Still unfamiliar with every aspect of the buildings on our campus, I did not know that we had an art gallery in Brodie Hall until my class attended a lecture by the art gallery director, Cynthia Hawkins-Owen. Walking into the room, I instantly saw Steve Prince’s name in bold letters and large pieces of his artwork on the walls. Sitting in the room, I was mesmerized. Here are more compositions to unpack that I did not know existed. Hawkins-Owen described the process of an art director and the troubles she faces. One that stood out to me while she was talking was how sometimes with art we do not get all sides of the story. Every piece tells its own narrative and it’s the artist’s job to depict a certain message to the viewers.
Intersectionality 2.1
After reading Analiese’s post, it made me feel very content and proud to see a friend, as well as a classmate, feel so understood and represented. The pathos appeal present in her post easily translated her enlightenment as she sat in on the Annual Hip-Hop Symposium. It’s reassuring to know and understand that someone else thinks about intersectionality just as much as I do.
“Call and Response”
Call and Response, our massive anthology, sets up texts of African American traditions in such a way that pieces begin to function as questions and answers to each other. This clever formation allows for conversations between and within said traditions. The metaphor is thus rich and literary, but it also carries with it a helpful reminder: that many of the included texts are to be read aloud. To call and, to a lesser extent, to respond are verbal, audible actions that are conducted in human and animal communication. No more has the sonority of Call and Response been obvious than in the work, badman, and prison songs we read for class (3/4). One thing about the spoken word, though. It’s tricky to anthologize. When I got to “Po’ Laz’us,” I logged on to Spotify and began listening to the version from the Coen Brothers’ “O Brother Where Art Thou?” (2000). Here’s where it got tricky: it was one of many versions, all riffing and remixing the words on the page before me. Without saying one version is the right one, I would argue that something is lost when editors take songs of a particularly oral quality and pin their content down to one reading as is done in our own anthology. Accompanying my reading with sung renditions on Spotify and supplementing it with Lawrence Lessig’s thoughts on “remix culture” (another useful source from Dr. Schacht), I began to develop questions of ownership and feelings of uncertainty about interpretive possibilities. Continue reading ““Call and Response””
Where Is The Progress?
You’re all probably getting sick of my posts about repetition, but I haven’t repeated these ideas enough to be sick of them myself. So far, in The America Play, I have been intrigued by Parks’ ideas about repetition and the writing process. In class today, we talked about Parks’ obsession with repetition and her idea of “Rep & Rev” which reflects what I have been thinking about in my posts. I have been struggling to find something to blog about that interests me and I was hesitant to bring repetition up again. That was until I read Molly’s post “Healing is not linear.” Continue reading “Where Is The Progress?”
Thinking about the Bible
In this post I’m going to attempt to thread some of my thoughts together from class on Friday, March 1 during our discussion about Big Machine. For reference at later dates, we have read up to the end of Part 2, or 24 chapters, at this point. What am I going to thread together? I’m going to explore how similar the story of Abram / Abraham is to what we know of Ricky Rice. This post doesn’t follow much of a chronology, so my apologies for that, I just have a lot of thoughts about the Bible at this point for reasons I also don’t understand, as I haven’t been consistently to church since high school. Again, for reference, the Abrahamic stories are contained in Genesis 12-25. Continue reading “Thinking about the Bible”
Progress
The final bullet of the final slide we looked at today in class, under the heading “Du Bois ‘Of the Meaning of Progress,'” read “Questioning the value of progress.” Nitpicking, I want to point out that the lowercase letter p of that last bullet isn’t consistent with Du Bois’s capital-p Progress in this chapter, and I want to write about what that difference might mean. Du Bois uses the word on only two occasions in this chapter. First, when he returns to Alexandria ten years after his stint teaching there: “My log schoolhouse was gone. In its place stood Progress; and Progress, I understand, is necessarily ugly.” Second, as he rides to Nashville in the Jim Crow car: “How shall man measure Progress there where the dark-faced Josie lies? How many heartfuls of sorrow shall balance a bushel of wheat?” Continue reading “Progress”
Whose Story is it Anyway?
When thinking about ownership in the context of literature, I can honestly say that I am at a crossroads. While I would agree that the author should maintain ownership over their ideas and the ways that they are interpreted, I also feel like the reader deserves some creative room for interpretation. In other words, I don’t think it’s entirely on the part of the author to dictate how their story is understood, because that limits the creativity of the reader, however the author wrote the story with a purpose, which they also deserve to maintain. I would equally agree that it is the job of both the reader and the author to meet in the middle to develop an understanding of how a story should be interpreted. Which brings me to the philosophical question, does the reader read for the author or does the author write for the reader? Continue reading “Whose Story is it Anyway?”
What Do You Mean by “Authentic”?
Within the paratextual preface to Jupiter Hammon’s works, it mentions his familiarity with his own “ethnic past” and how a view of ancient history provides a “source of pride and identity for African Americans.” Immediately after this, however, the preface’s author/s note that this connection with ancient history “has been an impetus for a recurring quest for authentic African history and culture.” At first, I wasn’t sure why the idea of “authentic” African history and culture resonated with me, and then I remembered Ron Eglash in African Fractals mentions this idea of authenticity amid a problematic natural-artificial struggle. What does “authentic,” in terms of African American, African, or any culture, mean?
Intersectionality 2.0
Joan Morgan’s interview for the Annual Hip Hop Symposium was genuine, organic, and a breath of fresh air. What was an extra credit opportunity for many turned out to be a moment of reassurance for me because I was able to hear myself represented on a platform that isn’t frequently offered here on campus. I have always been aware that the community and culture black people share inevitably leads to connections being made, but something about this intimate exchange of conversation and welcoming energy reached a new level of comfort for me. Continue reading “Intersectionality 2.0”
“Healing is not linear.”
Walking into the library this morning, I decided to start crafting a new blog post. Unlike last semester, I’ve noticed that ideas for blogs haven’t been popping into my mind as easily for posts, yet I’ve remained calm and hopeful that I will find my groove soon enough. Walking past the CIT desk, I noticed a new table on the main floor of the library. The table was covered with markers, small pieces of printer paper, and pieces of card stock with pre-printed positive quotes on them. One of these quotes specifically caught my attention. The quote read, “Healing is not linear.” Continue reading ““Healing is not linear.””