Week Six: Reading from Diverse Positions

This week we are reading a series of linked short stories that all together form a novel entitled The Dewbreaker, by the Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat. If you haven't time to read the entire novel you should at least try to finish about half of it. There are a number of convenient stopping places and you should read as much of it as you can, We will be discussing the novel in class with the intention of using the text to help us discuss the diverse position of texts and readers. There is no required film this week. 

As an alternative text to read for this week you might consider The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a pulitzer prize winning novel by the Dominican-American novelist Junot Diaz.

If you are interested in reading short stories that are written from a different position than is typical in American fiction try these stories which you can read by following the link to their title:

Hitting Budapest  by NoViolet Bulawayo
Whites by Julie Otsuka
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by YiYun Li

One of the very important exports of Haitian culture has been its popular music. You can go to the Haitian Music Icons page which curates a short set of youtube music videos highlighting classic performances from Haitian popular music tradition. Many of these performances are developments of Compas (in Kreole, "Konpas") a variation of the merengue that is to Haiti what the Tango is to Argentina. Among my favorites on the music icons page are performances by Nemours Jean Baptiste, one of the "creators" of 20th century Compas; the orchestre Tropicana de Haiti; the Tabou Combo; John Gesner Henry (Coupe Cloue); Sweet Mickey, Michel Martelly who just stepped down as president of the country; and T-Vice. The last two are substantially influenced by their involvement with the Haitian community in Florida.

Writing Assignment: We are carrying over the writing assignment from last week and I have asked you to write your blog post for last week's stories using one of typical questions that are asked by readers who come from feminist critical positions. These questions might include the following:

Are there any female characters in the work that you identify with?
How are relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles) portrayed in the story? 
What are the power relationships between men and women in the text?
How are male and female roles defined?
What constitutes masculiniity and femininity in the world of the story?
Do characters take on traits from opposite genders in the story? How so? Does this change others reactions to them?
What does the work reveal about the ooperations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy?
What does the work express or imply about the possiblities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
What does the work say about the history of women in literature or the arts or about women's creativity?

Use any one of these questions and apply it to one of the stories we read for last week to write this week's response.  

In Class: We will undertake to examine the following questions in relation to this week's reading:

(From the syllabus of Junot Diaz for his course in world-building for the Writing program at M.I.T.)
What are the primary features of this world--spatial, cultural, biological, fantastic, cosmological? 
What is the world’s ethos (the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize the world)? 
What are the precise strategies that are used by its creator to convey the world to us and us to the world? 
How are our characters connected to the world? 
And how are we the viewer or reader or player connected to the world?”

In Re: to our recent discussion of Wonder Woman: You can follow the adventures of a muslim female superhero here, beginning with this episode of the web comic Quahera.