New Era of Blogging

I have retired from teaching!

I was thinking that that new phase of my life deserved a new blog.

Here is a link to my new stuff.

It's slow, but I blame grad school.

Cheers!

Let's Get Official!

April 9, 2009. 

9:36.

I accepted the offer from Boston University.

I will freeze...

and I can't wait.

Spring Breaking and more waiting

The letter arrived while I was enjoying some farm living in Asheville over the weekend.

My friends there are so inspiring and my visits are so nourishing...I return full of love and with a renewed sense of passion for people, for goodness, and for my own personal endeavors.

The letter from BU was very congratulatory and made me feel wonderful, as did the scholarship covering the full amount of tuition, but the stipend I was recommended for was not attached to the "official offer."  So, like a rotten brat (or a lady who doesn't want a butt load of debt) I emailed asking if there was any more funding available.  I have until April 15th to accept.  I am getting used to waiting.  

While in Asheville I was invited to lead a class at Warren Wilson College, a college that I feel gets a lot of things right about academia and work and relationships.  The class is taught by a friend of mine who has lived a long, interesting life and who I have a lot of admiration for.

In this Civil Rights course I spoke with about 17 undergraduate students about my experiences with race, gender, and other power struggles growing up in the south and opened the floor for them to offer their stories.  It was inspirational and impressive.  The students are far better thinker than I remember being as a freshman in college.  It confirmed my desire to get on board with the PhD seeking.  

BU here I come.  PhD -- You are next!

Human Rights and Human Wrongs

The human rights unit that took me weeks to create has been in action for about two weeks now.
So far, so interesting!

Last week, my most advanced class (all of my classes are 'honors level,' but this class is filled with the most precocious little geniuses in the school) debated immigrants rights and the right to seek asylum or safety from persecution in another country. It was a pretty heated, yet respectful discussion. It is interesting to have such opinionated 16-year olds in my class. When I was 16 the only thing I was opintionated about was whether The Princess Bride was more engaging than Mallrats (today I use Princess in my classroom...sorry Kevin Smith, you didn't make the cut).
I feel pretty safe in saying that majority of my students are pretty sympathetic and understanding regarding cultural influences, haves and have nots, and fairness. Furthermore, it is interesting to hear what a concise knowledge of world history my students have...they not only make arguments, but also back them up with some undeniable facts that leave the students who stand firm in their parent's opinions dragging their heels in the dirt.

I just finished another novel called Cereus Blooms at Night by Shana Mootoo, which I highly recommend. It is one of the novels I have assigned for this unit on human rights.
Amidst the twisted plot filled with a defiance of, what Arundhati Roy describes as "the love laws that lay down who we should love and how much," the reader is exposed to different sets of circumstances that demand judgement. This judgement that the reader subconsciously makes is later deconstructed along with society's ideas of "should" and "should not." Throughout the novel, tortured souls practice forgiveness of pasts speckled like snail shells with stains of abandonment, deceit, and physical and mental abuse. Still these characters manage to appreciate the gentility of love while finding hope amidst their hurricane of life. They live in memories of goodness and in smallness of very few and far between acts of kindness. Maybe most inspiring of all was the way in which the characters were judged, written off, and erased from existence, within the pages of the novel, yet still learn to acknowledge equality in nature and celebrate the smallest of nature's miracles which, in turn, are the life-blood of a society that burdens and beats them down. This book is about survival among societies most dangerous of creatures -- human beings.

I like it a lot!!!

Grad school update: Should be getting paper confirmation this week by mail.
Then, and only then, will I believe it is all true.

Fun Facts

If given the opportunity to study at Boston University I will be:

1. a student of the oldest African-American Studies Department in the country.
2. studying where Martin Luther King, Jr. received his PhD.
3. studying where Howard Zinn received his degree

If you want to know about some of the classes I could possibly take go here

I am beginning my studies early! I have started making a timeline and making a list of authors I must read before I go to school. The idea of me at such a "big" school is really intimidating and I am trying to prepare as much as possible. Any suggestions of must reads? I gotta be smart enough.

The first week of my Human Rights Unit has gone over great!
My students are choosing between the following books for Literature Circles:

In the Time of Butterflies
Cereus Blooms at Night
The Inheritance of Loss
The Grass is Singing
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Year of Wonders

All of these novels deal, in many ways, both directly and indirectly, with violations of human rights on some scale. Each week I am handing out supplementary material (Bios, testimonies, documentary film clips, excerpts from novels, etc) that also deal with individual people groups (immigrants, children, women, GLBT, etc.) rights and having my students connect their novels to the supplementary material to their novels. This week I introduced ideas of Natural rights and Civil Rights, cultural perspectives, and responsibilities of the individual. I am asking a lot of question and my students are answering them based on previous knowledge, experiences, opinions, and thinking critically about consequences of acting and not acting, responsibility, and knowledge seeking.

It rules so far. I am pretty pumped. So many people have offered me suggestions for material and I really appreciative. I have so many great people in my life...all teachers in their own way.

Graduate School - Decisions

Graduate School has arrived and has knocked me in the chest and thrown me overboard, but then, just as I was losing hope, it swooped down at the last moment to catch me and catapult me into the air, higher than I've ever been before.

Monday was a snow day and the day that I received a letter from University of Texas, Austin sincerely thanking me for my interest in their program, but respectfully rejecting my application. I was devastated as I had decided that Boston University is far too expensive for me to attend school there this past weekend and felt the sting of defeat. I explained to a friend that in my world, if you work hard for something you usually get what you worked hard for and that this just stunk. I worked so hard. No doubt about that.

Yesterday I fought off thoughts that were telling me I wasn't good enough for grad school and maybe it was time to redirect my dreams. It was rough -- after dedicating so many thoughts and so much time to this goal, coming out with no reward was pretty terrible.
Then, around 4:00, my phone rang and the Director of the Department of African-American Studies in Global and Comparative Perspective was on the other line to tell me I had been accepted to Boston's MA program. This was great news, however, the cost of tuition is unreal so I was grateful, but hopeless. THEN she told me that I had been recommended to be awarded a 100% tuition scholarship and a stipend to cover living expenses during the time that I would be a student in the program.

I am still processing this whole thing. It is truly unbelievable.

My students are expressing joy and pride as they fake frowny faces and follow up with, "but Ms. C-------k! Who will teach us next year?!?"

I am telling them that maybe I'll teach them in college.
Wow. Maybe I will.

I am so unbelieveably grateful for those who have helped me and supported me.
It was their help that got me to where I am and will keep pushing me in the direction of where I'm heading.

This is the opportunity of my lifetime and I intend to meet it head on, if given the opportunity.

Thanks to you even, those of you who read this blog and are interested in my life. I'll keep it up during this waiting time. I'll keep it up if I'm lucky enough to get the scholarship and I end up freezing my tail off up North.

How great!

My Rushdie and Me: Adaptation

I emailed this to a favorite person of mine after returning home and thought I summed up all I wanted to share in it. This is a new strategy...rather than adapting (fresh thoughts) my messages for blogs why not maintain the originality of the first expression of the thoughts?

Attempt one: unadulterated explanation, straight from the heart.

Just got home from the Rushdie lecture. He was on point...as per usual I assume.
His lecture was centered around Adaptations. He focused mainly on film adaptations of movies (Ben Button, The Reader, and Slumdog being the primary three) but then led into discussion of adaptations in our own lives (which got me at the core). I thought of you and your infrequent transformations. I appreciated his critique of Slumdog after hearing Deepika's (shared aversion to the film adaptation being made my a man who had "never visited India and thought it would be interesting") and am looking forward to seeing it and viewing it with a critical eye albeit influenced by some marvelous thinkers. He noted an important question when thinking of adapting books to film, mini-series, etc. is What is essential? Then applied this same question to humanity. It was interesting to think in terms of how at times in our lives we find certain things essential (i.e. reading, love, money, "success," parenting children, etc.) and when our lives are shaken (we go blind, someone leaves us, get fired, children grow up) we adapt to find a new essence of life. On a larger scale even to think of this adaptation is also pretty rad. He said we had lived through an era of bad adaptations, appeasements, and can only hope for better films, better movies, and better stories. That was an approximation of how he ended his speech as they took my bag from me and I had to take minimal notes on an the Methodist Church's Offering Envelopes (forgive me father).

Back to our point of how what gets you and I going individually seems to be these endless tunnels with tiny lights at certain points, but for some reason we keep wandering about (and I can only speak for me here): I think that what makes a lot of this stuff so great is that the truths that we stumble upon in our 'studies' are truths that we have known in our lives and have always been on the cusp of naming (consciously or otherwise). It's like tonight, Salman was connecting literature and humanity, and by this ability I was blown away and envious. I want to do that...I want to train my brain to get big, be free and not rigid, to guide itself to epiphany after epiphany as I cultivate it with stories and studies. There was also something comfortable about everything he was saying towards the end though, and I think this is because I have known this habit of adapting by some other name at some other time in my life. I think it is this; the connection to humanity, to emotions, to the 'essence' of life, that keeps me wandering because I am (or feel at least) always almost there. It, like my mother's perfume, C's dumb jokes, and the sound of you singing a new tune, feels like home.

That is what rules about loving what you study and studying you love and I certainly hope that I get into graduate school.

Reflection on Lecture: "There are no women in the Third World"

Last night the student inside of me experienced the blessing of resuscitation; the life-giving thrusts upon my chests, the exhalation from another human’s breath into my lungs, and I feel alive again, in theoretic discourse at least.

I attended a lecture by Emory’s Associate Professor of English and South Asian Studies, Deepiks Bahri last entitled: “There are no Women in the Third World.”
She discussed the role of and position of women in the context of globalization and from a postcolonial feminist perspective examined the questions:
Who can speak and for whom? Who listens? How does one represent the self and others?

Here is where I attempt to connect the dots to what she said and the fragmented thoughts and memories that live somewhere in “No Man’s Land” (i.e. my brain).

As D addressed issues centered around these women that live in developing countries and, therefore, deemed Third World Women (by the First World, of course) she brought to the proverbial table a lot of interesting issues regarding representation, globalization, market economy, power, language, knowledge, understanding, misunderstanding, repression, recession, and oppression. A problem with the problems,she suggested, is that there are no clear resolutions and sometimes the problems aren't viewed as problems to the livers of the lives.

I drifted here and began thinking of the livers of the lives and how we discuss these people like we know (because we have done the research)their situations; their relationships to living. Deepika brought me back with stories from her travels through slums and brothels in India. Personal stories are history, I attempt to thread the tales together to create my understanding of humanity...maybe that explains why my understanding and remembering of things is in such shambles!
An idea came back to me during this lecture; was one that was born in a class on Jazz and Pop Culture as I was reading Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. In the beginning of the book, second chapter or something, the narrator is thrown into a battle royal and all I remember thinking as this scene filled me with terror disgust is "how can he keep his dignity?"
-and for the connection!-
As Deepika traveled in India and heard the stories of married women who were subjected to forced, unprotected sex with their husbands, forced into the sex trade, chose to live and work in the sex industry, orphaned, sick, and many of these women,she said, had one thing in common: the idea that they still had their "dignity." Deepika discussed the women she encountered as having dignity in a way that suggested that having dignity empowered these women who are seen by many in the Western World as powerless victims to their situations. Her argument, I think, was that these women who, in many ways, have been silenced are speaking up every day in their own language, in their stories that are never going to be published (see globalization to blame), and are not seeking salvation at the hand of Western values or judgments.

I was then led to wonder if feeling worthy of honor (dignity) can conquer a representation that has manifested itself deep into human consciousness (which is an entirely different discussion on representation, our susceptibility to it, and our perception). If that sense of worth carries that much power, and if so how does one maintain that sense of self hood when others are deliberately attacking it. What strength human beings have.

Ah, but these are just questions...that lead to more questions.

A Land Where Imagination Reigns Supreme

I've been seeking refuge from hardening of the imagination by reading children's tales.
I look to authors like Roald Dahl and Shel Silverstein and remind myself that they were adults too. I try to find my creativity and make things with my hands to remind myself that I am capable of creating and imagining.
I've made terrariums complete with banjo playing astronauts, journals adorned with pigs and mice in britches, paintings that double as night lights with roosters on them, super hero dolls, trading cards, drawings of giants, and I feel that I have rescued myself from the dismal valley of "grown up." My writing though is still struggling. It has been so long since I have stayed in with hopes of writing something for myself that isn't simply a reflection, an analysis of a book, event, or film, or a line from my reading that struck me for one reason or another. I want to center myself again and focus my creativity towards writing.

It is my goal to find sanctuary from whatever it is that plagues the youthful mind as I wish to never lose it...
I'm still trying to figure out how to protect it.

Here are some great ones...love Shel Silverstein.

"God's Wheel"

God says to me with a kind of smile,
"Hey how would you like to be God awhile
And steer the world?"
"Okay," says I, "I'll give it a try.
Where do I set?
How much do I get?
What time is lunch?
When can I quit?"
"Gimme back that wheel," says God.
"I don't think you're quite ready yet."


"Listen to the MUSTN'TS"

"Listen to the mustn'ts, child.
Listen to the don'ts.
Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts.
Listen to the never haves,
then listen close to me...
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be."

Back to School Not-so-Blues

It's been a long, long time since I've blogged, but not since I reflected.

Last semester was a bit to much for me to process. Towards the end it seems that all the tiny fires that have been ignited collide with high winds volcanic ash sloshing about. Really, it was a pretty terrible last week and I couldn't have been more thankful for that 3:50 bell on Friday afternoon. My break was great, I had a new year and a new birthday, so here I am a year older, a bit wiser, and hoping for nothing but a disgusting display of positive events this year. ONLY good things. It's all I will accept. Last year brought on enough bad for me to appreciate the good this year too. Gimme all that shimmers and set the rusty bits aside for a while!

The beginning of this semester hasn't been so terrible. I have two of three college applications submitted. The last one will be done soon enough and then I cross my fingers until March(ish) I think. Stress.

I am gearing my focus towards activism and dedicating my time outside of school to crafting and self-education.

Activism within the school is geared towards the Gay/Straight alliance. We have really broken some ground this semester -- I am looking forward to helping individual students and the school community as a whole become more comfortable with GLBT issues. The newspaper is taking care of itself but I am challenging my students as journalists, making them step outside of comfortable places and report facts. This has proven very hard for a Jewish student of mine who is approaching the Israel/Palestine conflict, but she presses on and I pound my fist in the air behind her. It's fun to push them.

I am learning a lot as well. I began the semester after a break that was a little too much fun without knowing what I would teach then deciding to teach something that I wasn't familiar with -- The Arthurian Legend. There was a lot of learning to do and I have actually enjoyed coming back to the legend as an adult.

I am dedicated to a book, a novel believe it or not, just for fun. It's about a fictional literary revolution in Mexico and these kids, well men and women I suppose, parallel lives of Ginsberg or Kerouac sleeping in caves, drinking tequila until sunrise, and the whole while celebrating poetry. It's fun -- The Savage Detectives by: Roberto Bolano.

There will be more as I try to center my focus again to blogging.

So to all my "fans"" (i.e. my wonderful grandfather), don't worry there will be more.