After reading the first section from Junot Diaz’s novel Drown, I feel like I have more of an understanding as to how it must’ve been like to live in the slums of the Dominican Republic without a father, and also what it must’ve been like to find racism in the United States (mainly Miami and New York).
The way Diaz arranged each section in his short novel was a bit hard to follow—especially since he uses quite a bit of Spanish terms. If I were to read it again, however, I think that I would understand more of it. I liked how he told both sides of the story- Yunior’s as well as Papi’s. This gave insight into both character’s lives, which was intriguing.
Drown is without a doubt—like Another Country—for an adult, open-minded audience. The sexuality of the main character Yunior could be seen as offensive to others, mainly since he lets his friend, Beta, give him a few hand jobs, and Diaz also devotes a whole chapter about how to get with women of all ethnicities. I did not understand the whole fuss about the “government cheese” in this particular chapter. Yunior’s character tells the reader to hide this specific kind of cheese from all types of girls- brown, black, white, or halfie (143).
I was shocked to find that at age nine, Yunior did not know how to write his own name (82). Also, I found it very unexpected when his friend, Beta, touched his privates while they watched a porno in Beta’s basement.
I thought that the Ysrael section was very upsetting. I did not like how the narrator and his brother, Rafa, took advantage of this poor masked boy named Ysrael. Rafa attacks Ysrael and together, they flipped him on his back just so that they could get a look at this poor fellow’s appearance behind his mask. Ysrael’s face was eaten by a pig when he was a baby, and the two other boys knew this, but it did not stop them from attacking this poor boy. Diaz’s description of Ysrael’s face was rather graphic and disturbing to me.
In the Fiesta, 1980 section, I was upset by the way Yunior’s father treated him for throwing up in his father’s VW van. Also, I was surprised to find that his father took both Yunior and Rafa over to his Porto Rican girlfriend’s house. This was sad to me, and I sensed a lot of foreshadowing- that their father was going to leave their mother.
I haven’t heard that honey can cure sleepwalking. This was what girlfriend told Yunior after he told her that he sleepwalks. I wonder if this is true. If I had this problem, I would try it out.
It was upsetting in the No Face section when a guy asks Ysrael if he has started eating cats and his friend joins in, “He’ll be eating kids next” (155). I feel horrible for this character since it seems everyone—except for the priest—picks on him like crazy. Indeed, Ysrael’s only safety is found in the church. The fact that the boys who chased him to the church had the nerve to throw rocks at the church was shocking to me. Have they no respect for the church? Apparently they do not.
It surprised me to find that Nilda was aware of Papi’s familia in the Dominican Republic, but yet she still agreed to marry him, and they had a son and named it Ramon. Also, I thought it was very cruel of Papi to fight with his new wife Nilda because he thought she was getting obese (200). Personally, I think that Papi is a real coward in how he deals with his first family (by ignoring all of the letters at first, then sending them money as a means to make himself feel better about himself). Also, the way he sneaks his clothes out of Nilda’s house is just ridiculous. He doesn’t have the nerve to talk to her about moving out, so instead, he gradually sneaks his clothes out. Then, one morning he strokes her hair (something he never does) and she asks him if everything’s okay and he says it’s fine. Then Nilda fell back asleep only to wake up and find that her wayward husband abandoned her, just as he had abandoned his first family.
The last thing that surprised me was the fact that Yunior wanted to meet Nilda. Personally, I would think that it would be way too weird to go meet with the woman whom my father abandoned my family for.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Response Post 2
I found myself drawn to the excerpt on chapter one of Fanon’s novel entitled Black Skin, White Masks. This specific chapter addresses African American men’s language. One thing I found particularly interesting was the fact that black men had to go to France in order to be considered “human.” In fact, Fanon states, “the more the black Antillean assimilates to the French language, the whiter he gets—i.e., the closer he comes to becoming a true human being” (2). This implies that all black Antillean folks were considered more or less animals. However, the hope for the black Antillean people was not completely lost. According to Fanon, the more black folks (the colonized) assimilate to white culture (the colonizer), the “whiter [they] will become” (2-3). These two quotes really put the black Antillean people’s identity into perspective for me.
I did not quite understand what Fanon meant when he said in one of his foot notes that when the black man goes home after living in France for a time, “he gives the impression of having completed a cycle, of having added something that was missing. He returns home literally full of himself” (3). I think that this quote basically means that black men who traveled to France to learn about the colonizer’s culture, language, and values became a “whole” person, or—in this case—a “whiter” man.
I found myself wondering about the female black Antilleans. In particular, I did not understand how they would be able to understand their husbands once they returned home from the Metropolis of France and spoke the colonizer’s language and forgot most of their native tongue. Unless, of course, the females tagged along with the males, it does not make sense to me how their relationships could have worked out terribly well since communication is essential in any relationship.
From reading James Baldwin’s novel, Another Country, I feel like I have gained more insight into racial and sexual identity. I personally accept homosexuality, but I have had trouble accepting bisexuality. I used to think that bisexuals were simply homosexuals who were pretending to be attracted to the opposite sex in order to gain attention and to be more accepted. Also, I thought it was just an experimental phase that some individuals go through before they consider themselves homosexual. However, after reading this novel, I feel like I have more of an understanding and respect towards bisexual individuals. One thing that I can say without hesitation is that this book is definitely not for close-minded, homophobic individuals, and is—without a doubt—a novel for mature adults only.
I thought this novel was written very well and I liked how realistic the plot was. Also, I was impressed with Baldwin’s writing style. I was drawn into the novel straight away (something that rarely happens to me).
The story starts off with the demise of a black man named Rufus Scott who is a jazz drummer that ends up committing suicide. I found it particularly upsetting when I learn of Rufus’ domestic abuse towards his white girlfriend named Leona. It upset me that Leona ends up in a mental institution. This then puts Rufus in a deep depression which causes him to commit suicide. It is this traumatic event that leads the other characters into a struggle to figure out why Rufus killed himself. For instance, Rufus’ friend, Vivaldo, blamed himself for Rufus’ death since he chose to ignore Rufus’ need for sexual comfort, mainly since he was homophobic at the time. However, once he spends one night with Eric, his whole perspective on sexuality is changed.
I did not quite understand what Fanon meant when he said in one of his foot notes that when the black man goes home after living in France for a time, “he gives the impression of having completed a cycle, of having added something that was missing. He returns home literally full of himself” (3). I think that this quote basically means that black men who traveled to France to learn about the colonizer’s culture, language, and values became a “whole” person, or—in this case—a “whiter” man.
I found myself wondering about the female black Antilleans. In particular, I did not understand how they would be able to understand their husbands once they returned home from the Metropolis of France and spoke the colonizer’s language and forgot most of their native tongue. Unless, of course, the females tagged along with the males, it does not make sense to me how their relationships could have worked out terribly well since communication is essential in any relationship.
From reading James Baldwin’s novel, Another Country, I feel like I have gained more insight into racial and sexual identity. I personally accept homosexuality, but I have had trouble accepting bisexuality. I used to think that bisexuals were simply homosexuals who were pretending to be attracted to the opposite sex in order to gain attention and to be more accepted. Also, I thought it was just an experimental phase that some individuals go through before they consider themselves homosexual. However, after reading this novel, I feel like I have more of an understanding and respect towards bisexual individuals. One thing that I can say without hesitation is that this book is definitely not for close-minded, homophobic individuals, and is—without a doubt—a novel for mature adults only.
I thought this novel was written very well and I liked how realistic the plot was. Also, I was impressed with Baldwin’s writing style. I was drawn into the novel straight away (something that rarely happens to me).
The story starts off with the demise of a black man named Rufus Scott who is a jazz drummer that ends up committing suicide. I found it particularly upsetting when I learn of Rufus’ domestic abuse towards his white girlfriend named Leona. It upset me that Leona ends up in a mental institution. This then puts Rufus in a deep depression which causes him to commit suicide. It is this traumatic event that leads the other characters into a struggle to figure out why Rufus killed himself. For instance, Rufus’ friend, Vivaldo, blamed himself for Rufus’ death since he chose to ignore Rufus’ need for sexual comfort, mainly since he was homophobic at the time. However, once he spends one night with Eric, his whole perspective on sexuality is changed.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Post 1
From this week’s reading assignment, I found Bhabha’s essay, “The Other Question,” to be rather difficult to follow because it touches on a number of different critic’s criticism on various topics concerning colonization, such as: Said and psychosis; Freud and fetishism; Lacan and the imaginary; and Derrida and discourse analysis. Bhabha points out that the main purpose of colonial discourse is “to construe the colonized as a population of degenerative types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction” (92). In essence, colonial discourse causes the colonizer (or the white population) to create negative/false stereotypes of the colonized (or black population).
I found Bhaba’s description of stereotyping and his use of Franz Fanon’s story of what it was like to be a black subject in a white discourse to be rather intriguing yet shocking at the same time. Bhabha defines stereotyping as, “a much more ambivalent text of projection and introjection, metaphoric and metonymic strategies, displacement, over-determination, guilt, aggressivity, the masking and splitting of ‘official’ and fantasmatic knowledges to construct the positionalities and oppositionalities of racist discourse” (104). This quote shows the complexities and ambivalence to stereotyping in general.
Directly following this quote, Bhabha cited a brief excerpt written by Franz Fanon that depicts a negative experience generated by false stereotyping of Negro men. In the story, a white boy observes a Negro man quivering with anger when he really is just shivering like any other human being due to the fact that it is cold outside. Nonetheless, (no thanks to false/negative stereotyping) this little boy runs to his momma to tell her that the “nigger’s going to eat [him] up” (104). This story shocked me and gave me more of an understanding to what it must have felt like (and may still feel like in some parts of the world) to be black in a white dominated world. I just cannot believe that many white people actually believed most—if not all—of false stereotypes such as the one portrayed in this excerpt.
In contrast, I thought that Slave Moth by Thylias Moss was very original and entertaining. Up until now, I had never read a narrative in verse like this work, and I have found that I really admire this type of writing. I found this story of the young fourteen-year-old slave girl, Varl (named after her master’s horse who died just as Varl was born) to be very unique and unexpected. I was surprised at the way that Varl confidently interacts with her master, Peter Thomas Perry, and how she has such a deep affect on him that she drives him to rename his town (which used to be named Perrysburg, named after him) Varlton.
Perry performs a reading experiment on Varl simply to see “how well could a black girl do it” (5). He shows Varl a book on moths which causes her to become rather infatuated with the luna larva’s process of creating a cocoon and transforming into a beautiful moth (5). In turn, she starts to create her own cocoon out of cloth and stitches in “powerful muscles of [her] thoughts” (10), and she fits each layer of cloth under her dress. When Perry discovers these layers, he starts to like Varl even more because he is so attracted to oddities. In effect, Ralls Janet (Perry’s wife) grows very jealous of Varl because she sees that her husband pays more attention to Varl than to herself. So, she asks Varl to run away, but Varl refuses to do so. This storyline really caught me by surprise because I never thought that masters paid more attention to their female slaves than to their wives.
I also found Mark Mossman’s essay entitled “The One-Legged Wonder and Other Names” to be very original and entertaining. I admire Mossman’s courage to write this specific essay about his life experience as a disfigured white male subject in a “normal” white male society. He writes how he can be seen as “normal” as long as he is sitting down, but once he stands up, he can no longer pass as a “normal” human being.
At a young age, Mossman received the name “the one-legged wonder” from one of his friend’s fathers by means of overcoming certain cultural obstacles in order to be successful at such sports as soccer and swimming. Mossman states that “naming is an act of cultural management” that fits us “into a different set of parameters” (2).This points out the fact that one-legged individuals—especially those who have multiple disfigurations—are not seen to be talented at sports, for instance. Indeed, newspaper writers repeatedly printed stories about his success as a disfigured athlete, which never seemed to get old to the public.
In addition, he admits to how he made more money than his “normal” brother did selling magazines. He did this by means of wearing shorts no matter how cold it was outside. Shorts accentuated his abnormal appearance and therefore portrayed it to his customers as, “disabled, disfigured, victimized” (5). I am quite certain that his customers who pitied him so probably would not have pitied him if they had knowledge of his “one-legged wonder” reputation.
Even though I found it rather hard to relate, I still enjoyed reading Geeta Kothari’s short story “If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?” Unlike the narrator of this story, my parents never told me I could not eat certain types of food (at least that I can remember). Also, I never had the experience of going off to a boarding school in which the cafeteria does not serve food that I am used to and have regularly at home. However, I can relate to the narrator’s concern for forgetting how to cook various Indian foods that are a part of her culture. For instance, since I am part Norwegian, I would love to learn how to make lefsa so that not all tradition is lost in my family.
I found Bhaba’s description of stereotyping and his use of Franz Fanon’s story of what it was like to be a black subject in a white discourse to be rather intriguing yet shocking at the same time. Bhabha defines stereotyping as, “a much more ambivalent text of projection and introjection, metaphoric and metonymic strategies, displacement, over-determination, guilt, aggressivity, the masking and splitting of ‘official’ and fantasmatic knowledges to construct the positionalities and oppositionalities of racist discourse” (104). This quote shows the complexities and ambivalence to stereotyping in general.
Directly following this quote, Bhabha cited a brief excerpt written by Franz Fanon that depicts a negative experience generated by false stereotyping of Negro men. In the story, a white boy observes a Negro man quivering with anger when he really is just shivering like any other human being due to the fact that it is cold outside. Nonetheless, (no thanks to false/negative stereotyping) this little boy runs to his momma to tell her that the “nigger’s going to eat [him] up” (104). This story shocked me and gave me more of an understanding to what it must have felt like (and may still feel like in some parts of the world) to be black in a white dominated world. I just cannot believe that many white people actually believed most—if not all—of false stereotypes such as the one portrayed in this excerpt.
In contrast, I thought that Slave Moth by Thylias Moss was very original and entertaining. Up until now, I had never read a narrative in verse like this work, and I have found that I really admire this type of writing. I found this story of the young fourteen-year-old slave girl, Varl (named after her master’s horse who died just as Varl was born) to be very unique and unexpected. I was surprised at the way that Varl confidently interacts with her master, Peter Thomas Perry, and how she has such a deep affect on him that she drives him to rename his town (which used to be named Perrysburg, named after him) Varlton.
Perry performs a reading experiment on Varl simply to see “how well could a black girl do it” (5). He shows Varl a book on moths which causes her to become rather infatuated with the luna larva’s process of creating a cocoon and transforming into a beautiful moth (5). In turn, she starts to create her own cocoon out of cloth and stitches in “powerful muscles of [her] thoughts” (10), and she fits each layer of cloth under her dress. When Perry discovers these layers, he starts to like Varl even more because he is so attracted to oddities. In effect, Ralls Janet (Perry’s wife) grows very jealous of Varl because she sees that her husband pays more attention to Varl than to herself. So, she asks Varl to run away, but Varl refuses to do so. This storyline really caught me by surprise because I never thought that masters paid more attention to their female slaves than to their wives.
I also found Mark Mossman’s essay entitled “The One-Legged Wonder and Other Names” to be very original and entertaining. I admire Mossman’s courage to write this specific essay about his life experience as a disfigured white male subject in a “normal” white male society. He writes how he can be seen as “normal” as long as he is sitting down, but once he stands up, he can no longer pass as a “normal” human being.
At a young age, Mossman received the name “the one-legged wonder” from one of his friend’s fathers by means of overcoming certain cultural obstacles in order to be successful at such sports as soccer and swimming. Mossman states that “naming is an act of cultural management” that fits us “into a different set of parameters” (2).This points out the fact that one-legged individuals—especially those who have multiple disfigurations—are not seen to be talented at sports, for instance. Indeed, newspaper writers repeatedly printed stories about his success as a disfigured athlete, which never seemed to get old to the public.
In addition, he admits to how he made more money than his “normal” brother did selling magazines. He did this by means of wearing shorts no matter how cold it was outside. Shorts accentuated his abnormal appearance and therefore portrayed it to his customers as, “disabled, disfigured, victimized” (5). I am quite certain that his customers who pitied him so probably would not have pitied him if they had knowledge of his “one-legged wonder” reputation.
Even though I found it rather hard to relate, I still enjoyed reading Geeta Kothari’s short story “If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?” Unlike the narrator of this story, my parents never told me I could not eat certain types of food (at least that I can remember). Also, I never had the experience of going off to a boarding school in which the cafeteria does not serve food that I am used to and have regularly at home. However, I can relate to the narrator’s concern for forgetting how to cook various Indian foods that are a part of her culture. For instance, since I am part Norwegian, I would love to learn how to make lefsa so that not all tradition is lost in my family.
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