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15 Books in 15 Minutes

This is a response to my friend Louisa Moon, who forwarded these rules:
Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

I played by Louisa's rules--and then went back and added my comments, lamentations, and other notes...

Unfortunately, I did some cutting and pasting, so they are not in the exact order I thought of them (which would have been fun--but I cannot completely reconstruct that):

1. Ceremony (Silko)--an American masterpiece
2. Nine Stories (Salinger)--when I fell in love with literature
3. Jesus Before Christianity (Albert Nolan)--helped/helps me in my own search for social justice
4. Invisible Man (Ellison)--Luis Armstrong and Ellison--our two greatest modernists in one text
5. Sula (Morrison)--some of Morrison's best prose and most culturally resonant characters/metaphors
6. A Hundred Years of Solitude (Garcia Marquez)--I remember reading it over and over during my year in Peru
7. Song of Myself (Whitman): from lonely women watching naked men swim and whitman bathing a runaway slave's feet to the glories of blades of grass and barbaric  yawps...
8. Bless Me Ultima (Anaya)--such a simple and beautiful gateway to helping younger high school students explore literature, art, and culture
9. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain): if only I had Huck's courage, Jim's wisdom, and one more chance to light out for the territories...
10. The Portable Thoreau: "Life Without Principle" and "Walking" would be enough even without Walden
11. The Portable Emerson: "Self-reliance," "Experience," "The Poet"--the texts every American since seems to be arguing with...
12. La Frontera / Borderlands (Anzaldua)-- what -- identity is a construct not an essential truth -- and that's exciting not scary?!
13. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson: much madnees is indeed divinest sense (especially when presented slantwise)
14. The Republic (Plato) -- am I in the cave--am I out--does it matter?
15. The Norton Shakespeare--Cheating, I know, but I could not face the pain of choosing

I cannot even begin to describe the horror of the many authors that I wanted to include but just did not make that first to rise to the top fifteen: ana castillo, luis alfaro, pynchon, de saint-expury, faulkner, baldwin, dubois, chesnutt, william carlos williams, sylvia plath, dostoyevsky, dickens, cooper, flannery o'connor, tolkien, arthur miller, edward albee, suzie lorie parks, willa cather...perhaps this was more painful than it was worth...

But looking at the list, many of the choices had to do with which texts I keep coming back to but also which books I have most enjoyed teaching.

I still remember...

discovering the world of Latino/a literature through Anzaldua and first teaching Bless Me Ultima to Upward Bound students...

the joys of teaching Sula (the phrase "magnificent desolation" which I picked up from Buzz Aldrin today seems so pefect for that book) to many different groups...

an amazing experience I had ending my American lit sequence last year with Ceremony--a book I had not read in years but was once again thrilled by its beauty...

watching students from many years of lit classes perform scenes from shakespeare...

Finding Jim: Spring 09

Office: MiraCoste College OC T318
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Boot Camp 08 Short Video

 

Use this boot camp 08 link to check out a short video of last summer's boot camp.

Amazing Colleagues

Survived a challenging outcomes assessment session today almost entirely because of the brilliance, graciousness, generosity, and commitment of my amazing colleagues. Even though our results were not what we hoped for, my colleagues have renewed me for the new semester with a combination of inspiration and new ideas.

New Course!

I found out I will be teaching Composition 201 this semester, which is a literature based critical thinking course.

I am imagining pairs of texts--Their Eyes Were Watching God with Invisible Man, T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and Other Poems with Plath's Ariel, some Faulkner short stories with some Flannery O'Connor and then a pair of plays (still working on that duo).

Probably too much, but enough to get me thinking!

American Lit Textbook List Posted

I posted my American lit textbook list in hopes that students could find cheaper options via Amazon. Anything to break the cycle of textbook ripoffs and recriminations!

Hipster?

Listening to my wife tell me that I am closer to hip replacement than hip. Oh the humanity!

Hooter's Hyphenation

Re-reading a question from student about his semiotic analysis of "Hooters": "Is it a bit over the top to hyphenate ass-ets?

Christmas Show Horror

Lamenting second consecutive disasterous christmas show: sobbing child later bellows repeatedly into microphone. Oh the humanity!

Feral Nursing Mother

Worrying about feral nursing mother claw marks discovered on sliced turkey in the regrigerator. Oh the humanity!

Gymnastics

Watching my son torment his gymnastics teacher. Oh the Humanity!

Seery on the LA Times and the Fourth Amendment

My friend John Seery posted a blistering critique of an LA Times editorial on President Bush's effort to defend telephone companies who spy on Americans for the government.

Here is John's post, and I include the comment I made in response to it below:

Hi John:

This is one of those posts from you that leaves those of us who share your concerns with very little to add.

To me, the Times, like so many other individuals and groups, has lost the broader issue in the back and forth of the political bickering in Washington. Like campaign junkies who follow the campaign--the "race" for the White House--for the sport of it, many of our political commentators have become so caught up in process that they have lost an authentic sense of purpose.

One final thought, this is not a liberal or conservative issue. Our national commitment to the principles of the Fourth Amendment transcends party and ideological lines, which is what makes our current Congress's passivity particularly astonishing (and disheartening).

Californians: Tough On Crime, Irresponsible About Prisons

A recent L.A.Times article on prison growth presents a classic California contradiction: "Gov. Backs Prison Growth" Californians want strict criminal penalties such as three strikes and you are out law but we do not want to pay for the necessary expansion in prison space that such a policy requires.

In terms of our state prisons, this contradiction has proven catastrophic:

• our system has 173,000 inmates in 33 prisons most of which are packed to "twice there intendend capacity"
• 16,000 inmates now live in hallways, gyms, lounges and other places not intended for housing
• 118 inmates have been shipped to other states
• the prison health system is now supervised by a federal receiver
• the mental health system "is overseen by a special master and a fedral judge"
• California has the highest recidivism rate in the nation: 7 of every 10 released prisoners returns.

The problem we face now is that repairing decades of neglect and attempting to address these problems will require billions of dollars that a state government facing a 5.5 billion dollar deficit does not have. This will probably mean more borrowing, once again leaving our problems to the next generation to pay off.

Yoga in California

"Here in California, the land of the free and the home of the mentally unbalanced, the quest for spiritual nirvana is widely recognized and accepted. Californians seem to love activities that incorporate tightening their buns with exploring their inner child."

Erica Haar
"Ga-Ga for Yoga"

This pair of sentences has the twin virtues of humor and solid construction. Yes, the first sentence does not benefit from the passive voice of "is widely recognized and accepted," and the "seem" in sentence two is unneccesary. But what kind of monster would complain about these details given the hilarious, dead-on cultural analysis, the lacertating appositive phrase in the first sentence, and the dazzling parallelism at the end of the second sentence. Who knew that "tightening" and "exploring" could join together so felicitously. Bravo, Erica!

Writing and Bleeding

Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.
~ Gene Fowler

Yesterday, I was chatting with a colleague about how surprised students often are to learn how difficult writing is. Because we speak the language, we assume that writing it should come naturally, easily. Fowler's quote humorously reminds us that even the best writers--especially the best writers--work hard to write well.

Centro Communitario, Tecolote

Thanks to Carol Wilkinson, director of MiraCosta's service learning program, we had a great trip to the community center in Tecolote, Tijuana. Thirteen students pained and resupplied an art and music room at the center using supplies and mateirals donated by MiraCostans.

I was impressed by how many people stepped forward to support the project or sent kind words of encouragement after we completed the project.

If you wish to see what we were up to, please check out this web link:

Tijuana Service Learning Trip

Verbonanza: To Vitiate

An interesting verb to use when discussing writing and argument, "vitiate" allows you to vividly describe how certain aspects of a text or elements of an argument weaken or corrupt that text or argument.

"Frequent and confusing verb errors vititate the emotional and philosophic power of her essay."

"The unspoken assumption that we are all willing to sacrficice for the benefit of others vitiates Johnson's hopeful arguments about immigration reform."

Of course, this verb offers a prettty harsh critique of whatever you apply it to, so use vitiate wisely lest you vitiate your audience's trust in your judgement.

Verbonanza: To Suggest

A simple verb, "suggests" opens up many possibilities in your writing, especially when you are discussing an argument or commenting on literature.

"Rawls suggests that Californians turn the frustrations of our many social paradoxes into a source for new creativity and cultural leadership."

"When he describes his experiences organizing protests in his high school, Luis Rodriguez suggests that the Chicano civil rights movement had a much different birth place then the African American civil rights movement."

Because "suggests" usually requires "that," you will sometimes find that the verb can introduce some concision problems. But those problems pale in comparision to the awkward confusions created by a verb too many student writers rely upon too frequently: "states." More on the horrors of using this verb to introduce quotes, see tomorrow's verbonanza entry.

Sean Wilentz from The Rise of American Democracy

In The Rise of Democracy, Sean Wilentz offers an interesting definition of democracy (and its vulnerability):

"Democracy appears when some large number of previously excluded, ordinary persons--what the eighteenth century called the many--secure the power not simply to select their governors but to oversee the institutions of government, as officeholders and as citizens free to assemble and criticize those in office. Democracy is never a gift bestowed by benevolent, farseeing rulers who seek to reinforce their own legitimacy. It must always be fought for, by political coalitions that cut across distinctions of wealth, power, and interest. It succeeds and survives only when it is rooted in the lives and expectations of its citizens and continually reinvigorated in each generation. Democratic successes are never irreversible" (xix).

This first sentence, what rhetoricians or cranky English teachers might call a loose sentence (loose, meaning the sentence begins with its main independent clause but then meanders on through a series of dependent clauses or phrases), defies the current conventions of popular writing and the advice of most Engish teachers by piling ideas, clauses, and phrases on after its main clause. What would not work for many lesser writers (myself included), works wonderfully for Wientz because the litany of verbs and the appositive phrase set off by dashes qualify and explain the author's definition of democracy.

The first sentence also works because the writer follows this long, complex sentence with shorter, punchier sentences marked by anaphora ("It must always be faught for...It succeeds and survives...") and energetic verbs: "fought," "cut," "succeeds," "survives," and "reinvigorated." When the clincher sentence reminds us that democracy is "never irreversible," the sudden turn from the rhetorical dynamism of this series of verbs adds drama to the foreboding prediction about the vulnerability of democracy.

In short, the long first sentence and the two short sentences set up the crucial shift of logic and meaning in the clincher sentence. Sentence variety and action verbs work their magic.

The Writing Demon!

"The struggle of every person who writes, of every true writer is primarily against the demon of that which resists being put into words. It is a struggle that spreads like an oil stain. Often to surrender to the difficulty is to triumph, because the best text can sometimes be the one that allows words to have their own liberty."

Luisa Valenzuela, author, educator
"Writing with the Body," The Writer on Her Work