Please do this Bricolage Blog after we have discussed Anzaldua and Alvarez

Bricolage: do an inventory of your personal culture(s) and see if you can determine where the things you wear, buy, eat, think, read, watch--come from. How globalized are you?  What do you disavow from your culture of origin? What do you stress?  Explore your hybridity and share with your classmates.  (See article by Michael Kimmelman, which inspired this assignment: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/arts/18abroad.html?ref=design

Here are samples of my students’ bricolages taken from an earlier course Ning: http://worldlit295.ning.com/

“Various cultural influences shape my tattoos. I have the words "nature" and "god" tattooed across my wrists in Sanskrit, a space where Jesus was allegedly pierced as he was crucified. On my upper arms I have an abstract version of the African continent (abstract because it's supposed to mimic the henna tattoos Indian brides have on their palms) with the Hindu symbol for the sound of creation, on one arm. While the other has a short prayer to the Hindu god Shiva surrounded by the lotus flower. This collage of symbols is evident of what has influenced me as a human the most” (Dominick).

When I'm walking around my neighborhood, or anywhere, the first thing that people often recognize, is my hair. And most people classify my to the group or culture of being a Rastafarian, "Rasta", which in my case, that's not a culture or a group that I can say internally that I appeal to. Like most, I don't really like to identify myself as being in a "culture", because there are its limitations, and often just boxed into what comes with being in a culture. And, I am totally the opposite at being boxed in. As an African-American young woman there are so many cultural identities, that I can be identified with, but I believe that it is the choices and options available to you, that deciphers what kind of cultures that you best coexist with. For me, I find that an "earthy-like" element is something that best fits with me. My look, I attempt to be very different, and I stray away from the norm of what Fashion is said to be like, I like my own originality. Even the music that I listen to, I have no limits to what I listen too, I love the words, in the poetic sense. (Victoria)

Post Response to Rosario Ferre Here

Greetings Woman Writer Scholars: (excuse belated posting!!--we will work on this in class today and you will follow up tonight)

Please post your personal response to "The Youngest Doll" here.  First just give your reaction to the story, your interpretation (or thoughts about) various events and characters.  I am especially interested in your ideas about the ending.  Please quote at least once from the story.

Then read the accompanying essay that explains the economic and social situation of Puerto Rico at the time of the story and leading up to that time (1976).

After reading the essay, write a brief paragraph explaining how/why the essay helped you understand the story.  Choose one passage from the essay that affected your understanding of the story and include a reference to it in your discussion.

So this is a two-paragraph blog--first on the story, then a response to the essay.  Enjoy reflecting!

Guidelines for Short Story Essay #1

The Woman Writer

English 247.0909

Spring 2013

Dr. Van Slyck

Guidelines for Essay #1

A.      Plan to include biographical information about your writer in your introduction.  In class we will discuss how to write the introduction so you can move from biographical information to your thesis.

B.     The body of your essay will be based on a close reading of the story we discussed in class for that writer.  You will need to decide whether you are going to write about a) character, b) theme, c) symbolism, d) setting, or e) point of view.  Included here below are some guidelines for each of these approaches and examples.

1.     Essay about character:  character is revealed by speech, action (especially change in action), dress, setting, and by what other characters say about the individual.  Even an absent character can be a fully developed individual: consider the character of Minnie Wright in Trifles, for example.  How is she revealed in the play?  In particular, how are changes in her nature shown?  If you answer this question you have a thesis.

2.     Essay about theme:  what main idea seems particularly important in the work?  What values are embodied in the idea?  Is the idea associated with a major character?  For example, what ideas about marriage or relationships are explored through Mrs. Mallard in  “The Story of an Hour”?

3.     Essay about symbolism: what symbols can be located in the work?  How is a particular symbol related to a character or theme?  Consider, for example, the use of the egg, the shell, and the fragility associated with it in “The World’s Greatest Fisherman.”  Write a thesis statement about this symbol in the story.

4.     Essay about setting: does the author provide extensive visual detail throughout the story?  How is that detail related to character and/or theme?  Consider the use of setting at the beginning, middle and end of “Desire’s Baby.”  Write a thesis statement connecting setting to character or theme.

5.     Essay about point of view: point of view is most often first or third person, occasionally second person.  A second person narration can be addressed to an audience but is probably also directed toward the speaker herself.  Consider the narrator’s use of second person in Engel’s “Green.”  Why does she tell the story this way?  What is the effect on the reader, on the story itself, its theme?  Does it make the story more ironic, more distant, or more intimate? If the point of view is third person, is the story still filtered through a particular character (central intelligence)? Make a claim about point of view and support it.

Please see my handout on guidelines for strong writing.  All essays for English 247 should be 600 to 800 words (minimum).  You should include a heading in upper left corner (name, course, essay #, date, my name.)  The essays should be typed, double-spaced, using 12 point font, Times New Roman.  You should include a Works Cited entry with page numbers for parenthetical documentation using original page numbers; if the story is from an online source just the author’s name after quotation will suffice.  We will go over these details in class.

works cited entries for Woman Writer essay #1

 

Works Cited for English 247, The Woman Writer, Spring 2013 (for April 18 essay)

Chopin, Kate. “Desiree’s Baby.” ND. Eastoftheweb UBooks. n.d. [Web]. 5 March 2013

Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Virginia Commonwealth University Webtext. n.d. [Web]. 5 March 2013

Erdrich, Louise. “The World’s Greatest Fisherman.” Love Medicine. New York: Harper Perennial Books, 1993.

Engel, Patricia, Vida. New York: Black Cat, 2010.

Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. University of Virginia Electronic Text Center. n.d. [Web]. 5 March 2013

Munro, Alice. “Boys and Girls.” Tripod. n.d. [Web]. 5 March 2013.

Olson, Tillie. “I Stand Here Ironing.” Tell me A Riddle.  New York: Rutgers University Press, 1956.

Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” In Love and Trouble. New York: Harcourt, 1973.

Note: If page numbers from original appear in coursepak version, use page numbers for parenthetical citations.

Example:

            In Patricia Engel’s “Green,” the narrator introduces the girl who hated her in high school, and the theme of jealousy, through the title but also the opening lines of the story: “Your mom just called to tell you that Maureen, the girl who tortured you from kindergarten to high school, who single-handedly made it so that you were never welcome in Girl scouts, soccer, or yearbook, is dead” (47).  Engel’s vivid use of physical description reminds the reader of the intensity of high school meanness (“your skin was the color of diarrhea”[47]), but her use of the second person creates distance and ironic humor to the detail.

 You must use parenthetical documentation for each quotation you use and put a works cited entry at the end of your essay.

Alice Walker: "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens. . ."

Excerpt from “In Searcy of Our Mother’s Gardens: the Creativity of Black Women in the South,” by Alice Walker, MS Magazine, 1974.

What did it mean for a Black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers' time? It is a question with an answer cruel enough to stop the blood.

Did you have a genius of a great-great-grandmother who died under some ignorant and depraved white overseer's lash? Or was she required to bake biscuits for a lazy backwater tramp, when she cried out in her soul to paint watercolors of sunsets, or the rain falling on the green and peaceful pasturelands? Or was her body broken and forced to bear children (who were more often than not sold away from her)-eight, ten, fifteen, twenty children-when her one joy was the thought of modeling heroic figures of Rebellion, in stone or clay?

How was the creativity of the Black woman kept alive, year after year and century after century, when for most of the years Black people have been in America, it was a punishable crime for a Black person to read or write? And the freedom to paint, to sculpt, to expand the mind with action did not exist. Consider, if you can bear to imagine it, what might have been the result if singing, too, had been forbidden by law. Listen to the voices of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, and Aretha Franklin, among others, and imagine those voices muzzled for life. Then you may begin to comprehend the lives of our "crazy," "Sainted" mothers and grandmothers. The agony of the lives of women who might have been Poets, Novelists, Essayists, and Short Story Writers, who died with their real gifts stifled within them.

And if this were the end of the story, we would have cause to cry out in my paraphrase of Okot p'Bitek's great poem:

O, my clanswomen

Let us all cry together!

Come,

Let us mourn the death of our mother,

The death of a Queen

The ash that was produced

By a great fire,

O this homestead is utterly dead

Close the gates

With lacari thorns,

For our mother

The creator of the

Stool is lost!

And all the young women

Have perished in the wilderness!

But this is not the end of the story, for all the young women-our mothers and grandmothers, ourselves-have not perished in the wilderness. And if we ask ourselves why, and search for and find the answer, we will know beyond all efforts to erase it from our minds, just exactly who, and of what, we Black American women are.