Katharine Newman and the Making of MELUS

Abstract

I envy, have always envied, friends and colleagues with excellent memories. My memory has always been, if not a sieve exactly, then at least an unreliable and erratic mental tool. I wish I could remember in greater detail some of my conversations with my friend Katharine Newman. I remember the pleasure and good humor of them and some of the challenges that they often presented, but little of the substance or content. So what I would like to say here will touch on some things, general and particular, that I do remember about Katharine and that I think the members of MELUS ought also to remember about her. Katharine Newman was more than a pioneer in an academic field of inquiry, the editor of a couple of anthologies of ethnic American literature in the early 1970s. She invented an institution. At an age when most academics have fixed their gaze oil the pleasure of retirement, Katharine created the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States. This creation was not an idea tossed out by Kay to be implemented by younger enthusiasts. On the contrary, Kay was always the greatest enthusiast and advocate for the Society among its founders. As I have noted at every MELUS meeting I've addressed since Kay's retirement, Katharine Newman invented MELUS in every significant part: the Society itself; its journal, MELUS; its bulletin, NewsNotes; and its annual conference. In each of these institutional developments Kay met with and overcame opposition and faint-heartedness, rallied the support of the faithful, inveigled co-operation, and prevailed. Had she had her way, MELUS would have had a few more parts-a book review publication, an executive director, a literary history project, and a high school text-anthology--but cooler, more practical heads prevailed in those instances. However, Kay was right about the worth of these additional parts, even when she was wrong about the Society's ability to afford or staff them. Like founders, forefathers and foremothers, everywhere, Kay could be obstinate and single-minded, at times even difficult. She had little patience with incompetence and indolence. And she had a temper that sometimes flashed into anger. I heard from colleagues about tongue-lashings they had received when she was not pleased by some MELUS decision or (in)activity. I was often surprised at this, because she was never difficult with me. I dealt with her as I dealt with my own mother, who could also be obstinate and single-minded, I did my best to avoid telling Kay things I knew she did not want to hear. And I refused to acknowledge her anger at others. During my term as President of the Society (1984-1986) and later as Editor of MELUS (1987-1999), we came to an understanding: I would listen to her position on every pending topic but never felt compelled to do what she wanted done if I did not agree. I was not afraid of her, as I was not afraid of my mother, though I acknowledged both as presences that needed to be respected and sometimes handled. We became friends at least in part because I resisted her. I only rarely had to remind Kay of the explicitly democratic principles of governance that had been built into the Society's written constitution, at her insistence, during the radical 1970s. One instance of Kay's temper that I remember clearly: we were at UCLA for the Annual MELUS conference, about to get into Kay's car to go to dinner. Kay saw Amy Ling, who was then engaged in a tenure battle at an institution that apparently did not appreciate her work in ethnic literary studies. Kay berated Amy for wasting time trying to correct these canonical traditionalists when she should be getting on with her important work on Chinese American women writers. In Kay's view nothing, not even the desire for justice and personal vindication, should come before one's commitment to the work of reforming the canon of American literature. It was a hard lesson, and Amy was clearly hurt by Kay's vehemence, embarrassed by its parking lot venue. …