese Americans in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. Although in different times and situations, the Chinese-Americans and Choctaw people similarly use culture to survive, defend, and fight off pressures of a society that demands conformity and assimilation. The consequences of these pressures are reflected by these authors and others like them in the identity of characters, through the influence of gender, the experience of "double consciousness," and the relationship between silence and suppression. In order to defend against these pressures, Chinese Americans and the Choctaw people use ancestral help, community, and most importantly, oral tradition. Storytelling in both communities is at the heart of culture, so it is the sole defense against a society trying to destroy them at their core and one in which both these works clearly demonstrate.