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Property ownership has been an overarching theme of the semester thus far. From The Old Man and the Storm, which follows an eighty-two year old man as he rebuilds his home after Hurricane Katrina, to Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, which depicts the build-up of the United States housing bubble in the early 2000’s, to Angela Flournoy’s The Turner House, which tells an account of an African American family living in Detroit struggling to keep their childhood home, the concept of housing is an important element to consider. Furthermore, it is also crucial to keep in mind that in all three of these cases this notion of home is accompanied with sentiments of melancholy.

The idea of a “dream house” juxtaposes the disheartening idea of home seen in the varying art forms aforementioned. This notion of a “dream house” is largely highlighted in mediums such as magazine advertisements and television shows and connects notably to the “American Dream” throughout time. Rather than focusing on compartmentalizing, many times a key component of a “dream house” is expansion, as depicted in Mr. Blandings Dream House. In the film (seen thus far), Jim Blandings and his family are cramped in a New York apartment. After seeing an ad in the paper about new homes in Connecticut, he and his wife decide to purchase what they continuously call their “dream house,” regardless of the apprehensions of their lawyer.

However, Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s lecture “Small is Beautiful” highlights the importance of modesty and ecological efficiency. He calls attention to the contemporary “Tiny House Movement” gaining popularity, as magazines and television shows are beginning to bring this shift into popular culture. An excerpt from the the television show Portlandia, shown during the lecture, exemplifies, in a greatly exaggerated manner, the efficiency and capability of a “tiny house.” Dr. Kenneth Cooper went on to reexamine the notions of the “American Dream,” calling attention to other countries, such as the Netherlands, that use bicycles, drive smaller vehicles, have tinier food portion sizes, and overall have less grandiose ideals within the culture. This sense of more, and bigger and greater has me thinking, when did the “American Dream” begin to constitute gluttony? Or has it always had?

Amid a welcome uptick in posts (all quite thoughtful!), I thought you’d be interested in “White supremacy and class privilege in Detroit,” an essay from The Mennonite, an online publication that in offering “Anabaptist content” invites connections with both Flournoy’s The Turner House and Morrison’s A Mercy. Continue reading ““Anabaptist Content””

Watching Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House during class yesterday, I found Blandings’s inconveniences and dissatisfactions full of deeply unappreciative and bourgeois undertones. What spoke to me specifically was the casual mention of government bonds as a method of buying their dream house and how the accumulation of wealth is heavily informed by race. The following statistics come from this article.

Continue reading “Invisible Privilege: Wealth Gaps”

While reading A Mercy, I did not realize the apparent religious undertones until we read it aloud in class last week. Specifically, after reading the line “A trader asked to dine with a gentleman? On a Sunday?” (16). This surprised tone did not strike me as an example of the Catholic vs. Protestant religious war until it was presented in class.

This example reminded me of my father telling me stories of growing up Catholic in Ireland with hostilities both towards and from the British Protestant (symbolic) Monarchy. This line in A Mercy reminds me of the Gentleman representing an Englishman and the trader an Irishman. This prejudice roots back to the early British monarchy having control over Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom. Now, only Northern Ireland is considered a part of the United Kingdom, while the south is The Republic. This allusion shows the intolerances and prejudices within all religions based on the mindsets of people from different regions.

As we saw in class today, Mr. Blanding’s dream house is one that takes him away from his “cramped cracker box” of a Manhattan apartment and into the freedom of 35 acres. However, many Americans’ dream homes have been downsized as part of the social movement surrounding tiny houses. At approximately 100-400 square feet, a regular house is roughly 11 times larger! Families are cramming themselves into these shoebox homes in hopes of combatting the pressures of environmental (the houses use less power) and financial (68% of tiny home owners have no mortgage) issues. In addition to these benefits, there is also the Thoreauvian hope of finding peace and understanding in the separation from the pressures of modern society.  In addition to pursuing the intriguing life of a hermit, the desire that tiny home owners all share is to eliminate waste. By cutting back, they may find what is truly important.

 

These home owners know what is important. For many, this is family. Tiny houses keep families a lot closer than their regular home-sized counterparts.  Andrew Morrison, a tiny house conference attendee, celebrates that his “family’s level of communication and family relationships are so much closer and deeper than they’re ever been” (X). Families being cramped together in a tiny space brings to mind The Turner House. The Turner children were eager to have their own space, as the oldest children took turns in claiming own room when they were the oldest. Though family bonding is incentive for parents who chose this cramped lifestyle, it is not ideal for the children. A family with teens actually had tiny houses built for each child because they needed their own space!

The fact that many people are experimenting with this lifestyle is intriguing to me. Based on the endless benefits and obvious challenges of downsizing, this movement has also fascinated a larger population and has become a central focus of bloggers, conferences and, of course, HGTV. Google search “Tiny House TV shows” and you’ll have multiple results, from Tiny House, Big Living to Tiny House Builders and Tiny House Hunters. This movement has hit the mainstream, and in a big way.

Though tiny houses have recently blown up, many argue that the original human dwelling of “caves, yurts, tents, wigwams, igloos, grass huts, and so forth” are only natural for humans (X).  Though idealizing getting in touch with early human nature is a pull to tiny homes, tragedy is truly what is at the root of the tiny housing boom. After Katrina in 2005, small houses stood in for trailers. (Take a look at these Katrina Cottages!) After the housing crash in 2008, the aforementioned financial benefits of living tiny brought about more attention to these homes. Despite their tendency to cost more than a regular house per square foot, they do generally cut down on waste.

I am very fascinated by the portrayal of tiny homes due to the omission of their tragic origin story. While researching for this blog post, however, I found countless blogs teaching potential tiny home owners how to build their own tiny house and go about finding materials and land. I found interviews from conferences and statistics about the benefits of this tiny lifestyle. TV shows and media glamorize families looking to become closer with one another, nature, and their passions. These benefits and dreams stem from a desire to gain a more fulfilling life, not survive one where almost everything you know has been lost.

These shows and this lifestyle frustrates me because the people on them have the privilege of choosing to downsize their homes and live a “simpler” life. The definition of the tiny house movement is a “social movement where people are choosing to downsize the space they live in”  (X). Though they are a great choice for the 1% of the population that voluntarily lives in less than 1,000 square foot homes (X), overly romanticizing tiny homes and their ability to “free” people is a way of overlooking people who are confined to smaller housing without a choice.

When I began my dirge essay, I had very little background on what exactly a dirge was, and what role they played in society.  I was sitting in the College Union (where I do most of my work), with some friends, and I began to speak out loud. Continue reading “Researching a Dirge”

As we are listening to the This American Life episode “Toxie” during class, and as I’ve asked you to attend to all the literary concepts roiling and churning through the episode, I invite you to read Dr. Valerie Prince’s brief but important essay “Metaphor is Hard Science.”

A key passage:

Continue reading ““Metaphor is Hard Science” by Valerie Prince”

*A brief note:  my intention is to have two main sections to my essay–what I have posted here is the introduction to the first section.  In my final draft, something will definitely come before the summary paragraph (which currently is the first paragraph) but I thought that would be much easier to write once I have everything worked out.  I’m planning to have a complete draft of the first section done within the next two weeks.  I have a good chunk of it done now, but at the completion of a draft I usually discover a much more logical way to organize the essay, so I’d prefer to present the body of this section in one large chunk to avoid any overly disjointed, incoherent writing.   I also expect this section to change quite a bit by the end, as introductions usually do.

I.The Devil in Silver chronicles Pepper’s stay at New Hyde Mental Hospital, a horrendously underfunded psych unit that is home to a monster that the patients call the Devil; the Devil, a patient by the name of Mr. Visserplein, lives at the end of Northwest 4, a hallway of New Hyde, behind the silver door.  The Continue reading “An intro of sorts”

As I was reading the turner house, something that I wondered was why Angela Flournoy decides to include 13 Turner siblings in the novel, when only about 3 of them are heavily focused on and given a POV. Why have a family composed of so many siblings when some aren’t even accounted for?  Did Flournoy just want to show the dynamics of a big family, or was she trying to get at something deeper?  When I tried to answer this question in class, I said that perhaps Flournoy was trying to show that when you have such a large family, with so many stories to be told, some are “naturally” left out.  Beth compared this to picking up a large pile of leaves, where some leaves are naturally going to fall out of ones grasp.  However, my assertion that leaving out most of the siblings stories was a natural process was questioned.  Someone in class (sorry I am forgetting who!) pointed out that this is not really natural at all but very intentional.  This made me question my initial assertion, and look deeper into the stories that are not being told in this novel. Continue reading “Why 13 Siblings in the Turner House?”

Birth order has always been a very intriguing topic to me, mainly because I see myself fitting very nicely in the trope of “oldest child.” In my youth, and still today, like to keep myself busy by being involved in a myriad of activities and clubs, I’m loud, bossy, and like to be the center of attention. My younger sister, the middle child, fits her prescribed path as well: she often feels as though she is “forgotten” and is much quieter and more reserved (my mother says this is because I did all the talking for her). As for my brother, the stereotypical “youngest child,” he is just as free-willed and spoiled as you might imagine.   Continue reading “Birth Order and The Turner House”