Pulitano: Landscape, Memory and Survival in the Fiction of Edwidge Danticat

In Elvira Pulitano’s, “Landscape, Memory and Survival in the Fiction of Edwidge Danticat,” she analyzes several of Edwidge Danticat’s literary works such as: Brother, I am Dying, “Caroline’s Wedding,” “Children of the Sea,” The Farming of Bones, and “Nineteen Thirty-Seven” three of these works are from Danticat’s novel Krik? Krak! Out of these literary works, Pulitano focuses on three specific elements that she believes is important in Danticat's work, which is her description of landscape, the importance of memory, and the struggles her characters endure in order to survive, hence her title. Pulitano describes Danticat's purpose behind her works as "Addressing both Haitians at home and in the Diaspora, Danticat grounds her narratives on Haitian soil thus w/righting her island history against colonial and neocolonial discourse on islands," (Pulitano). Throughout this article, Pulitano talks about the Diaspora, which is the dispersion of people from their homeland and in this case, the dispersion of the Haitian people from their island. The reason Danticat sets her narratives on Haitian soil is because she wants to share what her people have truly endured. Pulitano uses the term "w/righting," quite interestingly. It implies that Danticat is not only writing stories of literary merit but she also wants to right the history of her home against the colonial or neocolonial control over her homeland. This article is another prime example of what we will be aiming to write for our genre analysis in class. Pulitano uses her sources effectively has a strong argument to defend which is something that I aim to do in my analysis at the end of the semester. 

Danticat: Nineteen Thirty-Seven

In Edwidge Danticat's short story, "Nineteen Thirty-Seven," she tells the story of a young girl, Josephine, whose mother has been imprisoned for being responsible for the death of another woman's child. This story is full of colorful imagery, being told from the point of view of a child, but a very important motif in this story is the Madonna that Josephine takes with her when she goes to visit her mother. The Madonna, which is a statue of the Virgin Mary that is usually holding a young Jesus, is often a symbol of faith and motherhood in Catholicism, and represents that as well in this story. In this specific tale, Josephine believes that the Madonna cries because her mother has died even though she knows that the tears are only oil being released from melted wax placed by her mother behind the eyes of the Madonna (Danticat). Her mother insists that she bring the Madonna with her on every visit, and at these visits Josephine believes that "At times, she seemed happier to see the Madonna than she was to see me,"(Danticat) which emphasizes the value of the statue to Josephine's mother. Her mother, as she begins to become even more ill in her imprisonment, tells Josephine to "Keep the Madonna when I am gone...When I am completely gone, maybe you will have someone to take my place...But if you don't, you will always have the Madonna," (Danticat). This quote emphasizes the Madonna statue as a motherly figure since Josephine's mother is hoping that it will take her place for her daughter once she has passed away. This story mainly focuses on the relationship between mother and child, something that the Madonna statue encompasses.

Alexie: The Toughest Indian in the World

Alexie's story "The Toughest Indian in the World," is a story of a man who becomes disconnected with his Indian culture. This story is about an Indian man who lives a simple life and was raised with Indian morals of how people will "shoot you in the heart." Because of what he was taught by his father as a child, he learns that it is okay to pick up Indian hitchhikers. He is a reporter for a newspaper that writes human-interest pieces and while on a trip to interview someone for an article, he picks up an Indian hitchhiker heading to Wenatchee, his home reservation. They converse and he discovers that the hitchhiker is a fighter and that he was returning from a fight against the supposed "Toughest Indian in the World." This relationship takes an interesting and unexpected turn after the man offers the hitchhiker a place to stay the night. After they had gone to sleep the reporter awoke to find the hitchhiker in bed with him, naked and aroused. Although the reporter claims he is not gay he allows this encounter to happen and says "But I wanted him to save me." The question though is save him from what? This could show that he wants the hitchhiker to save him from the type of life he has been leading and in a sense, bring him back to the culture he left quite some time ago.

DeVoss & Rosati: "It Wasn't Me, Was It?" Plagiarism and the Web

In this article, DeVoss and Rosati divulge in the phenomenon of plagiarism among students today. Their audience for their work is directed towards fellow educators of writing and how this situation can be handled. These writers start their article with three stories of their encounters with plagiarism among their students in their time as educators. In the first story, Rosati was skimming a paper mill online to see what was being said about King Lear, while doing this she was familiar with some of the essays she was reading on the paper mill. When she asked for the three students to come forward she had more than those three come to her office and ask: "It wasn't me, was it?" In the next story, DeVoss was giving a tour of the library and notices that an older student did not show for the tour. When he turned in his assignment, all of his sources were from websites and not the most credible of sites either. She has a meeting with this student and shows him all of the resources the library has to offer as well how to find sources in the library. At this, the student was astonished with the work that goes into research. In the final story, DeVoss has a foreign student that although he does not quite have a grip on American writing, he proves to be bright and has a spark in his writing. Until on one assignment he turns in work that is lacking his "spark." She addresses the issue with the student and he reluctantly admits that he did not write the paper. According to the authors, the reason for sharing these stories is to remind educators the issues of research and plagiarism are interconnected to each other. The writers explain a theory by Rebecca Moore Howard that seeing some instances of plagiarism as "patchwriting" or "kidnapping" helps students grow with their writing skills whereas labeling is as theft is simply clarifying as stolen work. The authors explain how the readiness and ease of the internet has made plagiarism even more tempting. This is because of the plethora of information on a multitude of subject that can be found online and the simplicity of "copy and paste." In this work, the authors also mention that by focusing on plagiarism and seeing writing as intellectual property helps the students understand why plagiarizing is wrong. This article applies to this course do to the upcoming research we are about to embark on for our final work.

Rosling: Let My Dataset Change Your Mindset

In this video, Hans Rosling, a Swedish doctor and professor, gives a presentation at the US State Department for a video series called TEDtalks about the mindset of people versus what is actually true when it comes to the differences between first world and third world countries. The reason he gives this presentation is because of the preconceptions of his students that the Western world contained long life in small families and shorter lives with large families. According to Rosling, the preconceptions have not been true since the years that these students' professors were born. He goes on to disprove this misconception with a bubble chart that shows the relationship between life expectancy at birth and children per woman and income per person, child mortality and yearly income, as well as how HIV relates (or does not) to income over the span of different years. Approximately ten minutes into this presentation, Rosling presents a chart showing the relationship between child survival and GDP per capita in different regions of the world in 2003. When showed by region, it only makes sense that the African region is at the bottom, but when Rosling breaks the regions down by country the results change, showing countries from the regions at the bottom move to the top. By doing this, Rosling shows that these developing regions are slowly moving upward an improving their health and development. Breaking away from these assumptions is necessary in order to change the mindset of the world. Based on what Rosling has presented, once we have collected thorough and specific data that there should be a new mindset around convergence.

Alexie: Class

Edgar

Alexie's character Edgar Eagle Runner is a Native American from Spokane, Washington, and despite his ethnic background and upbringing, was able to overcome and become a corporate lawyer. Not only is Edgar the protagonist in Alexie's story, but he also represents what many people in America could experience: a cheating wife, revenge, the loss of a child, a loveless marriage, and even a life-changing epiphany. Told in Edgar's point of view, Alexie tells the story of Edgar and Susan, the white woman that he marries, from how they met to the morning after Edgar's bloody bar fight. This shows how Edgar evolves over the relationship. Towards the end of the story, Edgar experiences an epiphany while being intimate with his wife "that she'd been faking her orgasms all along since [their] child had died, and probably since the first time [they] made love," (Alexie, 46). This epiphany causes him to leave his wife in bed and leave the house to a bar and allow himself to get into a fight that he is certainly outmatched in. After this fight, he returns home to his wife in more ways than one. When Edgar answers his wife's question of where he had gone he says "I was gone...But now I am back," (Alexie, 56). This shows that his physical return is also a metaphorical return, that he had not truly been there in the relationship since he discovered her secret affair.

Work Cited:

Alexie, Sherman. "Class." The Toughest Indian in the World. New York: Grove, 2000. 35-56. Print.

Sommers: Responding to Student Writing

In this article the writer, Nancy Sommers, is trying to show her audience of fellow writing teachers that students are not getting the help they need with their writing. Sommers explains that comments are very important to writers because writers "need and want thoughtful commentary to show that we have communicated our ideas and when not." (Sommers, pg. 148). According to Sommers, teachers comment on their students writing to only show them whether or not they are communicating effectively but also to teach them to question themselves. Sommers also makes note of how teachers are "appropriating" their students' writing. What she means by this is that the way teachers comment or correct the students' papers is not very helpful and often vague. In this article, Sommers makes it clear that the use of generic comments on grammar and spelling is not useful to a writer. Instead, a teacher should ask the questions and showing the confusion another reader would ask on befuddling passages. As a writer, I must agree with Sommers on this issue. I can recall having teachers whose corrections were less than helpful.