Race and Identity in U.S. Literature

March 2nd and March 3rd: Wrapping up Homegoing and Intro to Ceremony

3/2/2021

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Here is the agenda for Tuesday, March 2nd

Student close-reading assignment read-aloud!
Negotiate when refinements are due. Yay, student voice and choice!
Tonight's homework (it's brief, I promise!)

Due tomorrow:

Watch this 6 minute video of Leslie Marmon Silko explaining inspiration and the writing process for writing Ceremony. Be able to answer this: At the end, she says, “I wrote that book to save my life. What does she mean?”
Skim through the student reading guide through page 6 to get a sense of the different “timeframes” in the book as well as the basic plot for the first part of the book that we’ll read for next week. Please make a comment on the doc. if I'm off on any of the page #s. Thanks! :)

Here is the Agenda for Wednesday, March 3rd

Ashley's closing thoughts on Homegoing (see below)
STARTER: What are ways you can measure time besides numerical units?
a) How can you do so to show time as behaving linearly?
b) How can you do so to show time as cyclically?
At the end of the video you watched for today, Silko says, “I wrote that book [Ceremony] to save my life. What does she mean?”
Lecture time with Ashley: Follow along with this link--> An orientation to Ceremony
Review the reading schedule and expectations for class preparation

Ashley's closing thoughts on Homegoing as inspired by an episode of Code Switch on Reparations, called “Pay Back’s a B****”
**Theme of truth and reconciliation as critical to beginning to heal from historical trauma and past injustices

This podcast makes an important point about how reparations are ultimately about being honest about the past, and for the case of white people, apologizing. It is through that honesty and apology, that we (as a nation) have a chance for forgiveness and healing. Without that, we are stuck. But the hosts of the podcast argue that white people feel a sort of existential threat when the notion of reparations arises, because it challenges our sense of selves, both as individuals and as a collective, in that reparations imply that we were (are?) cruel as a people.
In Homegoing, Gyasi plays this out through Effia's lineage as we observe a sense of "stuckness" in several characters, which seems to be a result of their guilt in being complicit in the slave trade. They deal with this stuckness and guilt in different ways. For instance, James straight up tries to runaway from it. However, it isn’t until they’re honest with their children (and in the case of Yaw's mother, apologize) that healing can begin to occur.
In the podcast, Erika Alexander describes a tiny plaque in Wall Street meant to memorialize a former slave market. She reflects on the notion of the "American Dream" and contrasts that tiny plaque with the GIANT monument at Ground Zero. She feels indignant because New Yorkers are able to walk past this place where tens of thousands of slaves were bought and sold and don’t have to grapple with that reality. She argues that what that tiny plaque represents is the myriad ways in which we as Americans can hold onto the myth of the American Dream. It is something we're sold hand over fist, and in turn, something we project to the outside world. Americans are supposed to be super optimistic: “We're this great country, spreading Democracy and equal rights for all!"
But then, Alexander asks, how do you reconcile that belief and sense of identity with the brutal history and systemic racism that still exists today?
So this brings in a tension for many Americans between one's identity as an individual and one's identity in relationship to the whole.
This class is really asking each of us to reflect upon that tension: How does it impacts how you move through the world? How do you incorporate that tension, that contradiction, into your own sense of self? It really is a form of cognitive dissonance, where you hold two contradicting ideas (smoking is bad, but I smoke). And because we know cognitive dissonance creates discomfort, we need to somehow address that contradiction. How do we do that? Deny the contradiction? Minimize the significance? Work to make the Dream a reality for all?
This cognitive dissonance isn't just harmful to the individual, it is harmful to we, the people. So working to heal (the self, the collective) is the real work for those of us who are engaged in the deep work of understanding race and identity- both our own, the collective, and the relationship between the two. As we'll see in Ceremony, there is no I without the We. Silko picks up the thread for us as she explores the concept of healing through ceremony in her own novel. Let's turn to that now, shall we?

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Daily Lessons

Week 4 Ceremony Discussion (4/7)

Week 3 Ceremony Discussion

Week 2 of Ceremony Discussion

Week of 3/9 and 3/10: Ceremony through page 76

March 2nd and March 3rd: Wrapping up Homegoing and Intro to Ceremony

February 23rd and 24th: Finishing Homegoing!

Week 2 of Homegoing

Week 5: Wrapping up Citizen and Beginning Homegoing

February 2nd and 3rd: Afrofuturism and Claudia Rankine's Citizen

Tuesday, 1/26 and Wednesday, 1/27

Ashley Carruth

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