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Digital Journal Prompt #12

Our final digital journal post is about autohistoria. These are a genre of writing that is intended to blur the lines of fiction and nonfiction. It is also a genre that is often used by writers whose voice lends to social justice endeavors, as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Gloria E. Anzladúa’s all do. 

Autohistoria bends genres. In another essay titled “now let us shift ... the path of conocimiento ... innerworks ... public acts,” Anzaldúa writes the following about this genre of essay writing, “Autohistoria is a term I use to describe the genre of writing about one’s personal and collective history using fictive elements, a sort of fictionalized autobiography or memoir" (Anzaldúa 578). Scholar Andrea J. Pitts argues that “from this brief articulation, Anzaldúa appears to point to the manner in which the act of giving meaning to oneself provides a platform for collaborative forms of meaning-making” (357).*

Toni Morrison’s Nobel Lecture also bends genre. She bends a “lecture” or a traditional essay format to a parable. A parable can be defined as a “narrative about human beings presented so as to stress the tacit analogy or parallel, with a general thesis or lesson that the narrator is trying to bring home to his audience” (Abrams 9). The bird is not intended to be a bird.

The two forms connect in that each is read for a message or a lesson. That lesson, though, is not explicit. The reader must allow themselves to be taken in by the writer and must see through the writer’s eyes in a way that helps us as readers to live another’s experiences, as we do when we become attached to a character we connect with strongly. 

For this last and final digital journal, please do the following:

Choose one of either Alice Walker’s “Looking for Zora,” Toni Morrison’s “Nobel Lecture,” or Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s “Le Prieta.”

Each of these pieces offers multiple possible messages and /or lessons to be learned. Identify at least one.

Citing the text you have chosen, please describe and/or explain one message you find in the piece.

Your response to this digital journal is due by class time on Wednesday, November 29.

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Digital Journal Prompt #11

Only two more digital journals to go, #11 and #12!

In this digital journal, we are going to consider the minimalist style of Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-lighted Place” and Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.�� 

There are some who would suggest that stories written with the minimalism of Hemingway and Carver allow a reader more control over the meaning of their own experience with the story. Because the story does not offer a lot of detail and description, our imaginations fill in the gaps. (Please see our course powerpoint for more definition of minimalism.)

My question for your consideration is one of tone. If we follow this viewpoint on minimalism and audience participation, I wonder how this affects the tone of a story.

M.H. Abrams defines tone (narratively speaking) by offering the following: 

In an influential discussion, I. A. Richards defined tone as the expression of a literary speaker's "attitude to his listener." "The tone of his utterance reflects . . . his sense of how he stands toward those he is addressing" (Practical Criticism, 1929, chapters 1 and 3). In a more complex definition, the Soviet critic Mikhail Bakhtin said that tone, or "intonation," is "oriented in two directions:           with respect to the listener as ally or witness and with respect to the              object of the utterance as the third, living participant whom the                      intonation scolds or caresses, denigrates or magnifies." ("Discourse              in Life and Discourse in Art," in Bakhtin's Freudianism: A Marxist                    Critique).

The way we speak reveals, by subtle clues, our conception of, and attitude to, the things we are talking about, our personal relation to our auditor, and also our assumptions about the social level, intelligence, and sensitivity of that auditor. The tone of a speech can be described as critical or approving, formal or intimate, outspoken or reticent, solemn or playful, arrogant or prayerful, angry or loving, serious or ironic, condescending or obsequious, and so on through numberless possible nuances of relationship and attitude both to object and auditor. (A Glossary of Literary Terms 218) 

For this prompt, please use our class discussion of minimalism, narrators, and tone to further consider the tone of either Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” OR Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” 

Question: How does the minimalist style of the story affect the tone of the story?

Please respond to this prompt using the following guidelines:

Begin your post by directly responding to the question above.

Use direct quotes from the text in order to illustrate your answer to this question. Be sure to use MLA guidelines in your response.

Your response should be at least two full paragraphs.

Your response to this prompt is due by 2:00 PM on Wednesday, November 22.

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This is a video of author, journalist, comic book writer, and educator, Ta-Nehisi Coates, explaining the power of words in a much more eloquent way than I did last Wednesday. The video is short. If you haven’t already watched this video, it is a great response to the question of words.

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Digital Journal Prompt #10

I will make this announcement during class tomorrow and via an email: I have changed my mind about your reading Hayden White’s “Introduction: Historical Fiction, Fictional History, and Historical Reality.” You will still be responsible for reading Antero Garcia’s “Witnessing Race.”

By the time you respond to this prompt, my expectation is that you have completed the novel Homegoing. The work of this prompt is to ask you to grapple with the historicity of Gyasi’s novel. In a speech in 1852, Frederick Douglass stated the following, “we have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.” This is in essence one of the purposes for historical fiction, at least one we have talked much about. 

The structure of Gyasi’s novel affects the way in which we experience the arch of time she is capturing. Instead of asking you to offer an informed opinion on her choice of structure, I would like you to look back at the stories/chapters. Is there a chapter you wished had been longer? Is there a chapter or a “main character’s” story you really wanted to know more about, but didn’t get to? 

In this prompt, I would like for you to either describe why you felt cut short with a character’s story OR to look back into the novel and describe a section that offered to you a different perspective of historical events that you were previously unaware. So, essentially you are either discussing 

A) I wanted to know more about because . . . 

OR 

B) This particular section/narrative/part of a story offered a new perspective on history that I did not know before.

Whichever way you decide to respond, please be sure to do the following:

Post at least two paragraphs of response.

Use textual evidence to support your response. (Cite the novel.)

Use MLA guidelines when citing the text or other sources.

Your response to this prompt is due before class on Wednesday, November 15.

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Allegiances are being drawn.

Maya is claiming Team Pond. ;-)

The real question for English 211… Team Pond or Team Terrapin ?

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Digital Journal Post #9

This digital journal focuses on Yaa Gyasi’s novel Homegoing: A Novel. Gyasi’s novel is structured in separate stories of people that tell a larger story of two families through generations. Each chapter focuses on one generation, more specifically one person in each generation. Each chapter offers a peek into their story, into their life. 

During this semester, we have talked about paradigms, liminality, agency, gender and queer theory, and many other ways to look at literature (often called a “lens” through which to discuss or come to understand a work in different ways). In your response to this prompt, I would like you to return to our course powerpoint. It’s on Moodle. Choose one term or concept we have discussed and/or explored in this semester and use it to explore 1 character in Gyasi’s novel. (When I ask for 1 character, I am intending 1 main character. So, a character whose name titles their chapter.)

In response to this prompt, please do the following:

Choose one main character.

Choose one concept we have explored in this semester, using our powerpoint as your source.

Use that concept to explore this main character’s story, identity, or narrative. Write at least two full paragraphs in your response.

Your response to this post is due before class on Monday, November 13.

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A map of the colonized Gold Coast area of Africa.

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From Darious. Lol!

The real question for English 211… Team Pond or Team Terrapin ?