week 5 at the correctional facility

Yesterday in class at the correctional facility, I felt like it was increasingly difficult to participate. I'm not sure what happened to the open, liberating, refreshing environment I and many of us described about the earlier classes. Yesterday I didn't feel that at all.

I think the dicussion around Kindred was really interesting; How did the plantation come to feel like home for Dana? Did Dana grow to love Rufus, or was it just fear? Still, I didn't feel as connected as I wanted to and I'm not sure why.

Then I felt really uncomfortable during the introduction of Persepolis, our next novel. This text differs for me than the other things we have read in class in that I have already read it once before. As I wrote in an earlier post, the poetry we started with was an experience of community/group learning since we were all processing the poems together, prima facie (for most of us). I really enjoyed that. Then Kindred was new to me as well, so I could relate to others in the class who had never read it before. However, it was really hard for me to sit back and listen to people's predictions about Persepolis. I just wanted to be like, "No that interpretation isn't right! That's not what the book is about!" even though I recognized that that is unfair. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, predictions, first thoughts about the text. But I wish someone, or I wish I, had said something to clarify that the four hijabi girls featured in the second pannel of the graphic novel are Marjane's classmates and not four incarnations of someone with a dissociative identity disorder. I just feel like we started off on a weird foot with this book I guess...

And at the end of the class, I wish I had some writing I could read, but I've been stuggling to think of experiences that fit the prompts in the time we have. I end up writing about other things, usually the first thing that pops into my head, because I'm trying to get in the habit of truly free writing.

Also, I think our class discussions need to have a little more structure, like the quote finding activity we did about identites last week and the things we brainstormed after class this Friday.