Week 10 Overview

Hey, class, Dr Sharp here.

I'm wearing my Baylor hurry to show my support for

both the men's and women's basketball teams, making it to

the sweet 16, at least at the time that I'm

taping this right now.

And so hopefully they've proceeded by the time you're watching

it on to the next levels of the March Madness

tournament, if you follow any of that, um, but if

you don't, that's great, too.

We just finished up whereas a great book, and hopefully

you had a chance to see Lady Along Soldier read

at the Bell Poetry Festival.

Uh, this book has so many interesting things in it.

Um, there's a lot of challenging of different things when

it comes to a challenge is how we understand or

think of, or what we think of to be kind

of conventional or traditional poetry.

I mentioned before that there's lots of poems that look

different than than what we're used to, um, aligned to

different sides of the page or shaped in different ways,

looking like pros.

Sometimes this poem itself has lines, um, crossed out right.

And so, um, it's interesting how the form itself is

being used to sort of mimic how lately, long soldier

is subverting some of the ways in which, um, history

has, uh, excluded, um, Native American peoples, indigenous peoples and

how her subverting the form is also a way and

how she's doing how she's subverting the form of poetry

kind of mimics the way that she is subverting how

history has often, um, either silenced or misrepresented particular narratives.

Right? And she talks about this in her poems, whether

it be the poem 38 or in the section that

we recently finished talking about.

Whereas which is also interesting for how it takes the

kind of US apology and then, um, as a way

to kind of pick it apart by exploring different sorts

of apologies.

Right? And there's different ways in which she's exploring the

word apology and what apology looks like what constitutes an

authentic apology.

And, uh, sometimes it's, uh, speaking, uh, you know, from

things in a cultural history or narrative, and sometimes it's

speaking of something in a personal narrative or personal history

of bone.

I think one of the one that's most touching to

me is the one where she's talking about her father

apologizing and him were kind of breaking down and crying

and how we are the juxtapose or think about these

different apologies and connected to how the U.

S. Apology was presented in a somewhat disingenuous way and

and how we might kind of think about that apology

and how it if it does the proper sorts of,

um, reconciliation and and recognition that we expect an apology.

True apology to do.

Um, there's also the interesting kind of connectedness with the

image of grass to things that we've read before.

Like while Whitman or even, I mean, there's a coma

titles, um, kind of nature poetry.

And so there's a lot here that I hope that

folks were able to connect to and and and maybe

respond to in there, um, in their reading responses.

Another thing that I wanted to kind of touch on

briefly and and hopefully, uh, we can kind of talk

more about as we continue on in, um, in the

next book, which is called the Book of Unknown Americans,

we will be able to kind of maybe talk about

this concept of damage versus desire.

Ive Tuck, which is who is an indigenous scholar I

think residing in Canada, um wrote this really interesting open

letter called suspending damage.

Where, she theorize, is the difference between, like damage centered

research and desire based research.

And she's talking about the social sciences.

But we might think about how we can apply this

to a lot of different things, including literature, um, and

thinking about damage center literature and a desire based literature.

And she talks about damage being how, uh, sometimes the

social sciences take a sort of law or lawyer esque

sort of approach.

And a lawyer tends to, um when When?

Um, when argument case tends to take, uh, something and

say, uh to prove first prove that their client, um,

has received some has been damaged or has received some

kind of damage in order to argue for some kind

of restitution or reparation.

And, uh, Tuck talks about how social sciences kind of

take that sort of, uh, theory of change.

It's called that sort of approach, um, to social science

and researching cultures and peoples.

And in order to receive some kind of resources or

reparation or restitution for these people, they use a research

to prove them damaged right and how that might have

might result in some some some positive benefits than coming

to these people's that there may be some kind of

collateral damage in establishing a community is injured or damaged,

right? And so she uses as an example Thurgood Marshall

and company during the Brown versus Board of Education case

to integrate schools.

I think we all argue that integrating schools is a

good thing.

But in her analysis she talks about how Thurgood Marshall

Company, uh, essentially argued that black Children were damaged by

segregation, which, the implication being that them being distanced from

white Children, uh, was somehow hurting them.

Um, and instead of kind of focusing on how this

disparity in the resources and things like that they were

focusing on, essentially establishing a particular community is damaged.

Um, and that's essentially her argument to kind of talk

about. It's good the schools were integrated, but then also,

do you see how this kind of principle is problematic?

She offers as an intervention, desire based, uh, research or

desire centred.

Uh, you know, literature in our case, where we acknowledge

the difficult aspects segregation damage was was was difficult for

the black community, um particularly comes to public schools also

was difficult for other communities.

And also just there was all sorts of moral and

ethical and and, uh, equity sort of issues.

Obviously, um and so it's not about saying that these

things aren't bad, that there wasn't bad things, but also

acknowledging some of the, uh, aspects of, um, that speak

to the hope and culture and joy of communities and

how sometimes social sciences tends to kind of focus on

these sort of, um, difficult elements in order to prove

damage, as opposed to also talking about these desire based,

hope based, um, elements of these communities.

And so, um, I hope that reading, whereas you all

feel that it was a desire based sort of poetics,

right, that that that soldier was talking about some difficult

hard histories.

Um, and then But then also it was expanding kind

of our understanding of a particular Native American experience and

and and maybe help opening our eyes to the possibilities

of Native American indigenous narratives, Native American indigenous poetics, Um,

and then also, uh, speaking into what we've talked about

before, this kind of notion of complex personhood, right, and

I think desire based poetics kind of really desire based

research is really interested in that concept of complex personhood

and thinking about the complex social life of, uh, these

people, these communities, these groups, um, and and and in

order to be able to see this fuller sense of

humanity beyond the ways that they've been victimized by systems

or institutions, Right?

Mhm. So, uh, with some of that in mind, we

might think about or keep that in mind as we

start to pivot towards Christina Enriquez's novel The Book of

Unknown Americans.

And it's interesting to know that the novels set in

for the most part, Delaware, except for some flashbacks.

Um, and she's from Delaware, right?

And so there's This is not a biographical novel by

any means, but it's interesting that she is from that

area and and maybe some is taking some from her

personal experiences.

Um, but again, this is not an autobiographical piece.

Um, she went to Northwestern and got an M f.

A from one of the biggest kind of, uh, M

f a standing for masters in fine arts, which is

kind of like one of the big degrees for creative

writers, and the Iowa Writer's Workshop is kind of the

top program in In the States.

She also has a few other books, Um, and so

I thought in The book of one of the Americans

has won several awards.

And so it's a really interesting book, though, for us

to think about some of the things we've been thinking

through when it comes to American literary cultures.

Um, it's one of the ways that we'll be able

to engage with kind of immigrant narratives, which is an

important part of American literary cultures, right?

And so this is gonna be coming from a Latin

X, um, perspective.

Many of the characters are coming from, um, also all

throughout Mexico, Latin America and Central America.

And so there's There's definitely there's some folks that we

might consider to be refugees.

Many of them are immigrants, um, and so it's interesting

also how it's told through a linked narrative sort of

perspective. This is something we would have gotten also from,

uh, the things they carried.

But we weren't We had to kind of skip over

that text.

But essentially, what are linked to narrative means that there's

each chapters kind of, um, doesn't it doesn't kind of

work and unnecessarily, strictly chronological sense, like sometimes they'll be

a chapter that's spoken by a particular character that doesn't

fit into the kind of chronological timeline of the plot.

Um, it'll kind of be also jumped back to their

kind of their own kind of story to how they

came to the States and and so on.

And then we'll come back to kind of the main

plot line, and then we'll come jump back and forth

through these kind of linked narratives.

Um, I'll do kind of like we did with Beloved,

where I'll offer some kind of tracing items that folks

can select and many of them will be kind of

similar ones that you you picked from for beloved.

So keep an eye out for that.

But I also think that I saw that the proof

is in the pudding with the first reading responses.

There were some really interesting readings offered by folks that

kind of followed, like there.

Um, you know, the tracing item of trees or masculinity

and femininity and all these sorts of things, and so

I'm interested to see how that plays out in the

reading of the Book of Unknown Americans.

Um oh, The next oq C is due April 2nd.

That will be on this kind of first few readings

of the book of unknown Americans.

Something else to keep an eye out for, though, is

that I'm gonna be introducing the final paper.

So we're already at that point where we want to

start thinking about that.

We've read Beloved.

Whereas we read a few other pieces, watch the film

or to, um And so now we need to be

preparing for to start thinking about.

Okay, um, how am I going to start putting together

some kind of larger argument about the things that we've

covered in this class?

And so I'll be introducing some possible topics, many of

them or prompts, and many of them will be similar

to some of the ones that you've explored in your

reading responses.

So hopefully you'll be able to kind of take some

of that and build from that reading response into build

from it to in order to construct your final paper.

Uh, this this, uh, image right here might be from

the assignment sheet from last year, so I'll make sure

that the assignment itself has the updated assignment sheet for

this year with the appropriate due dates and so on

and so forth.

Um, but yeah, just keep an eye out for that.

Make sure you watch all the materials you think about

how you might plan your time so that you could

start by maybe the writing center or stop by the

my office hours to talk about the paper.

Um, and this paper, actually, it is required that you

visit the writing center, so you'll definitely want to plan

for that.

And you can visit more than once.

And so that's that's an option.

So keep that in mind as well.

Um, and so more about that later in the module.

Until then, Have a great week.

Have a great module.

Enjoy this little picture of a pug and a unicorn

costume. Um, and if you are a basketball fan, you

know, sick, um, bears keep it going, and I'll catch

you all later on in the module

Week 10 Overview

Chapters

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