First of all, let me begin by saying "Welcome to our Literary Conversation!" The good news is that on the first day we will all have questions! We will explore, through Ethnic Literature the great mystery of ourselves, others and our relationship with this tiny, short LIFE. Asking questions will be rewarded. 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 talk about the "angry tone" in the text, A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid which is directed at her reader, and we ask, "Why is she so angry?"----be confident that as we talk and explore, we will come up with several reasonable explanations. 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?"   

These in-class opportunities are centered on your voice and experience. They are intended to help us continually shape our classroom process so that it is relevant, reflective and refreshing in the context of your learning this semester.

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?  Does 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, Americanah, by Chimimanda Adiche (608 pages) would be 33 pages per day for 18 weekdays if you only read Monday-Friday (leaving leaving weekends out). However, if you wanted to include reading on weekends, you would reduce your daily pages to 23. Both options would get you to the finish line of Thursday, February 13th. AND, you can further break this down hourly. So, in the morning before noon, you may read 16 pages, and then at night you may read the other 16 pages on that Monday-Friday schedule. The second book we will be reading is Two Old Women by Velma Wallace (140). 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 may be asked to write about the text which will count for participation points.

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! 

In this course, we will be using the Critical Reading Interpretive Tool (CRIT). It is a systematic approach to literary analysis that has six steps:

1) Paraphrase  2) Observe  3) Contextualize  4) Analyze  5) Argue 6) Reflect

This tool is particularly useful when you use it with smaller amounts of narrative within a particular text...a paragraph or a chapter, rather than the entire text you are reading. Following is a link to my PowerPoint which includes a description of CRIT. 

EthnicLiteratureTwo Old WomenPP.pptx

We will be practicing this skill in class. You will be expected to demonstrate a solid grasp of this approach to literary analysis on both the mid-term and the final exams. Mastering this skill will serve you well in any career field you choose to pursue.

Additionally, you may wish to review the following resource describing the Critical Reading Interpretive Tool and the Close Reading Process:

The CRIT VIDEO!