Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities
Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities has 50 remote-ready activities, which work for either your classroom or remote teaching.
Narrative is determined not by a desire to narrate but by a desire to exchange. (Roland Barthes, S/Z)
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Tasting what the eye sees
Long overdue, but I have a feeling that even if class is over, we might still post from time to time.
Well, here is the Audre Lorde poem that reminded me of the Book of Salt:
On a Night of the Full MoonI
Out of my flesh that hungers
And my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking
For reason.
The curve of your waiting body
Fits my waiting hand
Your brests warm as sunlight
Your lips quick as young birds
Between your thighs the sweet
Sharp taste of limes
Thus I hold you
Frank in my heart's eye
In my skins knowing
As my fingers conceive your flesh
I feel your stomach moving against me
Before the moon wanes again
We shall come together
II
And I would be the moon
Spoken over your beckoning flesh
Breaking against reservations
Beaching thought
My hands at your high tide
Over and under inside you
And the passing of hungers
Attend, forgotten
Darkly risen
The moon speaks
My eyes
Judging your roundness
Delightful
First, let me say that I am so please that the book went over so well in class! That means a lot.
Maybe it's true that we place so much emphasis on our eyes when we read. Some of the most intense moments I've had with literature, poems, articles have been when they have been read to me and I am able to experience different materials on different levels.
Truong invites the reader to feel the depth of the characters on so many different platforms. She enables the reader to hurt and simultaneously lust with Bao. We are able to taste with Alice and feel sensual with Gertrude (wow, there really isn't anything sensual about the name Gertrude).
I love Truong's ability to make the story of the sous-chef from Alice B Toklas' Cook Book, not someone who is "othered" in the readers eyes. For us, he is our point of reference and we experience what he experiences.
I don't usually enjoy flowery novels and lush descriptions that go on for pages. Her descriptions, however, envelope you. I don't get bored, I start wanting other forms of simulation. When I read about Bao's recipes I had to eat. I spent that week's lunch in my room curled around a Haffner take-out box, covered up and reading. When I read about Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas' "intimate moments" I felt like I needed touch. We should not take books like this, that push us to different places for granted. Too often we are de-sensitized by the things we watch or hear. Truong requires more from her audience. However, I never had a problem feeling drawn in.
Like Flora, I'm not sure that I would associate it with a feminist categorization. Feminism implies an agenda of some sort. I feel like Truong wrote for Bao and to bring forward the "other". Maybe, that is feminist. However, stimulating different senses with text does seem sort of feminist to me. I feel like inciting different areas of thought and learning is something that is very much so a part of the feminist agenda (at least my feminist agenda).