Notes Towards Day 13 (Tues, Feb. 28): "History Redefined/Reconstructed to Include Us All"

* Bryn Mawr College Books Performance Artist Villanova Canceled
there is space for 14 students in the Bi-Co to join the workshop,
--a super cool opportunity for anyone into that kind of thing:
3 1/2 hour workshop each evening Monday-Thursday, April 16-20,
2+ hours of rehearsal Friday mid afternoon, followed by a
2-hour public performance later Friday afternoon.

* tasting (again) The Book of Salt:
melal: At the end of our class on last Thursday, Anne asked if we cared about the characters in the book. Acutually this is also my question. I felt that we put our focus mainly on the language during our class discussion, reading this book as a ‘textbook’ for an English course, trying to get something out of the writing style. Did we really ‘taste’ its taste? Or we just ‘analyzed’ its taste? To tell the truth, reading by only paying attention to the language itself seems a ‘cold’ way of reading for me. Analyzing the writing style is definitely an important part, but language, no matter how beautiful it is, is used to express people’s emotions.... I care about Binh, because I feel his story relates to mine .... when we are really ‘into’ a book or like a certain character, it is likely because we can see ourselves in it .... their past reflects our past, their future implicates our future ... that explains again why it is so difficult to explain or describe something to a person who does not have any concept of the object, for example salt, only by using language. 

S. Yeager: I was troubled by our in class salt licking ... because ordinary table salt, licked out of our hands, is so different from the way salt is described in The Book of Salt, and so contrary to how salt is used in cooking .... when we read Jessy's post about the queerness in the book being ... simply allowed to be an ingredient ... I understood what was vexxing me. The thing about salt is that is in nearly everything we eat .... However, if it's too obvious, ... it can take the focus off the other aspects of a meal, so can queerness if it's forced to become the central aspect of a character's being.  I think that, by allowing the characters within it to have multiple facets of their lives, The Book of Salt also allows their sexualities to flourish and enrich the story, instead of overpowering the narrative.

FrigginSushi: I can see Binh as stuck ....His image as a vietnamese man is stopping others from knowing Binh more deeply. By not directly addressing Binh as a gay man, I think Truong is giving the character more agency in the book. She doesn't want him to be completely identifable and by using the label "gay", Binh would be trapped in his own image and the gaze of others....Truong is emphasizing ... how limited language can realy be.

II. I had asked you to read Peggy Mcintosh's essay
on phrases of curricular revision for today;
only one of you referenced it in her posting (meaning....
no one else read it? or found  it useful?)

I want to bring it in to frame our conversation:
McIntosh uses Little Women
--Meg, Jo, Amy and her daughters --
to walk her way through five "interactive phases
of personal and curricular revision," asking
repeatedly, "what are the shaping dimensions
of the discipline [of history]? how must they change
to reflect women's experience?"

Meg --who learns Womanless History (about
those in public power) is socialized to 'fit in,'

Amy--who studies Women in History (the
exceptional few) "kills herself" trying to be
exceptional;

Jo--who studies Woman as Problem/Anomaly/
Absence in History "("it's not an accident that we
were left out...the gaps were there for a reason")
understands interlocking systems that work to exclude;

her daughters Maye & Angela--who learn about
Women AS History (life below the faultline;
subjects as authority on thier own experience;
honor particularity, stress diversity, identify commonality)--
are "canny about systems"

and their children/grandchildren (you all?) will study
History Redefined/Reconstructed to Include Us All:
McIntosh is calling here for an "alternative value system
of 'lateral consciousness,' working for  the decent survival of all,"
that overturns the conventional disciplinary divisions of knowledge;
one of her keynotes is that "Teachers are trained to isolate bits of
knowledge; this training keeps students oblivious to larger systems."