March 31, 2008

Laramie, Localore, and Longing (and a Giveaway)

So last night, after a long day of grading papers and trying to get my cat to eat anything – we’ve settled on tuna juice and bits of Friskies Salmon Dinner fed from my finger – I settled in to watch The Laramie Project. And wow, what a great – if hard – way to cap my weekend. In case you don’t know the premise, the film is based on the play that was written by the Tectonic Theater Project with Moises Kaufman as director/coordinator. The Project members visit Laramie, Wyoming, shortly after Matthew Shepard is killed, and they interview lots of people from around the town. These interviews then form the language and shape of the play/film.

It was beautiful. Balanced, fair, honest and eye-opening, especially for me who moved to rural Maryland from San Francisco a couple of years ago and who doesn’t always remember that people are still scared of gay people. I’m going to use the film in my composition class because we’re talking about discrimination, and I’m sure it’s going to be a hard class day. A lot of my students believe homosexuality is wrong – as do many of my dear friends – and many of my students are truly homophobic. So I’m hoping this film will open their eyes to the way that dislike can turn into hate and hate almost always turns into violence, be it verbal or physical. If you haven’t seen the film, I would highly recommend it, and for a sense of how challenging it must have been to conduct the interviews in Laramie, read this interview with Moises Kaufman.
Cover of DVD The Laramie Project

After watching Laramie last night, I came up to shut down the computer and happened to see that my friend Megan Scott had posted a new addition to her blog Localore. Megan’s writing is lovely, like the pleasure you get from seeing a picture form from the pieces of a jigsaw – all tulips and fairies coming into life. In her most recent blog, she talks about the gloriousness of beet-flavored, hard-boiled eggs. I can’t even begin to describe how well she captures the life of an egg, but my favorite section is:
My chair screeches back, as I reach for the salt hog, a pinch of sea salt across the top of the yellow-eyed, pink-shadowed eggs. These treats are ladies, ready for a night out. These treats are the opposite of their sisters, the beets that share their domicile. Housed together they make a funny pair of earth and birth, sweet/tangy, sugar and salt. Root and life..
Take a look at Megan’s writing. Add it to your blog roll. Never look at beets or eggs the same way again.

So I’m at the point in the year when I’m longing for the end of the semester. My students are fried and frazzled; I’m fried and frazzled, and we’re pushing into the last month, when all anyone can do is work, work, work. I’m not a big fan of summer – just not one for the heat and humidity – but I am absolutely longing for those languid days when I can work in the yard, read a lot, and get some writing done. Oh for it to be mid-May. Can anyone relate?

So I’m giving another book away, mostly because the cover looks summery to me – a girl’s bare legs beneath a white cotton dress as she stands over looking the sea. The book is Between the Tides by Patti Callahan Henry. (Note – there is a small water stain on the edge of the book, so if you’re a pristine book lover, this may not be the giveaway for you.)Post a comment below before Friday, April 4th, and I’ll draw a name on Saturday. I love these giveaways.
Cover of Henry's Between the Tides

* Filed by Andi at 6:45 am under Book Recommendations, Teaching Triumphs and Travails, Written and Wrought
* 16 Comments

March 30, 2008

A Big Teaching Travail

My former classmate Lucia Galloway Dick tells me that she’s going to read about my teaching experience here, so I thought I would post my latest and greatest trial. Please write and commiserate if you have this experience.

My students don’t write!!!

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let me explain. Today, I graded nine papers from one of my Freshmen Composition papers. That may sound okay until I tell you that there are 19 students enrolled in the class. I have tried everything to prevent this from happening again – this sloughing off of students like so many layers of dead skin – I don’t take late work; I tell them they’ll fail if they don’t turn in a paper; I tell them that they’re all smart and deserve A’s if they will but earn them; I play nonchalant; I play overly committed. Nothing works!!!!

My father, a wise, wise man, has always told me that you can’t motivate anyone (and he would know – he taught community college, as I do, for many years), but still I try. I want them to care; I want that so much. I want them to understand what being articulate can do for them; I want them to be able to convince other people that they are right; I want people to see them, in writing, for the smart, compassionate, intelligent people I know them to be. I want all of this, and I cannot in any way make them want it, too. It’s sad . . . very, very sad.

So if you have brilliant ideas (which I’d probably already tried but am willing to try again), please let me know. Or if you just want to bemoan this lack of interest, please use this forum. I could use the company in my shallow pit of misery.
Andi

* Filed by Andi at 5:44 pm under Teaching Triumphs and Travails
* 4 Comments

Fairy Tale Favorites

Inspired by a question on You Can Never Have Too Many Books, I’ve been spending some time this morning trying to decide which fairy tale is my favorite. And the truth is that choice is very hard for me because I didn’t really read fairy tales until I was older – at least I don’t think I did (Sorry, Mom, if you have lots of memories of reading them to me). So my knowledge of fairy tales starts in a very academic place – mostly with Angela Carter – who is, by the way, my favorite recent fairy tale reviser/writer.

But if I had to pick, I’d probably choose “Snow-White and Rose-Red” because it is a story of the way that kindness can transform life – to be it very simply. And that’s why I read fairy tales – because they portray the depths of life – good and bad – very simply.

I will say, with an eye to Susan’s comments on Too Many Books, that I really don’t like the Disney versions of the fairy tales. They take the sting and bite out of stories that are meant to seem real, not fictional. I find it very ironic that we make our children’s stories so banal and simple and yet we let our children watch violence and sex on mainstream TV, almost without knowing it. Before everyone stops reading because you think I’m a prude, let me say that, if given help in understanding, children can process a lot more information than we give them credit for – hence, I wish Disney hadn’t cleaned up the fairy tales (and for that matter, I wish the Brothers Grimm hadn’t done so, too) because I think that it’s important that children have save places to work out their fears. As G.K. Chesterton once said, “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” If we make the safe completely unreal – clean and pure and lovely – and then make the real seem safe because it’s on a screen, are we really helping kids?

Share your thoughts on fairy tales, if you have them. And happy reading.
A

P.S. For a great fairy tale illustrator, check out Anne Anderson.

P.P.S. For some very contemporary uses of fairy tales, check out The Fairy Tale Review.

* Filed by Andi at 7:24 am under Book Recommendations, Teaching Triumphs and Travails, Written and Wrought
* 4 Comments

Incidents

So as promised, I have finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, and I really appreciated this book. That sounds lame – like I didn’t like it – but I did like it. I just appreciated it more because it’s ability to portray people with mental disabilities fairly, compassionate, and honestly.

I realize that I may be the last person on earth to read this book, but in case you’re my comrade in this here’s the basic plot, with hopefully nothing to spoil it. A boy, Christopher, lives with his father in Swindon, and one night Christopher discovers that the neighbor’s dog, Wellington, has been killed. Christopher sets out to discover who committed this crime. Fairly basic plot – until you realize that Christopher has a mental disability (one of my students believes he has autism; one believes he has Augsberger’s – either way, Christopher operates in a different mental world that many of us).

It’s this point of view, one of the most consistent uses of a non-typical point of view that I’ve ever seen, that makes the book so exciting. While Christopher knows everything that’s going on around him and can, in fact, remember things almost verbatim, his way of filtering them and making sense of them is so fresh, so beautiful.

This book makes me understand a great deal more about humanity. It helps me to see that my way of knowing the world is unique but that everyone else’s is, too – and that we are better for these differences. Plus, as one of the Powell’s reviewers said, “This book makes you feel like anyone can be a hero.”

It’s a quick read, but one well-worth it. If you, like me, felt a little bit like you were reading a gimmick at first, read on – soon you learn to live, or at least stick a big toe into, Christopher’s head.
Andi
Cover of Haddon's Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

P.S. Mark Haddon’s website is awesome. I highly recommend “Strange Stuff” page under the section on Curious Incident.

Other Reviews – Puss Reboots’ Review

* Filed by Andi at 7:06 am under Book Recommendations
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March 29, 2008

Earth Hour – Lights Out!

Today, Saturday, April 29th, at 8pm in your local timezone, people will be turning off their lights to show solidarity as we try to save this wacky planet of ours. Try it. I will. Sounds like a good time for a soak in a tub (run, of course, before 8pm) where I can read by candlelight.
Check out the Earth Hour website. And let me know here if you do it.
A

* Filed by Andi at 1:09 pm under Uncategorized
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