Lil

I had heard of  Sorry to Bother You  prior to watching it in class, and I thought it seemed really cool if a little weird, but I was never expecting it to be what it ended up being - it was seriously one of the biggest mind trips that I have experienced watching any movie. As a lot of people have already talked about, what made it so insane was the fact that it started out fairly normal. Sure, it seemed a little bit off, but the world that Cash enters as soon as he is promoted completely changes everything. I looked the movie up on Wikipedia because I was curious as to what the general reception was, and it seems to have been really well received, which doesn't surprise me because regardless of how absurd it is, it was still objectively a really great film. What really interested me though, is something Boots Riley said, which is that the movie is not actually meant to specifically critique the Trump administration. I don't think I was ever necessarily under the impression tha...

White Boy Shuffle is funny. When the first line of the entire book threw around a level 3 expletive like it was nothing, I knew automatically that I would love it. Granted, the expletive in question is a super gross and misogynistic one, but for some reason I was kind of okay with it in this context. Maybe I'm wrong for that - let me know. But either way, the humor throughout the book is exactly the kind of humor that I love. It sarcastic and dry but at the same time it's fun. It's exaggerated and unrealistic, but it knows that and it doesn't care. It doesn't take itself too seriously, but it it's also conscious - it calls out things that are important, like police brutality or the issues with "multicultural" education. It sometimes feels like Beatty is writing just to write or like he gets caught up in his own imagination. The book is filled with details that are just unnecessary - it seems like their only function is to screw with us. But that's ...

One thing that I've found really interesting while reading  Beloved  is the theme of colors. It's something that has kept coming back throughout the book, and it's clearly really meaningful and symbolic. We're told that Baby Suggs has this weird  fascination with colors – she constantly wants to be shown different colors by Sethe and Denver. The way Sethe sees it, 124 is so devoid of color, it makes sense that Baby Suggs would be so “starved for colors.” Apparently everything in their house is either brown, grey, white, or some other muted, neutral shade. The only things that have any color are two patches of orange on a quilt. It seems depressing, and it is. But, what makes it more depressing is thinking about why exactly 124 is devoid of color. We’re pretty much given the answer – after Beloved dies Sethe stops seeing things by their colors. It reminded me of when Denver was asked a question she couldn’t handle and went deaf for years. One sentence which was especia...

In his criticism of "Their Eyes Were Watching God" Richard Wright calls Hurston out for not being political enough and instead contributing to harmful stereotypes of black people. Something that we talked about in class though, is that on some level the mere existence of "Their Eyes Were Watching God" seems to be political. For one, Hurston chooses to focus her novel on the experiences of a strong, independent black woman, and that in and of itself is important. Further, the novel's focus on entirely black people, and on different all-black communities is another aspect that makes it inherently political. Harmen said something in class which I found really interesting. He said that the novel almost resembles some of the romantic novels that we would (and did) read in 19th century literature. But, instead of a cast full of upper class white people, the roles are played by black people. The fact that Hurston is writing what we might consider "normal" lit...

As we finish our discussion of Invisible Man  I wanted to write about one of my favorite chapters in the book - Chapter Three, the Golden Day chapter. As chaotic as it is, I love the idea of the Golden Day; it's an isolated part of society where ordinary social norms and hierarchies don't apply. As soon as Mr. Norton walks in, he is ridiculed and mocked by the patients. They call him Thomas Jefferson and John D. Rockefeller and make other jokes that importantly, are at his expense. We talked a lot in class about how important laughter and humor are in Invisible Man - they function most often as a means of undermining someone's authority or importance. Specifically, the jokes that compare Mr. Norton to any other white guy are powerful because they basically send the message that Mr. Norton is of little importance or concern to the patients. He might as well be any other person and in that sense the patients' jokes really serve as the first warning that something is diffe...

One thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot is the narrator's development from the submissive, naïve kid he was at the beginning of the book to where he is now. We talked in class about whether or not he has truly discovered invisibility, or if he’s still being “kept running” by someone or something and I honestly don’t think there’s one right answer. On the one hand, I think he genuinely seems to have developed more of a consciousness and one scene where this is evident is the one where he talks to Hambro about the Brotherhood’s real intentions. When he’s told that they are basically abandoning Harlem, the narrator gets genuinely upset in a way that suggests a deeper consciousness, at least compared to the beginning of the book. He questions Hambro – he asks why. Why does it have to be Harlem that they’re “sacrificing?” One line that stood out to me was, after Hambro says “It’s inevitable that some must make greater sacrifices than others…” and the narrator replies, “That ‘som...

We’ve mentioned the ‘yam scene’ a few times in class, but we haven’t quite gotten to it yet so it’s pretty much uncharted territory for the moment. I think it’s a super important scene for a lot of reasons, but the most important one is the sense of freedom that the yams bring the narrator. He leaves Mary’s house needing a breath of fresh air and a break from his inner turmoil, and the yams end up bringing him a huge deal of clarification. He says immediately after eating the yams that he is “overcome by an intense feeling of freedom” and I don’t think that he’s truly experienced this feeling yet in the book (pg 264). I was definitely a little confused at first – that eating yams from the street can inspire an inner revelation in someone seems pretty weird – but then I thought about all the times that I’ve gone somewhere on my own, or bought something on my own and I understood a little better. Being in a situation where you answer entirely to yourself and everything you do is on ...

I guess I should have seen it coming since Mr. Mitchell warned us multiple times about the dialogue that happens between the books, but reading Native Son and Invisible Man back to back has really been a wild experience. One comparison which blew my mind just a little just because of how painfully specific it was, was the similarity that we talked about today during class between the narrator in Invisible Man  and Bigger Thomas. In Chapter 3 specifically, the former is so clearly a reflection of Bigger Thomas that it’s difficult to ignore. He is tasked with driving around a white client who makes him at once uncomfortable and confused. And yet, against his better judgment, he is compelled to stray from his intended course. In doing so he exposes his passenger to a new lifestyle and part of town - something that was certainly not in his job description. But as soon as the ball gets rolling it can’t be stopped, and in parallel with Bigger’s fate, readers get the feeling that ...

Disclaimer - I had no idea what to write about since I don't really have many strong feelings about Libra, so instead this is a response to a certain Paul D'Angelo's bold claim about the rankings of the books we read this semester. Here's mine: 5th place: Course Packet Readings I'd have to agree here and say that the packet readings were probably the least enjoyable. I did appreciate them because of the context that they gave for the rest of the semester, but they were also just super dense and hard to read, and they had no plot to make me actively  want  to understand them. Tied for 4th place: Libra and Slaughterhouse 5 I know this is kind of cheating, but I genuinely can't decide between the two. I'm not sure that I would use the word indifferent, because even though it's meant to be neutral I feel like it has some negative connotations to it, but I definitely didn't have very strong opinions on either of the books. I found both interes...

One thing that we've been talking about a lot during class is the way in which  Libra  depicts our obssession  patterns. We are constantly looking for patterns in the information that is given to us, despite whether or not there is even a pattern to be found. I liked the way that Mr. Mitchell put it today - he said it's like the way that we impose constellations on random collections of stars. Are stars really meant to look like frying pans? Probably not, but we're always trying to find something familiar in things that we don't understand, or things that are bigger than us. Can you give me one other reason for the existence of math?? Because god knows it makes no sense, we just pretend it does so we can explain all the other things that make no sense (ironic that we explain confusing phenomena with even more confusing formulas !!). We've talked about how the event which Libra  is centered around - the assassination of JFK - is a shining example of this aspect of ...

When I started reading Kindred, I was really struck by its resemblance to Slaughterhouse. In terms of their structures and overall premises, the two books are super similar.         Both start with some form of foreshadowing which gives us a look into the very end of the book. The functions of these prologues are super similar in that both of them grab the reader's interest and leave them wanting to more. The prologues are both narrated by survivors of whatever is to come. Right off the bat, in Kindred's prologue, readers know that whatever happens to Dana, she will survive, but she will also suffer from it, both physically and mentally. In a similar vein, Slaughterhouse-Five's prologue establishes the fact that the narrator has survived the tale he is about to tell.         We discussed in class how part of the significance of Kindred's prologue is the fact that it establishes the normalcy of the situation. In the hospital, Dana and Kevin disc...

I probably shouldn’t be admitting this- but I actually have yet to finish Slaughterhouse-Five. I still have the last chapter left, but so far, I have counted exactly 77 instances of “so it goes.” I found the continued usage of this phrase really interesting because it just kept coming back – sometimes every paragraph on a page ended in “so it goes.” When I started looking for a theme which tied all the instances together, the only thing I noticed was that it was usually at the end of passages, and much less often in the middle of passages. As I was looking around at articles for my panel presentation though, I read something which I had never thought about, but which is super obvious now – the “so it goes” always comes after the death of someone or something.               I think that the effect of the “so it goes” relates to the entire book as a whole in the irony and the understatement that comes along with it. Every...

I found Charlotte really interesting as a character because crucial to Mumbo Jumbo Reed is its important commentary on cultural appropriation, and Charlotte is one of the most blatant depictions of this phenomenon, especially as it relates to black music and dance. She learns the "The Work" from Papa LaBas, but she then quits and goes on to profit from what she has learned, despite LaBas's protests that "you shouldn't attempt to use any aspect of The Work for profit" (pg 52). The first sentences of Chapter 28 summarize Charlotte's situation well: "Charlotte has struck it wealthy with her Plantation House routine. She possesses a richly endowed apartment as a result of her ability to Stop the Show." Not only is Charlotte - a white woman - gaining success doing the same things that black people are villainized for, but she is doing it with a "Plantation House routine." In short, she is profiting off the oppression of black people and ...

During the very first Mumbo Jumbo reading, I was really interested by Reed's comparison of the 20th century to a giant "Age Race" (pg 20) because the analogy gives a lot of insight into the greater context of Jes Grew's growth during the time period. He basically describes the time period as a time when many different trends are vying to be the one which is remembered at the end of the era. Everyone is competing to be the face of the 20th century. He continues, saying, "Now imagine this Age Race occurring before a crowd of society idlers you would expect to find at 1 of those blue-ribbon dog shows." It's pretty obvious that this refers to privileged white people - becoming part of mainstream culture is a contest, and white people are the judges. At first though, white people aren't too into the Jes Grew craze, because it's outlandish and scandalous. Black culture is the "hound mongrel" next to pekinese and collies. What's interest...

The scene that takes place in Emma Goldman's home in Chapter 9 was one that I found really interesting, but also a little bit conflicting. To begin with,  Emma Goldman gives Evelyn a powerful lecture about liberating herself from the manipulations and abuses of men; of embracing real love and the freedom that comes with it. Great, I thought, it's about time someone sets Evelyn straight (or, maybe not  straight , exactly). The best part is that Emma is just so right. Evelyn's worth has, up until this point been defined solely by her relation to powerful men - men who abused her both physically and sexually. Her sexuality has been on constant display for all of America to debate. As such, th ere's something really empowering in Evelyn experiencing this sexuality with someone  who, for once, doesn't view her worth as existing within a restricted domain; someone who doesn't view her beauty as existing within the corset that she wears.  The scene is, overall, one whi...