ENCW 452: Senior Portfolio Seminar

WARNING: SA Mention

Now that I have finished The Sleeping Dragon by Joel Rosenburg, I can say with certainty this book is a mixed bag. So let’s go over all of it.

The Good: The characters and their interactions are done very well. A majority of this novel is conversation and internal dialogue based. The world described around them in their journey is vivid. Rosenberg clearly put in the time for this. The whole concept of them battling it out near constantly with their characters for how they react to something. The stakes are made incredibly clear with Jason’s death in the fifth chapter. And Jason stays dead, and the rest of them don’t even get time to process because they are being chased by his killers.

Everyone in the main cast aside from Karl are also in this category because they are actually likable. Doria faces some deep internal struggle with her cleric role due to her lack of faith after past events in her life. I would have loved to see more into her mind. Similarly with Andrea. Her desire to cling to her original identity and her value in herself are admirable, and I found myself wanting more stuff focused on them. Riccetti’s reaction to Jason’s death is a great example to how trauma can manifest in different ways. It is also a good example of how easy  sliding into unhealthy coping mechanisms can be. As the group leader, James refuses to accept passages even with guards drawing near if it means Doria will be put in a position that makes her uncomfortable. She agrees to it, but James was more than willing to go at least three to one based on her boundaries. Walter repeatedly defends the women’s choices, tells Karl he’s a POS for being a slut-shaming incel, and sees the girls as actual people. He’s much more emotionally vulnerable than most of the other guys and is shown to actually care about the people around him.

The Bad: How this book treats women. A lot of the  game-world characters’ actions towards the girls range from gross to abhorrent. We’re never actually given full access to the thoughts of the two women. The only two characters who seem to actually respect women in this are James and Walter. Riccetti is indifferent to everyone post Jason dying.

Karl is the problem. He slut-shames Doria when she is hesitant to accept the advances of the Captain of the ship.

“I don’t see your problem. After all, you’re always willing to make it with practically any-” (Rosenburg, 83).

Which he rightfully gets slapped in the face for. He is genuinely in shock when Walter tells him that slut-shaming is bad and women are allowed to have sex of their own free will.

“Maybe, just maybe, there’s nothing wrong with a woman–or man, for that matter–having sex with somebody she likes, for her own damn reasons, not yours. And not because it’s a reward, just because she wants to.”

“So?” He rubbed his eyes. It was… confusing” (Rosenberg, 91).

And then when he learns that Andy had sex with Walter, he has what is essentially a big temper tantrum and tries to kill Walter. The Barak part of Karl calls Andy his woman and Karl doesn’t correct him. He doesn’t say “Andy is her own person, she and I aren’t even dating.” No, all he says is essentially “If we do this she’ll never be my woman” with little regard to the fact Andy has already rejected him.

Karl acts like Andy cheated on him when they aren’t even dating. Like she’s his property that Walter has sullied. He temporarily considers sleeping with Doria (who in the other world he’d hooked up with once than ghosted and he’s willing to do that regardless of how she’d feel) for the sole reason of attempting to hurt Andrea. Karl COULD be an interesting character, if he stopped getting in his own way and essentially shooting himself in the foot repeatedly.

The “I Hate It Here”: This ties into the Bad. There is a scene towards the end of the book after they are captured by slave traders. The slave traders separate Andy and Doria from the guys. It thankfully isn’t graphic, but the novel makes sure to let you know exactly what happened to the girls, that their friends had to hear their screams for hours. Here’s the thing: you can write about this, but you need to have tact and be respectful. There are many books that deal with SA in a respectful and sensitive manner that tackles how serious of a topic it is and the lasting impacts it has.

This is not one of those books. While not graphic about, there is a certain almost exploitive feeling to it. And because we never get to be in the women’s heads, we don’t get a reflection on how they feel, their emotions, etc. We just get to know about how it made the guys feel. When Karl is talking to Andy about what happened, the focus is about Karl and how HE feels, not about the intense trauma that just happened to Andy. It is gratuitous and only used to further the men’s character arcs.  

This book has a lot of good things going for it, but some of its flaws are glaring enough that hold it back.

This week I have decided to center my focus around the poet Tiana Clark and her collection I Can’t Talk About The Trees Without The Blood. Throughout the first section of the collection, Tiana primarily focuses on  identity, racism, the black experience, and sexual assault. What I have been reminded throughout this process, of reading both Clark and Morgan Parker, is that there is so much intersectionality between things and concepts. She identifies as a mixed race woman which opens up a plethora of assumptions from others about the experiences that she may have encountered and even who she is as a woman. I am interested in finding out if she explores this further on in the collection. Right now, it seems as though the message of these particular poems focusing on identity is that she/people of color are always being perceived and unfortunately there will never be a time where we are not perceived.

they can’t just wink at any woman, Mr. Till,

just walk through any neighborhood, Mr. Martin,

just wear any hoodie, but any iced tea. Someone is watching,

always watching us, so when I think about justice,

I think about eyeballs, the first impression,

the action that follows, George Zimmerman stepping

out of his car. I think what would have happened

if he’d just given him a ride home?

— “The Ayes Have It”

As previously said, primarily the poems focus on identity and race, but she does add poems that focus on sexual assault. As unfortunate and inhumane as it is, I believe this is where we see intersectionality again or even just the fear it is to be a woman, a child. The thoughts of what we could have or should have done and the way that these thoughts plague her mind along with having to hold the fear of her racial identity as well. Again, at all times we are being perceived reminding us that the world is a scary place.

4.) You are in the backseat of a moving car. You are twelve. You want a kiss on the mouth, but he pushes your head down and makes you suck. You are thankful for the potholes on Old Hickory Boulevard that makes the grill of your braces scrape the shaft of his penis.

You get the taste for blood too early.

— “Ways to Be Saved”

I am particularly intrigued by her storytelling. The way that the imaginative is used and the questions that she is able to form. Being able to place yourself into a time that was not kind to you and others who look like you is incredibly hard to do and it becomes such an emotional experience. You start to look at the trajectory of your own life and the ways that it has been affected by history. I wonder what part of the collection so far was hard for her and what part was easier. The way that Clark explores these thoughts is not like any way I have seen before. Her use of formatting applies different things to her poems. It changes the way it should be read and also the tone, sometimes the context. In a way I believe that it can make a poem more emotional or have deeper meaning when formatted a different way. I have decided to play around with my format some more in hopes of achieving something different. I believe that I have constantly thought of poetry as this one thing and put it into such a narrow box/category when in reality it is anything I make it to be. She is able to push the boundaries and I believe through formatting it becomes 2 separate pieces of art, the words and the frame that holds them.

Women have consistently been portrayed as “emotional” and shamed into believing that their desire to bring attention to a topic that has deeply impacted them is nothing but, as many female writers call it, “Navel-Gazing.” However, the author of the book Body Work writes an entire chapter called “In Praise of Navel-Gazing,” which is meant to show how female personal essayists are treating immensely different than male essayists. Febos, the author of the book I am currently reading, goes over her experience as a personal essayist and her workshops that involve female essayists reading their own work. While Febos often gives them critiques stating that they should add more of themselves to the work, often there is a cringe of the thought about writing more about themselves, often with a statement afterwards stating, “I don’t want to come off as self absorbed, you know, navel-gazing.” Not knowing what “navel-gazing” was, I searched the definition and was met with the following statement, Navel-Gazing (n.): Self indulgent or excessive contemplation of oneself or a single issue, at the expense of a wider view; (adj.) Engaging in or characterized by self indulgent or excessive contemplation of oneself or a single issue, at the expense of a wider view.” A stereotype of female personal essayists is the fear of having their essay not taken seriously and seen as a diary. However, very few diaries are published and the people who want their work published go through multiple editors, work with publishing agency, and advertise the book. With a diary, it is descreet and hidden away from the public eye. However one may ask, why is this a feminist issue? As Febos puts it in her book:

Tell me: who is writing in their theraputic diary and then dashing it off to be published? I don’t know who these self-indulgent (and extravagantly well-connected) narcissists are. But I suspect that when people denigrate them in the abstract, they are picturing women. I’m finished referring, in a derogatory way, to stories of body and sex and gender and violence and joy and childhood and family as navel-gazing.

When women tell their stories about trauma, it is often seen that there are already too many stories telling the same thing and that there is no place for it in the seriousness of classic literary works. However, because there is trauma in the world, and because there will continue to be, there will never be enough stories about survivors to be told until violence that causes trauma is completely eradicated in our world.

There is another stereotype regarding personal essays and that is having that theraputic experience should not be the one of the top experiences of writing an essay. While, indeed, essays do not have to always be about trauma or the negative experiences one has felt, to say that writing an essay is nothing but neutral prose that cannot show that the author is still impacted emotionally from their experiences is preposterous. An essay needs that emotional interest so the reader can connect to the author just as much as an essay needs neutral prose to keep the reader and the author grounded. Febos recognizes that the resistance to published essays regarding women’s experiences and trauma caused by men is tied to fights against the acknowledgment of the social injustice because once it is acknowledged, then there is no turning back and the patriarchy reveals the problematic side of constantly being in power. Without knowing the stories of survivors, a culture cannot truly empathize and change to keep the people within the culture safe. As Febos puts it, “The resistance to memoirs about trauma is always in part- and often nothing but- a resistance to movements for social justice.”

“Five Plots”, the fifth and final chapter of Trabold’s book of the same name, is split into five additional sections titled 1 through 5. Although I think I should’ve known better by now, I expected the fourth and fifth chapters of the book to tie back into the earlier chapters more than they did. Instead, they continued to tell new stories, unrelated to the preceding ones except through their relation to the author and the land. Even though it’s not what I expected, the book is successful in its ability to tell different stories, each at varying levels of completion, without making any obvious connections between them all.

The final chapter begins like this: “I am going to have to start at the other end by telling you this: I am close to my death. My grave has been plotted and paid for by my father. He told me about the purchase at some family gathering—perhaps it was Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or the Saturday we finally decided to put down the family cat.” Trabold does not explain her closeness to death, unless the answer is that she is physically close to it whenever she visits the place she grew up, where the grave resides. She later hints at a physical subluxation, something she’s had since childhood, but there is nothing to suggest it is fatal. She leaves the story of a misalignment largely untold, as well.

An interesting effect of introducing so many tales, even without finishing them, is that the reader begins to feel like she truly knows the author. By excluding the reader from the fully explained versions, Trabold highlights only what is most important in each story. Even if I don’t know what I’m missing, I know that what I’m getting is what Trabold found most impactful. That, in itself, can be very telling.

I’ve realized that I cannot create the kind of large, complex metaphors that lyric essayists, Trabold included, often use in their writing. It’s part of the reason I don’t write fiction anymore. My imagination is limited, and I have trouble writing about things that I have to make up. Utilizing partial storytelling helps me work around this. One definition of a lyric essay suggests that it “pays the reader a compliment by dint of understatement.” The whole story doesn’t need to be explained; you can trust the reader to put the pieces together. With any luck, this is what I hope to emulate in my own writing.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and published in 1892. It is formatted as the journal entries of a woman who, shortly after the birth of her child, has begun to suffer a mental decline. In an attempt to treat her condition, her husband has rented a summer home where he has confined her to the upstairs nursery. He heavily restricts her activities, forbidding her to write, work, or visit with friends, instead encouraging her to rest and breathe in the country air. The journal entries (which she keeps secretly) show the writer’s increasing hysteria as she begins to hallucinate a woman trapped inside of the wallpaper of the nursery. 

I chose to read this story in conjunction with The Bell Jar because, like The Bell Jar, it is written from the perspective of a woman experiencing a mental health crisis. Whereas Esther Greenwood suffers from depression and a series of suicide attempts, the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper is entering into psychosis. These two stories are both interesting looks at the actual experience of disordered thoughts and the way that, to the person experiencing them, they are not only out of control, but completely rational. 

Another similarity I noticed, which I did not expect, is that both stories have strong feminist themes, focusing on the way that women’s mental health is treated in society, particularly by men and male doctors. Esther’s condition is repeatedly downplayed by others throughout The Bell Jar, even by her male psychiatrist, who not only doesn’t take her seriously, but prescribes her shock therapy which is improperly administered at his own private hospital. The experience is incredibly painful and traumatizing for her. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator’s husband is incredibly dismissive and considers himself the authority on her experience because he is a physician. He condescends to her and repeatedly insists that she is getting better even as she steadily declines. She recognizes her own state and tries to bring it up with him, but he argues that his course of treatment is really helping her because she has been sleeping and eating better. This scene is leads into the following exchange:

“… Really dear you are better!”

“Better in body perhaps —” I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word.

‘My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?”

So of course I said no more on that score, and we went to sleep before long.

To me, this is one of the best examples of the condescension and emotional control that characterizes the narrator’s marriage. The Yellow Wallpaper is a horror story because of this relationship almost as much as it is because of the obvious insanity aspect.

Writing a personal essay can, at times, feel repetitive if language is not taken into account. As stated in the book Crafting the Personal Essay, the author Moore states, “if writers followed only predictable paths, where would new ideas come from?” This quote resonated with me because though I know already how a memory ends, that does not mean that it cannot be interesting. Remembering that the essay written is supposed to have a story and a form of creative nonfiction is an excellent way to keep the pros excitable to the reader. Furthermore, adding deeper meaning, figurative language, and fascinating metaphors to the essay can create deeper interest in the writing because it has variety and has the readers looking at, as Moore mentions, an orchestra. While this can be difficult starting out as a personal essayist, it can be rewarding at the end. As Moore states, “It is better, perhaps, to control an entire orchestra rather than just one flute, but it takes infinitely more work and practice.” Being the conductor of an orchestra means that you need to have the proper balance between different sets of instruments to create a harmonious melody that listeners can enjoy and resonate with the music. Being a writer is just being a conductor except that you are using different literary devices in equal parts to create a harmonious story.

In chapter V of part one, Julia is introduced when Winston is having lunch with Syme and talking about newspeak. She is described as, “…the girl with dark hair. she was looking at him in a sidelong way, but with curious intensity” (Orwell 61). The way Julia looked at him was uneasy, and he noticed that she followed him around sometimes watching him. Winston initially thought she was a spy for the thought police or a goody-two-shoes party member. Winston notes that it was because the younger generation is subject to follow more blindly than the older generation who has seen the faults of Big Brother. But to the contrary, Julia was the complete opposite of what Winston first thought. Julia was young but wasn’t the typical young follower of Big Brother. She rebelled and disliked the things that Big Brother believed in. Her character juxtaposes the ideal character of a young member of the party. We get more of her character in the first few chapters of part two. In part two, we see Julia for who she truly is, not a spy but a rebel.

Julia rebels with Wisnton by having a love affair, so her nature is the opposite of what was mentioned before. Julia was now pictured by the following, “Julia, in any case, seldom had an evening completely free. She spent an astonishing amount of time attending lectures and demonstrations, distributing literature for the Junior Anti-Sex League, preparing banners for Hate Week, making collections for the savings campaign, and such like activities. It paid, she said; it was camouflage” (129). This meant that Julia put an act on every day, acting like a good party member, but in reality, she was doing it so that the thought police wouldn’t look into her when she broke bigger rules. Julia was showing her independence from the party and her carefree nature that she had but seemed to not have at the same time. Julia’s character is interesting because she dances on the tip of a double-edged sword willing to rebel but also willing to act like a servant so she can rebel. Her character is someone who knows to be overly cautious and still has fun.

By the third chapter of The Sleeping Dragon, the characters are sucked into their D&D campaign. That chapter is appropriately named “This Isn’t a Game Anymore” as the group wakes up and discovers what happened to them. They have taken on the bodies of their characters, the body housing the mind of both the character and the player. Some of them like James and Karl take it much better than others. Andy-Andy and Riccetti have minor or major freak outs. This is partly due to how there are spells bouncing around in their minds, adding a third voice to their minds.

You can begin to learn even more about the character’s based on their reactions and how they lean on the “whose at the helm” spectrum.

“They haven’t woken Riccetti yet?”

“They’re trying. Jimmy– Make that Ahira; he likes it better– Ahira thinks we should have a full conscious wizard on hand before we try to open any of the rest. And no offense Lotana–”

“Andrea.”

“Andrea, then–” (Rosenburg, 42)

Here we begin to see who has taken to the world more and whose clinging to their old selves. James Michael has completely let the Ahira part of himself take over and lead, the book calling him Ahira as well. The few times he’s referred to as James or Jimmy is by the other players. James also only refers to the others by their character names, which they often correct. Andy is on the opposite side of the spectrum. She clings to who she was, correcting people when they call her by her character’s name. Everyone else has a bit more push and pull on who is in the driver’s seat.

This sets up an interesting question as the group begins the journey try and return to their world. Will everyone want to return? Does existing in this new world for too long have the potential for them to forget their old selves? In gaining these new abilities and bodies, they’ve lost their old selves. Identities, homes, family, etc. Will some of them still feel like it was worth it?

The Bell Jar is the first and only novel written by renowned poet Sylvia Plath, who in February of 1963, barely a month after its publication,  cranked the gas on her stove and placed her head inside. She died at only thirty years old and left behind two children, aged two and one at the time. The novel follows protagonist Esther Greenwood, an intelligent and successful nineteen year old college student, as she begins to lose touch with reality and descend into a psychotic-depressive episode. It is semi-autobiographical.

I have read through the first ten of twenty chapters, and one major theme I have noticed is the issue of choice. Esther is a young woman with her whole life ahead of her. For someone with the talent and privilege that she has, this should be energizing. However, Esther is paralyzed by the possibilities. She explains it well in the following passage:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. 

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. 

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Throughout the first half of the book, Esther is pulled in many different directions and never moves. For the first half of the novel she is working as a guest editor on a fashion magazine with a cohort of other college women. She attempts to relate to her friend Doreen by going out on double dates with her, but ends up feeling like a passive observer in the activities rather than an active participant. At the same time, she fails to relate to her more “innocent” friend Betsy. On separate instances she privately renounces each of them in favor of the other. She feels pressured by those around her to get married, or at least to seek marriage, and she considers it many times but repeatedly concludes that she will never have a husband. When her boyfriend Buddy proposes to her, she tells him no, saying “If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”

At the same time, it is not only the neuroticism that causes Esther’s paralysis. As time goes on, she is gripped by a feeling of “unreality” which causes her to behave in erratic ways. One night, after she is the victim of an attempted date rape, she climbs to the roof of her hotel and throws every item of clothing that she owns from it. The next day she rides the train home without ever wiping her attacker’s blood from her face, and yet wonders why she receives odd looks. When she is rejected from the writing course she had intended to take over the summer, she is encouraged to take a different class and go to the city anyway, and while in her mind she agrees, she hears her own voice tell her would-be roommate to give the room to somebody else. She contemplates the myriad of ways she could spend her summer and vaguely decides to spend it writing a novel, but she soon loses the ability to write, read, or even sleep. She spends three weeks in bed without bathing or changing her clothes. All access to choice seems to have been lost, the figs all rotted. At the end of chapter ten she goes to her doctor to receive a prescription for sleeping pills, and is instead referred to a psychiatrist.

The novel is told in the first-person past-tense, and in the first chapter Esther lets the reader know that she is now married and a mother. Presumably, she will regain her sanity by the end of the book. I am particularly interested to learn who she marries and what leads her to make this choice despite her initial adamance that she never would. Why that fig?

Erica Trabold’s “A List of Concerns”, which is the third chapter of her book “Five Plots”, explores her relationship with her sister and a nostalgic Nebraskan prairie. It is quite literally formatted as a list of concerns, which gives the whole chapter new meaning. It starts out fairly normally, listing things like “3. Glue left behind on wrinkled skin,” and “9. The apologies I can’t remember if I’ve made.” Then, it transitions to include more traditional storytelling. Concern number ten explains a childhood habit of making lists with friends, offering examples like Christmas wish lists and desirable qualities of a future husband. It ends with, “Our lists were demanding, the requirements exhaustive.” The rest of the chapter continues, offering a combination of short and long concerns.

Some of the numbers make plenty of sense why they ended up on a list of concerns. These include “29. The childish temptation to break every rule,” and “86. The predictable way the blades [of grass] slice at my skin and leave behind a stinging rash.” Those sound pretty worthy of concern to me. Some of the numbers, however, I would not consider to be concerning if they were not on the list. An example of this is:

“46. When we were kids, we planned our weddings. Alie planned most. She picked out colors and the dresses, the groom and the flowers. She wrote a list describing the man she would marry. He would own a farm. He would like to read. He wouldn’t believe in divorce.”

The knowledge that the author feels some sort of negativity about it changes the experience of reading it. It might have just been a sweet memory, but the reader knows there is more to it. The sentence about divorce feels like a Chekhov’s Gun. Sure enough, number forty-seven begins, “When Alie married for the first time, we were nineteen.” The first time implies there is a second, which implies the husband she found did believe in divorce. Although not every number on the list is concerning on its own, the story provides context for why this selection of facts and stories are troubling. Number fifty-three is actually left blank, but it is surrounded by pieces of a story of Trabold not attending her sister’s second wedding. There is enough for the reader to come to her own conclusions.

The chapter also explores a past filled with regrettable actions and words. Trabold admits to some shameful things she did as a girl, but it is clear she wouldn’t repeat any of it as the person she is now. She indirectly offers a piece of explanation, writing “…I had the kind [of mother] who never told me to stop and consider how my words might cause another person pain.” Through the parts of the stories she tells, Trabold shares a tale of growth. This is my favorite chapter so far, because of both the format and the story.

George Orwell’s 1984 thrusts the reader into a world in which both thought and freedom are punishable by death. Chapters one through four introduce Winston, who is well aware that he is being constantly watched and listened to. He must be careful of everything he does, as even the slightest shift in facial expression could give something away. It is made very clear to the reader that Big Brother regulates reality in any way that is beneficial to maintaining the current power structure, whether it be through the routine and schedule of every person in the Party or through what is said in the media.

With that in mind, I found what Winston describes as “Two Minutes Hate” to be one of the more compelling aspects of control demonstrated in this story. During Two Minutes Hate, a traitor by the name of Goldstein is displayed and he talks against Big Brother and the Party’s policies, and everyone gathers to become physically angry towards his thoughts and his image. Initially, I found it odd that they would even distribute his ideals. As Orwell describes:

“But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen,in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were—in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him” (17).

Why even consider letting those ideals be shown in the first place? Isn’t that why everything is closely controlled—to have nothing but the Big Brother’s influence and ideals be the only thing allowed? Soon after, we get an answer:

“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp” (Orwell 19).

The emotions that you are not allowed to express can be directed at something else, and that something just so happens to be representative of freedom and better life. Even though you may secretly not want to, you find yourself raging towards the person embodying the ideals you agree with, which further establishes compliance. This compliance is at such a mass amount that you feel singular in your deeper emotions, and you can only suspect that maybe someone else around you feels the same. Thus those deeper emotions are trained to be pushed down until they disappear or fade away.

There will always be some who do not let this deter their thoughts and emotions, and it seems that Winston is one of those individuals. His need to express thoughts and feelings exceeds even what he is willing to let go of in the Two Minutes Hate. They are dangerous, and the society George Orwell establishes in this story understands that greatly.

George Orwell’s book, 1984, is a classic and well-defined post-apocalyptic dystopian story of the dangers that technology will provide to the government like surveillance. Orwell does an excellent job of building the world in the first part of the book and the imagery of a bleak, boring life through the main character’s experiences, Winston Smith. The day-to-day monotoned life that Winston lives helps readers picture the grey world. From his waking up and doing the same exercise that Big Brother, the governmental body that is in charge, makes him do to the long work hours in the office, sets the stage for how this dystopian society is a community of blind obedience that must be followed. Winston becomes bored and wary of the life he’s been living under Big Brother. The constant monitoring of his life through the telescreen makes Winston paranoid about what the government can see. He knows that if he makes one wrong move against the government it would lead to prison or, even worse, execution, but he still writes in a diary. Winston actually writes in the diary throughout the whole book. He writes down what he dislikes about Big Brother’s government policies.

Looking more closely at Chapter V, one can see an ironic policy that Big Brother makes. The policy is the newspeak which is a new way to communicate. The idea is to destroy words that don’t seem fit for the society they are living. On page 51 Orwell beautifully explains the irony of destroying words. Orwell writes, ” It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course, the great wasteage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t just the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. Afterall, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words.” The irony of this excerpt is that through the character’s speech, there was no use of newspeak even though it was there to make the novel easier to read. Orwell still uses newspeak to show how Winston’s world operates. Orwell knew he needed to give examples and use them to an extent to give evidence of the irony that became of newspeak. Today, we are also making new words and phrases all the time, but with already existing words. What we are doing is the opposite of Orwell, we are taking words and giving them new meaning. For example, the word lit doesn’t necessarily have to mean past particles of light; the new definition is more lax as it means to get drunk or excited. It is not totally different from the ironic and controversial idea that Orwell writes about in this chapter, as well as, in the two chapters after this one.

In Chapter VII, Winston is having a hard time grappling and thinking about what life was before the revolution. He knows that there some parts of life wasn’t pleasant but he is not sure if the life he is living now is better than life before the Revolution.  He is aware that the history he has learned and what the governemnt is teaching and propagandizing is incorrect. Winston’s knowledge with the governement’s lies comes from the work he does as an editor who puts what would seeem to be correct in a slot that lead to an incenerartor. As he looks at the truth that he is destroying, he has to craft lies that the government creates.

Orwell makes the readers aware that what Winston writes are lies. If you were sucked into the world without this prior knowledge you would believe what the papers were saying, but there would still be a lingering feeling of mistrust. The feeling would be described as follows: ” It might be true that the average human being was better off now than he had been before the Revolution. The only evidence to the contrary was the mute protest in your bones, the instinctive feeling that the condition you lived in were intolerable and that at some other time they must have been different” (Orwell 73). The passage shows that even the society that Winston is living in now is as bad as it was before the Revolution or even worse. The passage solidifies the ironic life under Big Brother. A society without a capitalistic presence is freeing to humans especially the proles who were said to be the most oppressed under capitalism, but in reality everyone is now more oppressed.

We readers see the people being oppressed and the newspeak being ridiculous because of Big Brother skewing the history and the literature that would have helped prove that their ways were better. Orwell describes these ironic elements throughout part one to set the stage for the world in which Wisnton lives. Both chapters show the redundancy that Big Brother had created and the fallacies that were made. Overall, both chapters show the counterintuitiveness that Newspeak and the edited history books brought into Winston’s world. We see that some like Winston are skeptical about Big Brother and their way of governing as well as those who blindly follow them.

After starting The Sleeping Dragon by Joel Rosenburg, two thoughts came to mind. ‘I can see how this book and series is considered some of his best work,’ and ‘Oy and vey, this is so 1980s but in some less than ideal ways’. Rosenberg clearly has a talent for crafting interesting settings and characters. One of his strong points is the way he introduces his characters in the first few chapters.

An example is with our first two characters. We meet Karl Cullaine and Andrea Andropolous (Andy-Andy): college students and friends. We learn that Andy had rejected Karl despite clearly caring for him. Rosenberg doesn’t come out and say why Andy rejected Karl, but rather shows it. Andy mentions the numerous hobbies and majors Karl has gone through, and his constant losing things.

“Stop trying to sound like a psych major. You’re supposed to be studying to be an actor these days”

“I used to be a psych major–”

“–and a poli sci major. Plus American lit, engineering, philosophy, sociology—am I missing anything?”

“Prelaw. And two weeks of premed, back when I was a freshman. What’s your point?”

“You’re a dilettante Karl. This role-playing stuff is just another one of your temporary obsessions. Remember last year, when it was bridge? You spent your whole semester nattering about Stayman conventions and Southern American Texas transfers, whatever the hell they are–”

“South African Texas, not South American.” He dipped two fingers into his shirt pocket and pulled out a cigarette, then lit it with his shiny new Zippo… He figured that he might as well enjoy it while he could; he’d lose it soon. Karl could never keep track of things; the Zippo was the third lighter he’d bought that semester” (Rosenburg, 9-10).

Without having to spell it out for us, the author shows us why Andy turned Karl down. Karl is wishy-washy, jumping from a total of nine majors in four years. He picks up new hobbies and drops them usually within the semester. He can’t even keep track of a lighter. Andy cares about Karl, but all she’s seen is a lack of commitment with everything else in his life. It’s natural, and fair, she’d assume he’d be the same with a relationship.

Another example is James Michael. James is physically disabled (a lot of the cringing comes from the language used about it) and is in a wheelchair. The group always waits for him if he shows up late, something they never do for anyone else. James hates it. He wants to be treated like anyone else. The only person who does is Walter Slovotsky, which James appreciates despite his jealousy of the jock. He hates how he has to act positive. He wants to snap at the characters for how they treat him, but keeps up a kind and calm facade lest he be ostracized. The author doesn’t outright see all of this, but rather in James’ thoughts and the others’ actions. This is something that seems to easy to do, but a lot of authors can get stuck on. But Rosenburg is able to accomplish.

Today I dove deeper into Parker’s collection looking to find answers to previous questions that I held. I feel as though I am getting a better grasp of understanding her literary choices such as titles and even secret innuendos that hide between lines/stanzas. I am still finding the common themes of race, sex, violence and beauty, but there is much much more than that going much more deeper. While reading Parker’s collection we are able to see how these topics intersect, as mentioned in my previous post. We are able to see, even though some may not understand, her experience as a black woman. It is one thing to be black and another to be a woman, two experiences. I believe that Parker is able to articulate these two experiences coming together effortlessly. It is easy to forget that the identity of being black occurs outside of the identity of being a woman, especially in the movement of feminism. I wonder, myself, how to shape my voice to articulate this as well in a way that I feel will do the experience true justice or in a way that is relatable to other black women since not all experiences are the same.

What to a slave is the fourth of july.

What to a woman is a vote.

What to a slave is river water.

What to a slave is an award show.

What to a slave is fine china.

— “The Gospel According to Her”

I questioned in my last post the author’s ties to Beyonce and why she was often mentioned. I felt confused by the titles and also analogies. I provided myself to research and question why such comparisons may be made and I found that it was much easier to make sense of than I thought. Whether or not her music is preferred, Beyonce is a huge staple in black culture and culture in general. A black woman being a staple in black culture is more widely accepted (at some points) than she is widely accepted in the general culture. She is subject to more ridicule (by both), watched with a close eye, and almost unhuman(which the public has made her seem). Would these thoughts and actions from the public still be present if Beyonce were white? This calls for the question of biases. I now see how this topic ties into Parker’s collection and how it ties into the themes that I previously listed.

She preforms and the coverage is breezy:

What rosy cheeks what milky vacancy

Her daughter learns about beauty

Discovers nothing surprising

— “White Beyonce”

Poems I have read: “Freaky Friday Starring Beyonce and Lady Gaga”, 13 Ways of Looking at a Black Girl”, “The Book of Negroes”, “The Gospel According to Her”, “Black Woman with Chicken”, “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife”, “White Beyonce”, “The President’s Wife”, “Welcome to the Jungle”, “Beyonce Touring in Asia, Breaks Down in a White Tee”, What Beyonce Won’t Say on a Shrink’s Couch”, “Ain’t Misbehavin”

Erica Trabold’s Five Plots is composed of five parts. The first, “Canyoneering” slowly introduces the reader to the story of Trabold’s extended family in short sections separated by sections of lyrical writing about caverns and canyons. Although the stories are told side-by-side in the chapter, the meaning behind their connection is not made very obvious. It took time for me to discover the ways in which they complemented each other.

Each time the chapter switches from one story/section to the next, a single asterisk in the middle of an empty line marks the change. I like this style choice because it makes the succeeding section feel like a footnote to its predecessor, in a continuous string of footnotes upon footnotes. The story builds on itself, and you have to do the work to consider how each part works together. One of the beauties of lyric essays is that they don’t offer all of the answers. So, in a sense, the real answer is whatever you come up with that makes sense and resonates with you.

“Canyoneering” begins with the sentence, “When I was a year old, my parents took me to see a cavern underneath New Mexico.” Trabold offers a little more detail about the trip, then ends the section with, “Tomorrow, they will introduce me to my biological grandfather for the first time.” Then, she talks about the ghosts and ancient histories held within rock and stone. She considers the first explorers of the cavern and their fearlessness. She imagines an explorer caught in stasis in the cavern for so long that she becomes a part of it and forgets herself. Trabold writes of herself, saying, “A nocturnal predator—the realization that I haven’t yet illuminated enough to live properly in the world—stalks me in every canyon, every cave of consciousness.” I underlined this sentence, but couldn’t quite connect it to the rest of the reading until later. In this chapter, Trabold explores her family history and the messy work of untangling it. As a baby, she visits this cavern and then meets her biological grandfather. As an adult, she returns, still feeling in the dark about her extended family. That darkness makes her wary, uneasy.

I also liked that sentence because it felt so immediately relatable. I can’t understand the specific struggles with untangling a family history, but I understand feeling lost due to a lack of knowledge about the world outside of myself. I dislike knowing that I don’t know something, and the inability to find answers can leave me floundering. Trabold’s ability to voice this through such a great metaphor helped me connect personally to the story. That’s what great writing does—connects us through our empathy and understanding of one another.

As I move through reading There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce by Morgan Parker I find myself questioning where these poems are taking me and what their true intentions are. Parker touches on the topics of race, sex, beauty, and violence so far. Not only what it means to be a woman, but to be a black woman and how the topics of sex, beauty, and violence intersect with this. With this I particularly think of the first poem in the collection, “ALL THEY WANT IS MY MONEY MY PUSSY  MY BLOOD”. She writes,

I could die any minute of depression.

I just want to have sex most of the time.

I just want my student loans to disappear.

I just want to understand my savings account.

What is happening to my five dollar one cent.

I am free with the following conditions.

The way that Parker is able to articulate these issues without outwardly expressing them is beautiful in a way. By doing this there is still exposure to them, but there is also a silent understanding between the people who have experienced these issues or situations where certain things do not have to be said or explained. She is speaking of the black experience as though it is something that is not meant for people to outwardly explain or to be understood which I am very much enjoying and thinking about incorporating into my own pieces as well. While I am reading I do have to say that there are pieces that I am confused about and drawn to look deeper upon such as the poems primarily about Beyonce. I question why Parker is making these associations and what is the true underlying meaning upon doing so. Here is a quote from “Beyonce on the Line for Gaga”,

I open my legs, throw my shades on like,

Divas gettin money.                                     Hard as the boys.

Give me all

your little monsters and I will burn them up.

Give me your hand

and I will let you back this up.

Tonight   I make a name for you.

As I continue to read further I hope that I can understand the meaning behind these particular poems.

As I begin to take on my own project I look towards Parker’s work as a guide. It has brought new ideas to the forefront of my own project and how I want to present it. The way that she is able to say a lot without saying too much and also the language that she uses, which some may call informal at times. I admire how she owns her work through her words and the way that she is unapologetic for this which I hope I can do the same for my work as well.

Poems I have read: “All THEY WANT IS MY MONEY MY PUSSY MY BLOOD”, “The President Has Never Said The Word Black”, “Hottentot Venus”, “Another Another Autumn in New York”, “Poem on Beyonce’s Birthday”, “Lush Life”, “Beyonce on the Line for Gaga”, “We Don’t Know When We Were Opened (Or, The Origin of the Universe)”, “My Vinyl Weighs a Ton”, “Beyonce Is Sorry for What She Won’t Feel”, “Afro”, “These Are Dangerous Times”, “Rebirth of Slick”, “RoboBeyonce”, “Delicate and Jumpy”

After reading “The Gentle Art of the Personal Essay” and “The Personal (Not Private) Essay,” I have come to a fuller understanding of personal essays: 1. A Personal Essay can feel entirely different to any other genre of essays. 2. Structure is your friend to keep you on track. Regarding personal essays, the essays can feel extremely different from the formats one is used to. Often, essays can read like a robotic format that is unchanging: 1. Thesis, 2. Body, 3. Conclusion. However, personal essays are extremely different. While a normal essay has a thesis, a body to argue your thesis, and a conclusion to restate your thesis, personal essays do not have a thesis to restate because the essay is about you. The essay is personal, meaning the essay often takes a more reflective approach. The topic may not be fully discovered either, as explained on page 5 of Moore’s book Crafting the Personal Essay, “The essayist does not sit down at her desk already knowing all of the answers, because if she did, there would be no reason to write.” The reason for writing personal essays is to look at the topic in its entirety, and try to discover what else there is to it rather than the surface of the story.

There is also a matter of structure. At points, writing about oneself can feel like writing through Stream of Consciousness. However, ensuring that you maintain a form of structure, one is able to work to not loose the reader, while also having the freedom to explore emotions and possible rabbit holes of the story they are telling. As explained by Moore on page 14 of the book Crafting the Personal Essay, “there are ways to roam without seeming lost. So give your reader no reason to be tense. Let her feel constantly as if she is in competent hands.” 

Your assignments for this semester include:

A self-designed creative writing project. You will meet with me to devise a plan for producing and revising creative work during these three weeks.

A reading plan. You will meet with me to select the texts you plan to read during these three weeks.

A series of blog posts. You will produce at least six blog posts in which you discuss the texts you’ve read.

A bibliography. You will produce an annotated bibliography of the works you’ve read in pursuit of your English and Creative Writing major.

An assessment essay. You will compose an essay in response to this prompt: Discuss how your study of English and Creative Writing has contributed to your growth as an empathetic community member. Please use specific examples from your experience in the English and Creative Writing program.