After the apocalypse in Zone One by Colson Whitehead, drastic changes have been made in the political structure of the United States. America is now referred to as the American Phoenix, and Buffalo, NY is now the capital city. For those of us native to western New York, this pulls our heartstrings a little bit. It’s endearing and somewhat comical. However, what comes as more of a strange shock is that the bird that once represented our country–the bald eagle–has been dethroned and replaced with a fiery mythological bird Continue reading “The American Phoenix”
Wounds That Never Heal: Regret
Chronic wounds are wounds that take more than three months to heal or years to heal. Sometimes, these wounds never heal. They scab over, open while oozing fluids, exerting pain with external contact. The Family Health Team (2015) assert that “while cancer can sometimes present as a chronic wound, chronic wounds typically fall into three main categories: diabetic ulcers, venous leg ulcers and pressure ulcers”. Diabetic patients with compromised immune systems might require amputations in the cases of chronic wounds and gangrene complications. These injuries might cause infections and even tissue death which can cause life threatening complications. However, what about wounds that are not physical but hurt all the same or even more? In his book, Discourse on Colonialism, Aime Cesaire likens gangrene to colonialism. A wound inflicted on Africa causing the death of culture, people and civilisations. The vulnerability is in the ” the nakedness of Africa where the scythe of Death swings wide”. (Aime Cesaire,1939. )The dismantling of heritage and traditions came with the advent of religion and conquest. On one hand, the colonial masters gave religion and, with the other hand they took the essence of a naive people. Continents brought to their knees amid the throes of vain conquistador ambitions. Albeit separated by the Atlantic sea; the Americas and Africa would never be the same. What-ifs abound and in the midst of it lies regret, pain and longing lurking in the shadows. Colonialism inflicted wounds that would never heal across populations and regret inflicts wounds that would never heal across mindsets.
Dental Coverage: You Have Options
While reading “The Painful Truth About Teeth” by Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, I found myself comparing my dental experiences with other people’s experiences described in the article. I also found myself becoming irritated while I read the article and how quickly some people place their lack of attentive dental care on the president. Continue reading “Dental Coverage: You Have Options”
Mutato Nomine, De Te Fabula Narratur
For those of you that don’t speak Latin (myself included), the title of my blog post reads “With the name changed, the story applies to you.” In class, we’ve read stories that had a tendency of revolving around the topics of racism, medicine, and literature (which is understandable given the course’s title). Out of the six books and multiple online articles we’ve read this semester, I made a ‘both/and’ connection between Zulus by Percival Everett and Zone One by Colson Whitehead. Even though I’m not a fan of the doomsday genre of literature per se, I’ve realized that they’re inspiring nonetheless. The endings of both books leaves the reader to believe that the main characters follow through with the “forbidden thought” (suicide) like Professor McCoy explained to us. Continue reading “Mutato Nomine, De Te Fabula Narratur”
The Contagious Human Act of Gendering
I started writing this as my one-page reflection for the “Trans? Fine by me.” panel, though once I got into it, I discovered it might work better as a blog post in conversation with Linda’s post about the Oankali’s greater freedom of gender (https://morrison.sunygeneseoenglish.org/2017/11/16/2739/). Continue reading “The Contagious Human Act of Gendering”
A Dose of Hope
Continuing Sakshi’s conversation in “Is Hope A Bad Thing?” on Zone One, I think that hope is a necessary component for change and transition. In Sakshi’s post, she discusses Mark Spitz’s connection between hope and the pre-apocalyptic world, in which Mark Spitz views hope as the equivalent to a “gateway drug” (222) because of the duality of its effects. While enveloping yourself in nostalgia may be a nice temporary reprieve, it is also dangerous to hold onto hope so tightly that it affects your safety in the situation you are currently in. Mark Spitz’s perspective is understandable, as hope is defined as a very risky precipice for his fellow survivors. However, I see hope as more of a middleman between the past and the future. Rather than feeling as if you are constantly on the brink of things, hope is an agent for a certain rite of passage. In Zone One, this rite of passage is named Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder (PASD). Continue reading “A Dose of Hope”
Looking in the Mirror in Want for Freedom
In Molly Bawn (1878), Author Margaret Hungerford reiterates that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Beauty is subjective? Does beauty truly depend on perception? If so, why are there beauty standards all over the world? The absurd notion that every woman needs to fit into culturally idealized/idolized looks as championed by society to be considered beautiful. In some parts of the world where women’s rights are abused, the most important possession a woman can have is her body. Young women suffer from body shaming, body image disorders among others because they feel they are not good enough, pretty enough. We are constantly stuck in a limbo of either looking in the mirror in search of confirmations or looking in the mirror in search of freedom. Indeed, if beauty is what I make of it and what I project to the world. I hope the looking glass can confirm this.
On May 15, 2011, Satoshi Kanazawa published a controversial article on physical attractiveness in relation to race. The article titled ” A Look At the Hard Truths about Human Nature” sought to explain why black women are considered to be ugly compared to other women. The Scientific Fundamentalist shamelessly carried the article under the headline “Why Black Women Are Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women”. I read this article and was appalled by the blatant racism. Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics says that “the only thing [he] can think of that might potentially explain the lower average level of physical attractiveness among black women is testosterone” In other words, the higher levels of testosterone in black women made them appear to be more masculine and therefore less physically attractive. Unbelievable. This piece of pseudoscience empowers ignorance and can be used to reduce the self-esteem of millions of black girls all over the world. Whereas, it exists only as another fictional narrative like the concept of race.
Continue reading “Looking in the Mirror in Want for Freedom”
Oracles and Premonitions
Everybody has some concept of some mythology that has been unearthed on the planet. The most common mythology anyone claims to know something of is mostly Roman, Greek, Norse etc. Mythology has been a part of human history since the beginning of civilization. There have been plenty of authors that have written their own interpretations of these myths, more famously Rick Riordan with his Percy Jackson/Heroes of Olympus series that delves into the Greek/Roman mythologies. The one thing each of these mythologies have in common though, is their own type of oracle/augur/psychic that will have a prediction about the future. It was brought up by Francesca in class on Monday, that when Mark Spitz and crew went in to see the psychic, it was sort of like some books I have read before that have to do with mythology.
The Oracle of Delphi was a crucial part of Greek Mythology, most of the heroes we’ve read about wouldn’t be as great as they are if the Oracle wasn’t there. The Oracle is the one who gave out the prophecies, or riddles that the hero was to decipher and work out to complete an assignment or quest. In Rick Riordan’s hit series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Phoebus Apollo’s Oracle is placed within the Camp full of demigods (children of the Greek gods, half-human half-god) and she is who the young heroes go to seek counsel from when they have a questions, or a quest that needs fulfilling. In the books, the Oracle is described as having an air of reptiles or snakes wherever she walks, and the Oracle is described as ‘a human female body shriveled to a husk. The skin of her face was thin and leathery over her skull and her eyes were glassy white slits, as if the real ones had been replaced by marbles; she’d been dead a long, long time.’ (PJO: The Lightning Thief). The Oracle was integral in making heroes heroes, but without fail, whenever a prophecy was issued, chaos followed in the years to come until that Prophecy was fulfilled. The main prophecy in this series spoke of the second Titan War against the Greek gods, and how the demigod son of Poseidon can either save the world or let it die with a single choice (sorry for spoilers).
In Zone One, before Gary met his end by another one of his microaggressions, the trio of Mark Spitz, Kaitlyn and Gary happen upon a Fortune Tellers shop, and Gary wants to go in and get his palm read. Everything was going fine, and the straggler fortune teller wasn’t moving one inch as Gary laid his hand in her palm. But as soon as Gary moved his hand from hers, she moved and chomped down on Gary’s hand, sealing his doom, even though he tried to stave off the plague rushing through his body with ‘anticiprant’. The straggler fortune teller is described as having, ‘a hunk of the fortune-teller’s neck beneath her right ear was absent. The exposed meat resembled torn-up pavement tinted crimson, a scabbed hollow of gaping gristle, tubes, and pipes: the city’s skin ripped back.’ (Zone One). As in any mythology, after visiting the oracle to have a reading of the future, and having Gary’s thumb savagely bitten off, chaos ensued as pointed out by Prof. McCoy. In the streets all of the dead are surrounding the city, the few survivors are trapped in the building with no way out and it seems to be the end for our characters.
“Free Will” Part 2
Earlier in the year, I had made a blog post in relation the concept of free-will. I evaluated this concept through Butler’s work, “Fledgling”, but now, I want to look at it through “Dawn”. This is not to say that the other two parts of the Lilith’s Brood trilogy are unimportant, but that I feel that this question is best analyzed through the first book. I would like to say that this is all based on my own personal thoughts and not based in some book I read. However, I did state in my previous post that biased knowledge can change perspective; therefore anything I have read could have led me to this conclusion. Regardless, this post is not intentionally based on anyone else’s work and is just my thoughts on the matter. Continue reading ““Free Will” Part 2″
Responding to Beware the Epistemophilia
In Friday’s class (November 17th) McCoy had us look at previous blog posts by classmates to learn from them. I looked at Sabrina’s post entitled Beware the Epistemophilia. Before I dive into the post itself and what it helped me understand, I would like to define what epistemophilia is. In Sabrina’s post, she defines it as an excessive love of knowledge. By taking another look at the definition I found that epistemophilia is the specific striving for knowledge or a preoccupation with knowledge. Continue reading “Responding to Beware the Epistemophilia”