First of all, let me begin by saying "Welcome to our Literary Conversation!" Beyond the expected utterances such as "I am confused,"  I hope you will muster the courage to ask both simple and difficult  unanswerable questions that will stump us all. Such questions will lead us all to whisper the phrase, We are confused, which leads us further into the great mystery of ourselves and our relationship with this tiny, short LIFE. Asking questions will be rewarded. When you enter our classroom and ask, "How are you?"  that will be rewarded with a smile (or a blank stare) depending on the day. When you encourage a classmate by asking, "Can you give us an example of what you are thinking?"  That will be rewarded because generosity and thoughtfulness are often noted and appreciated. When we are in a heated discussion about the "angry tone" of Jamaica Kincaid which is directed at her reader, and you ask, "Why is she so angry?"----that will be rewarded because bringing up a question that others are surely thinking, and your voicing of that universal question will connect us. Speaking of connection, please be assured that I will be with you through every part of this "Ethnic Literature" journey. This is indeed a subject area for which I have a deep respect and passion. The good news is that both of us want you to earn an "A."  However, that potential reality is totally in your control. Prioritizing this class will help you with that goal.        

The texts you will be reading this semester present varying human themes of belonging, trauma, forgiveness, steely determination, in-depth community observations and insights that you may discover inform your own experiences. Additionally, the narratives are beautiful language displays-- some simple, some complex, but all compelling. The first contact we have with a book is usually its cover and beyond that the opening lines of the first chapter.... Consider the following opening lines. I challenge you to play a "matching game."  Looking at your book's covers, or the covers displayed in the image gallery below, which of the following opening lines belong to which book?  1) The air stretched tight, quiet and cold over the vast land. 2) If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you'll see. 3) Princeton in the summer smelled of nothing, and although Ifemelu liked the tranquil greenness of the many trees, the clean streets and stately homes, the delicately overpriced shops, and the quiet abiding air of earned grace, it was this, the lack of smell, that most appealed to her, perhaps because the other American cities she knew well had all smelled distinctly. 4) Before the crimson rays of dawn touched the treetops, before the cry of the cock, the bark of a dog, or the bray of a donkey pierced through the heavy darkness, or the voice of Sheikh Hamzawi, echoed in the silence with the first call to prayer, the big wooden door opened slowly, creaking, with the rusty sound of an ancient water-wheel.  5) I began what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. 

A Word About Learning

A word about learning ---Learning is not a spectator sport. Fundamentally, the responsibility to learn is yours and yours alone. For learning to happen in any course, you must take an active role in the process. For our class, you are expected to come to class prepared and ready to learn, which requires you to read and study the assigned reading before you come to class. Being prepared for class enables you to construct a knowledge base on which subsequent learning rests. During our class, we don’t cover content, which means I talk less to encourage you to talk more about what you are learning. 

Regarding Attendance and Participation--VERY IMPORTANT

Our class process is heavily dependent on your preparedness and your presence. When I am in class, you need to be in class. When we are working with a class-time in an online format, you need to be participating in that format as well. 

You will be engaging in learning tasks that require you show through speaking and writing, your grasp of the material and how it connects to your previous knowledge or experiences. Your in-class performance on these tasks will be evaluated through your response to questions that directly pertain to our discussions. They will also be evaluated through your honest answer to the following question, "Have you read the text up to the point that was due today?"  A self-assessment handout will be handed out at the beginning of each class, beginning week two. It will be returned to you the following class period.

Writing Together

Writing together. Often when we meet, we will be writing together--okay, there may be a day or two where we just don't feel like it, but most of the time, I hope we feel like it. The purpose of writing together will be to provide "models of writing" that you can emulate (copy or replicate in some way). So, we may choose to write about which literary devices a particular author uses and to what end. Following a discussion, we may choose to "write up" observations about a character in one of our texts. Or we may choose to write several versions of a thesis together. Another possibility is just to write up examples of "transitions" or just write-up some brainstorming about one of our texts. The writing that we produce together will be sent to you via email after our class. It is totally up to you what you do with it. No permission is needed to use any of the information that we may write together. Use any of it or none of it. Use it as a reference only if you wish.

So, I think you get the point by now that the main process that we will be engaging is "INQUIRY"---the practice of asking questions. Primo Levi, a Jewish-Italian physicist and Holocaust Survivor tell us that “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”  Because our class is essentially a conversation, we need to honor the voices coming from our text, and coming from ourselves. To this end, I am asking you to consider the following, "What does an ideal conversational space look like? Do we deserve to completely focus on the ideas presented without disruption for a time-frame of 45 minutes? In this culture of distraction that claims our time, can we even do it? Is there value in coming together and listening to one another? Why or why not?  Doe silence play a part in our conversational space? If so, what role does it play? Sherry Turkle says in her book, Alone Together, Face-to-face interaction teaches "skills of negotiation, of reading each other's emotion, of having to face the complexity of confrontation, dealing with complex emotion." She goes on to say, "Face-to-face conversation is the most humanizing thing we do. It's how we participate in empathy" (NPR Interview)

Our reading load is reasonable if you break it down into "pages and days." So, for example a reading timeline for the first text we will read, Two Old Women by Velma Wallis (127 pages) would be about 32 pages per day for four days if you only read Monday-Thursday (leaving Friday out).  From that point, you can further break this down hourly. So, in the morning before noon, you may read 12 pages, and then at night you may read the other 20 pages on that Monday-Thursday schedule. The third book we will be reading is Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and it is a little longer (371 pages). Still the same strategy applies--break it down to a daily page number commitment to insure you will finish the book within the time-frame set in the syllabus. At the beginning of class, you will be asked to write about each reading assignment, and so it is best to be prepared to insure you are on the path to earning that "A" that you desire. Those who read will be rewarded, and those who don't are going to struggle with passing the course. Please invest in your learning and engage with the course material!