English

my original plan had been to further explore haunting but i've decided that i don't have enough time to really delve into it the way i'd like to. i've decided instead to focus on the color purple and it's different adaptations. i'm not sure exactly where i'm going with it, but this is the text i'm going to work with. my next post will go more in depth about my plan moving forward - i've been having a bit of a hard time with the lack of structure/guidlines/planning time in this independent study.

I'm interested in revisiting Dill's character, looking at intersectionality to unsettle (and reveal the assumed privilege inherent in) the "coming out" narrative. I mentioned this earlier in the semester when we were reading Getting Mother's Body: 

Unpacking Intersectionality: Black Women Holdin’ it Down and Showing Us the Way

Dear all,
Just writing to remind you of the plan going forward for Big Books. You of course continue to be welcome to gather in our classroom to work together, or talk through our texts/your projects, during the allotted class time. I’ll be using it to meet w/ each of you individually, and remind you that I can also meet with you at others times if you'd like.

A sometimes-tricky thing about independent work is keeping yourself accountable/doing the work steadily without some form of regular check-in. So, along with meeting with each of you, I will continue to expect regular short postings from you by midnight each Tuesday evening:

Christmas, the day after, in 2004, following the presidential re-election of George W. Bush.

I am reading a few different books right now.. excited to have more time for them. 

1. Incognegro: a Memoir of Exile and Aparteid by Frank B. Wilderson

2. On Black Men by David Marriott

3. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual by Harold Cruse

4. Stain Removal by J. Reid Miller

ooo and 5. just got my hands on Sylvia Wynter's: On Being Human as Praxis

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so, i'll pull something from these.. probably not an amalgamation.  i'd like to focus on wilderson RN as he feels really central to what I've been thinking towards this semester. more ideas to come when I have them.

Constructions of Masculinity: you can’t train yr daughter like you train yr horse

Reading Segregation Signs in Getting Mother’s Body by Suzann-Lori Parks

            The segregation sign is a pillar of racism in the post-civil rights- United States. The segregation sign is an object of desire and social scorn. People look for these signs in museums and public exhibits, asking to be reassured that Jim Crow is indeed dead, yet wonder if these venues can adequately portray and describe the lived experiences of enforced race segregation. This essay will examine the cultural waste and debris left over from Jim Crow and its afterlife. The salience of race returns in the segregation sign. The contests over the meaning of segregation signs must be understood as part of the continuing struggle against racism and inequality.

Monique Truong titles Bình’s narrative The Book of Salt -- and salt, at least the fleur de sel that Bình discovers during the book, is described as “a gradual revelation of its true self… there is a development, a rise and fall, upon which its salinity becomes apparent, deepens, and then disappears” (98). Like salt, then, this book and its stories are also a gradual revelation of self. Through the tale of the basket weaver and the water hyacinths, Bình unfolds a narrative about himself and the theme of home.

Intersectionality is a theory that examines “the intersecting patterns” of systems of oppression (Crenshaw). It is a framework that accounts for the intersections of identities, such as race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, etc., which overlap and inform the experiences of people who are of multiple marginalized identities. It is an analytical tool that addresses the layers of identity that accumulate and form a wholeness, and recommends that this wholeness be approached with respect to all the social categorizations that are applied to different bodies.