Final Blog Post Assignment

Your last regular blog on the readings is due this Sunday, May 8. After that, your final blog post, as noted on the syllabus, is due Sunday, May 21st by midnight. Your assignment for that last blog post (10% of your final grade) is a little more extensive than the regular blog assignment.

As a final piece of writing, it should attempt to tie the semester together and provide closure to your literature blog. You are expected to reflect on the texts as a whole, the themes we have encountered as a whole, and the responses you have written on your blog. This final piece of writing should also reflect on your increased understanding of women's literatures, lives, and experiences. Consider the following questions as prompts for writing (but don't feel as if you need to answer each question). Pick some topics that are important to you and use them to help shape your writing.


* What is women’s literature, what does it try to accomplish, and why is that important?
* What experiences define women’s lives? What is celebrated, lamented, vented in anger?
* What is important to women in history, relationships, education, their bodies, self-identity, progress, and expression?
* What have you learned throughout this course? What do you know now that you didn't know before? What have you gained?
* What strikes you as important in all the discussions we have had? What have these texts made you think about, reconsider, or wonder?

This final blog post should be 600-800 words long, should include specific examples from some of the readings we have done, and should demonstrate your ability to analyze the literature of the course as a complete unit. However, you do not need to quote from every text we have read. Choose some texts that stand out to you or help you prove your ideas. Use the semesters' blogs to help you pull out some direct quotes.

This assignment, although somewhat longer and broader in scope, requires the same type of writing that you have been doing all semester, and it will be graded using the same exact rubric and criteria as all blogs.

I look forward to reading these final pieces.

Reading and Writing about The Shawl

How would you describe the tone and feeling of the first story "The Shawl"? How is it different from the later story "Rosa"? Why did Ozick create this difference?



Why do you think that Ozick chose to include such a small segment of story representing the Holocaust experience compared to a much longer, drawn out version of Rosa's life in Florida? How does the form here mirror the content?



What gaps are there in the story, in Rosa's memory, in the differing versions of stories told by different characters? Why is this important to the book? Also, think about some of the contradictions in this book, things that just don't make sense to you as a reader? What makes sense to Rosa? Again, why are these contradictions important?



Is Rosa crazy? Why does she smash up her successful store and relegate herself to a life of squalor in Florida? What does Ozick want readers to learn or to think about from Rosa's story? Is this a story of survival and triumph or is this a story of oppression?



What is the significance of Dr. Tree and his study? Why does Rosa reject his version of reality? What does she object to? Can you make any connections between her attitude toward Tree and her attitude toward Stella?



Why does Rosa refuse to admit that Magda is dead? Explore the many possibilities here.



What role does Mr. Persky play in the story and in Rosa's life? Is the ending a positive, hopeful, ending? Is Rosa transformed in some way by her interaction with Persky; does she change or have any realizations? What do you imagine happens after the book ends?



What do you think Ozick's intentions are with this book? What does she want us to get out of it?



This is another story about motherhood. Reflect on the way motherhood affects a woman's identity. How is Rosa's survival mitigated by the loss of her daughter/motherhood?


How does this book connect to others we have read about surviving a traumatic experience, especially When the Emperor was Divine and Push?

Divine Emperors

Here are some possible writing topics for When the Emperor was Divine:

1. Some people have labeled Otsuka's style as minimalist because of what one Eng 217 student on Wednesday described as the "monotone" feel of the narration. Certainly, the emotional impact of the writing seems muted or concealed under a surface layer, especially after reading Push which had an opposite style/feel. Do you agree that Otsuka's style is minimalist? What is the effect of her style and why do you think the author employs this particular style? How does it relate to the novel's content, the characters, etc.?

2. Beneath a monotone surface of writing lurk powerful emotions: shame, fear, resentment, anger, etc. Where do we see these emotions erupt and what does that show about the bigger picture of the characters' lives and feelings?

3. There are a lot of interactions between humans and animals (ex. White Dog, the bird, the horses, the turtle). What is the significance of these interactions? What is the author suggesting about humanity?

4. Why do you think the main characters are unnamed in the book? How does that detail add to the author's project? Compare the lack of names to people and places that are named in the book and see what is emphasized in this comparison.

5. Comment on the silences or the things left unsaid in the novel. What do the gaps reveal about what is being hidden or ignored and why?

6. Color is important in real and symbolic ways throughout the writing. Look at the various uses of color and think about what their importance is. What do they illuminate? Also, compare the use of whiteness and colors to the idea of American vs. Japanese identity.

7. Track the ways that the characters change through the experience of being in the internment camps. How are the family members different people when they come back? Have they traded roles in some cases? How do you think they will/can go on with their lives, go back to "normal"? What is the effect of the camps on the identity of the characters? Say where you see identity being shaped, altered, crushed, etc.

8. Explore further the themes of lying, truth, and fantasy that we began to cover in class discussion. How does the end of the book speak to these topics?

9. Relate this novel to the idea of the American Dream and the stories we tell about our nation in American history.

10. Why do you think the author seeks to break the silence surrounding this historical event by telling this story? (Her mother and grandmother lived in an internment camp but the author heard/knew little of their personal experiences.) How might this novel also relate to the historical events of 9/11 (considering the novel was published in 2003)?

Push

Discussion Questions or Push

How does the voice of Precious change the way we see her? Can it change the way others in her community see her or refuse to see her?
What roles do language and emotion play in the book?
At what points do we see change in Precious? At what point do we see Precious owning her identity and her destiny rather than accepting what others have forced on her? What influences her change?

As Precious learns about the world around her, how do her views on race and sexuality change? Do her friendships help her lose her biases and see beyond stereotypes? What factors contribute to the way Precious sees the world in the beginning of the book, and what factors make her reconsider?

What problems does Sapphire want us to be aware of? What societal institutions does the novel critique? What solutions do you think she offers?

What is the role of Precious' community in forming her individual self?

What is the role of literacy in identity formation? What is the role of writing and expression in Precious' story? Why are these crucial elements?

What does Precious learn about her identity as a parent? Do you think she comes to forgive her own parents? Why or why not? What does Sapphire suggest about motherhood and the role it plays in identity formation?

What is this book suggesting about themes like power, abuse, and survival?

What do you think of the ending of the book? Is it hopeful? What do you think happens to Precious and her son?

Is this an American Dream story or the opposite? Is it a story of hope or a story of despair? Or is it not that simple - and why?

What is the purpose of the Life Stories at the end? Why does Sapphire end with them and what do they add to the novel?

Writing about Fun Home

Fun Home is a autobiographical graphic novel, and it is also a coming-of-age story. Accordingly, there are a lot of themes in this work that echo other books we have read this semester: themes of self-expression, developing an identity, personal beliefs vs. societal expectations, sexual exploration, desire, guilt, control, and insecurity. You can write about Bechdel's talk on any of these themes and what she adds to the conversation.

One of the things that makes this work very different is the pictures. Bechdel is an artist, and she is doing a lot of interesting things with the images she presents, in writing as well as pictures. Notice some of her fine details, how she plays with light and shadow, what is in focus and what is sidelined in various pages, what is repeated, changed, etc.

Like many other writers, Bechdel seems to suggest that writing is an outlet for survival as well as expression. Like Ensler, she also uses a dark humor as a coping mechanism. Explore this in her tone and in her contradictions.

Like Nye, Bechdel looks to her father in order to understand herself. Throughout Fun Home, she reads her father's sexual identity as a mirror of her own (lots of images of mirrors throughout) just as Nye read her father's cultural identity as a mirror of her own. What might this suggest about the way that children use family as a springboard for their own self-expression and identity? How do these authors both embrace and reject their families? How so they learn from their experiences? Specifically, how does Bechdel write a different ending for herself than her father's and why is that so important?

Reading Buterflies

photo © 2009 Hafiz Issadeen | more info (via: Wylio)



Remember to keep your character charts/event timelines.

Here are some reading and writing questions that you can blog about: (warning: #7 contains a spolier)


1) Why does Alvarez feel compelled to tell this story, to bring this story to American
readers? What does she want us to gain from knowing this history, from knowing
these women? Is this an American story? How is this also Alvarez’s story? Where
is her voice here?

2) By the end of the novel, how have the characters of Minerva, Mate, and Patria
changed? Have they changed the revolution or has the revolution changed them?
Is there a happy ending to this story at all?

3) In the epilogue, Dede’s perspective is presented from a first person point of view,
unlike her previous chapters which were in third person. Why? Has she finally
found her “I”? What has she learned about herself by this time? Who is she and
how has her view of herself changed? Why does Alvarez dedicate the novel to
Dede?

4) Why does Trujillo kill the sisters even though they’re no longer directly involved
in the revolution? Were the women victims, martyrs, heroes, or something else?
What about the men? Why doesn’t he kill them? What does he do instead?

5) By the end of the novel, do you get used to Alvarez’s style? Why did she choose
this style? Does it work? Is she able to get you to finish reading the book even
though you know the ending? What does she focus on instead and why?

6) Alvarez says that she wants to take us beyond the legend in creating her
characters? Does she do this? How? Why?

7) What do you think she is trying to accomplish with this book? What is she saying
about truth, justice, storytelling, the search for self, the roles of women, and other
themes touched on in the book?

Bookstore Alert!!

The bookstore sends any unbought books back about halfway through the semester. They sent an email saying that it was almost that time. So, if you haven't bought the rest of the books needed for this class, and were planning to buy them at the bookstore, wither buy them now or go there and ask them to hold them for you. If not, they will send them all back and you will need to find them elsewhere.

photo © 2006 Ian Wilson | more info (via: Wylio)

Blogging Ideas for I Am An Emotional Creature

1. Explore the contradictions in the text. What do they reveal about the lives of girls today?

2. Explore the connections between 2 pieces in the text (for example: Dear Rihanna and Bad Boys or Asking the Question and It's Not A Baby... or Guide to Surviving Sex Slavery and 35 Minutes). How do they speak to one another?

3. What progression do you see taking place over the 3 sections? I find the last section the most powerful, and it makes me reflect back on the first two a bit differently. Think about how the 3 make sense to you or work together to build some larger project.

4. Look up some of the women or groups mentioned in Section 3 and explore the context a bit more. How does that enrich your understanding of the text itself?

5. Consider the epilogue. What else would you add to this poem? What else do girls need to know or be reminded of?

6. The word "feminism" isn't used in the book, but how might Ensler be defining or repackaging feminism from a 21st century girls' perspective.

7. Ensler draws distinctions between "girls" and "boys" as well as between "girls" and "adults/women." Why? What does that show?

8. As I read this book, I think a lot about "nature vs nurture." In some places it seems like Ensler essentializes, even stereotypes, girls (for example, she implies that all girls are emotional). Other places, I see her questioning/challenging those assumptions or saying something else entirely. What can you add to this conversation? Why are these questions important to think about in regard to girls in general and Ensler's project specifically?

9. What does the game "Would You Rather?" show abut girls, especially the one girl who wants to play it?

10. Thinking about one of the facts along with a few other pieces, what do girls need in High School besides "Sex Ed" in order to not get pregnant, etc.?

Reading and Writing Questions for The Vagina Monologues

Here are some analysis questions that we may explore in class discussion or in an in-class writing. You may also use them in blogging:

1)The genre of this piece of literature is drama, meaning that Ensler wrote these monologues to be performed. Why do you think she wants vaginas to be publicly performed? Why does she want vaginas to be physically embodied? What effect does this have on the way we see and think of vaginas?

2)For Ensler, language is important? Why? What does it matter what we call body parts? What is the importance of language in defining sexuality, bodies, etc.? Why do you think she asks those questions about what vaginas would wear, etc? What is she trying to do with that?

3)Ensler seems to have two purposes in this text: to celebrate vaginas and to raise awareness of violence against women? Does she achieve both of these goals equally? Do they contradict each other at all? What is the effect of reading all the monologues as one large piece?

4)Emotion plays a huge role in what Ensler is trying to accomplish. Why is this? How does she use emotions like humor as a strategy? How does she move us from laughter to embarrassment to sadness to other emotional reactions and why do you think she is doing this?

5)Audience reaction is crucial to Ensler’s overall project. Why? Why won’t she allow us to simply read without having a reaction, whether positive or negative? Why do you think she wants to push us out of our comfort zones? Which monologues resonate most strongly (positively or negatively) with you and why?

How much do you know of Haiti's history?

The title of the second story in Danticat's collection, "1937" signifies how much the writing is steeped in Haitian history. You need to know a little about this history to truly understand the images and references in the collection, especially this story, especially the title of the story, and especially the third story, "A Wall of Fire Rising." When reading these two pieces (or before you read or re-read them), look up some information on Haiti and its history. Learn a little about the significance of the folowing things:

1937
voodoo religion
Massacre River
Boukman
Toussaint Louverture
Duvalier (Papa Doc)
tonton macoutes (from 1st story)

Language and Story in Krik? Krak!

Edwidge Danticat, the author of Krik? Krak!, is a Haitian-American writer. Unlike Naomi Shihab Nye who was born in the United States, Danticat was born in Haiti and came here at the age of 12. Like Nye, however, Danticat writes to pass on stories, to reaffirm history, identity, cultural memory. The title of her book comes from a tradition of storytelling passed down from elders in the Haitian community: "We tell the stories so that the young ones will know what came before them. They ask Krik? we say Krak!" This tradition preserves the stories in a collective, communal, memory: "Our stories are kept in our hearts."

This theme of story, speech, writing, and communication are found throughout the book. In the first story, for example, there are two narrators, writing in separate journals (although ostensibly writing to each other as well.) The male narrator is wanted by the government as a traitor because he spoke his mind on the radio. That results in his current situation where all communication is hidden from public view. In fictionalizing these two diary writers, though, Danticat reinstates their intended correspondence as public language -- writing to resist silences placed on them by outside forces. (The author talks more about the importance of voicing these silenced voices in the epilogue, which we are reading for next week.) Language is seen in this first story as dangerous, but also powerful. Think about the relation of language to other forces of power in the story like government, violence, love, family, etc. What part does language play? What can it accomplish?

In the first story, also pay attention to the two speakers, their different writing styles, and the stories they tell (for themselves and for others). Also, consider why Danticat begins her collection with this specific story, putting her own voice somewhat in the background by foregrounding the two 1st-person narrators. Why give us a glimpse of their private and personal communication? At the same time, the individual narrators are also somewhat depersonalized as they are unnamed, anonymous. Why is this? What is the effect of that tactic? Is there a connection to the comment on page 3 that there are "lots of people in this world whose names don't matter to anyone but themselves"? How does that statement relate to Danticat's purpose in writing?

Exploring Humanity in Naomi Shihab Nye’s Poetry

In class on Monday, we began to identify a few prominent themes in Nye’s poetry and examine some of her purposes for writing. Our discussion only scratched the surface and did close reading of a few poems. In your blogs, you can go further with what we discussed and apply some of those ideas to other poems in the collection. What are these poems suggesting about humanity, connection, knowledges, perception, stereotypes, etc.? What is Nye painting a picture of as important and why that and not something else? How is she trying to shape what we are seeing and how we are seeing it?

The introduction to her book also provides some excellent starting points for writing. Taking a point she makes there and trying to see how and where it plays out in the poetry one way to do literary analysis of this work.

For example, on pg. xii, she talks of people as “disconnected dust.” How might that compare to the way she writes about connection in poems like “Two Countries” or “How Long Peace Takes” and others? She also describes children as sheltered, tended “birds.” Contrast that image with some of the stories of schoolchildren or images of young people found in various poems. What is she showing in these contrasts?

We touched briefly on the theme of hope in class, how her writing in response to 9/11 nevertheless has a hopeful feeling often. Where does that hopefulness come from? Where do we see it in the poems? In the Intro, she talks of “gazelles” that are “leaping toward the horizon with hope” (xii). This image seems especially important because of the title of the book. Try to examine these gazelles a bit more. What do they represent in the poem “19 Varieties of Gazelle”? Why name the book after them?

In another piece of Nye’s writing, she claims that “poetry humanizes us.” What do you think that means and how does it play out in this collection? How might this connect to her ideas of what “a true Arab” is or is not? Nye writes in the Intro of feeling as if she and others are “writing parts of a great collective poem” helping her to feel “rooted and connected” (xiv). What does she mean by that? What role is writing/storytelling playing in her work in general? And why is that important? Why extend that connection to us as readers?

Go deeper into this theme. Nye says that she writes so she “could think over” things (xiii), that “poetry slows us down, cherishes small details” (xvi), that “writers believe in words” (xvi). All of these phrases seem to connect to the idea that she seeks to mend a gap that exists between people. She finds healing in a variety of places and people, like her Grandmother: “What wisdom did she know that all these men can’t figure out?” (xviii). What underlying meanings is Nye exploring in these passages and in the poems that connect back to these passages.

Finally, if you want, try to place this poetry in its larger context. In the Intro, she talks about unbalanced media representation of the Middle East following 9/11 and the “sorrowful headlines in the background to carry around like sad weights” (xiv). How is her poetry a response to all of that? Go further and look at the long history of war and violence in the Middle East, especially between Israel and the Palestinians. What happened, for example, in 1948? How does the poetry weigh in on that conflict and its historical complexities?

As I said before, this is just a start if you need it. You may have questions and ideas and connections of your own to explore, and that’s fine too. Think through these points as you consider what to write but also as you continue to read. We will hopefully come back to some of these questions in Friday’s class as well.

Writing a “Literary Analysis” Blog

photo © 2009 Markus | more info (via: Wylio)


In the syllabus for this course, there is a detailed description of what your blog posts should contain, and I specify that you should be recording some aspect of “literary analysis.” The analysis you bring to the text is part of the way you make meaning when reading a piece of literature. In class, we have started to model how to do this, what to look for, etc. However, if you haven’t done this before or don’t feel very confident in your abilities yet, I have a few ideas that I hope will jumpstart your writing process.

**See my next post for more specific ideas on writing about Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry.**

Remember that there is no one right way to do literary analysis, but that doesn’t mean that there is no wrong way. You will need to show that you engaged with the text, understood what you read, read closely and carefully, and can support your analysis with specific examples from the text. Each blog post will be graded on the following items:

1) Clear Understanding of the Text and Accurate Summary, Description, etc.: (This shows that you read the book/piece and took time to understand it accurately.)

2) Original Ideas about the Text: (This shows that you are doing some independent thinking and not just summarizing the text or repeating what we said about it in class.)

3) Analysis and Interpretation: (Your post doesn’t just summarize the book or give your opinion on the book, but tries to make meaning of the subtleties presented in the literature.)

4) Direct Quotes to Support Your Ideas: (Every post you write needs to include at least one direct quote that ties in to your analysis. Be sure to also discuss in the post exactly what the quote shows.)

5) Clarity of Your Writing: (Your writing should be clear and easy to follow.)

Each blog post is worth 20 points total. Each one of these 5 items can earn 4 points each: 4=excellent, 3=good, 2=satisfactory, 1=weak, 0=not at all. Of course, you can also lose points if your post is shorter than the required length, and blogs submitted after the deadline will not earn any points.

I think you will get the hang of how this works after the first week, but feel free to ask questions and read other people’s blogs to see how they’re approaching the assignment.

19 Varieties of Gazelle

As we work through this book, this week, here are parts I would like to focus on:

For Mon:

Introduction
My Father and the Figtree
The Words Under the Words
Arabic Coffee
My Grandmother in the Stars
19 Varieties of Gazelle

For Wed:

Prayer in my Boot
Jerusalem
Two Countries
Peace
How Long Peace Takes
Blood
Praying For WInd
Olive Jar
Stain
My Uncle's Favorite Coffee Shop

For Fri:

Different Ways to Pray
Biography of an Armenian Schoolgirl
Spark
The Clean Rinse
For the 500th Dead Palestinian...
The Tray
5 more of your choice

The Vagina Monologues at SCSU

SCSU is staging a version of The Vagina Monologues, a play we are reading for this class soon. Extra Credit will be offered to anyone who attends the performance (and submits a one-page reaction to it). Extra Extra Credit will be given to anyone who is part of the performance team (no write-up needed). Director Sarah Rizzuto sent me the following info. Email me if you want or need more info and I will forward her entire email to you.

Casting Calls: Monday Jan 31 from 3:30-4:50 & Tuesday Feb 1 from 5-7:00 in EN C-108

Performances: Monday February 14th at 7:00PM & Tuesday February 15th at 7:00PM in the Student Center Theater

Contact Info:

Directing Team: Ashley McGuffie (ashmcguffie@yahoo.com (203) 218-1459); Sarah Rizutto (runningstars@hotmail.com ) and Eunice Opuku (opukue1@owls.southernct.edu)

Production Team: Ebony McClease (mccleasee1@owls.southernct.edu ) and Moira Duffy (duffymhd@gmail.com)

Class cancelled today due to snow

So here is a snow poem for you
(not a woman writer, but a contemporary American poet):

photo © 2009 Mrs. Gemstone | more info (via: Wylio)



Snow Day


Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

In a while I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch,
sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed,
the All Aboard Children's School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with -- some will be delighted to hear --

the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School,
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and -- clap your hands -- the Peanuts Play School.

So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.

Billy Collins

A Welcome Poem

Seize The Day

By Judith Ortiz Cofer



Remember to wake early and take your time in rising.
Enter the world refreshed by the hope emitted by each atom of light,
by the bird who must sing at the sight of the sun.
Does he pity us humans,
who can choose not to break into song at dawn?

Look for small revelations all day.

Let water heal your body.
Think of bathing as a ritual of new beginnings.

Step outside and breathe deeply.
Take in the smells of life, good and foul.
Remember this day is a gift.

Be surprised by nature that shares your world of giant steps.
The bug that irks you,
the yellow butterfly that catches your eye,
and the furred thing with sharp teeth that repels you –
are all in your moment of history.

Concentrate on living hour by hour as if you were feeding coins
into a meter measuring your life.
Here is this hour, and you have already paid for it.

Love your work, and enjoy your play.
Remember, there is little lasting joy in things
done only for gold or fame.
Without love your spirit will be a flower picked without purpose
and thrown on the ground to be trampled by anyone.

Have a place and a time to sit with your thoughts.
Pray before sleep, or read a great poem.
Sacred words will clear your crowded mind.
Remind yourself to speak Spanish
before you go into the dark.
Greet your ancestors
in our native tongue, let them guide you
to the place of your origin, an island in the sun,
our home now only in our dreams. Say noche,
say amor, say suenos.

Welcome the night.
Good sleep is your body’s mending time.
In its sweet release, the fires of worry and anger will be subdued;
and in dreams you may learn to fly above any blaze,
and let your secret self float free
above a new world.
You must imagine and learn to embrace
each and every day.