Finishing up a particularly rough semester. Spending the last few days finishing up student publication editing as well as grading portfolios. Still have a few more hours of math and grade finalizing. Always amazed at just how much work we complete at my community college in writing and lit courses. Ready for a trip to NYC and the Latino Book Awards as well as more time as a student in Sergio Troncoso’s workshop at the Yale Writers Conference.
Tag: teaching
what’s write for me interview
Just finished a very engaging What’s Write for Me interview on my book, writing and the process of writing. Thank you to the host Dellani Oakes.
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rereading mark richard’s strays
This afternoon I’m rereading Mark Richard‘s “Strays” for my Lit 150 class:
“Uncle trash rakes everything my brother and I owned into the pillowcases off our bed and says let that be a lesson to me. He is off through the front porch door, leaving us buck-naked at the table, his last words as he goes up the road, shoulder-slinging his loot, Don’t ya’ll burn the house down.”
tom spanbauer and literary minimalism
Preparing for Lit 150 and discussion of Amy Hempel’s stories “The Cemetary Where Al Jolson is Buried” and “The Harvest”. This morning I’m reviewing Tom Spanbauer’s notes on literary minimalism:
Notes on Literary minimalism—(exemplified by Mark Richard, Amy Hempel and Chuck Palahniuk)
Literary minimalism is characterized by an economy with words and a focus on surface description. Minimalist authors eschew adverbs and prefer allowing context to dictate meaning. Readers are expected to take an active role in the creation of a story, to “choose sides” based on oblique hints and innuendo, rather than reacting to directions from the author. The characters in minimalist stories and novels tend to be unexceptional.
Instead of grand narratives we see briefer and more economical scenes and seemingly insignificant moments that “add up to more than the sum of their parts.”
representations of columbus
Columbus owes Washington Irving quite a bit. Also his portrait/face has never been authenticated. In fact, Charles Patrick Daly calls this painting from 1592 “pure fancy.”
Not much changed in these different cartoon and feature film representations of Columbus:
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pop culture as history and christopher columbus
Prepping a lecture on Howard Zinn A People’s History of the United States, post-strucuralist analysis and Christopher Columbus. But I’m lazy and probably going to rely on Robert Wuhl’s Assume the Position.
afternoon with argument/research papers
Spending time this afternoon with a large stack of composition argument/research papers. I’ve found no way to make the process easier for me other than to organize and seperate out to about ten or twelve papers a night in prep for about ten to twelve conferences the next day. So important for me to comment and also meet individually with each student to discuss.
grading and the b and n
The most difficult aspect of teaching has to be the hours grading. And I have to admit commenting on lit analyses is my biggest weakness. Have to get out of the house and out to Barnes and Noble along with D for coffee and a place to focus.