Reading/viewing for Monday

For Monday (in addition to having your papers ready), please read:

http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/CS/Marketing%20Madness.pdf

After you read, watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WTA_8waxTo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R_483zeVF8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcV8WN1YIL4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGZa5xGwgko

Come ready to discuss.

*For use in class (and for those of you who won't be in class), we're also watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPOla9SEdXQ

Full transcript of this video (and extra links) available here:

http://feministfrequency.com/2016/03/31/body-language-the-male-gaze/

Long Paper #2

Your second long papers are due on Monday. (See previous post for topic.)

A word about interpreting quotes:

A lot of you tend to write things like this:

Mami  was  nervous,  like  a  frozen  person  without  reactions,  as  shown in this  quote : “Why  don't  you  help  me  to  unpack?  Mami  suggested. Her hands  were  very  still,  usually  they  were  fussing  with  a  piece  of  paper,  a sleeve,  or  each  other.”

 That's not quite enough.

Saying Mami is "nervous" in this quote is ONLY valid if you guide the reader through the steps that led you to this conclusion:

1. We know, because Yunior tells us, that Mami's hands are "usually" in constant motion, "fussing  with  a  piece  of  paper,  a  sleeve,  or  each  other."

2. But in this scene, where the boys are unknowingly headed towards confrontation with their father, her hands are "very still."

3. Holding your hands still when your natural inclination is to have them in constant motion requires effort; tension. 

4. We can therefore guess (infer) that Mami is feeling really tense.

5. In the context of this scene, there's only one reason for her to be feeling tense--it's the possibility of conflict between her husband and her sons.

6. Why would this make her tense? 

7. Yunior says, in the middle of narrating the scene, that if he'd known his father better he wouldn't have turned his back on him, which implies danger coming from Papi--and more specifically, physical violence. (Physical violence is the kind of danger that can be mitigated when you can see it coming.)

8.So when Mami is tense in this scene, we're able to gather that she's afraid of her husband doing physical harm to her sons.

9. Therefore, we can guess that Mami is "still," in this scene, in the same way that a gazelle is still when it's near a lion. She's frozen, like a deer freezing in front of the headlights of an oncoming car.

You have to show your work, like long division.

For Wednesday,

• Please write a rough draft--2-3 pages long--of your second 5-6 page essay. This essay should be about "Invierno," by Junot Diaz. Write about Mami and cold; Mami and snow. (A good question to ask, for example, would be something like: "When Mami goes out into the snow at the end of the story, what is the intended effect on us, the readers, given what we know about the way the story uses the images of 'snow' and 'cold' throughout the story?)

• Please bring three hard copies of your draft.

For Monday

Please re-read:

"Invierno," by Junot Diaz

Also:

A selection from Citizen, by Claudia Rankine:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247344

And:

"To the Man Who Shouted 'I Like Pork-Fried Rice" at Me on the Street," by Franny Choi

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247348



On Wednesday, we talked about indexing, as a tool for following an idea or an image through a text.

If you were to make an index of "sight"/"looking"/"watching" in the first three pages of "Invierno," for example, it might look something like this:

121 ("[...] you could see the thinnest sliver of ocean cresting the horizon [...] my father [...] didn't stop to point it out." Papi controls what his family sees.)
("I was watching the snow sift over itself, terrified [...] this was our first day in the States." First glimpse of the US for Yunior is something terrifying and completely foreign. And cold.) 

123 ("Don't you eye me, he said." Papi sees Yunior's looking or eyeing as a challenge to his authority; Papi doesn't want to be seen for what he is, possibly.)("We mostly sat in front of the TV or stared out at the snow." Papi turns his family into passive watchers--they're not allowed outside; all they can do is look. And only at things that aren't Papi; only at things that he wants them to see.)

For your weekly response paper this week, please index in this way, images in "Invierno" that have to do with cold. 

For Monday:

• Your papers are due.
• Please read "Invierno," by Junot Diaz. (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B19N9rbwQdXZWGJvUzBLMFljZ2s/view?usp=sharing)