Category: McCoy 337 Spring 2019

For my last blog post of the semester, I usually reflect on the growth I’ve seen within myself. More specifically, how I’ve grown in terms of my writing skills, how I analyze information as a student, and how I learn to appreciate literary works as an individual. However, for this blog post, I have decided to write about the course concepts and the lessons I’ve learned from them. Our class on “African-American Literature” may focus on writing from a different cultural perspective, but I also appreciate how the coursework could be related to one another and we could circle back our conversations to work we’ve done earlier.

Continue reading “Read, Discuss, Reflect, and Repeat”

Like Tayler, I was interested by the Big Machine quote, “In case I don’t survive, I want you to know this is my voice. Ricky Rice. Your father” (LaValle, 366). In her post, “Meaning & Measure,” Tayler suggests that Ricky’s story is a measure of his life. I think it’s particularly interesting to consider language as a measure of life in the context of Big Machine, because Ricky is telling his own story. Continue reading “Ricky, Our Narrator”

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

After reading Victor LaValle’s Big Machine. I’m still thinking about the recurring idea of doubt. My blog posts “Doubting Doubt” and “Cycling Through Doubt” both deal with what it means to doubt and why people do it. At first, I thought that the course epigraph, reproduced above, cast doubt in a negative light. After reading through Big Machine and seeing the quote in context, I realized that doubt is is a necessary human trait. But I still have one question: what does this have to do with recursion, if anything? Continue reading “How Do Doubt and Recursion Connect?”

“A bus covered in dust. This dirty, gray bank safe came crawling down the block, and folks nearly went to tears. There were passengers inside it already, too many, in fact… But the bus stopped. A few people got off, which meant there was room for a few more… But finally everyone agreed: a quartet of senior citizens walked to the bus door” (356).

This is my second time reading Big Machine and yet I had no memory of this brief scene of people crowding onto the bus after the explosion in Garland. This moment seems to resolve the haunting image of “That shabby man… scowling from the shoulder” who was thrown off the Greyhound at the beginning of Ricky’s story. I think the reason that man remains in Ricky’s thoughts is because he comes to represent the cast-out or despised, who have been failed by institutions. However, by the end of the book, Ricky encounters a bus full of people who shift and make room for more. A group of anxious people agree to let the neediest people get on the bus. In fact, in the wake of tragedy, Garland seems to be full of people making room and inviting others in: “Couples, trios, and quartets of people walked together on the streets. Holding each other up. Some of them crying, others still shocked. But no one seemed abandoned. Someone grabbed you up if you were alone. They pulled you close.” Even before Ricky officially takes on the mission to invite them back in, the text is acknowledging his new perspective. Continue reading “Back on the Bus”

In Ian’s post, “The Theme of Outcasts in African American Literature and Societal Views on Persons with Disabilities,” he addresses the process and impacts of social othering. He uses Big Machine to illustrate some of the forms that “outcast” has taken in our literature, including the homeless man on the bus, the Unlikely Scholars, and those working on behalf of Solomon Clay. The post then transitions to the language surrounding disability and how it functions to other people with disabilities. Then he states, “A good practice to remember to introduce people by their qualities and their relationship to you instead of by what makes them unique.” I believe that people’s qualities and what makes them unique are somewhat interchangeable, but Ian’s intent seems to be asking readers to consider character before aspects of identity. Continue reading “Content of Their Character”

“Bloodchild” has changed much of what I thought I knew. Octavia Butler’s story fascinated me, yes, but more so confused me and left me so unsure of my own convictions. If there are aliens, if there are monsters, if there is an “other,” who are they?

Continue reading “We, Like Monsters”

It feels appropriately recursive that I end my time posting with the same topic that I started with: the topic of homelessness in Victor LaValle’s Big Machine. I predicted in my last post and in conversations with other people that the homeless people would play an important role in the unfolding events, and I was right.

Continue reading “The Aftermath of a Threat and a Call to Action”

In my blog post “Recursive Memory” I discuss how important it is for people to be aware of what “script” they are drawing from, using Dr. McCoy’s words. By this I meant that people should doubt the information they are disseminating and using in their lives. Quite frequently, words and phrases people use have connotations and contexts they never realized were there prior to some careful introspection. This is important to note, considering how influential language is to how people perceive the world and process information; that and how people perceive each other. Continue reading “The Mutability of Language”