Category: McCoy 101 Fall 2017

In class we recently discussed Colson Whitehead’s fantastic use of vocabulary in Zone One. Like Whitehead, Percival Everett uses a variety of literary elements to convey his ideas in his novel Zulus. A very prominent element throughout the novel was imagery. Everett uses this element in order to appeal to the reader’s senses and to add depth to the major themes. Continue reading “Cold Imagery and Consent in Zulus”

Yesterday I attended a poetry reading by Christopher Soto. Soto is a poet based in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of Sad Girl Poems (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016) and the editor of Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color (Nightboat Books, 2018). Soto read a few original poems and other poems produced by other poets as well. Throughout this experience, all of the poems shared a common theme. There was a shared theme of inclusivity within the poems. Each poem covered serious issues, such as mass imprisonment, sex slavery, and racism. One writing technique I gained from attending this poetry reading is call and response. Soto read a poem aloud and when he raised his hand, the audience replied with the same response. I found this to be effective in accomplishing the message of the poem. The poem was in regards to mass imprisonment. The poem also contained the technique of repetition. Repetition stands out to the reader in that it makes the piece memorable and quotable. Christopher Soto is an incredibly talented writer that touches upon economic, racial, and social issues throughout society.

Some of Soto’s work brought me back to Fortune’s Bones by Marilyn Nelson. Throughout the book the reader is brought through the life of Fortune and his endeavors. After Fortune died, Fortune’s bones were placed in a museum to be put on display. This was done without consent. During some of Soto’s readings, there was an instance of lack of consent when a female writer wrote about being raped and beaten in prison against her will. The other topic discussed in yesterday’s poetry reading that brought me back to Fortune’s Bones is racism. Soto opened up the discussion with self identity. Every person in the room had their own identity, but unlike Fortune, he was merely classified as bones in a museum. Fortune was more than that, he contained an identity just like everyone else. I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday’s discussion and thought it was informative and pushed students to think creatively and productively.

The small group discussion today felt different than Monday’s class, as Dr. McCoy acknowledged. I did not realize the change in pace at first, but our group was more engaged and energetic during the conversation and more willing to participate. I think this change occurred because we finally understood what was expected of us in order to successfully complete the project. Everyone was obviously invested on creating a collective paragraph that expressed and combined our opinions about medical voluntourism. Today our group was clearly embodying some of the learning outcomes that we predicted would arise during this project. Leadership and collaboration was demonstrated as we all worked, “to engage others in developing collaborative solutions; to experiment, take risks, and learn from mistakes; to enable, encourage, and recognize contributions to collaborative efforts by all group members” (Globe Learning Outcome 6). For example, we were communicating and challenging each other to think critically and discuss the problem we are responding to. This was further demonstrated as we challenged each other on many sentences, which caused us to think further about the problem to generate a thoughtful paragraph. Today’s exercise proved that this class is capable of creating a positive and significant collaborative project that addresses the problem of medical voluntourism.

This week’s class was dedicated to our entire class to collaboratively work on the “Final Course Statement.” The collaborative course statement unpacks a specific problem we have discussed during class, in our case Medical Voluntourism, and follows-up with a solution. During our class Monday, we went over how that project is relevant to Geneseo’s Mission, Vision and Values and the Globe. We identified how medical voluntourism can be seen as a problem. That is if the volunteer were to lack adequate training/qualifications, then they can cause more harm than good to the underprivileged communities that they work with (Zakaria, 2014). Continue reading “A Surprising Transition From Monday’s Class to Today’s”

Ah, medical volunteerism. You know, sometimes I really do feel bad about the amount of blog posts you might end up reading about medical volunteerism on this website, but honestly, there is just much to say on the topic, and everyone has contributed such meaningful and thought provoking sentiments to the blog… So, is it really a bad thing?

In this one in particular, I’d like to briefly comment on Avery’s very eloquent blog post entitled “Studying Abroad: What’s your Real Purpose?” I think Avery was incredibly attentive in her writing and brought up some interesting points about the medical volunteerism industry being tainted by American’s selfish motivations.

Continue reading “America, We’re not Selfish… Are We?”

After grappling with Colson Whitehead’s Zone One in its entirety, I found that the racial element of the story is not as prominent and obvious as I had anticipated it would be. For one, we do not learn of Mark Spitz’s race until far into the narrative. However, this is really the only distinguishing characteristic of Mark Spitz, other than that he is male and described as “average,” which may be a comment on race itself. Mark Spitz’s race and mediocrity are his only distinguishing traits, and it is precisely his mediocrity that allowed him to survive the infestation for as long as he did. He is described as being “neither the captain…nor the last one picked.” In the context of the zombie infestation, the last one picked would surely fail, but so to would the captain because he/she would be responsible for other people.

Being that Mark Spitz is presumably a minority and Colson Whitehead is as well, Whitehead is possibly trying to convey that a young person of color could easily see being average as the best route in traversing through society. As it is the least notorious, because people tend to ignore the average person as they prioritize helping the below average person as well as praising the above average person instead. The character’s name “Mark Spitz” is itself a racial slur derived from a moment where instead of jumping off a bridge into water to flee from a swarm of “dead,” Mark Spitz shoots his way out of it screaming that he cannot die. There is a similarly climatic scene on the final page where after the final barricade is breached by the dead, Colson writes “Fuck it, he thought. You have to learn how to swim sometime. He opened the door and walked into the seas of the dead.” Perhaps this is him embracing who he is as he self-actualizes and “swims,” conquering his fear of “water.”

Mark Spitz’s fear of water is the stereotype that creates his name and enables him to share that story with Gary as he passes, which must have been especially emotional given that he and Gary were brothers in battle against the infestation. They were the only family they had left, as Mark Spitz lost Uncle Lloyd and the vast majority of the population died. In this context, it was actual great to be the minority. His fear of water is symbolic of his fear of death. Mark Spitz was not one to delude himself with hopes of the “after,” and when the barricade broke and he walked into the seas of the dead, Mark Spitz was able to feel closure. Additionally, Whitehead may have been using zombies to symbolize micro aggressions perpetrated by white people, and the barricade breaking is symbolic of the micro aggressions adding up and having a cumulative effect. At one point in the novel, Mark Spitz makes a reference to there finally being no “amateur fascist up the street machinated to steal the next cab.” The plague itself could be symbolic of retribution for the atrocities of slavery as well as the sum of centuries of micro aggressions, bigotry, racism and acts of racism.

 

Thinking more in depth about medical volunteerism has forced me to contemplate everything regarding studying abroad. I was on scrolling on twitter when I saw my friend tweet something along these lines, “I can’t wait to go dancing at the bars in Tuscany.” She’s studying abroad next semester in Italy. Reading this tweet in correlation with our discussions in class made me realize something: how often is it that someone studies abroad to genuinely study and experience the educational opportunities that another country may have in store for them. Continue reading “Studying Abroad: What’s Your Real Purpose?”

The fact that the zombie that ultimately kills Gary was a fortune teller has a lot of significance outside of the obvious. There is enough irony and subtleties in the conversation being had before the fatal bite to create a whole other blog post, but I just keep getting stuck on the fortune teller. There are many different methods of fortune telling, all with vastly different origins, but one of the most well know practice today is Tarotology. Although there is not an exact science to reading tarot cards and there are many reasons to doubt their real power, there are still many interest aspects and meanings within the deck that can be applied to the ending of Zone One. Continue reading “Fortune Telling”

One thing I noticed and enjoyed in Zone One was Colson Whitehead’s ability to convey humor amidst the dreariness and dystopia of the apocalypse. He implements humor in his characters through games like “Solve the Straggler” and “Name That Bloodstain!”. This helps counter the more gloomy events of the novel so we aren’t completely overcome with how depressing the story actually is. Continue reading “Humor In Humanity”