Author: Abigail Axton

Throughout the course of this class we have focused heavily on the concept of “looping back” which can be unpacked to be defined by the concept of “nesting”. Where in which we have not focused purely on one story or concept at a time, we have nested previous topics and mindsets in every module of this course to create a common thread throughout all of our topics. Specifically, if we look at our last reading; The Water Cure by Percival Everett we can identify many cases of this nesting idea sprinkled throughout the reading by the author himself, and simultaneously we have nested our previous thoughts and readings into our understanding of The Water Cure. This process of nesting allowed for a larger and more intricate consciousness to the stories we read and the ideas we produced by freeing them to be recurring instead of imprisoned in a single module and timestamp in our semester. By consistently relating things back to previous thoughts there was less opportunity for forgetting certain earlier ideas that proved helpful in reading and understanding later stories and envisions. 

In African Fractals Ron Eglash talks about recursion, and embedded in that, iterations, and embedded in that, the idea of nesting. In the book Eglash says that nesting “makes use of loops within loops” (Eglash 110) this immediately sparked a thought in me because I remembered a very popular phrasing we use in this class; “looping back”. We use this term when we want to remember previous thoughts or readings in order to better understand a current discussion or story. In the beginning of this class I tended to disregard this idea, I would hear it being said as something I should do but I did not see the importance in doing so. I thought that I knew as much as I needed to currently and that I did not need to return to stories I had already read or concepts I had already been taught, quite an overconfident thought to have. Yet, as the semester pursued, I found myself valuing taking the time to return back to previous works and familiarizing myself with relevant topics that could help me with current works. I do not think I would have retained or even understood later works like The Water Cure without returning to earlier classwork and allowing myself the time to fully be prepared in comprehending a work as complex as it. 

The Water Cure not only was aided by my use of nesting, but it also contained many features within itself that were examples of nesting used by the author. Percival Everett did not conform to a simple form of storytelling, where one story is told in a linear view, he instead utilized the idea of nesting to create a deeper story and meaning for his audience. To this I am referring to the embedded riddles, drawings and poems that Everett nested within his story and loops back to multiple times within the story. One of the more prominent loops Everett makes is the continuing drawing that takes place throughout the passage, he has nested in this in-progress drawing of what looks to be a cat all throughout the story which supports his storytelling by allowing the readers to cling to a common thread tying the story together. The Water Cure is a very confusing read and I think this nesting of the drawing helps the reader in their journey to understand Everett’s storytelling a bit more. Another use of nesting in The Water Cure is the riddle Everett embeds earlier on in the story talking about having to bring chocolates, a monster, and a child over a river but not being able to leave certain ones alone with each other, he states this on page 27, then later on page 223 he loops back to this and says “Answer to puzzle: Kill the monster” (Everett 223). This feature of nesting aided Everett in showcasing how unstable and irrational the father is in this story, when we first are presented with the riddle we rack our brains trying to figure out the real solution, but then as the story progresses and more is revealed about the father’s life and actions we get the looped back answer that he had which is to “kill the monster” instead of rationally working through the problem as we did 196 pages prior. 

Not only has the nesting Everett put into the story aided me on my journey of reading The Water Cure, but my personal usage of it allowed me some semblance of ease while working through it. By having the foundation of all our previous readings and practices of understanding them I was able to successfully loop through the ins and outs of this course in an effort to aid myself in reading The Water Cure. It helped that we had constantly been reminded to “loop back” all semester because it made me feel better about needing extra help in comprehending some of our more complicated works. We talked in our first few weeks about the importance of slowing down, our notes specifically stating “thinkers who slow down*, however, might find other explanations” this was a very important nested idea that I found myself falling back onto. Whenever I hit a block in reading or felt frustrated that it was not coming easily, I slowed down and allowed myself the understanding that needing to take a step back and another look is not a negative thing, instead it shows that I have the yearning and effort to fully take in what we are reading instead of skimming through it and hoping for the best. Another example from our notes that I found myself relating The Water Cure back to was our reading of James Snead’s “On Repetition in Black Culture”, in our notes it is written that we may understand this reading more than we originally presumed we would, which is exactly how I felt about The Water Cure. At first glance I was quite honestly scared of this text, I thought it to be too difficult for me to fully understand and that I was going to struggle more than the rest of my classmates. In feeling this I remembered the aforementioned point in our notes and I decided instead of giving up I was going to go into it with a different mindset and not immediately count myself out at the get-go.

All-in-all I think the idea of nesting is one of our most important concepts we have touched on this semester. It allowed for so much more conversation and connections than there would have been without knowing of this idea and being encouraged to utilize it. Especially with The Water Cure it paid off to be able to revert back to previous classes and conversations in order to tackle a seemingly daunting piece of work. Personally, I found nesting very helpful to me in my process of navigating this course, and even the others I am in. I can definitely see myself remembering and “looping back” to this idea in my future classes and life endeavors. Now that I have been exposed to this idea as a concrete thing, I recognize it happening so much in my day-to-day life, just like a nesting doll, everything contains other things within itself. 

So far throughout this course we have talked about and read a lot of stories that contain some idea of ownership. This I would argue is one of the most important seed shapes so far. A seed shape, as explained by Ron Eglash, is the starting shape or point that grows into a much larger pattern or story, this has been exemplified with ownership in the stories we have read, most namely in “Bloodchild” and “Everyday Use”. In both of these texts there is a sense of ownership and entitlement that gets builded on to cause the central conflict or purpose of the story, this can be translated into the greater theme of our class where ownership, of either yourself or your culture, is debated and fought with in the stories we read and the discussions we have. Many main points and themes we have outlined in this class can be traced back to some sort of ownership and the conflicts brought upon as a result. 

In the story “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler ownership is the base for the story because of the ownership the Tlic have over the Terrans, although this is said to be an interdependent relationship, there is still a factor of ownership because it is the Tlic’s planet and they ultimately are in charge over the Terrans. This ownership provides a sprouting point for the story because it creates tension when Gan witnesses a birth and realizes the position they are stuck in because of this ownership. We can see some evidence of the loss of self ownership when Gan says “Thus, we were necessities, status symbols, and an independent people” (Butler 5) Gan acknowledges that Terrans have no control over what happens to them and who can say they “own” them. So although the relationship between Tlic and Terrans does have some give and take it is ultimately up to the Tlic to decide what happens to and what the Terrans can do with their lives. We can see the seed of ownership become visible when Gan says “She would have to give one of us to someone, and she preferred T’Gatoi to some stranger” (Butler 8) this creates the jumping point for the rest of the story, the fact that Gan will be given to T’Gatoi to impregnate because the ownership of Terrans is expected in this world. The rest of the story expands on this by creating conflict within Gan and whether they want to go along with this expectation or leave it. We see this doubt grow when Gan says “”I don’t want to be a host animal,” I said. “Not even yours” (Butler 24) This idea of yearning for freedom from the ownership you have been destined to is the main point of this story. Without the initial seed shape of ownership this story would not have had the basis to create a conflict around freedom and making choices for oneself. Many conversations we had about this story in class centered around the idea of this ownership the Tlic have and the effects that had for the Terrans, and more specifically Gan. 

In the story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker the seed of ownership takes on many different forms. The first form it takes is one of names, another in the quilts, more generally both of these fall under culture as the debate of ownership, in the story Mama’s daughter originally named Dee comes back home after being away and says she goes by Wangero now because “I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me” (Walker 1799) This continues throughout the story where Wangero seems to have come back home completely changed from before. Where she all of a sudden has an interest in her culture and has a certain mindset on how that culture should be owned. This is specifically showcased at the end where Wangero demands she should be the one who gets her Grandma’s quilts because she would honor them the right way unlike her sister. This expands on the concept of ownership, specifically of one’s culture, and the conflicting views on what the “right” way of preserving one’s heritage is. On one hand Wangero insists that the quilts must be hung up and never used, but Mama says that they are meant to be used and Wangero’s sister will do just that. This jumps off of the original idea of ownership because it presents a conflict where the ownership of one’s own culture is debated within a family, more specifically within older and newer generations and viewpoints. Mama, who represents an older generational point of view, believes that the name Dee is fine because it was owned by her mother, and Mama believes that the quilts made by her mother should be owned by a person who is going to use them for their intended purpose, for everyday use. On the other hand Wangero who represents a newer generational way of thinking believes that her old name Dee is a sign of her oppressors and does not belong to her, and that the hand me down quilts should go to someone who is going to preserve them and not wear them down in everyday use to the point where they can no longer be owned by anyone. The newer age of thinking puts emphasis on lasting ownership while the older age is less focused on ownership over experience of culture. 

These stories and their seed shapes of ownership contribute to our class as a whole because the majority of our discussions revolve around these conflicts of ownership and its implications. In “Bloodchild” the ownership of oneself relates to a lot of discussions we have had about slavery and control over your own life and your rights as a human. And in “Everyday Use” the ownership of one’s culture is the basis for many conversations we have had about how culture shifts throughout time and new generations develop new ideas or views on how that culture should be represented. Overall, ownership has been the basis of most discussions we have had in our class so far, which leads me to believe that it is the most important class seed shape as of yet. Where the rest of the semester is concerned, I think that the recurrence of ownership is going to continue and pop up in more readings along the way. I expect that we are going to see more conflict with this idea and turmoil over both the yearning to be free of ownership and the clarification of what type of ownership is the “right” type of ownership. I wonder if this seed shape will take form in more of the short story types like I have outlined, or more biographical instances going forward.