Category: McCoy 337 Spring 2019

“Doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men”- Victor Lavalle.

I remember when I first scanned over the syllabus the week of classes beginning in January, I saw that we were required to write ten blog posts and I was a tad intimated. I had always thought about writing a blog but had always found the actual act of doing so, time consuming and sometimes frustrating. I doubted that I would be able to find connections and topics that I could post about (without sounding totally incompetent), but thanks to Dr. McCoy and her constant encouragement to “unpack” I found that there was so much I wanted to discuss, and I found the blog to be a place where I could be “heard” as I do not like to speak out in class.

Continuing along the lines of doubt, I went back to my first blog post which was focused around the Big Machine quote, “doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men” (Victor Lavalle). At the beginning of the semester I thought that the uncertainty and doubt I was feeling about graduate school applications and finding my first ‘adult’ job after graduation, compared to the feelings of doubt and uncertainty that Ricky first felt when he received that mysterious envelope one day while working as, “a janitor at Union Station in Utica, New York” (Lavalle, 3). As I read about Ricky holding the envelope and being weary about opening it, I could not help but compare it to my own life when I got the phone call from my mother about a letter in the mail from University at Buffalo. Although I was not there to physically hold the envelope, I was suddenly engulfed with this feeling of panic and doubt. Wanting to know so badly what the letter said, I found myself thinking back to the line, “you know that old saying about curiosity: curiosity is a bastard” (Lavalle, 6). The doubt does not stop there.
Another place that doubt is a constant in my life, is the voices of those people that learn I am studying English saying, “what are you going to do with that?” If someone had asked me that question at the beginning of the semester my answer would have been, “I want to teach.” Now here we are, a few short months (and a possible quarter life crisis) later, and my answer has completely shifted to, “I want to be an academic advisor.” I want to be the person that students can come to and feel that they are being heard; English is simply a stepping stone. Although the anxious moments over the years have been intense, I truly believe that all of those moments have led me to find the path that is the best for me. That is how I relate to Ricky in Big Machine. I seem to recall him having many moments throughout the novel where he did not know how he would make it, or if going to the Washburn Library was ever the right choice at all, but alas I cannot find the textual evidence to support this claim. Despite the doubt that Ricky faces, he manages to accomplish so much after arriving at the Washburn Library.

With encouragement from Dr.McCoy I began to look at other texts throughout the course where doubt was one of the central ideas/themes. I thought back to how Big Machine and “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler were connected and realized that there was also the shared feeling of doubt between both protagonists. Although the doubt is shown in different ways, one could say that the doubt Ricky and Gan face is centralized around one thing; the capability to follow through with a task. When Ricky arrives at the Washburn Library, he (among all the other unlikely scholars) is doubtful that he is meant to be there, “I leafed through each paper, looking for some mention of the Washburn Library… But not a damn thing stood out. I knew there must be some reason I’d been given these papers, but I didn’t understand the motive. I felt lost” (Lavalle, 49). Although it is never clearly stated throughout the novel, I would say that it is safe to assume Ricky clearly did not think he was cut out for the job. And this is where “Bloodchild” comes into play. “I had never killed one at all, had never slaughtered any animal. I had spent most of my time with T’Gatoi while my brother and sisters were learning the family business. T”Gatoi had been right. I should have been the one to go to the call box. At least I could do that” (Bloodchild, 11-12). The reader sees Gan struggle as he is told to go out and kill an animal and bring it back, he wrestles with this idea, and we see him doubt that he is capable of doing so. I too have felt incapable of completing tasks, or milestones in both my academic and personal journey. From wondering how I will do with beginning graduate school in the fall, to making sure I am being a good role model for my younger sister.

Often times people will laugh when someone says they truly related to a character in one way or another. Instead of simply laughing it off, maybe we should all start “unpacking” how we relate to that “person”, we could even learn something about ourselves along the way. Personally, I did not know that this much doubt consumed me until I read Big Machine and dived deep into Ricky’s character.

At the beginning of this semester, I posted a blog post “The Power of Sound” about Toni Morrison’s epigraph  “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” Through this epigraph, I talked about how important it is to use the sound of our voices to portray messages. An example I used was of Fannie Lou Hamer, she was an activist who tried to register to vote and she got fired from her farming job for doing this. So, by using her sound and her language she became an activist and was able to extend her message to the world; through this, she became a role model for many people. This goes along perfectly with what we have been doing this whole semester in Dr. McCoy’s class. All of our voices matter and if we use them to spread the messages about what we believe in we can have the possibility to change someone’s world. One idea that I brought up in my past blog post is that “Just by using our sound, our voices can go a long way and we could inspire other people too.” This is still very true, when writing my blog posts, I always try to write in a way that I use my voice/ language to convey a message to whoever wants to read it, with the possibility of bringing a new idea to someone.

Continue reading “Changing the World One Idea at a Time”

At the beginning of the semester I was first very drawn to the course epigraph, “my job is to notice… and to notice that you can notice” said by Dionne Brand. Within my first blog post of the semester, My Future Classroom Awaits, I discussed and explored this epigraph. Looking back on that first blog post I have found that my interpretation and understanding of not only this particular epigraph but also the course content has greatly shifted. Although this shift has taken place, I still find myself drawn to this epigraph even though I am understanding it through a new lens. Continue reading “Just Notice”

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ReflectING is a very difficult thing to do because we are often given the task to write about almost anything but ourselves. So when we are given the opportunity to reflect, we tend to have a difficult time doing so. After figuring out what I wanted to discuss in my reflection, I want to share one of my many flaws that I came to notice in this process. I doubt myself a lot. I doubt my ability to do what I have already done. Struggling to trust my own instincts, I often find myself asking others for their approval on my work which is not always a bad thing, unless you are by yourself and believe that your work is not worthy which is what happens most of the time for me. And although I have taken the first step in noticing, what do I do now? I reflect! Continue reading “A New Curve”

It is truly amazing how much growth a college student can experience in just one semester. Looking back at my first blog post, I have realized how much of a stronger writer and student I have become. The epigraph that I chose in the beginning of the semester was, “my job is to notice…and to notice that you can notice” by Dionne Brand, which is the same epigraph I want to end the semester with. I struggled trying to interpret exactly what this epigraph meant and spent hours on my first blog post trying to make sense of it. I settled with, the epigraph means, “that our jobs as human beings is to notice the people around us and recognize that we all come from different backgrounds and have different experiences that have contributed to the person we are today.” After reading and analyzing the amazingly varied literature given to me all semester, I feel as if a lightbulb turned on in my head and I have a more in depth understanding of what the epigraph means. Continue reading “The Journey of Growth”

“Doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men.”  Victor LaValle, Big Machine

“My job is to notice… and to notice that you can notice.” Dionne Brand

Throughout the semester, I’ve been thinking a lot about doubt because of the Big Machine course epigraph. I questioned my own misunderstanding of LaValle’s quote and how important doubt actually is. In two of my blog posts, I navigated through and cycled back to this quote and came to the conclusion that doubt allows for intellectually conscious and independent perspectives. These perspectives are independent of institutions that may fail us. I chose to reproduce the Big Machine epigraph above because this is where my thinking for the semester started. Through thinking about doubt, however, it really made me question how I doubt as a student and where this doubt stems from. This is where the Dionne Brand epigraph comes in. Continue reading “Noticing How to Doubt”

surely i am able to write poems
celebrating grass and how the blue
in the sky can flow green or red
and the waters lean against the
chesapeake shore like a familiar
poems about nature and landscape
surely but whenever I begin
“the trees wave their knotted branches
and…”           why
is there under that poem always
an other poem?

— Lucille Clifton, “surely i am able to write poems”

 

I am choosing to consider Lucille Clifton’s epigraph partly because I felt challenged by Dr. McCoy’s remark that nobody had really tackled it in their blog posts. In addition, I’m really interested by the question that Clifton raises: “why / is there under that poem always / an other poem?” (9-11). I wonder who Clifton is addressing this question to, and I wonder whether that “other poem” is self-imposed. Is Clifton frustrated that others are assigning a meaning to her poem that she did not intend? Or is she frustrated in her own writing process, where she cannot seem to give words to what, exactly, she means? These questions have a double implication for me, as both a student and a writer. As a student, I want to take care that I am not trapping writers within my expectations of them. As a writer, I find myself worrying about the idea that I cannot control the way others understand my work. Continue reading “An Other Poem”