2. Imply / Infer
Imply means to suggest
indirectly (you’re
sending a subtle
message).
To infer is to come to a
conclusion based on
information (you’re
interpreting a
message).
3. AGENDA
Discussion: “Howl"
Lecture
o La conciencia de la mestiza/ Towards a New
Consciousness
o “El Sonavabitche”
o “Warrior Woman”
o Historical Context
o Themes and Style
Discussion
o Intersections of identity and oppression
The American Dream
Introduce Essay #2
4. Chair Poet?
“If I feel physically
as if the top of my
head were taken
off, I know that is
poetry.”
Emily Dickinson
6. 1. Q: Why title the poem Howl?
2. Q: What is the first part of Howl talking about?
3. Q. What are some themes in Ginsberg’s poem “Howl”?
4. Q: What is the term “Moloch” referring to?
5. Q. What role does sex and sexuality play in the search
for freedom?
6. Q: Does Ginsberg glorify drug use in Howl?
Meaning
7. 1. Q: What does Ginsberg mean when he states,
“Everything is holy!” in the Footnote to Howl?
2. Q Ginsberg begins 58 lines with the word “who” in the
first part of his poem “HOWL”, exactly who is he
speaking about?
3. Q: What does Ginsberg mean by “who lost their
loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed
shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew
that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that
does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual
golden threads of the craftsman’s loom…” (495)?
Meaning
8. 1. Q: Who is “Howl” for?
2. Q: Why does Ginsberg choose to incorporate so many
different religions in Howl?
3. Q: Why does Allen Ginsberg mention jazz music? And
how does jazz reflect the Beat Generation in Part I of
“Howl”?
4. Q: Why does Allen Ginsberg include “Footnote to Howl”
after the poem “Howl” itself? Is it meant to be read as a
sub-piece to “Howl” or a separate work that
relates/alludes to “Howl”?
5. Q: How do locations contribute to the many themes in
“Howl”?
Purpose
9. 1. Q: What role does insanity and mental
illness play in the poem?
Madness
10. Discuss
Seven minutes!
Gloria Anzaldua was a self-described
"chicana dyke-feminist, tejana patlache
poet, writer, and cultural theorist."
Maxine Hong Kingston
Through her stories about herself and
her female relatives, Kingston paints a
picture of Chinese tradition that portrays
women as objectified and enslaved by
men.
11. Intersections of identity and oppression
As a Mestiza I have no country, my homeland cast me out; yet all
countries are mine because I am every woman’s sister or potential
lover. (As a lesbian I have no race, my own people disclaim me; but I
am all races because there is the queer of me in all races.) I am
cultureless because, as a feminist, I challenge the collective
cultural/religious male-derived beliefs of Indo-Hispanics and Anglos,
yet I am cultured because I am participating in the creation of yet
another culture, a new story to explain the world and our
participation in it, a new value system with images and symbols that
connect us to each other and to the planet. Soy un amasamiento, I
am an act of kneading, of uniting, and joining that not only has
produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also
a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives
them new meanings. (841)
12. Gloria Anzaldua is among the many feminist theorists that
move into the realm of addressing postmodern
identities. In her discussion of a new emerging
consciousness in La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a
New Consciousness, Anzaldua suggests the construction
of identities as multiple, hybrid, and more specifically,
created as a result of the Borderlands, those spaces that
intersect. While the people who live in the intersections
are privy to a world others don’t see or understand, it is a
space where cultures collide, often with incompatible
values, opposing histories, and contradictory experiences.
It can be difficult to be an individual, or member, of several
social, classed, gendered, racialized groups but never
feeling quite at home in either.
Postmodernism
13. An example of the contradictions of which she speaks is through a brief
discussion of the identities of women of color. For instance, if an
African-American woman advocates for women’s rights, does this
mean that femininity and the struggle against gender oppression takes
precedence over her racial identity and her struggle against
colonization and racial oppression?
The inverse question can also be asked. If an African-American woman
of color takes a political stance for the end of her racial oppression,
does this mean that she devalues her experience as being oppressed
by her gender identity?
Anzaldua makes a plea to feminists to bridge identities and to
understand identities as always being constituted in the Borderlands.
The sorting out the contradictions embedded between these social
identities requires a tolerance for ambiguity.
14. Q: How does Anzaldua’s La Conciencia de la
Mestiza tie into the idea of postmodernism?
H: Anzaldua’s work seems to reflect postmodernist
concepts in many ways. First off, she speaks of having
“tolerance for ambiguity.” While lamenting the binaries
that enslave most people today, Anzaldua asks the
reader to understand the world outside the given
“black” and “white.” Rather, she realizes “a massive
uprooting of dualistic thinking in the individual and
collective consciousness is the beginning of a long
struggle, but one that could…bring us to the end of
rape, of violence, of war” (841).
15. Discuss Minority Theory in terms of Anzuldua
Using one of Tyson’s questions, I will apply this Minority Theory to “El
Sonavabitche” by Gloria Anzaldua: What can the work teach us about the specifics
of Chicano heritage? Does the work provide imagery that resonates with Chicano
culture?
“El Sonavabitche” provides sufficient imagery, that begins in the first stanza, when
she writes, “In time to see the tall men in uniforms thumping fists on doors
metallic voices yelling Halt!” (Anzaldua 858). This image illustrates the border
patrol and their actions. I find it interesting that she chose to use the word
“metallic” to describe their voices because metallic paints an image of a hard rock.
Clearly, this quote shows the terror that comes with the gunshots and the sudden
need to run. It teaches the reader the presence of immigration services upon the
Latina community. In addition, Anzaldua gives the reader a detailed image of what
it is like to fear for one’s life: “I see that wide cavernous look of the hunted/ the
look of hare” (859). This quote is powerful because she compares a human to a
hare, which is known to be constantly hunted.
16. Discuss themes or meaning in “El Sonavabitche”
The theme of dehumanization is clearly prevalent as
Anzaldua details the sad and malicious transport of illegal
Mexican immigrants, without regard for their humanity:
Como le dije, son doce –started out 13
Five days packed in the back of a pickup
Boarded up tight
Fast cross-country run no stops
No food they pissed into their shoes—
Those that had guaraches
Slept slumped against each other
Sabe Dios where they shit.
One smothered to death on the way here. (Anzaldua
2957)
17. Discuss themes or meaning in “El Sonavabitche”
Some of the themes I noticed, and some of which others
have already mentioned, are bitterness, invisibility,
power, and finally pride. We can immediately tell from
the beginning Anzaluda is beyond pissed, and who
wouldn’t be? Her people are being brought here in
trucks like animals, forced to work long hours, then
being forced to flee back home because the bosses are
calling the government to have them deported back. She
also mentions in the beginning how these people are
invisible, and later on she experiences being noticed for
the first time.
18. Discuss themes or meaning in “El Sonavabitche”
Theme: Advocacy/Double Consciousness
In El Sonavabitche, the narrator explores the horrors of undocumented
immigrant labor, and how the laborers are abused and fooled into
ultimately working for free. When the “sonavabitche” calls
immigration, and they are forced to flee without having been paid, the
man is using the system to his advantage: he can have his land worked
on without paying for it. […] However, by the end, the narrator is able
to come to grips with the fact that she is not only an immigrant, but a
documented one, and she realizes how to use the system to her
advantage instead.
“You want me telling every single one
of your neighbors what you’ve been doing
all these years? The mayor, too?
Maybe make a call to Washington?
Slitted eyes studied the card again.
They had no cards, no papers.
I’d seen it over and over.”
19. QHQ: “La Conciencia de la
Mestiza” and Patriarchy
1. Q: According to Anzaldua, why is it necessary that white society
“own the fact that [they] looked upon us as less than human, that
they stole our lands, our personhood, our self-respect” (845)?
2. Q: What is does Anzaldúa mean when she says “… say that you are
afraid of us, that to put distance between us, you wear the mask of
contempt. Admit that Mexico is your double, that she exists in the
shadows of this country, that we are irrevocably tied to her” (845)?
3. Q: Why does Anzaldua include Spanish words and phrases without
translations?
4. Q: How does the speaker depicts the distress of having double
consciousness in “white” America?
5. How does being tricultural result in an “inner war”?
6. How has “machismo” impeded the progress of Chicanos moving
toward a new consciousness?
20. Historical Context: Women in Chinese
Society
Kingston takes revenge on centuries of Chinese female
oppression in The Woman Warrior, the larger work from which
“No-Name Woman” was taken. From the days of Confucius
through the early twentieth century, the Chinese placed men
above women and family above social order. When people
married, new family ties formed, and new wives became
subservient to their grooms’ parents. Women from the higher
classes lived extremely secluded lives and suffered such
treatments as foot-binding. The Chinese chose young girls who
were especially pretty to undergo foot-binding. The binder bent
the large toe backward, forever deforming the foot. Men favored
women with bound feet, a sign of beauty and gentility, because it
signified that they could support these women who were
incapable of physical labor.
21. Setting
The narrator grows up in Stockton, California,
where she was born in 1940. The events that
actually occur in her life take place in California.
Her imagined warrior life and her mother's "talk
stories," however, take place in China. For
example, the story of No-Name Aunt, the ghost
aunt, occurs in China from about 1924 to 1934.
22. Style
Kingston combines fact with fiction—relying on
her own memories, her mother's "talk stories,"
and her own vivid imagination—to create a view
of what it is like to grow up a Chinese-American
female.
She reworks traditional myths and legends to
modernize their messages.
Some critics argue that her dependence on
inventiveness (from the myths and legends)
renders her writing difficult to classify as
autobiography or fiction.
23. Postmodern Aspects
Shrugs off old forms and limits: Her work differs from most
autobiographies in that it is not a first-person narration of the
author's life.
Multiple genres and approaches: memory, fantasy, speculation,
translation, and point of view.
Moves away from the metanarrative: Kingston struggles to
reconcile her identity as a member of two cultures, Chinese and
American, who does not feel entirely at home in either culture. It is
a story of an individual.
Themes: Kingston combats what Shirley Geok-Lin Lim has called
"the cultural silencing of Chinese in American society and ….. the
gendered silencing of women in Chinese society,” through the
telling of stories about women who are either literally or mythically
her ancestors. Her words are her weapons against silence,
racism, and sexism.
24. “No Name Woman” and Feminist Criticism
In China, the narrator’s aunt is heavily stigmatized for her premarital
affair and pregnancy, which might have even been coercive. Her family
is shamed for it, leading to her suicide and her child’s death. In fact,
this one incident had hurt the family so much that the aunt’s story
never gets mentioned; it is erased instead. In the text, the late 1800s-
early 1900s Chinese society […] had a strict patriarchal system in
place. In this society, […] “women in the old China did not choose”
(Kingston 3). […] They were essentially groomed for marriage and sent
away to her husband’s home even though the husband usually went
away to America to pursue whatever he wanted to do. […] Obedience
in this society oppresses women because any action the man forces
them to do, regardless of relation, always ends up hurting the women
while the man gets free reign. In fact, the very man who got the aunt
pregnant might have even organized the raid against her and her
family
25. “No Name Woman” and Feminist Criticism
Much like Mina Loy’s “Parturition” (“The irresponsibility of the male /
Leaves woman her superior inferiority”), the man of “No Name
Woman” is allowed to enjoy the act of sex, while the woman is left to
manage the aftermath and resulting pregnancy alone. The man
escapes the punishment inflicted by the community, and even
organizes the raid on her family’s home.
Because of society in which she lives, the narrator’s aunt becomes a
pariah of the community, a “ghost”. […]
The narrator says, “The real punishment was not the raid swiftly
inflicted by the villagers, but the family’s deliberately forgetting her”
(800). In this way, her punishment is unending. With each new
generation her existence existence fades even more, and eventually
no one will be left to carry her memory.
26. Themes and Symbols
1. A major theme in this text is gender roles. Gender plays a huge
role in creating different experiences among siblings and other
family members. The narrator’s aunt stayed at home in China,
while her four brothers, her father, uncles, and her husband sailed
to America. These are completely distinct experiences. On one
hand, of those who went to America, they went with many of their
family members, where they had many helping hands and familiar
faces in the new country. The narrator’s aunt, on the other hand,
gets left by her whole family, including her husband
2. One of the themes in “No-Name Woman” is the difficulty of
growing up as a Chinese-American. The struggle of Kingston’s
aunt is likely paralleled to the struggle of Kingston herself, who is
attempting to make sense of the old customs and traditions that
she learns from her mother.
27. QHQs
1. Q: Why does the aunt haunt the narrator?
2. Q: Why does the mother choose to tell this story to her
daughter instead of keeping it repressed like the
father?
3. Q: How does the story of the aunt shape the speakers
opinion on sex, love, and family?
4. Q: Why does Kingston fill in her own details when
imagining her aunt’s story?
5. Q: What is the meaning of a “dead ghost”?
6. In what ways does the narrator’s story about her aunt
reveal the oppression and inequality women face in
patriarchal society?
7. Q: How does Maxine Hong Kingston make the story of
an ‘invisible’ woman ‘visible’?
29. Prompt Introduction
In this second half of our quarter, we have read and
discussed multiple texts, theories, and opinions on both
literature and literary analysis, and for this reason, I
offer you many choices for your first essay. In a thesis
driven essay of three to six pages, respond to one of
the prompts I have offered or one of your own. You
need only the primary text for this essay, but you may
incorporate other stories, manifestos, or critical theory
as additional support. Remember, you can also draw
on your own experiences and knowledge to discuss,
explain, and analyze your topic.
30. Topics for Essay #2
There are many essay topics to choose from.
On the webpage, click on “Essay Prompts” and then
“Essay #2”
You will see another list of choices specific to our texts.
Click on any of them to explore topics
You may write an essay on any of these topics.
You may write an essay on a topic of your choice.
You may use fodder from one of your posts.
The essay is due before class on the day of the final.
31. The Road
Topic #2
Using a close reading strategy and specific textual
evidence argue for how the world was most likely
devastated. Consider climate change, earthquakes,
volcanic eruptions, the explosion of nuclear bombs,
or?
Topic #15
Examine both the concept and reality of cannibalism
in The Road. Consider motivations and outcomes of
the behavior.
32. “Battle Royal”
One does not need to look very deeply in
Ralph Ellison's short story "Battle Royal" to
find different elements and examples of
racism. Use African American literary
criticism to make an argument about “Battle
Royal.”
Examine the theme of “American Dream” in
“Battle Royal.” Consider how the story defines
the concept of “success”?
33. Postmodernism Essay
Discuss the work in terms of its postmodern
construction. Consider the postmodern
manifestos or the Mary Klages article on
Postmodernism to ground your argument.
Discuss two or more of the manifestos, working
to define the ever-elusive idea of
postmodernism. Consider using the Klages
essay on postmodernism to support your
argument.
Discuss the American Dream with regard to the
postmodern condition.
34. Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten
novels, ranging from the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic
genres. He has also written plays and screenplays.
He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, and his 2005 novel No
Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won
four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He received a National Book
Award and National Book Critics Circle Award for his 1992 novel, All the
Pretty Horses.
His previous novel, Blood Meridian, (1985) was among Time Magazine's poll
of the best English-language books published between 1923 and 2005 and he
placed joint runner-up in a poll taken in 2006 by the New York Times of the
best American fiction published in the last 25 years.
Literary critic Harold Bloom named him as one of the four major American
novelists of his time, along with Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and Philip
Roth. In 2010 the London Times ranked The Road no.1 on its list of the 100
best fiction and non-fiction books of the past 10 years. He is frequently
compared by modern reviewers to William Faulkner.
35. End of Days
Class 20: this is the class we skip
Class 21
The Road
Discuss Self-Assessment
Class 22
The Road
Self-assessment due
Discuss Revision
Final Exam: 23
Thursday, June 23 9:15-11:15
Revision of essay #1 due before class begins
Essay #2 due before class begins
36. HOMEWORK
Read The Road:
Post #27: Choose one
1. What caused the devastation of
the land? Provide the clues you
used to come to your
conclusion.
2. Discuss a theme from the
novel: Destruction, survival,
isolation, death, or hope
3. Examine the concept of trust
and mistrust in The Road.
4. Analyze the symbol of
innocence and how it pertains
to the son in The Road.
5. Introduce another concept or
symbol
