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“Writing and rewriting, practicing, experimenting, I came to comprehend more fully the generative power of language. I discovered- with the help of some especially sensitive teachers-that through writing one can continually bring new selves into being, each with new responsibilities and difficulties, but also with new possibilities.”

Barbara Mellix, From Outside, In

“Throughout the past 4 weeks in this course, I have approached each piece we have read looking for an answer or a quick fix to these cultural differences. After listening to Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech, I realized that there is not a single solution. As hard as one may try, we cannot completely knock down these walls that separate us. I think that this is a clear point that Obama’s speech highlights and, while obvious, we tend to overlook this. 

Obama reminds us that we are not a perfect union, nor will we ever be perfect. However, if we don’t at least try to come together then division will persist. He affirms that our “racial wounds” are not an issue that can be solved “in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy”. This is something that America, as a whole, must work on together throughout time.”

Amanda Gen, Healing the Wounds, Sept 25th, 2019

 

I discovered – with the help of some especially sensitive teachers – that through writing one can continually bring new selves into being, each with new responsibilities and difficulties, but also with new possibilities. Remarkable power, indeed. I write and continually give birth to myself.

– Mellix, “From Outside, In”, closing statement

 

Everyone who has a notebook or journal understands that they are in no way, shape, or form, perfect. My notebook has scribbles where I’ve misspelled words, I’ve got arrows all over the pages where I’ve tried to connect my thoughts, I have random lists in between heartfelt journal entries, and sometimes I’m writing so fast that my handwriting changes completely. It’s messy and sometimes unorganized but I find beauty in the way that I let my thoughts take over the pages. If anything, I think it shows how human I truly am.

– Ashley S, response to Lambeth – “The Three-legged Dog who carried me” – 9/4/19

I think I would say that Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is my favorite piece we read this semester. The way that she articulated her lack of connection from both English and Spanish speakers was intriguing. She managed to inform her audience that because she spoke a form of “Spanglish,” that she did not feel like she was part of the English-speaking community because she was Spanish, while at the same time she did not feel like part of the Spanish-speaking community because the Spanish she spoke was broken.

My favorite class response was Bridget’s response to Richard Rodriguez’s “The Achievement of Desire: Personal Reflections on Learning ‘Basics.’” I believe her response brought up interesting points about Rodriguez being a good student because he was good at mimicking his teachers.

Context: Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 2016 Ted Talk focuses on the urgency of intersectionality and  acknowledges the cultural impact of recognizing overlapping identities such as race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989 and it is defined as: the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group regarded as creating overlapping and independent systems of discrimination or disadvantage. Crenshaw refers to a case brought to court by Emma Degraffenreid that was dismissed because the Judge believed her attempt to sue on the grounds of “double discrimination” would be a preferential advantage. This is referred to by Crenshaw as “Injustice squared” because of Degraffenreid’s inability to get the job she applied for as well as the discrimination she suffered being inconsequential.

Role: I plan to use The Urgency of Intersectionality as a framework for my paper to express the impact of society’s constraints and constructions on women especially young women and women of marginalized ethnicities.

Why it is interesting: I find this video interesting because although I’d realized and lived the concept of intersectionality several times in my life as a black woman, I don’t think I’d ever heard of the phrase before watching this video. Realizing that was eye opening to me because it made me think of how little this concept is actually discussed. This concept invites you to understand the overlapping identities of marginalized people on a complex and immersed level.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe93rfyFepPQ7otscI3bY7jrm7wDQfl8MyFimCboiHggPty6A/viewform?usp=sf_link

Project Reading

Bibliographic

Ongiri, Amy Abugo. “”He wanted to be just like Bruce Lee”: African Americans, Kung Fu Theater and Cultural Exchange at the Margins.” Journal of Asian American Studies, vol. 5 no. 1, 2002, p. 31-40. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/jaas.2002.0009.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/14656

About the author

Amy Abugo Ongiri is an assistant professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. Her research and teaching focuses on Black literature and culture, transnational cinema, and gender and sexuality studies. During the academic year 2001-2002 she was a fellow at the John Hope Franklin Center for International and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University. Her current book project Spectacular Blackness: The Cultural Articulations of the Black Power Movement and the Search to Define a Black Aesthetic addresses the cultural and political articulations of the Black Power movement, particularly the aesthetic concerns of the Black Arts Movement’s search to define a “Black Aesthetic.” This essay is part of a larger project addressing the transnational circulation of Black popular culture.

Role

I hope that this piece will provide me with beneficial insight into the systems and concepts that allowed Bruce Lee’s films to stitch seamlessly into Western culture during the 1970’s. I should use this article to support Lee’s very own contact zones then explain why they were so important in building the bridge between the east and the west as far as film and martial arts go.

Appeal

This piece should provoke your interests in world culture it helps demonstrate how we are always connected even if we live on separate halves of the Earth. If you are fascinated by film and the history of film this article should give you a very raw and astute summary of what the culture of film was like in the 1970’s. If you are interested in martial arts, Bruce Lee was one of the best to ever do it.

James McBride, The Color of Water, 1996, Penguin Group

Context: The Color of Water is an autobiography by James McBride, who is African American, and it was a tribute to his mother, who was a white Eastern European Orthodox Jew. In his work, he documents as much of his mother’s life that he knew about and he writes about his experience growing up as an African American with a white mother. Also, all of Mrs. McBride’s children grew up to have very successful careers and James McBride is a perfect example.

Role: I plan to use The Color of Water and compare and contrast it with Barbara Mellix’s writings. I feel that James McBride’s upbringing juxtaposed with Mellix’s brings attention to a very interesting point: the diversity of writing, upbringing, and use of language just within the community of African American writers. 

Why The Color of Water interesting: I believe The Color of Water could be considered interesting to my fellow classmates because it demonstrates a new perspective on a subject we have discussed at length. This subject is the work of African American writes, such as Barbara Mellix, who discuss growing up using Black Standard English, but perfected the usage of Standard English. 

Posted by Joe Harris for Winston Allen

I found this article an interesting choice for selection because of the topic it pertains to – rape. I am sure that at least some of us in class have heard the name Clay Conaway. I also understand that some of you have not heard of him or what he is or has done. Before I get into that, I would like to note that my topic is athlete culture as a contact zone and how that takes away from and adds to the other subcultures that makes up the rest of the student body at UD. Obviously as a part of that is the stereotype of rape culture. I was a freshman in the fall of 2017 and Clay was a teammate of mine as a senior who had one more year of eligibility that he had planned on using. I was not fond of this guy, and for that matter no one else really was either, but nevertheless, he was our teammate and no one knew any better. Clay was arrested over a year ago on six accounts of rape, two of which being in the first degree. He is being tried separately for all of them and has already been found guilty for rape in the 4th degree for the first trial. He is awaiting sentencing of 15 years and still has to sit through an additional 5 more trials.

 
       The reason that I bring this case up and include a decent piece about him is because of the myths surrounding student-athletes and rape culture. There are myths on both sides. No, not every major student-athlete is a rapist or is just out to have a good time with as many girls as possible. Yes, there are definitely student-athletes who cannot handle the attention and the publicity of it all and make very poor, life-altering decisions. No, not any one sport has more of these sick humans than any other. Yes, it happens more than you think. I brought up Clay Conaway as it hits home. Someone who walked our very campus and interacted with students of all kinds. I used him as an example of reading to go in to how serious athlete culture can be and to show that it is not all it is cracked up to be sometimes. It goes into depth about right before the trial began as evidence had started to come out. I thought that this would be an interesting read for both its proximity and relation to the university as well as it being an example of rape culture amongst student athletes. 

The author is by the name of Brittany Shammas. She used to work multiple reporting jobs in Miami before becoming a full-time general assignment reporter for The Washington Post. She does good work and I like to believe that she is unbiased in her reporting so that both sides can be educated on what is going on. Moving forward, I will dive a little deeper into Clay and his tribulations but I will be swinging back in the direction of non-rape culture amongst student athletes and then from there move in to some of the positives of the athletic student-body. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/09/19/an-alleged-serial-rapist-met-victims-bumble-tinder-his-attorneys-say-women-were-there-hook-up/