A blog for SUNY Geneseo students and faculty interested in American Studies
*Warning: This blog post contains strong language
After reading Emily Tsoi’s blog post “The Necessity for Diversity in Children’s Literature,” I was reminded of a conversation I had with my AP Literature teacher during Spring break.
Continue reading “Tell your story. Or they will tell it for you, and it will not be the right one.”
I don’t have very many memories of my great-grandmother. She passed away when I was five and all I have are very vague memories of visiting her when she was in hospice with my dad, wandering through the too-clinically white space and being vaguely scared of the machines. However, the stories my dad and aunts tell about her live on. The problem is, is that not all of them are good memories.
She grew up during the Second World War where her (much older) brothers fought in the Pacific theatre. As a result, she was deeply racist towards anyone of Asian descent, saying things that are almost funny in how ignorant and prejudiced they are. Imagine a stereotype of a racist old white lady and you pretty much have a good picture of how my great grandmother talked about anyone who didn’t look like her. Her racism towards everyone else who isn’t white was less obvious, especially as she grew up and lived most of her life in a predominantly white area, but rather unfortunately, it came out towards the end of her life when she was put in an assisted living facility and hospice with primarily black nurses. Continue reading “Love In Response to Hate”
During class on Monday, April 22nd, Dr. McCoy asked the class to pull out a line within our reading of Big Machine that stood out to us. I originally thought to myself that this was going to be difficult due to the fact that I knew I came across many intriguing lines within the reading, however, when skimming through the pages I kept being drawn back to one particular phrase; “As a human being you tend to think your present moment is the pinnacle, the summit, of life’s achievements” (266). At first, I believed that I was attracted to this line because I related with it and believed it to be true but when I actually read this line out loud to the class and had to provide an explanation to why I picked it, my understanding of the phrase shifted. Continue reading “Hope, Doubt, and Life Achievements”
When we discussed Suzan-Lori Parks’s Imperceptible Mutabilities in class the other day, Professor McCoy told us how in the performance of the play, actors stare and single out audience members, making them uncomfortable. This was a big source of criticism for viewers, as it made them uncomfortable to be the subject when they went into the play with the expectation of watching objectively. After learning this play is a commentary on slavery, I believe the intent of this was to make viewers feel the way the Naturalist, along with white people in general, were treating and seeing African Americans as inferior subjects. Continue reading “On Being Subjects”
To further elaborate on my understanding of the horsemen from my last post, I thought it would be a good idea to discuss how I have applied them in my daily thinking and life. Over spring break, I visited my older brother who lives in Nashville, Tennessee. While I was there I visited the Parthenon Museum, an exact replica of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece that was built for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in 1897. To my surprise, I was greeted by many pieces of art that have symbolism similar to themes that we have studied in our class—primarily the horsemen.
Continue reading “Understanding the Horseman… and Then Some”
After Monday’s class when we had to pick out a quote from our reading that stuck out to us, I remembered a quote from earlier in the novel that I kept thinking about: “To be an American is to be a believer! But y’all don’t even understand what you believe in.” This was the quote that the man on the bus said before he was kicked out into the snow. Originally, this quote stuck out to me, but going back through the quotes I highlighted, I feel as though I have a better understanding of it. I typed this quote into google to see if there was any commentary on it and came across this response to LaValle’s novel on NPR. Continue reading “‘These Are Books We Have to Read’”
This past weekend I was lucky enough to experience my first Passover Seder with my boyfriend and his grandparents. I have been raised with Athiest beliefs, only briefly educated in Christianity from my grandmother. This being said, I knew next to nothing about Judaism other than what I’ve learned in class and what I have been taught by Jewish friends. I was very surprised by how beautiful this experience was, as it was something that brought us together and sparked conversation. His grandmother spoke in lengths to me about her experience with her faith and the times that it has often failed or ostracized her even from her own friends and religion. Continue reading “The Tail”
Though I am officially no longer a physics major, my life has remained entangled (perhaps quantumly so) with the sciences. It sometimes seems to me as if the sciences refuse to relinquish their hold on me, as this semester I was approached by members of the biology department and asked to serve as a supplemental instructor for General Biology II.
Though I was extremely nervous to start the position, as I am not a biology major, I have grown to love the job, due to the way I am able to make a positive impact on the academic experiences of my peers. Recently, the class has started to learn about muscles and their form and function. During the most recent session, I asked a question regarding typical muscle fiber patterns, which are either pennate or parallel in their arrangement.
Pennate muscle structure is differentiated from parallel in that the muscle fibers are arranged at an angle to the force-generating axis within the muscle, whereas parallel muscle structure involves muscle fibers that exist in parallel with the force-generating axis. As a result of this differentiated architecture, muscles that feature a pennate arrangement are able to produce more force than those that are arranged in parallel; however, muscles that display a pennate structure are quite limited in their movement.
As I was trying to find inspiration for my last blog post I started thinking about all the things that we have been doing in class and what would be best fit to end my last blog post. In class we have been talking about Big Machine by Victor LaValle and the class was asked to each come up with one question that we think the book seems to be raising. There was a whole range of questions; a lot of the class thought of questions that included doubt and I thought mine went along with this topic. My question was “Who can you trust in the world, or are you alone?” A lot of people seemed to rephrase this question, focusing on the word doubt instead of trust, but fundamentally asking the same concept. I feel that doubt is the exact word that I could use that would go along with my question, if I rephrased it. So far, we have only read up to chapter 78 of the 81 that is in this book and we have seen multiple characters talk about trust and doubt in a way that links them.
As the semester nears the end, I am finally writing about the concept of consent illustrated in Octavia Butler’s fictional short-story, Bloodchild. This blog post is long overdue, but considering how this class consists of recursion and repeated themes, I think it’s safe to say that writing about consent in any area is always relevant. Also, considering how Ricky Rice in Victor LaValle’s Big Machine experiences nonconsensual conception shows the narrative of consent that science fiction, more specifically in Afro-Futurism portrays with men.
*Pictured: Assumed Illustration of Gan from Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild
Continue reading “Consent and Male Pregnancies in Black Science Fiction”