Category: McCoy 337 Spring 2019

Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life.

Before reading Bernice Johnson Reagon’s article “Nobody Knows the Trouble I See”, I never thought about the constant switching between two worlds. There is an idea that we straddle between our own family beliefs while trying to master the more dominant society as a way of survival and being “who we are in both places or all places we move” (Reagon). Continue reading “Straddling between Two Worlds”

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.– Toni Morrison, 1993 Nobel Lecture (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

I read this epigraph to mean that people and groups of people aren’t necessarily forgotten when they die.  The language and the culture that we engage with and contribute to when we’re alive effectively measures our lives and makes us memorable.

Bernice Johnson Reagon spoke, studied and sang about the way in which music can help people to reclaim space.  She spoke of music as a way to bond and ground a culture.  Music and the language within music effectively grounds a culture and reclaims space taken from African Americans in pre civil war times.  In and through black music, black people have been able to live through and past their deaths, reclaiming their spaces, as others have continued to sing and spread their songs.

There is a certain resonance communicated in this epigraph that is similarly found in the African American community.  Reagon herself wrote her own music in response to historical events as a way to pay homage to those who came before her.  There is a clear recursive element to this epigraph as well as to African American culture and music.  The recursion is found in the music in the way in which events seem to be recalled through music.  Reagon references history effectively bringing people and events back to the forefront of culture.  This style of song writing and historical representation is indicative of the Call and Response theme present in African American culture.

 

Something that intrigues me about the verb notice is the high level of attention, care, and respect that is needed TO notice something, someone, or even a concept. As an educator, I hope to bring awareness as well as various perspectives to students that they might have not seen otherwise.

Continue reading “Notice Me Notice You”

Admittedly, I felt a tinge of panic when I came to the blog and found that others had written about something that I had also been thinking about. EVEN THOUGH in all of the classes I’ve taken with Dr. McCoy, she has given us permission, and even encouraged my classmates and I to go back… To remember what others have written on or spoken about… To build off of different ideas that are already taking up space. Sometimes there is a discussion already occurring that sparks a thought or a question within us that allows us to propel forward.

Continue reading “Looking Back While Pushing Forward”

“Black literature is taught is sociology, as tolerance, not a serious, rigorous art form.” – Toni Morrison.

Without presupposing her intentions for this statement, I would like to think of the tone of this epigraph as regretful and ashamed (for now). Perhaps it’s my Geneseo training to believe all things not serious and not rigorous as somehow not valuable and perhaps this is why I would regret this sort of assessment of black literature. One thing I am more sure of is the recursive nature of such an epigraph. It lends itself to multiple interpretations and, thus, multiple iterations and applications and this is why I have chosen it for goal setting this semester.  The goal emergent from this epigraph is this: investigate the ways in which black literature can be taught (and learned) as a serious, rigorous art form. Continue reading “Waves, Bits, Memes, and Goals for the Semester”

During the beginning weeks of the new semester (my last at Geneseo) I have been doing a lot of reflecting, and thinking about what my future holds. This semester has a lot riding on it as there is no turning back when I walk across that stage in May and receive possibly the most important piece of paper in my life thus far.  While looking through the course epigraphs one, in particular, stuck out to me; “Doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men.” Victor LaValle, Big Machine.

As I was reading Big Machine for class this past week I noticed myself connecting with Victor, as I have always been one that doubts my capabilities. Towards the beginning of the novel, Ricky receives a mysterious envelope with simply just his name written on the front. Wanting to be alone he locks himself in the station bathroom but alas, Cheryl finds him, “Hey! What did that letter say?… Don’t know yet… Well, I’d love to know… Me too”. One can sense a feeling of annoyance from Ricky. He simply just wants to open the letter and be by himself, but instead, he has Cheryl yelling at him about what is inside the envelope.  While reading this I couldn’t help but think back to my senior year of high school waiting for my college decisions to arrive in the mail, and when they arrived having my mom rush me into opening them.  And now again during my senior year of college waiting to hear back from Graduate Programs, hoping to hear good news, but doubting that I will. Similarly to Courtney, I am the first person in my immediate family to go to be earning their Bachelor’s degree. I find that when people ask what my major is and I say “English”. Their first question is, what are you going to do with that? It is almost like they find it hard to believe that one could do a job with a degree in English. Having to talk them through the process of my plans after Geneseo sometimes helps with my doubtfulness, but other times not so much.

 

This class will definitely be the most rigorous English  course I have taken to date my college career,  and as I move towards the culmination of my academia, graduation, I feel encouraged to look behind and contemplate my path; what sort of path is it, what’s it shape? I’ve always thought of college as a line, sloping upward, increasing, and I’d say the large part of the student body would agree with this comparison. But if I seriously look back at the past three years of college and had to assign some sort of shape to all studying, testing, studying, writing, studying, and testing I’ve done, it’s anything but linear.

So, in the interest of ever-evolving my perspective and challenging the viewpoints which ground the base of my character, one of my goals for this class is to challenge my ideas on what college is, and to view my academic career much more holistically instead of something separate from other aspects of my life.

Continue reading “Circles on Circles on Circles”

During the first two weeks of classes, I’ve developed a goal for myself as a student in not just this class, but all of my classes: I want to notice the small details that make a big difference. This goal was developed after reading one of our course epigraphs: “My job is to notice…and to notice that you can notice.”–Dionne Brand.  While reading the first ten chapters of Victor Lavalle’s novel, Big Machine, I concentrated particularly hard on some of the intricacies of the text that might not have stuck out to me before.

Two of the recurring themes that I saw in the beginnings of the novel were self-hatred and self-doubt. Right away, Ricky states he knew that Cheryl’s outing with him was indeed a date, but that the “stink of failure had followed [his] relationships for years.” He does not even make an attempt to start a relationship with her; he has already made up his mind that it would end in failure. There is an element of mystery with the situation, but even the fact that Ricky leaves his job to jump on a bus shows signs of self-sabotaging behavior. That continues when he goes to toss salt onto the sidewalks. He neglects to protect his hands with gloves, and the salt makes his fingertips bleed. This physical pain is not something that he is upset about, however. If it is, it is not conveyed through the narrative. I have a feeling that these themes will continue throughout the novel. It has been a true test of my self-control to not finish the novel in an afternoon.

After doing the straddling exercise yesterday, I noticed that I’ve been doing a type of straddling in my own life. I’m the first woman in my family to go to college. The only other person to go was my father. Most of my family members have been happy to complete high school and continue with their adult lives. As I neared the end of my high school days, I realized that I wanted to learn more and that I did not want to be done with my schooling. After choosing English as my major, many family members did not understand it or value the decision to furthering my education at all. I found myself unable to talk about the biggest part of my life around the people who had been the biggest parts of my life. It has been challenging to figure out how to be myself with my family off campus, almost as difficult as walking those two little lines.

Bernice Johnson Reagon states at the beginning of her essay, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I see” that, “popular and academic chroniclers have a way of reshaping reality so that warts and pimples get smoothed off.” She goes on to remind the reader that the “greats” that we read were humans with flaws too. This is such a simple concept, but it struck a chord with me. She claims that when we celebritize our authors/advocates to the point where they are no longer human, they are disconnected from the community/cause that they are trying to represent. I want to pay close attention to guard against that this semester. Instead of celebritizing the authors that we read, I want to notice that they are humans with human emotions and not divine literary gods and goddesses.