American Epic

Despite being in the midst of reading articles about hermaphrodites, drag queens, and transsexuals and finishing the documentary, Southern Comfort, for another course, I think I’ll try to choose to not write about intersexuality and related topics for this week’s response for Middlesex simply because in the bulk of book one and two, Calliope/ Cal hasn’t been quite born yet. Though, I will do so next week… When my copy of Middlesex came from Amazon, it came proclaiming as the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, an “international bestseller,” chosen by Oprah, and with pages and pages of snippets of reviews. A particular line in the little blurb/ summary sandwiched between these proclamations stood out to me: “Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.”

With that in mind, my first reaction to that line as I made my way through the first half of the novel was that Middlesex was more than a “reinvention,” but more like a tongue-in-cheek- jab at what the hegemonic American experience/ identity is or what American (family) values are. I am sure that a knowingly incestuous relationship, then marriage between a blood-related brother and sister followed by a marriage between second cousins within an incredibly tight and confusing family tree, and then a hermaphrodite would be a far cry of a description of what most considers a typical American family lineage. Incest and hermaphrodites were and are still deviant, sensationally “freaky,” and a minority (maybe to the point of erasure) in the face of mainstream American society. Aside from the terms of kinship and sexuality, Middlesex (at least book one and book two) is quintessentially an epic narration of the unique American experience in the 20^th century.

Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides leave their home country to due to political unrest/ war, a reason not unheard of in many immigrant narratives. They go through Ellis Island and land in Detroit at the peak of the Roaring Twenties. At that time, mass production and Ford’s automobiles were beginning to take central stage in shaping America for the rest of the century. Lefty is initially employed at Ford’s factory and embedded is the changing experience of human labor becoming unskilled and almost mechanical. The tug between immigrants assimilating into American society and trying to keep ties to the home country and culture and is salient in the Ford-melting-pot play and in the strain between Lefty, who is more adept in adapting to American society (particularly American markets), and Desdemona, who still holds onto her home culture tightly as evident in her cooking. Discrimination and racism are other themes related to immigration. At the turn of century, eastern Europeans like Lefty and Desdemona are not considered “white,” in the sense of a privileged white Americans, as evident in the degrading visit from the Ford “sociological” investigators for “cleanliness” to the Stephanides and Zizmo household. At the same time, there is unrest between the African-descent and people of color community and these minority immigrant groups as evident in Desdemona’s initial visit to the Temple for a silk worker job.

The Stephanides family narrative also goes through other American-defining historical events such as Prohibition and speak-easies, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. Post-WWII, the lineage continues with the marriage between Milton and Tessie. They participate in American-defining moments like moving to the newly developed suburbs and presumably the American Dream. Within these two generations, there is another unique American experience: the tug between immigrant parents and their first-generation children as evident in Milton’s take-over of Lefty’s established Zebra Room. Presumably, this narration would probably go into other American experiences in definitive time periods like the 60’s and so forth.

After discussions of The Scarlet Letter and Lolita, I started to pay more attention to the narrator of novels. In Middlesex, the narrator is Calliope/ Cal. Obviously, Cal has not been born yet and was not present in the narration described above (unless you count her/ his fantastical presence through the recessive gene being passed along). The first question I have is about the reliability of the thoughts, dialogue, and events of the narration so far. At the same time, relying on a narrator who wasn’t actually present does make the narration more like an epic saga. I look forward to the continuation of this epic narrative in the larger American experience and Calliope’s/ Cal’s personal experience.

Tags: American Experience, incest, Middlesex, Narrative, Sexuality

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 28th, 2012 at 8:12 pm and is filed under May 1, Vita Xie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.