Category: Uncategorized

My semester’s story began in the opening week of the course when we were introduced to Ron Eglash, a professor in the school of information and design, and his book African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design. We moved soon into Eglash’s content of fractal concepts including Koch’s curve. The first iteration of a Koch curve informed every other text we sorted through in the days that followed. In those days, I found that as the previous iteration of movement became the input for the next, Eglash used the language regarding the repeated seed shape and the sole seed shape as “not special.” The endless yet expected result of the process was exactly what made it indistinct and he further states, “an extremely tortuous curve,” since any shape that didn’t imitate the steep slope for a plot could repeat (Eglash 11). In that process too, being able to see the end while it goes on for infinity seemed to be contradictory, but Felix Hausdorff in Eglash’s attribution to him seemed to resolve this. Hausdorff, one of the founders of modern topology, stated that we could imagine these curves as “taking up more than just one dimension” in the way circles do. In my reflection as well I looked through the files we had once studied and recalled the resemblance between what was drawn on the board on January 22, 2024 to February 16, 2024 and February 6th’s class notes as well as Koch’s curve that Freytag’s Pyramid and Aristotle’s Unified Plot Structure appear comparable. As I peered at the narrative arc that so much of Western culture implemented into the art of storytelling Dr. McCoy highlighted, I took a count of the novels I had been instructed to read in some of my most formative years. I took a big look at what we had read for this course where many of the texts seemed to reach no finality or restoration for the disorder. In that disorder I found joy in the tortuous Koch curve and relief in the literature that expanded past one dimension and interpretation, past the idea that there is only a singular mode of understanding thought and experiences. 

My understanding of the course evolved as I looked back to my essay, “Call-and Response: A Means to Resist Suffering,” for the seed shape of call-and-response that formed as resistance in the face of oppression and atrocity. I realized in my further reference how no text or any form of art can ever reach a definite end, much like the ongoing call-and-response, art exists in several dimensions closer to a circle than anything else. I wandered past shapes in this reflection to look at the natural world to tell us something greater about humanity. At the heart of the course is the principle that no great lesson ends—it is a river of thought that keeps supplying a handful of ideas, those ideas that could never be the same as the last phase of the day when we reached it last. If this sounds familiar, it’s with purpose, in staring at my reflection in the river of concepts and seed shapes, I found Heraclitus’ theory of flux in his book Fragments that within in, he suggests the ever-changing nature of the world around us makes us incapable of stepping in the same river stream twice. Heraclitus believed in change and becoming as waters touching those who go in the same river, so they coexist rather than negate the other if we compare them to a physical feature that we all recognize as constantly flowing, yet named the same body. The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher wrote in his self-named incomplete work about ancient wisdoms, “Most people do not take heed of the things they find, nor do they grasp them even when they have learned about them, although they think they do,” (Heraclitus 17). 

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve reflected on that space in between dimensions and that river analogy while we read Percival Everett’s The Water Cure. In it, Everett’s speaker Ishmael Kidder calls out these fragments imagining that Heraclitus wrote them to just be what they are and not a part of a grander work, but as fragments they are not whole by necessity (Everett 56). Before direct attribution to Heraclitus in the story, Kidder introduces fragments in a visually separated sentence that isn’t a sentence as it lacks the components of a general structure including a subject, verb, and object in that order simply. If we were to analyze instructed by the conventions of what is arbitrarily called “standard English,” we’d note the literary construction of chiasmus as well that appears throughout providing a contrast of words, for instance in one section it is nouns and names (Everett 13, 38-39, 110) and may or may not (Everett 45, 109-110). Ishmael Kidder takes over as the god of meaning as the one who gets to tell us in his art, “all sections are fragments, except for this one because it lives here, in this spot, among the fragments, and has a specified job concerning those fragments surrounding it” (Everett 24). 

His references to the fragments of knowledge not just in logic, but in experience go beyond form or language as they move to his self-portraits (Everett 41, 53, 113) that refuse to affirm or even acknowledge in their creation Jefferson’s commentary in Query XIV in Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson professes without support, “never yet could I find that a Black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture” (Jefferson 9), which Everett subverts conceptually for Ishmael Kidder’s ambivalence and fragmented sense of self are depicted in his Picasso-esque painting. In a signified conversation between Kidder and Jefferson Everett facilitates, I am reminded of another voice in James Snead’s essay, “On Repetition in Black Culture.” So I draw a line between Heraclitus, Ishmael Kidder’s story, Koch’s curves, and further back now for how no text may be uninformed by its influences and references that hide within the output as they are its input. Snead would agree as he starts off claiming a truism among people regardless of culture, “After all, men have by now had to make peace with the idea that the world is not inexhaustible in its manifold combinations, nor life in its various guises and forms” (Snead 146). Snead points us to a broader and recurring issue that Jefferson’s statement only moves past the top of, which is that Europeans during Enlightenment in particular started to define themselves over while attempting to define cultures “belonging to” Europe independently from African culture. In isolation, the “ultimate otherness,” as he calls it, declared this similar idea of being and non-being as Heraclitus of what Black culture was and what it existed as and in opposition to what. We see, however, in Ishmael Kidder’s isolation and immersion in his writings being critical of society, we are told in phases of a conflict between an individual and the collective proving an irony in many of the qualities of said society.

Adding to the handful of instances in The Water Cure that writer Ishmael Kidder discusses fragments, another happens as he unravels Thale’s story using all that he knows from Aristotle’s Metaphysics and De Anima, which allow him to land on it meaning that “Water is the essence of things. / All things have soul in them / The all is divine” (Everett 34). Aristotle, who Kidder falls back on frequently in his rumination, frames—as a critical concept we’ve returned to on many occasions as well—his thoughts of definitions of things that state their essence (Everett 190). A not so distant connection drawn to such a belief is in Kidder’s statement on art and his respective relation to it as he talks about the politics of the world being a source of disarray and atrocity, “right or wrong love it or leave it and it’s a good thing because it’s always wrong but it has taught me to torture…seek definite descriptions precise definitions clear marks of identity or identities…that might or might not exist” (Everett 191-192). So we make our way back to Heraclitus’ idea of indefinition and unity of opposites that everything is and is not at the same time with a possibility of both existence and nothingness. This is all as if to say that, to end on Everett’s novel to put a pin in the semester to come back to after a passage of time, we’ll look at the identity of the course newly and that is a natural consequence of movement of some sorts, forwards and backwards, to and fro. The iterations of this semester’s course came in full-force, but gracefully. At last I think about in Eglash’s African Fractals for the figure captions about measuring nature using fractal geometry to show how across time and space, the curves of the land change. Out of these, African fractals showed strong resemblance with Georg Cantor, who contributed a great deal to set theory and an infinite set (Figure 1.1) and looping as recursion, to create his Cantor set and fractal (Figure 13.1). This occurrence of art and its essential feature of inspiring more art using its inspiration as input to reiterate or recreate has come up significantly. Cantor’s work, according to Eglash, only became useful to the study when Benoit Mandebrot, a polymath associated with the “art of roughness,” furthered the notion of fractal dimension in scaling to measure irregularities in nature. The connection of his contribution in this dialogue between studies pulls us back to Heraclitus for Mandelbrot firstly happened upon a study of “long-term river fluctuations by British civil servant H.E. Hurst” (Eglash 208). Hurst found that the annual floods varied in their scales and couldn’t ever be grounded in an average as the only way to describe these changes was to scale annually and sketch a slope.

We’ve learned to read slopes in this way as we read Everett’s The Water Cure, which confronts a tension of power for who gets to decide the cultural aesthetics and formal narratives of literature that are deemed as canon, relevant, legitimate, worthy, and “art” and the resulting fragments of that art, and therefore people. The logic of Ishmael Kidder’s actions of making himself a god, not only to his captive, but his actual written art is interconnected with the idea of an absolute truth existing for a God and not for anyone else. There’s no truth to an order disorder restore plotline unless we are completely removed from the situation at hand, watching the river pass from above it. So I am left to meditate on the protagonist’s words that tell me about Plato’s saying, “the sense of things becomes that they are true when perceived,” (Everett 114) to believe that change and becoming can accompany one another. I believe that what we consider and value in literature as art can include movements that have kept it running forward. I believe that I can keep up even while I look back on those bends and curves and get caught in the river.

Works Cited

Eglash, Ron. African Fractals : Modern Computing and Indigenous Design. Rutgers University Press, 1999.

Everett, Percival. The Water Cure. Graywolf Press, 2007.

Iterations Final Reflection Essay

Forever repeating, neverending, without a true destination. The concept of infinity has come up in my own personal experience in my class with Beth McCoy, African American Literature, as well as in some of our course topics such as African Fractals by Ron Eglash, and The Water Cure by Percival Everett. African Fractals is a topic we focused on throughout the course, our cornerstone, applying it to each concept. Fractals can be described as patterns that repeat itself, onto itself. This pattern is never-ending, and decreases in scale infinitely. According to Eglash, “African visualizations for infinity are snail shells”(Eglash, 148). This represents their symbol for infinity because of “the scaling properties of their logarithmic spirals; one can clearly see the potential for the spiral to continue without end despite it’s containment in finite space- indeed, it is only because of its containment in a finite space that there is a sense of having gained access to or grasped at the infinite”(Eglash, 148). It is easier to understand the concept of infinity when you can visualize it. This is why discovering infinity in The Water Cure is less concrete. The novel is a satiric comedy/horror novel about the experiences and thought processes of an Ishmael Kidder, who may or may not have a man in his basement who may or may not be the culprit of his daughter’s rape and death. The concept of infinity is used in a more metaphorical way, to describe his desires, and the idea of wanting to achieve something that he can’t quite reach, making that motion towards his desires one of infinite movement. I have had a similar experience when reflecting on my own writing this semester. Approaching the concept of infinity from African Fractals is something that involves discussing my personal experience, and connecting this to events in other course topics such as The Water Cure by Percival Everett.

When discussing my experience in this course, this idea of infinity comes up relatively frequently, especially when it comes to finding a destination and purpose when writing. For example, when I first started this class, I already had experience with my professor, Dr. Beth McCoy. In my previous class with her, she gave me feedback on one of my essays, advising me to slow down. It was at this point in my education career that when getting this guidance, I interpreted it as a way to solely improve my writing and product. I thought of it as a tool to allow me to get my essays done in a more efficient manner, that will help me to achieve a better grade or attain more positive reinforcement from professors. However, through this class I have realized that this feedback from Beth has so much more significance and purpose behind it. 

The importance of slowing down lies in the benefits and growth that you receive from taking time to unpack your thoughts and ideas. Unpacking results in more clarity within myself, as well as increased understanding in the reader, as they can more fully understand my thought processes. My motive should be less about the grade I receive, and more about the purpose of the essay I write. This is emphasized further in group collaborations during this semester, in talking with each other and discussing sensitive topics. Without slowing down, or finding your essay’s destination, your essay goes on infinitely, without true motion, without purpose. For this reason, I have learned to slow down, giving my essay a place to land, giving my thoughts the chance to fully form. With this in mind, I have found the concept of infinity not just in my own experiences, but in specific ideas throughout this course, such as The Water Cure and African Fractals.

When Ishmael Kidder in The Water Cure talks about the supposed man in his basement, the concept of infinity is brought up several times. For example, he uses infinity to describe torture he experiences, torture he inflicts onto the supposed man in his basement, as well as his love for his daughter. When inflicting infinite torture, Kidder places mirrors all around his culprit, and discusses the idea that there is infinite space between the man in the basement and the mirrors surrounding him, forever reflecting his own image. He describes that he “wanted him to have the company of infinite incidence and refraction, unending repetition, the forever drip drip drip of his own image”(Everett, 129). This idea leads me back to African Fractals, as Kidder uses mirrors to visualize infinity, compared to the African symbol of snail shells. Kidder also frequently refers to the theories and work of Zeno, a philosopher who talks about the concept of Dichotomy. The Dichotomy Paradox, as provided to us by Beth, is the idea that to get somewhere, you have to travel half of that distance, and then half of that half, and so on, continuing to infinity. Each step taken, task completed, built off of the one before. This idea is also similar to that of African Fractals, as their patterns are always building off of each other.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in describing the paradox, describes the problem that traveling infinitely “must take an infinite time, which is to say it is never completed. And since the argument does not depend on the distance or who or what the mover is, it follows that no finite distance can ever be traveled, which is to say that all motion is impossible”(Huggett, 2024). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/ Kidder applies this Dichotomy Paradox to his approach to torturing the man in his basement, as well as his love for his deceased daughter. When applying this paradox to the man in his basement, he attributes the idea, again, to the mirrors that he has placed around him, and describes that he only experiences the betweens of the mirrors. There is infinite space between him and the mirrors, that he can only infinitely interact with his reflections. He describes this to him, saying “there you are again and again and again and in order for you to appear you have to dissociate yourself from everything around you, but you can’t do that, can you”(Everett, 59)? Kidder is using the infinite images that the man in his basement is seeing of himself to torture him, as well as to hide himself. Furthermore, Kidder uses the Dichotomy Paradox to emphasize his love for his daughter, as well as his guilt and yearning to no longer exist. 

Just like the concept of movement when traveling half of a distance infinitely, Kidder wishes he could punish himself for surviving rather than his daughter, but he describes his problem, saying “you never cut a thing down to nothing. There is never a final cut. Daily, I slice away at my love for my daughter, at my guilt for surviving, at my resolve for revenge and slice away at merely myself, and it remains painfully obvious that I’m all still here, always big enough to be cut a million more times”(Everett, 164). Kidder wants to be with his daughter, but the anger of not being able to do so drives him to commit violence toward himself, the man in his basement, and even the love he has for his daughter. Earlier in the novel, however, Kidder describes his love for his daughter as “this desire for infinite words”(Everett, 18). He elaborates on this statement by saying “you cannot have the desire unless you love infinitely.(Everett, 18)” Again leading back to African Fractals, Kidder again uses another symbol to represent infinity compared to snail shells; words. Kidder loves his daughter infinitely, and wishes to speak to her infinitely. He further describes this love by imagining her daughter at a word shop, possibly with the desire for infinite words but having to purchase them. With only a dollar, she buys a box with four words, and after opening the box and finding it empty, “she marched back into the wordshop and said, ‘THIS BOX IS EMPTY!”(Everett, 121) using her four words. After doing this a second time, she is left with empty boxes, without words. This emphasizes the idea that Kidder wants the infinite ability to speak to his daughter, but any words he speaks to her have no true destination, and travel both endlessly, and with static movement. He imagines that his daughter is having the same struggle. This love that Kidder has for his daughter turns into one of infinite desire, torture, and movement towards an illusory destination. 

The concept of infinity based on African Fractals is one that can be applied to my experiences in this course, African American Literature, and our last topic, The Water Cure. Finding a destination with this essay involved circling back to past experiences, noticing changes in my writing, and applying that to my life as well as The Water Cure, connecting these two concepts through African Fractals. Throughout writing this essay, I have learned that my writing has purpose beyond a grade, and that this class shouldn’t end here, but concepts learned in this environment should stretch to finding connections throughout our lives and in others as well. 

Iterations Final Reflection Essay

African American Literature Studies

Iterations Essay

Throughout this semester and our readings we made many connections. During class discussions and small group discussion there was often a connection of texts happening. The two texts that I will be focusing on during this essay are Percival Everett’s, The Water Cure, and African Fractals, by Ron Eglash. I have decided to focus on the idea’s of recursion, iteration and infinity. What is recursion? According to Eglash, “recursion is the motor of fractal geometry; it is here that basic transformations- whether numerical of spatial – are spun into whole cloth, and the patterns that emerge often tell a story of their whirling birth”. He also defines iteration as, “only one transformation process, but each time the process creates an output, it uses this result as the input for the next iteration, as we’ve seen in generating fractals”. Finally, Eglash defines infinity as, “… it was a limit that one could tend toward, but it was not considered to be a legitimate object of mathematical inquiry in itself. Most Europeans stuck with this definition until Cantor set Europe’s first fractal, created the proper definition of an infinite set, thus allowing infinity itself to be considered.” There are different types of both recursion and iterations. There is cascade recursion which is a predetermined sequence of similar processes. The example that Eglash provided for this was, “there is a children’s story in which a man buys a christmas tree, but discovers it is too tall for his ceiling so he cuts off the top. His dogs find the discarded top, and put it in their doghouse, but they too discover it’s too tall, and cut off the top. Finally  the mice drag this tiny top into their hole, where it fits just fine – the recursion “bottoms out.” – all of these were independent transformations; it is only by coincidence, so to speak, that they happened to be the same”. Another version of recursion is the numeric version of cascading recursion. Eglash defined this as, “we divide a number by 2 in each part of the sequence”. According to him this is not a very strong form of recursion because it requires we know the transformations ahead of time which is not always possible. Second, you have to know what transformation you are going to make ahead of time which is also not always possible. An important variation of iteration according to Eglash is “nesting”. This makes loops within loops. Nested loops are very common for computer programs. Percvial Everett’s novel, The Water Cure, is about a man who’s daughter was kidnapped and raped then brutelly murdered. He spends part of the story maybe or maybe not getting revenge on the man that did this horrible act. He may or may not have had the man in his basement. And he may or may not have shoved him in his trunk. 

A form of recursion that is used in this text is self-reference recursion. This is when symbols/icons are used to represent or refer to something. The example that was used in the text, African Fractals, is “Kellogg’s corn flakes, for example, once came in a box that featured a family sitting down to breakfast. In this picture you could see that the family had a box of Kellogg’s corn flakes on their breakfast table, and you could see that this box showed the same picture of the family, with the same box on their table, and so on to infinity.” An example of self-reference recursion from Everett’s, The Water Cure, is, the man that he may or may not have kidnapped. This man is representing Everett’s anger and grief. He represents the fact that his daughter is gone and not coming back. Everett has to deal with this and learn how to grieve with this fact. That is why I believe the man that he may or may not have kidnapped is a symbol for these things. Recursion is all throughout this novel. Everett is breaking up events in his life to smaller events that all have cause and effect. For example, the murder of his daughter was the cause of Everett maybe or maybe not kidnapping the man who raped and murdered her. An example of this cause and effect relationship with recursion is when Everett is explaining how he used to feel when his daughter was around. For example, “I used to find serenity in the face of my daughter, but that state went missing as did she, turned up missing, as it was put, as if a person, a life, an idea can be discovered by the realization of its absence”. Clearly, there is a cause and effect relationship here. The cause was the kidnapping of his daughter and the effect was him not being able to find peace or happiness after his daughter went missing. Recursion is an important aspect of this novel. Without any cause there would be no effect… there would be no novel.

One example of iteration that I want to focus on is the drawings throughout the novel. As the novel continues the drawings develop more and more until they are completed. This is iteration because he is using each output to be the next input. Everett begins the text with a drawing. It is a singular line on a piece of paper and underneath it, it says, “…so we induce…” on the next page is the singular word “and”. On the page after that is the singular word “find”. It ends with “the arduous nowhere.” The drawing reappears about 25 pages into the text. This time Everett added another line. The picture is now made up of two small lines. This drawing keeps reappearing in the text until it is finally finished at the end of the text. For those of you curious… the drawing ended up being a cat’s head. This example of iteration I believe is to add an abstract component to his novel. The drawing does not necessarily mean anything or go along with anything that the text is about therefore, that is why I believe it is to add this abstract component. This whole novel of Everett’s is very abstract, as that was his goal. When looking at the term infinity and how it fits into this novel there are many examples. I decided to discuss the hatred that Everett feels because I feel that is a very common and never ending theme throughout the novel. Everett has hatred for many people and things. One person in particular is the man who he may or may not have kidnapped in revenge for killing his daughter. Another is president Bush. Everett used Bush as a comparison for many people. It was as though he was taking his hatred out for Bush on anyone he could. He wrote, “The stupid fuck was elected by stupid fucks and supported by stupid fucks and even occasionally fell out of favor with stupid fucks, but stupid fucks, being stupid fucks, either forgot or forgave and again loved the kind stupid fuck who loved war and money and butchering the language while chewing at the inside of his cheek, polluting the air with slogans like, If you can’t find your enemy, create one and When in doubt, fear and hate, though my favorite unused one is It’s Us against Them, too bad We’re not all Us.”  This may seem like a weird example for something that I am saying is infinite. Is there infinity in the quote? Yes. The hatred that Everett is expressing so intensely I can almost feel how extreme it is myself is expressed throughout the text. When Everett expresses his hatred for someone it is in an intense way. He will make it clear who he does not like all throughout this novel. 

This semester I learned a lot. I was/still am new to the English major. This class provided me with many different reading techniques and different ways of understanding texts. Another thing this class taught me to do was make strong connections. All year we have been making connections between texts which is something that was not so familiar with me. Before this class I would not have been able to connect African Fractals to a novel. I didn’t even know what African Fractals were. It is so important to be able to make these types of connections not just for the ability to write an essay like this but just to develop and strengthen your understanding of something as a whole. Sometimes it takes connecting a reading to something else to be able to truly understand it or at least develop some sort of theme you think goes along with it. Looking back at my first essay, Seed Shape Essay, I have noticed many changes. I feel that not only have I become a stronger writer I have also become a more independent writer. I remember with that essay I was very confused. I had never written an essay like that before and had no clue where to even start. Looking at that essay compared to this I feel I have made many improvements and I feel that I am able to make better/stronger connections between readings.

Throughout this semester, and the duration of the course, I have greatly expanded my knowledge of African American literature and its importance. I walked into this course with very minimal knowledge of anything that would come out of this class. As a class, we had many collaborative discussions which have deepened my understanding of several concepts, including recursion, repetition, and the importance of collaboration. 

Ron Eglash explains in his book African Fractals that the concept of a seed shape is crucial for understanding African design and culture. A seed shape is a basic geometric form that has repetition in African patterns, resulting in the creation of intricate designs. In The Water Cure by Percival Everett, we can see a similar pattern. The story starts with simple elements and gradually builds upon them, becoming more complex as we read. This progression is like the growth of a plant from an actual seed, which helps in illustrating how stories, like African designs, can be built upon a simple foundation to create something rich and layered. In addition to the text itself being comparable to a seed shape, and even theoretically to a real seed, the fact that we ended with this text is a seed shape of this course itself. Using The Water Cure by Percival Everett as the final text we tackle is important due to the fact it is a culmination of concepts we’ve spoken of (including repetition/recursion). Though it does not particularly engage with past texts, the piece is a good through-line of what we have done up to this point, as Professor Beth McCoy continuously notes throughout this course, that we are looping back to past content every module. In the first pages of The Water Cure, we see Ishmael spiraling, being that this piece is, in fact, a revenge narrative. This sense of spiraling and a bit of insanity is an idea that continues throughout, but increasingly makes more sense as we read. 

Regarding African Fractals, The Water Cure, and recursion, both works exhibit a commonality in their use of it. In African Fractals, recursion is depicted as one shape serving as the foundation for the next, seamlessly repeating and continuing the patterns. I can rationalize the comparison of recursion to repetition because it helps me understand. This repetition is the act of doing something again (in this case, repetition of the seed shape from one to another for African Fractals). This comparison helps emphasize the relationship between recursion and repetition and how such complex and interconnected patterns also relate to the development of the story in The Water Cure. For example, on page 53 of the PDF of The Water Cure, “It is the dissymmetry in the natural world that creates beauty, the fact that a thing cools down, but will never heat up without an input of energy, that a rock will stop rolling, but will not start without an input of energy, that the days lose meaning and will not mean anything new without an input of energy.” I feel like this is an interesting quote (and a longer one) to focus on as this quote itself lacks symmetry, physically, making it dissymmetrical. 

Next, to turn to our final module in English 337, African American Literature. Professor Beth McCoy has organized the modules of this course to tie into not only the content tackled in the said module but also tying it to the ones before it. This final module, module 7, entitled “Endings that aren’t endings” greets us with a big photo of a colorful infinity sign. In the bio of this module, Beth states that we will be returning to the beginning of the course. This module being a photo of an infinity sign reinforces my thoughts that not only does this class build upon itself, but also everything connects. We began this semester with our first module, which the bio says “You’ll be constantly looping back to previous modules and concepts even as the course moves forward.” (McCoy, 2024). This first module, without the knowledge of any content to come, already formed that infinity sign in my head, unbeknownst to me when this course began. 

Reflecting on in general, my semester through this class, I have learned the benefit of collaborations in other disciplines than the one I am familiar with, for example, I am an education major and collaboration in those courses is different from what I have done in this class. Participating in collaborations with my peers has been key to my success in this class, and I felt positive about collaboration opportunities from day one before any had taken place. I felt so confident in my abilities and opportunities to collaborate due to Beth’s voice in modules. By ‘voice’ I mean, for example, “As part of processing critical issues such as that seemingly minor one, you’ll get to talk with each other in large groups and small groups. You’ll get to write anonymously. You’ll get to write publicly. You’ll get to write collaboratively as well as independently. Yes: you’ll get to do these things because they are precious opportunities” (McCoy, 2024). Beth could have simply given us the robotic typical class introduction like ‘We will be doing group work in this class’, but, she did not. I believe my confidence and success in this course also stem from how Beth presented the course from day one and continued to till the end. Calling collaboration a “precious opportunity” rather than just… collaboration, means so much more than just saying it. Through mature collaborative discussions with my peers, I have seen new insights and perspectives, which led me to see the richness and complexity of African American literature. By working with my classmates this semester, I have gained a deeper understanding of the material provided, and given confidence and kind people who help me understand things I may not have understood the first time I read them. The power of collective and collaborative learning is one thing that has helped me soar in this course. Overall, throughout exploration of Percival Everett’s The Water Cure and the concept of recursion of African Fractals by Ron Eglash, I was able to delve deep into collaborative conversation and see the depth of African American Literature. This course has not only expanded my understanding of the texts but has also deepened my appreciation for the power of collaboration and diverse perspectives. Professor Beth McCoy’s thoughtful course design, emphasizing the recurrence of themes and concepts, has further played a part in my understanding of the course, and my newfound appreciation for thoughtful collaboration with my peers.

My first year of college is definitely one to remember, so much that I learned that I will take with me throughout life, including the concepts that came along with taking this class. Originally I was nervous about taking a three-hundred-level English class, as this is my first year so I was unaware of what to expect, but Professor McCoy made this class during the semester a delight to attend. She made my first college Literature class so easy, and not overwhelming at all. The concepts that were learned and discussed in class will stick with me and they will make the rest of the English classes I need to take so much easier. In the duration of this class, we did tons of thinkING as well, constantly digging into the bigger picture and not staying at the surface. This semester during class we discussed tons of journey of discovery and questioning. Everyone within the class will have taken some part of the class in a different interpretation than others, but ultimately it’s the same concepts. This semester presented me with challenges that forced me to confront my own thoughts on certain topics I knew more about. The completion of this class will open up a gate for my next English class using the same concepts, this can be known as recursion; a concept that was taught in class using the author Ron Eglash, and his book “African Fractals”. 

“African Fractals” refers to a fundamental geometric form or pattern that serves as the basis for the generation of intricate fractal structures. Fractals are geometric shapes and patterns that repeat at different scales, displaying similarity, meaning that each part of the fractal looks similar to the whole when magnified. The process is repeatedly applying a transformation of shapes, which, as a result, creates complex, self-replicating patterns. This process can be brought back to the idea of recursion between English classes here at SUNY Geneseo. In Ron Eglash’s words, “a sort of feedback loop, with the result of one stage brought back as the starting point for the next.”(Eglash, African Fractals). In class, we experience recursion every time we start a conversation on the topic of our previous class and use those ideas to lead into the current class topic of the day. Life as well constantly consists of recursion, and it never stops. As said before, recursion can be seen as a pattern of repetition or self-reference. 

Within African American Literature, our class faced topics such as discrimination, bias, and unequal power dynamics when we were reading. These systems of racial oppression and injustice can exhibit recursive patterns as well. Patterns of oppression often have deep historical roots that perpetuate over time. For example, systems of slavery and colonialism have had long-lasting effects on societies, creating recursive patterns of disadvantage for certain racial groups that persist across generations. In our readings, we discussed these issues. In “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet A. Jacobs, recursion is constantly considered. Jacobs explores the recurring themes of oppression and the desire for freedom throughout the narrative. Repeatedly, Jacobs emphasizes how enslaved individuals resisted their oppression, whether through acts of defiance, escape attempts, or efforts to maintain their dignity and autonomy in the face of dehumanizing conditions. This is just one of many readings that discussed topics as such within our class this semester. 

Not only does racial injustice occur in “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” but also in “Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass”, another reading that we discussed in class. In class, we used recursion when discussing these autobiographies; it started with Fredrick Douglass and used his ideas and concepts to move into Harriet Jacobs. Again this can be considered recursion. Douglass’s reflections on his growth and development could be seen as a form of personal recursion. As he recounts his journey from slavery to freedom, he frequently reflects on his past experiences and the lessons he has learned along the way. This process of self-reflection and self-examination can be likened to a recursive loop, as Douglass continually revisits and builds upon his thoughts and experiences.

In “The Water Cure,” Everett incorporates elements of fractal-like complexity into the narrative structure and themes of the novel. The story unfolds in layers, with multiple perspectives and storylines intersecting and diverging in intricate ways. Just like in class, the complexity is grand and it takes time to delve into the bigger picture. So many layers of our class need to be examined for better understanding. There is a connection between the novel’s themes and the concept of fractals as a fundamental aspect of human expression and experience. “The Water Cure” and the concept of African fractals explore the idea of interconnectedness and how seemingly disparate elements are actually linked together in intricate ways. Again, like our class, everything we did was connected, from standing on a line in the hall to the actual readings throughout the semester. All Literature classes that I need to take will be interconnected. “The Water Cure” navigates the fractal-like patterns of power and identity in their lives. Just as African fractals demonstrate the interconnectedness of smaller patterns to form larger wholes, the characters in the novel may find themselves caught in a web of relationships and power dynamics that shape their identities and actions. Grief for example will forever be in his life because of the actions of Ishmael Kidder. Going back to the concept of “seed shape”, the grief that he faces will always connect back to him in his mind. 

Within “The Water Cure” it tells a story that challenges perceptions and forces you to question the reality presented to you. This semester during class we discussed tons of journey of discovery and questioning. Everyone within the class will have taken some part of the class in a different interpretation than others, but ultimately it’s the same concepts. Much like the characters in Everett’s novel, we found ourselves navigating through murky waters, trying to make sense of conflicting information and societal expectations. Just as “The Water Cure” confronts its characters with uncomfortable truths and complex moral dilemmas, this semester presented me with challenges that forced me to confront my own thoughts on certain topics I knew more about. 

Throughout the duration of this semester, there have been recursion.  In the second half of class we would discuss a concept and then continue to pick back up with that concept in the beginning of the following class. This happened every class, nonstop. From the very beginning of this semester we discussed African Fractals and recursion as a theme. This semester presented me with challenges that forced me to confront my own thoughts on certain topics I knew more about. In the duration of this class, we did tons of thinkING as well, constantly digging into the bigger picture and not staying at the surface. This semester during class we discussed tons of journey of discovery and questioning as well. 

I’ll admit, before starting this course, I had many assumptions about Black Art and the types of novels we would be reading in the course. I have always strived to be anti-racist, but what this course has taught me is that any assumption one makes about Black Art limits their experience of it. The literature I read over this semester smashed any assumptions I had to pieces. Specifically, while reading The Water Cure by Percival Everett and African Fractals by Ron Eglash I have come to realize that not only are these books the ultimate examples that Black Art proves all of the Western World’s assumptions to be false, but the ultimate examples that prove my assumptions to be false. 

African Fractals by Ron Eglash goes into great depth on the subject of the mathematical complexities of African cultures. But, after reading, I think the real throughline of African Fractals is the sheer amount of evidence provided by African cultures that proves Western World assumptions about them to be misguided and racist. 

African Fractals disproves two main assumptions that the Western World has held about African societies and their capacity for complex mathematics. The first is that the fractal geometry displayed by African societies is a result of an accident or a mimicry of nature. Eglash reminds us that “most indigenous societies seem quite interested in differentiating themselves from their surroundings.” (Eglash 51) This supports the fact that the displays of fractal geometry in African societies are not the result of trying to mimic the natural environment like people in Western societies think they do.) African societies are just as complex and competent as Western societies are, and that complexity is a result of the profoundly deep minds of African people. “The fact that African fractals are rarely the result of imitating natural forms helps remind us that they are not due to “primitives living close to nature.” (Eglash 53 To think they are “primitive” is to assume a racist ideology that Black people are less than White people. 

The second assumption that African Fractals proves false is the one that claims that the Western World invented/discovered fractal geometry first. African Fractals draws attention to an important timeline of the world’s “first fractal”. The Cantor Set, or the so-called “first fractal” was created by Georg Cantor in 1877. But what African Fractals points out is that a fractal pattern that looks awfully similar to the Cantor Set can be seen atop ancient Egyptian temples, which of course are much older than the 17th century. Eglash makes the inference that Georg Cantor may have even taken inspiration from ancient Egyptian architecture to create his Cantor Set. (Eglash 207) I can selfishly ease my conscience a bit by reminding myself that I did recognize the fact that African societies are much older and thus wiser than Western ones… I am not as racist as I could be. It was fascinating and new to me, to read such explicit examples that prove this fact in African Fractals. I found it even humourous to see such blatant examples (like the use of the Cantor Set in Egypt) of how misguided the Western World’s view of African Societies is. 

Something else in this class I found humorous because of just how ridiculously and shamelessly racist it was, was Thomas Jefferson’s assertion in his Notes on the State of Virginia: Query 14 that “But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration…” (Query 14) Again, to me, this seems like such a ridiculous notion. Of course, Black people are capable of telling intricate and sophisticated stories that include perplexing examples of narration that span beyond streams of consciousness. I had known deep down that this was possible and did not hold this same assumption, I still had my own assumptions about Black literature. I had assumed that the literature we would read in this course and thus the majority of Black literature would be mostly “fugitive slave narratives”, folk tales, and abolitionist songs/poems/essays. Luckily, I was wrong and have never come across such a great display of this fact as I did by reading The Water Cure by Percival Everett. 

The Water Cure could be read as the diary of a man named Ishmael Kidder. His young daughter has been brutally murdered and Kidder is crippled by his grief. In order to cope with these incapacitating feelings, Ishemeal decided that his daughter’s murder needs to be punished. As the book progresses, the reader comes to realize that Ishmeael “may or may not” be holding a man hostage in his basement and torturing him. 

The Water Cure is anything but “plain narration”. Throughout the book, the story is intercepted by various modalities of interruptions. Some of which include drawings. There are drawings of the narrator’s daughter (Everett 19), Picassoesque self-portraits of the narration (Everett 30 ), and a curious slow-built drawing of a cat that is not fully completed until the end of the novel. (Everett 213) These drawings help the book to function more as a journal of the narrator’s mind. The wild drawings help the reader to grasp just how unsettled and sick the narrator is. The main story of The Water Cure is also disrupted by textual interruptions. There are sections of text in other languages (Everett 8), handwritten poems by the narrator (Everett 61), and riddles (Everett 18). I will admit these textual interruptions are even more distracting to the reader than the visual interruptions. But I think that may be precisely the point. Kidder, as the narrator, is trying to distract the reader from what is occurring in his basement. 

To me, it seems that Kidder recognizes that what he “may or may not” be doing could be considered wrong by some people, and while he is trying to confess his inner thoughts to us as the readers he is also trying to be cautious. I think this is exactly why cases of “plain narration” are few and far between in The Water Cure. Kidder wants the readers to focus on what really matters in his situation, not the man in his basement, but the death of his daughter and the grief he is feeling as a result. One of the few examples of “plain narration” that does come up in the book is when Kidder reads his daughter’s coroner’s report to the possible hostage in his basement. This is a detailed account of his daughter’s injuries, the state and place her body was found in, as well as her suspected cause and time of death. (Everett 200) The report is gruesome and devastating. It is at this point, almost at the end of the book, where The Water Cure grinds to a halt. The readers are forced to ignore everything else that has been told to them. Ignore all the previous interruptions, ignore all of their assumptions about what Kidder is doing, and just simply focus on the death of his young daughter. After finishing The Water Cure, I realized that this book is the ultimate example of Black Art that proves both Jefferson’s assumptions of Black Literature and my assumptions wrong.

The fact that Everett even references Thomas Jefferson in The Water Cure (Everett 35) proves that this book was a direct reaction to Jefferson’s racist statement and intended to serve as proof that he was wrong. Jefferson claimed that Black authors and their writings were not capable of producing complexities or works that included anything other than simple streams of consciousness. The Water Cure absolutely destroys this assumption by telling a deeply moving, emotional, and intelligent story all the while hardly using any “plain narration” at all. 

Looking back at my thoughts on Black literature from the beginning of this course, although I am proud to say that my assumptions were not as awful as Thomas Jefferson’s, I still had them. I had assumed that Black literature consisted only of the traditional “fugitive slave narrative” genre. Historically, that was the only example of Black literature I had read. The Water Cure was the first piece of Black literature where the focus was not slavery. Of course, there are still undertones of this in The Water Cure, but after reading I think that the main point of this book was the grief that parents must deal with after they have lost a child, and how much grief can drive a person to extremes. The Water Cure is not only different from any other book by a Black author that I have ever read, but different from any other book I have read period. It completely obliterated the assumptions of Black literature that I had held and helped me realize that Black literature is so much more diverse than I had previously thought. It’s sad to think that in the past I had been limiting myself and my reading to books and literature that fit into my false and misguided schema. I am so grateful to this course for expanding my knowledge and expectations and teaching me to think critically about my assumptions. While African Fractals by Ron Eglash and The Water Cure by Percival Everett seem to have nothing in common, they both have had very similar functions in my learning about literature over the semester. Both books have functioned as counter-stereotypes and provided evidence that completely shattered any assumptions that I or other people in the Western world have historically had.

When kids are being taught in school, they learn to read what is written on the page and interpret the words they see, but literature is often much more than this. Authors make conscious decisions to include information and messages not directly on the page, just because a reader cannot physically see something in the text does not mean that the message is not there. This concept is discussed in African Fractals, a text written by Ron Eglash. Chapter 9 of the text explores the idea of infinity and those who doubt the presence of “true infinity” because they cannot physically see it. The texts read throughout this course along with the concept of infinity represent the analysis and complex thought processes that are necessary to understand all that this course has taught me. 

When I first began my time at Geneseo I was under the impression that my reading and comprehension skills were up to par, and that high school had taught me what I needed to know in that area. As I began taking English courses, I found that to be a foolish thought. Every English course that I have taken at Geneseo has taught me something unique and has improved my ability to interpret texts and apply learned concepts, especially this course. I most recently learned that Percival Everett’s text The Water Cure is an extraordinarily complex read due to many things that are not stated directly on the pages. The story’s narrator and main character are unreliable, and any information shared directly from him to the reader is to be taken with a grain of salt. The text tells the story of a man who lost his daughter and may or may not have kidnapped a man who may or may not be guilty of the death of his daughter. The phrase “may or may not” is purposeful, for the duration of the story the reader is not informed if what they are reading is true or just imagination, and it is not clear if the narrator knows either.  

Earlier in the semester I wrote my seed shape essay on the effects of narrative on a piece of literature and what can happen when an author chooses to depict just one character’s point of view. That idea is truly relevant in relation to The Water Cure where the entire story is told from the perspective of one singular character who proves throughout the story to be unreliable and confused by his own thoughts. The narrator’s name in the novel is Ishmeal Kidder and much of the text was written from the first-person point of view with him as the narrator, except for the scenes in which he refers to himself in the third person. Ishmeal is a parent experiencing grief and his unique story could only be told through his point of view. The uncertainty of the situation allows for the expansion of the themes and messages told throughout the story. If this novel were told through the perspective of his wife Charolette the story would be astronomically different. The story would morph into a more commonly seen expression of grief from a parent who has just lost a child. The narrative choice made in this story is unlike anything I have ever read before and introduced a new obstacle that I was forced to overcome. But with the narrative choice made by Everett, the story transforms into a question of innocence, guilt, revenge, time, and a guilty conscience.  

Under these circumstances, it became evident while reading that many ideas and concepts could be found from what was being implied and reading between the lines. For example, a specific bird called the vermilion flycatcher is referenced many times throughout the story. Upon completing research, one can find that this bird is often used to represent lost loved ones, and their bright red color symbolizes an eternal flame of life within us all. This bird is a representation of his daughter at times, with lines stating “The sweet and bewildered flycatcher believes the ditch is a waterway and so it is. The little bird lets out a stuttering pit-pit-pitpitty-zee! No one answers” (Everett 79). Using this thought process, one could conclude that the narrator feels an intense sense of uselessness as his daughter needed saving, but he was nowhere to be found until it was too late. It is never explicitly stated anywhere in the text that this bird represents his daughter or represents anything specific, but the idea of it is explored in between the lines.  

The concept of interpretation being in between the lines coincides with a concept that has been brought up multiple times in this course. This concept is the idea of plain narration and the misbelief in former years that African American writers were not capable of producing literature that was above the form of plain narration. In class, we read Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on The State of Virginia in which a sentence explicitly states, “But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration” and proceeds to state other racist claims that Jefferson and others at the time believed to be true. This concept is something that I frequently thought about throughout the final weeks of the course, as it reminded me that there is indeed much more than what is on the page. The Water Cure and other works read in class demonstrated the complexity of writers and all the concepts that can be found while reading in between the lines. Complex ideas being found underneath the surface is something that is seen in African Fractals and the idea of infinity. The chapter opens with the statement “…Africans could not have ‘true’ fractal geometry because they lacked the advanced mathematical concept of infinity.” (Eglash 147). This statement came from a review, an outsider who had decided something was not possible because of their own association with the concept and what they can see on the surface. Approaching a new topic with a closed mind can prevent ideas from expanding and can limit the amount of content that you get from the source.  

This class included many group assignments and discussions, something I would normally dread and complain about. Throughout the course, I realized that the group discussions provided the perfect opportunity to read into the texts in depth and decipher new meanings from things I had never seen before. Even though the class is made up of students with similar majors, if not the same, every student interpreted the texts differently. Discussing various concepts I have learned from other courses at Geneseo and hearing other students do the same allowed for everyone to dig deeper into the texts we read in class. This especially applied to The Water Cure as each page held metaphorical ideas and information that the reader could use for interpretation. At times I would come into class with a page full of questions from the assigned reading which often included lots of “I don’t know” and “what does this even mean.” Without fail my questions would be answered in class discussions and small group discussions, often I would find answers to questions that I did not even have.  

This semester was my first experience with taking a 300-level English course at Geneseo and has proved to be just as difficult as I imagined it be to. However it has taught me a new level of close reading and interpreting texts that I will continue to utilize during my time here at Geneseo. We often discussed in this course “looping back” and utilizing past texts and lessons to further advance the current one. This course and its teachings will be something that I “loop back” upon and utilize as I encounter complex texts.  

Over this semester and throughout the class, I have learned many things regarding African American literature and delved deeper into the main topics of the course. From one of the first things we analyzed “African Fractals” by Ron Eglash, many of the ideas discussed in the Ted Talk have proven to remain true throughout the rest of the course, similarly to how they related to the course works back in January. After reading The Water Cure by Percival Everett, it is evident that the theme of infinity discussed in African Fractals has remained true and was displayed in the novel. By evaluating my progression thus far, my understanding of the purpose of the course has broadened immensely and I believe I have grown as not only a student but a person in many ways. 

In diving back into my Seed Shape Essay from earlier in the semester, I discussed the meaning of the term “seed shape” which was used by Eglash in his Ted Talk. He defined the term as essentially, “A set whose number of elements whose sum was larger than infinity”(Eglash 0:42). He defines seed shapes because he wants to emphasize the idea of infinity and never-ending points and how this relates to African American culture. This idea of infinity has remained consistent throughout the entirety of the course and as we read our last book, The Water Cure, it is evident that the theme has remained consistent in several ways. The novel revolves around a man named Ishmael Kidder who is suffering with immense grief with the loss of his eleven-year-old daughter Jane. She was tragically raped and murdered, a horrific story that evidently changes Kidder and puts him in a state of anger, and sadness, and leaves him craving justice. Overall the course of the novel, one of the main terms we have used is “may or may not”. This phrase has come from the idea that Kidder may or may not have abducted the man whom he presumes to be responsible for the loss of his daughter and trapped him in his basement to torture him. Interestingly, Ishmael uses the words “forever” and “infinity” many times throughout the novel, relating to the theme of infinity in “African Fractals”. In the text, Kidder says, “We can count forever. That is infinity, so to speak. But we do not have names for most of the numbers in the world of infinity. This is one million: 1,000,000….We do not have infinite words. But we could”(25). This idea is very similar to the idea expressed by Eglash with African Fractals that seed shapes are a never-ending set of elements (Eglash 0:42). Although this idea expressed by Kidder may seem random, upon diving deeper into the text, it becomes more clear as to why he included this in the novel. Kidder’s daughter was murdered, which is a horror that he will live with forever and a pain he will never be able to forget. Grief is a seed shape that will forever be in his life, as it is something that has permanently changed his life. Because of this, Kidder “may or may not” want to inflict permanent pain on Art, the man he claims is responsible for the murder of his daughter. In the novel, Kidder says, “I wanted him to have the company of infinite incidence and refraction, unending repetition, the forever drip drip drip of his own image”(129). This was said by Kidder when describing a torture technique he used on Art. He decides to torture Art in this way because he wants Art to be forever unsettled in the same way that Kidder will be due to the trauma he has faced. In one of Kidder’s final monologues of the novel, he discusses how he released Art and why he made the choice to do so. In following the theme of infinity, he seems to release him with the knowledge that Art will forever be terrified of the possibility that he could come back to find him again. In deciding not to end his life, Kidder is almost more cruel by instilling a fear in him that will follow him forever. This idea is very similar to the idea of seed shapes since no matter how long they go, there will never be an end and infinity is the result of not only the repetition of the seed shape but Art’s fear. Kidder says, “If I found you once I will find you again, almost, almost peace, as I want the terror in your heart to remain pure, I want the terror to wake you in the morning and sleep with you at night … and remember, know that I have killed, will kill, and that is only part of what instills fear, that what chills your blood is that I can give life, that it is my gift to give…(252). Kidder shows that he wants the fear Art experiences to be infinite and almost become who he is. This idea relates to the overarching theme of infinity seen in “African Fractals”, the course as a whole, and The Water Cure.

In relating this idea of forever back to the course, Kidder was also shown to use the word “forever” when going into a monologue about permanence, a theme we have discussed. Kidder said, “ But of course no change is permanent, and so permanence is never complete. And so we are forever what we are, changes or not…(170). I found this statement to be interesting and one that I did not necessarily agree with completely. I disagree with the phrase “We are forever what we are”. I disproved that idea simply by taking this course. When I started the class, I came into it completely blind as to what we would be learning. I felt we would be reading novels I had seen many times before then from my previous years of schooling. I truly was not prepared for the way mindset would open up the way it has. This class has helped me learn how to dig deeper into things, analyze texts while considering every side, and think more philosophically about texts I may once have seen as black and white. Even with novels such as Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild, a story that seemed so obviously like a slave narrative, I was able to consider other points and realize why Butler had not aimed for the story to be interpreted that way. Throughout the entirety of the course, I have learned so much about myself not only as a student but as a person. I came into the course as a more shy type of student. I rarely would raise my hand in classes, unless trying to bring up my participation grade, and felt what I had to say wasn’t important enough to share. This course has helped me to become more confident in my thoughts, include myself in group and class discussions, and share my thoughts with the class when I previously would not have done so. It is for those reasons that I somewhat disagree with Kidder. I think that people can change and growth is possible, although that idea is incredibly situational. I agreed with Kidder, when he said “Permanence is never complete”. I also believe that change is never done. In group discussions, we agreed that the novel felt as though it was not complete which is why we found it an interesting novel to wrap up a course with. After analyzing these thoughts further, we came to a consensus that this may have been an intentional choice to get us thinking about infinity and forever. Much like how the novel did not feel complete, this class should not feel complete. We should take the ideas of the course with us throughout our lives as we continue to learn, grow, and change as individuals. I believe the idea of infinity was around me the entire time I was in the class, and it took reading The Water Cure for me to fully understand the weight of the idea of infinity.

Throughout the entirety of this course, there has been a recurring seed shape of infinity and what that truly means. From the beginning of the class when talking about African Fractals and recurion these themes have shown to be continuous in the rest of the semester. The idea of forever can be interpreted in many different ways including a more scientific perspective that fractals never end, the permanent fear that Art will feel, the forever pain that Kidder will feel, the infinite importance of this course, and the lessons that we will take with us. After completing this class, I can confidently say that I have vastly grown and realized the importance of forever learning and taking forth the knowledge acquired within the semester.

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. 

In my seed shape essay, Can Real Life be Plotted on A Seed Shape Diagram? I discuss how stories are often mapped out using a plot diagram. A plot diagram is a seed shape in which your exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution can be plotted onto a horizontal line that rises into a triangle then falls back into a horizontal line. This seed shape is a type of fractal, which is a geometric term that refers to a shape that is “characterized by the repetition of similar patterns at ever-diminishing scales.” (Eglash 4). In other words, a fractal is a shape that repeats itself infinitely. In my seed shape essay, I wrote about how this fractal, or plot diagram, is often used by authors to create their stories. Authors can use the plot diagram to brainstorm their story’s beginning, middle, and end. Up until now, I have only read stories that followed this repetitive structure: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. Back in February, I wrote my feelings about the plot diagram. “I felt comforted by the seed shape. I knew what to expect, and roughly when to expect it.” (Malley). It was not until I read The Water Cure by Percival Everett for my ENGL 337 course, African American Literature, that I experienced what it is like to read a novel that does not follow this comforting and predictable pattern of events. 

Percival Everett does not appear to have used a plot diagram when mapping out his story The Water Cure. The Water Cure is a novel about a man named Ishmael Kidder whose eleven year old daughter Lane was abducted, raped, and murdered. Kidder, as a form of revenge or perhaps as a way to cope, then kidnaps and tortures a man (who may or may not be his daughter’s assailant) in his basement. The story is written from Kidder’s point of view, and does not follow your typical story outline. Kidder tells his story through what can only be described as ramblings and tangents, which are separated on the page by three asterisks, and jump back and forth chronologically. 

The story begins with the yiddish proverb, as cited by Percival Everett, “The truth rests with God and a little bit with me.” (Everett 9) This is a bold start to the novel, and already hints to readers that we will not be given the full truth in this story. Everett’s narrator Ishmael Kidder will be keeping secrets from us. His last name alone, Kidder, is enough for us to assume he is an unreliable narrator, since Oxford Languages defines the word “kidder” as “a person who deceives others in a playful way.” This uncertainty is unsettling to me. How will I be able to determine the truth? Will I be fooled?

Kidder attempts to fool us readers throughout his narration. One example is that Kidder very directly states that he will not eat restaurant food. “I’ll eat in restaurants, but I won’t eat their food. I prefer to take my own.” (Everett 50). However, nearly two hundred pages later, Kidder casually recalls a time where he was in a diner. In his retelling, he recalls ordering and then eating the diner’s chili. “Thank you. I’ll have the chili.” (Everett 243) and “I ate my chili with beans.” (Everett 244). This scene contradicts Kidder’s previous statement that he will not eat restaurant food. This caused me to go back and find proof that Kidder stated previously that he does not eat in restaurants, because he had me second guessing myself. He tricked me. His lie shows that he is: 1.) unreliable and 2.) trying to fool us readers and make us second guess ourselves. 

Kidder’s unreliable narration is not only full of lies, but is also very confusing. Kidder will start thoughts and not finish them until much later, when the thought has already slipped his reader’s mind. For example, on page 26 of the pdf of The Water Cure, Kidder presents us with a puzzle. “A man is standing on the bank of a wide river. With him are a monster, a child, and a bag of chocolates. He must get all three to the other side, but his boat is so small that he can take only one across at a time. He could not ever leave the monster with the child for it would eat her, and he could not leave the child with the chocolates for she would eat them. The monster hates chocolates and would never touch them. How does the man get all three across?” (Everett 26). This puzzle is then not mentioned again until nearly 200 pages later, when Kidder says “Answer to puzzle: Kill the monster.” (Everett 223). The answer was unprompted and had no reason to be revealed 197 pages after the puzzle was first introduced, yet here we are. Everett is not afraid to catch his readers off guard and to be unpredictable in his writing. His unpredictability could not be planned out on a plot diagram. His unpredictability is uncomfortable. I can not see his next move before it happens.

Kidder does not speak in a foreseeable manner. Sometimes Everett, as Kidder, chooses to spell words incorrectly. “Me wlife pryor to leavening Charm’s Lot is lift zen snoopshits of vetter thymes, her miles when I whood me eat here at the dour, her shrilly runing thorough the whouse, hurt farce seam-eared with dirth from the god’s den…”. (Everett 223). This same sentence is written (and spelled correctly) on the previous page: “My life before leaving Charlotte is left to me in wrinkled snapshots of good times: her smile when I would meet her at the door, her silly running through the house with her arms unmoving by her sides, her face smeared with dirt from the garden…” (Everett 222). What is the point of repeating the same sentence, but with the words misspelled? What is the point of this iteration?  Of the incoherence? Is there even a point to this at all? Is he just trying to trick me? 

In Ron Eglash’s book, African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design Eglash defines iteration. “In iteration, there is only one transformation process, but each time the process creates an output, it uses this result as the input for the next iteration, as we’ve seen in generating fractals.” (Eglash 110). Reading The Water Cure created a transformative process within myself. As I mentioned above, I used to only read books that followed the predictable pattern of the plot diagram. Examples of which are romance books. In romance books, I can almost always see what comes next before it happens, unlike The Water Cure. I can almost always figure out who the main love interest will be just from the first few chapters. I also know that the main protagonist will get together with their love interest in the story. After getting together, there will be some sort of conflict. Maybe they will have a fight, or maybe the world will try to keep them apart. Then the story goes one of two ways: either they overcome their conflict and stay together, or they split up. When reading those types of books, I know what to expect for the most part, and roughly when to expect it. Percival Everett’s The Water Cure is so unpredictable that it often made me uncomfortable with the unknown. As mentioned above, Kidder speaks in tangents, and they come on randomly. They jump from past to present, and sometimes they do not make sense. Other times they are clear as day and even include detailed dialogue and description, like his scenes with his agent Sally. “‘Hello, Ishmael!’ She is cheery, always cheery, but never quite happy, and she will be even less happy with me shortly.” (Everett 49). Other times, the words are spelled incorrectly, like in my example above, or he is using math equations to represent the kidnapping of a possibly innocent man. “Man X is identical with Man Y. Man X = Man Y.” (Everett 51). While reading this text and trying to decipher the deeper meaning behind Kidder’s ramblings, I felt like I was being tricked, purposefully confused, and lied to. How can Man X = Man Y? Man X and Man Y are two separate individuals. Because of this, reading the novel was at times an unnerving experience for me. 

Though reading this story was often uncomfortable, I was able to open up my mind and allow myself to read a book unlike anything I have ever read before. I have started to push and challenge myself to be uncomfortable, and to be okay with that feeling. Maybe it is okay to not know what to expect. Maybe it is okay if things are not repetitive or predictable like fractals. I am even starting to learn that maybe it is okay to read something that makes me uncomfortable, because in doing so I am allowing myself to experience something new, and different. 

Taking this course has exposed me to new and different things, and has brought on this new iteration of myself. As I get ready to graduate this month, I will continue to take with me the lessons I have learned in this class: It is okay to be confused at first and uncomfortable with the idea of trying something new, but you must not let these things stop you. Unlike Kidder’s belief that Man X=Man Y, I know that Man X and Man Y are not the same. I know that I am unique, and not the same as anyone else. Even though I took this course with twenty four other SUNY Geneseo students, I know that my takeaways and journey with this course is special. Man X does not equal Man Y. Like in iterations, I will take these lessons and input them, so that I can output a new and improved version of myself. My new iteration will be a version of me who is not afraid to try something different, and who will work to feel comfortable with the uncomfortable.