jay's museum of college writing

In English 102, we read Sharon Olds’ haunting  tribute to Marilyn Monroe’s mysterious death.  It’s a poem that focuses upon the immediate aftermath of the famous starlet’s suicide.  What if you were called upon to take the body away?  What would happen to the image you have of her in your head?  In English 008, students researched Marilyn’s life, and  they compared her tragedies with those of Rhianna and Linsey Lohan.   They defined and examined the term “sex symbol.”  50 years after her death, they explain why we still look to Marilyn with love and admiration.

We love Frida Kahlo’s paintings, but we are awed by the story behind them.  As a young teen, Frida was involved in a terrible accident  when the bus she was on collided with a tram.  Several people were killed right on the spot.   A piece of railing drove right through Frida’s spine and punctured her uterus.  Doctors didn’t know if she would ever walk again.  Frida was confined to bed for three months,  but that’s where Frida’s  artistic vision grew.  Her father built her an easel  and fixed it to the bed.  Frida learned how to paint lying on her back.  Her art reflects empty, cold and lonely rooms; her lonliness and despair.  Look here for cause and effect writing – students explore how her pain affected her art.  How her art affected her love.

At the end of each semester, students  combine their love for music with their appreciation for literature.   From their personal music vaults they create a soundtrack for their reading.  In English 110 we read The Tortilla Curtain, a story of desperate Mexican immigrants pursuing the American Dream. Many students like to write with a Nortena beat,  and  they draw upon the lyrics of Los Tigres del Norte.  More often than not, they choose” La Puerta Negra,”  a song about impossible love.   They break down the words and analyze the theme.  Everyone agrees.  This sad song  fits the novel like a glove.

David Bowie? He sings China Girl. Playwright  Henry Hwang  references the lyrics to this song in his introduction to M. Butterfly.  Edgar Allan Poe uses clown imagery in his Cask of Amontillado, but there is little to laugh at in this story . Patti Smith?  She wrote just maybe one of the most beautiful memoirs I have ever read.

Join Now! Come inside Jay’s Museum of College Writing and see what our students have to share.

 

Jay's NEW YORK CITY READING Post - The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith - Real-Life Love at First Sight in Bloomingdales

  This Summer 2025, I have assigned a novel with my classes I recently plucked off my shelf here in Mexicali. It's called Paradise Travel, and it is written by Jorge Franco.  I'm not giving any spoiler alerts, but it focuses upon the American Dream - two teen-age lovers, Marlon and Reina from Medellín, Colombia, who successfully make the long, ardous journey to New York City but learn tough, life-changing lessons along the way.   I like this novel, for the CHANGE in characters that happens right before our eyes.  Both Marlon and Reina become Hard and Knowing.  They are entirely different people at the end of the novel.  Did their journey to the U.S. change the way they saw each other? How did their struggle to fit in, to find their place, to define their identities...Affect Their Love?

My students appear to engage with the novel, but I didn’t think about this until only recently – Few, if any, of my students will  know much about setting of the novel, The Big Apple, New York City.  To them, New York City must seem like a distant planet.  Damn, I haven’t been to New York City in like 40 years.   I don’t know much more then they do.  But, that’s why I’ve developed a group project to complement our reading.  I call it Jay’s NYC Scrapbook.    For our Summer FINAL EXAM Project, I’ve asked by student to collaborate in groups to research a New York  PERSON, PLACE, THING, HISTORICAL EVENT, CULTURAL PHENEMONON, MUSICAL OR SPORTS MOMENT, FASHION STATEMENT,  MOVIE SCENE, SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY...  Their final grade will correspond to the quality of their Final Exam Group Presntation and Display Boards.

Why? Like what course standard does knowledge of New York City meet?  I don’t know, and I didn’t look.  I’ve created this project to boost student reading pleasure.   I myself have a goal to read FIFTY books this year.  It’s July, and I’m right on pace.  Some of the books I have chosen are now my favorites of all time.  Some, not so much.  For each book I read, I try my best to look beyond the pages. The more I know about the setting, the deeper I dive into my reading.  I’ve told that to my students.  They are already searching articles about the New York Skyline, Subway System, Homeless Situation, Twin Towers Tragedy,  FRANK SINATRA.... (See above!)

Why can’t the instructor, ME, have any fun?  While my students canvas our campus databases for NYC ideas to include in their Final Exam presentation, I read a NYC novel called The Price of Salt.  I’m an indiscriminate reader.  I’ll  read anything.  I read everything.  I made a good choice this time, for The Price of Salt may be one of the best/surprising/unique novels I have ever read. This one happens to be about a lesbian love affair based on author Patricia’s Highsmith real-life obsession with a customer that came into her place of work, Bloomingdales of New York, to buy a doll for her daughter.  That was the only time they met, but it wasn’t the last time Patricia would see her customer.   With a copy of the receipt in hand, young Patricia twice hopped a train to New Jersey to stalk this woman’s house.  I’m not sure if she wanted to fuck her or kill her.  Patricia would be inspired to turn her obsession into million-copy paperback romantic thriller:  The Price of Salt ( later renamed “Carol” for the movie.)

Author Patricia Highsmith has always been a favorite of mine.  Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve been re-connecting with the books on my shelves here in Mexicali.   In fact, I probably have an entire shelf devoted to “The Talented Miss Highsmith.”  Jaja.  I keep her short-story collections and biographies right next to the novels.   I have heard others describe her writing as dull and monotonous, but I find her characters dark and complicated.  Things move slowly, I agree, but I have come to expect something very unsettling awaits me just a few pages ahead.  It’s worth the journey. The reward comes in both truth and suspense.

I'm not writing a book report here.  It's more like I'm sharing my reading of Pat's twenty-something years in NYC.  I can't say I know anything about lesbian life for a young woman in the 1950s but for in order for Pat to publish The Price of Salt, she had to adopt a pseudonym.  Her publishers were GOOD with her writing about murderers and psychopaths, but they didn't want anything to do with lesbians.  But that didn't stop her or even slow her down.  She took this novel to another publisher.  The name Claire Morgan appears on the cover in place of the author's name. 

The edition of the novel I have on my shelf is the revised edition with Pat's name FRONT and CENTER.  I see the novel was re-published in 1984.  How our sense of sexual identity had changed in thirty years.  In 1952, at the time Pat first laid eyes on the woman who she believed to be the Love of Her Life, homosexuality was outlawed in New York City.  This fact plays a major role in the plot of her novel.   The young protagonist, Therese, seems to be involved in a relationship with a boyfriend that is going nowhere.  How could it?  She is only now realizing her lesbian self.  The object of her Love, Carol Aird, who is much older and wiser, is married with a child.  Here is the conflict of hte novel: When Carols's husband realizes his own wife is a lesbian, he threatens to divorce her and take full custody of the child on "moriality" grounds. Carol's lawyer convinces her that will happen. Carol has to choose between Terese and her own child.  That's "The Price of Salt."

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I don't plan to introduce any homoerotic literature in my classes, but reading The Price of Salt has inspired me to research it's setting. Therese and Carol spend a considerable amount of time entering and exiting NYC restaurants.   As a mater of course, I began searching New York City FOOD on the internet.  I have encouraged my students to pursue their own NYC interests in groups with the goal making an oral presentation on Final Exam Day. 

• This means they have to put their heads together - Each group member needs to choose a specific idea to contribute to a group outline.
• I suggested they  lead with an ACADEMIC SKILL they  have learned this semester.  Like: QUOTE SANDWICH.  DEFINITION.  SUMMARY.  CHARACTER ANALYSIS.  ANECDOTE
• You can see my instructor sample below - I began with THREE BOXES - I will assign THREE MORE next week.

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Upon my completion of the novel, I came across Pat's afterword.  I had never seen or read this before. She writes,  "Prior to this book, homosexuals male and female in American novels had had to pay for their deviation by cutting their wrists, drowning themselves in a swimming pool, or by switching to heterosexuality (so it was stated), or by collapsing—alone and miserable and shunned—into a depression equal to hell."  To tell you the truth, I looked to see something similar with the turn of each page.  As a student and fan of Patricia Highsmith, I've learned to expect the worst.   But, thank you Patricia H, you don't follow any code.  You make your own. None of the aforementioned tropes found their way into this novel  The surprising ending to The Price of Salt made for both a rewarding and illuminating reading experience. 

In reading a few of Pat's biograpies, I recently discovered the author was a compulsive notetaker.  From the time she was a teenager, she kept both journals and diaries.  In her journals, she would capture details from her everyday life.   Details of restaurant menus.  Snips of conversations with lovers.  Possible names of future characters.    In her diaries, she would explore the depths of her soul.  The writing from both these sources, she would eventually transfer directly to her novels.  She is known to have amassed and kept 8,000 pages of notes.  I have read a few of Pat’s diary entries reprinted a few years ago in the New Yorker. Among them, Pat records the day she met a handsome blonde woman dressed in a mink coat who came into her place of work when she was a college English major, working part-time in the toy department at Bloomingdales.  This was December 8, 1948:  Pat jotted down details about the encounter in her diary.  Clearly the woman caught more than her attention.   It must have been LOVE at first sight: “How we looked at each other—this intelligent-looking woman! I want to send her a Christmas card, and am planning what I’ll write on it.”   Her diary entries reflect a clear obsession with this woman.  Pat described how  the woman "seemed to give off light.... I felt odd and swimmy the head, near to fainting, at at the same time uplifted as if I had a vision."   

I imagine she wrote these notes in her "cahier" on her train ride back to NYC. Pat went directly back to her apartment to write up a plot outline for the novel. Her biographers say she was absolutely feverish.  Like she was on FIRE.  She couldn't stop writing.  After she completed what she set out to do, she found out that she had contracted the chicken pox. (She was nineteen-years old.) By the time Pat died in 1995 at age 74, she had kept 8000 pages of notes at her disposal and written 22 novels.   Writing for her was a compulsion.  She once said, “I’m miserable when I can’t write.” 

Wouldn’t’ that be great if I could make my students feet that way?

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Jay's NYC FINAL EXAM Post - History - Culture - Art - Music - Architecture - BIG APPLE POSTCARD COLLAGES - Group Presentations - Student News Conference

  They told her not to come, but she came anyway.  That's Bobby Kennedy on the left.  That's President Kennedy on the right.  And you know who that is in the middle - That's Marilyn Monroe.  She had flown to New York to sing "Happy Birthday" to the president on his 45th birthday at Madison Square Garden.  Of course, the first thing anyone is going to see in this picture is the dress.   It's skin tight.   It was so tight that it had to be practically sown on to her body for her performance.  This is a black and white photo, but the color of the guaze material is the same color as her flesh.  So, it looks almost transparent, like you could see right through it.  What you are not going to see is Marilyn's underwear.  She's not wearing any.  There was no room for any garments underneath that dress.  The dress is famous for all the jewelry that comes with it.  More than 2,500 crystals are sewn into it.  Her platinum blonde hair is arranged into a stylish bouffant.  It rises up and flows downward on one side to cover part of her face.   But nobody is looking at her hair.  I notice both the Kennedys have their heads tilted forward and their eyes pointed downward.  You can guess what they are looking at.  In this picture, their behavior surprises me.   They may be flirting with Marilyn right out in the open in front of everybody at the party.   They knew of the rumors going around.  People were whispering of their affairs with Marilyn.  And the rumors were true.  They were both sleeping with her.  Reports say they warned her not to come because at this point, both of them must have feeling nervous for the truth to come out.  Reports say they warned her not to come. But that’s Marilyn Monroe.  She’s not a small nation president, princess or queen who might be intimidated by the Kennedys. She’s calling the shots.  Nothing is over until she says so.

Above:  Sample NYC Postcard - For Possible Use in Finals Week Group Presentations -  Summer 2025 Student News conference - "The 60s New York" 

Above: SNIP from Spring 2025 Student News Conference.  English 105 Students Present Group Projects.  Take Questions from a Live-Studio Audience.

This Summer 2025, I'm reading a novel with my classes I recently plucked off my shelf here in Mexicali. It's called Paradise Travel, and it is written by Jorge Franco.  I'm not giving any spoiler alerts, but it focuses upon the American Dream - two teen-age lovers, Marlon and Reina from Medellín, Colombia, who successfully make the long, ardous journey to New York City but learn tough, life-changing lessons along the way.   I like this novel, for the CHANGE in characters that happens right before our eyes.  Both Marlon and Reina become Hard and Knowing.  They are entirely different people at the end of the novel.  Did their journey to the U.S. change the way they saw each other? How did their struggle to fit in, to find their place, to define their identities...Affect Their Love?

Over the years,I have enjoyed reading and re-reading this novel in both English and Spanish.  I mean reading for enjoyment is the best thing I can share with my students.  I just completed thirty-three online quizzes over the past month to upload to my Canvas curriculums.  That took me thirty-three days.  When I'm reading a book I love, I'm astonished by the amount of time and energy I can put into it.  I know.  I know Paradise Travel will not show up on many suggested reading lists or class syllabi, but that's pretty much why I have chosen it.  It's a gift to myself.   I'm going to tell my students that reading doesn't have to be a grind.  They  are not going to get much out of the book if each page is like tramping through the mud.  I'm confident my students will identify with bits and pieces of Marlon and Reina. Paradise Travel will push them to understand more about themselves. 

On FINAL EXAM DAY, I have asked my students to prepare both GROUP and INDIVIDUAL presentations that reflect their summer writing and learning. Each INDIVIDUAL STUDENT is expected to discuss his/her summer research paper with the rest of us.  Each GROUP will create a NYC POSTCARD COLLAGE with a common theme ( See my JFK Birthday Card above - The writing goes on the back.)  This week I pass out the display boards.  I tell my students the following:

Students will be graded on the following:

• Professional behavior and preparation - effective use of time during presentation.
• Knowledge of subject matter - Ability to share 2-3 SIGNIFICANT elements of research
• Postive attention and feeback directed towards classmate presentations

Here are few suggestions/requirements for the class presentation:

• The presentation must last SIX minutes - THREE for your STUDENT DISCUSSION  - THREE for ANSWERING QUESTIONS
• A meaningful visual must accompany the presentation - We will broadcast it on the BIG SCREEN
• Students will analyze and  explain their images in a  a logical way - They just may bring up our SELF-REFLECTION exercise - WHAT DID THEY LEARN?  - WHAT WAS THE CHALLENGE?
•  Students should offer supporting evidence and alternative viewpoints from your own - Share their RESEARCH. 
• Students must maintain eye contact with their audience while you present.
• Students must speak in an appropriate volume of voice so that everyone can hear them, and they must speak clearly.
• Students must be prepared to present and speak with confidence.
• Students must use language that is appropriate for a class presentation.

I like the idea that my students will have the opportunity to share an image they themselves have created for their presentation.  Visual Analysis is an IMPORTANT academic skill.  The ability to capture meaning in  images is a great way to display y CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS. I've designed this assignment to ENHANCE your PARADISE TRAVEL READING EXPERIENCE.  The more they know about New York City, they will get out of their novel. This is how we ROLL:

For our Summer 2025 Paradise Travel READING and WRITING enjoyment,   I ask my students to convert a NEW YORK CITY image into a POSTCARD.

• They choose an interesting NEW YORK IMAGE to make up the FRONT of your POSTCARD.
• It could be a  New York  PERSON, PLACE, THING, HISTORICAL EVENT, CULTURAL PHENEMONON, MUSICAL OR SPORTS MOMENT, FASHION STATEMENT,  MOVIE SCENE, SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY...  

On the BACK of the card, I ask them to share 200-300 words of VISUAL ANALYSIS. 

• Like, what EXACTLY are we looking at - I encourage you to be DETAILED and SPECIFIC in your DESCRIPTION.
• Is this a picure of Taylor Swift at Madison Square Garden? - What is she wearing?  What is she doing?  How are people responding?
• Is this a picure of an Aaron Judge home run at Yankee Staidum - What is that stuff under his eyes? - Who are the  Yankees playing - What does the expression  on Judge's face say?
• OK.  Maybe there is NO ONE in the picture - What exciting details can be shares?  -  Like, what makes a New York City Slice of Pizza world famous?
• Maybe there is WRITING to be found in the image - What do the words say  -  What do the words mean?  - What message is being sent.  Like this one - of a Broadway Theatre and Marquee:

Here are the questions that need to be answered:

1. Discuss the basic elements of your image:  picture, captions, description, colors, shapes.
2. What visual element grabs your attention first.  What seems to be most important?
3. Can you SUMMARIZE what is happening in the image?
4. Are the people in you postcard important.  What are their facial expressions.  How are they dressed.  What may they be thinking at this moment?
5. What probably happend the moment before this picture was taken.  After?
6. Is there something IMPORTANT that WE DON'T SEE in this PICTURE?
7. Is there something YOU DIDN'T SEE the FIRST TIME, but now you SEE IT'S IMPORTANT?
8. Share your discovery with your classmates!

Jay's Tips:

 When you look at your IMAGE, you may want to consider ONE, MORE, or ALL of  the following WRITING PROMPTS - You DECIDE!

1. SUMMARIZE the overall idea  of the image - imagine describing the image to someone who cannot see it  - WHAT'S GOING ON?

2. DESCRIBE THE PARTS. Identify the visual elements that make up the entire composition. Consider the identifiable objects in the piece (such as buildings, shapes, icons, people, and so forth) as well as more abstract visual elements, like colors, textures, typefaces, organizational layout, groupings, patterns, and so forth  WHAT CATCHES YOUR EYE?

3. EXPLAIN HOW THE PARTS RELATE TO THE WHOLE. Look at the items in the visual holistically; that is to say, see how all of the combined elements together make for interesting meanings. How do the colors, buildings, shapes, locations, and so forth combine to make for an interesting communication and reading? MAKE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL ELEMENTS OF YOUR IMAGE.

4. EXPLAIN THE TITLE & CREATOR. Use the name of the piece and describe the creator/artist to analyze the message the artist may have been trying to convey. Understanding the title and author can provide clarity, historical context, and meaning to a piece.  IF YOUR IMAGE DOESN'T HAVE A TITLE - WHICH IT PROBABLY DOESN'T - MAYBE, YOU COULD PROVIDE YOUR OWN TITLE - Like this: This image doesn't come with a title, but if I  had  to create one myself, I would call it this:  "Insert Your Title Here."

5. CONCLUDE WITH A STRONG ANALYSIS - Now that you’ve described the many pieces of the visual, you’re in position to make interesting claims about the visual as an entire composition. Provide an analysis that gives insight into what the painting may be trying to portray - WHAT'S THE  MESSAGE - WHAT DO YOU THINK?

This is what Jay's INDIVIDUAL Submission May Look Like on Canvas:

• I probably followed a few of the instructions above and ignored others - This is how it came out - I LIKE it.
• The FIRST THING I noticed was NICO'S CHEEKBONES - The rest was EAZY.
• My students will  decide what's BEST to write depending on the information they have available.

  The first thing you might notice about Nico is her high cheekbones. I say they are high, because they are closer to the bottom of her eyes than the bottom of her nose. Maybe they give her an icy look, for she was a very cool customer.  This probably came from her modeling experience. She was non-flamboyant.  She showed little expression.  Her hair, long and straight, falls to her shoulders and down her back.  Her look is accentuated by her bangs, which  are full and cut straight across the face.  This page-boy look accentuated her cheekbones.  The golden blonde hue of her hair sharply contrasted with the dark tones of her bandmates.  The Velvets were famous for dressing in black and wearing mirrored sunglasses on stage.  I just read some place the lips are the face's most sensuous feature. The structure of the lips is thought to offer information about a women's sensual aspect.  In this photo, Nico looks extremely attractive but at the same time very sad.  Nico's time in the Velvet Underground may have been the most exciting time of her life; however, the jealosy and anamosity she felt from her bandmates brought her down. They were serious musicians.  She was a pretty face.  They didn't like being pushed into the background. The expression that appears on Nico's face may have nothing to do with her sensuality.  It probably has to do a lot with her depression.   Bandmate John Cale once said, "She hated the idea of being blonde and beautiful, and in some ways she hated being a woman, because she figured all her beauty had brought her was grief.”

Jay's Note:  

• I haven't been to New York City in like 40 years.  I know about as much about the City as my students do.
• But, here in Mexicali, I have a lot of BOOKS on my SHELVES.  I have a lot of ideas to choose from
• OUR NYC WORK WILL RAISE OUR SKILL LEVELS AND PERFORMANCE  IN THE CLASS 
•  Papa Johns Pizza arrives at the end of the Press Conference- EVERYONE WINS!

SUMMER MEAN FUN -This is going to be great!

Paz,

JL

Jay's KISS THE DETECTIVE Post -- More Elmer Mendoza, the Godfather of Narco-Lit

I’m a big fan of Mexican crime writer Elmer Mendoza. Each time I read him, I read him TWICE:  ONCE in English; and ONCE in Spanish.   I have now read like five of his Narco-Lit novels; this counts for TEN on my shelf.  Most of the Mendoza books I have read follow Detective Edgar “Lefty” Mendieta through the violence and trauma we call Culiacan, Sinaloa, where llfe is so savage,  it’s surreal.   At first Mendoza’s writing  style may be a little difficult to follow.  He may begin a paragraph from one point of view and finish with another – with little punctuation or distinction between.  It doesn’t matter language I’m reading, I often don’t know WHO is WHO, or WHAT is WHAT.  Maybe that is the point.  His string of consciousness writing style brings together the cops,  hoods, politicians, and victims together into one place.  In Lefty’s Mexico, he  believes they are all the same:  “Nothing is true, nothing is false.”

Here is a scene where Lefty’s trusted friend and informer, the Flea is murdered only a few feet away from him by the people who are supposed to be protecting them:  “Lefty emerged into the sunlight.  Susana, her eyes wide had one hand over her mouth.  Hyena Wong and his men stood around the body on the ground.  The Flea.  What Happened? His eyes went  to young Long and spotted him next to his boss, gun in hand, wearing a satisfied look.”  As a novice Spanish reader, I often have to read a paragraph like this one over and over.  There’s too many people.  Too much going on.  The narrative forces to me to scrutinize every detail of a scene.  But, that’s good for me.  I mean that’s what Lefty has to do through the entire novel.  As I journey through each page, I now feel like a Narco-Lit detective myself.  It gets better.  Like, I’m learning how to track the dialogue. I appreciate the ART and the CHALLENGE of it all.   I feel like I’m submerged in the SWAMP, they call Culiacan.

Edgar 'Lefty' Mendieta is a Mexican police detective who is not always holding up the law, but interpretting it. Much of the crime he sees on a daily business occurrs in his own building.  Corruption is everywhere.  Incompetence.  Disinformation.  Lefty is smart, not in the way of the politicians, doctors or lawyers he encounters, but in the way he can make it to the end of each novel,  ALIVE.  That's not an easy task in Sinaloa.   Like many of the hard-boiled detectives I read, Lefty is a drinker.  A pill-popper.  He's in his forties, his life is full of CONFLICT.  In his profession, he doesn't know what to believe or who to trust. 

This means, when he sees his childhood friend, the Flea, bleeding out in the dirt, he knows things like this can happen sooner or later, and he has to measure his reaction. The men who have just shot his friend dead are holding semi-automatic rifles.   Lefty knows his own life is on the line.   His trust in Flea no longer matters. He has to get over it, and I mean, QUICK.   Besar al Detective begins with the appearnce of Samantha Valdés, head of the Pacific Cartel.   I know her from other Lefty novels in the series.  After Samantha’s  father dies,  she becomes the Queen of Drug Lords.  She is La Reina del Sur.  Up until this point, Lefty doesn’t know her.  He doesn’t want to know her.  He hates the cartel.  But, the harder he tries to stay out of the swamp, the more he feels pulled into the middle of it. This is what I mean:  Samantha proves to be a ruthless gangstah, and she shows herself to be a dedicated lover.  In the novel I refer to , Nombre del Perro, her lover, is a much younger woman she keeps by her side for her own protection.  In Mexico, the Machista side of most crime bosses leave them with little trust or respect for a woman to give them orders.   Samantha’s rivals band together to send a message where it will hurt her the most.  They hire a military assassin to shoot her lover. This is where Lefty meets Samantha.  She uses all her power and contacts to seek Lefty’s help in finding her lover’s killer.  I mean, he’s Culiacan’s top homocide detective.  Everyone tells her that Lefty is on the Up and Up – he won’t do anything to help the Cartel.  But, like they say in the movies, she gives him an offer he can’t refuse.

I guess you can say Besar al Detective starts out with a BANG.   A rival cartel attempts to take Samantha out with a precision military attack of her caravan on a highway just outside the city limits of Culiacan.  It’s an ambush.  There is gunfire from all sides. Bazooka shells penetrate bullet proof doors.  Cars in front and back burst into flames. Somehow, Samantha’s bodyguards are able to move her to another car and escape, and they are able to transport her to a nearby hospital.  Lefty  happens to be working on a completely different case.  Of course, another murder.  This case is a tough one to crack. And Lefty knows that Samantha is not going anywhere soon.  The hospital is soon to be  surrounded by Mexican army, waiting for her to regain consciousness to transport her to Mexico City.  Although Lefty does not have much of a personal relationship with Samantha, he knows a few of her underlings.  They are former cops.  This is how they roll in Sinaloa.   Lefty feels they will have information he needs to solve his case. In the same way, Lefty helps Samantha avenge her lover’s death, he finds himself helping her escape the hospitatl under the watchful eye of the Mexican Army.  In each case he felt he didn’t have a choice. This is his Sinaloa.

I’m not writing a book report here, but through this series I enjoy exploring the complexities of Lefty’s drive to balance his professional  and personal life. In both cases, he seems to be hanging on a thread. Thrust into the middle of his violent and chaotic world, his ex-lover shows up out of nowhere.  Susana is a beautiful woman he first fell in love with in high-school, la prepatoria.  They share a life time of mutual respect and understanding.  They also share a son who is now eighteen years old, a son Lefty had never previously heard about.  The son's name is Jason.  He has a gringo name, and here is the difficult part for Lefty.  Jason wants to be a cop, just like his dad. When Lefty looks into the eyes of his son, he feels a surge of pride from the way he turned out.  He has his mother's looks at his father's determination.  But, Lefty doesn't know what to say about becoming a policeman in today's age of Narco-Traficantes.  I mean, half the time Lefty is high on whiskey and pain medication just to make it through the day.

Susana appearance drives up the intensity of the novel.   She shares the awful news that their son has been kidnapped and held for ransom. The father in Lefty freaks out., but the detective in Lefty suspects criminals out of his past  he has locked up.  Now more than ever, Lefty needs to keep his Cool and stay focused.  They kidnappers used a beautiful redhood to lower Jason’s defenses and lure him into a trap.  Lefty suspects it's some real Sinaloa shit.  He’s receiving threatening voicemails that end with the sound of a wet kiss. Susana has received his son’s cut-off trigger finger in a blood-stained envelope.  Lefty knows that the L.A. police or  FBI are going to be of little help to a Mexican national, even though he is a cop.  Once again, he feel alone at the bottom of the abyss.

But that’s when he remembers Samantha. Earlier in the novel, he was able to speak with her in her hospital room.  La Reina was severly injured from the bazooka blasts to her bullet-proof SUV: she was limp, lighter than he could ever imagine.  This was in the emergency room.  She was hooked up to tubes and machines.   At the sight of her, Lefty may have said ot himself, “I don’t give a fuck.” There was no money in the world that was going to tempt him to help a cartel leader escape from this hospital. That changed when his son was taken away from him.  He knew Samantha had not part in the kidnapping.  How could she?  She was surrounded by the Mexican army.  It was something Samantha told him then and there at her beside that sounded more true than anything else he knew: "Neither your life or mine travels in a straight line: we move to the beat of whatever come at us.  A poco no.. "Tell me that isn’t so."

Lefty once loved Susana with his entire soul.  He just may have hated Samantha on an equal level. For me, this is the cool part of the novel. No matter what,  Lefty will always feel torn apart in whatever he encounters. There is the hint of happiness at the end of the novel.  He just might reunite with Susana.  Lefty is forty-something.  Susanna may be what is missing in his life.  But in Sinaloa, he realizes the truth to what Samantha has told him. Lefty and Samantha maybe two parts of the same orange.  She seems to know him better than he knows himself.  They will never be a couple,  but Samantha may be what makes him whole. 

Jay's HEROIN HEROINE Post - Lola - Young, Smart, and Ambitious - Gangstah Queen of South Central L.A. - Novel by Melissa Scrivner Love

 I know Chrissie Hynde from the seventies. In her Pretenders song, “Up the Neck,” Chrissie belts out, “Lust turns to anger, a kiss to a slug…”   Up until then,   I don’t think I had every seen a woman like that on stage before; in front of the band, her guitar slung low across her hips, her hair falling into her eyes.  She sang LESS about LOVE and MORE about ANGER.  She was hot-blooded and cold-hearted.  You better watch out.  You don’t really know what she was going to do next.  She was a FEMME FATALE.

I mention FEMME FATALE, for I just read a Narco-Lit crime thriller this week titled Lola written by Melissa Scrivner Love.   I know of Femme Fatales from my favorite film-noir movies.   These women may not be the clear stars of the show, but they steal their scenes.  They are beautiful, smart, and most of all, deadly.  Over time I’ve learned they have an insatiable need for money, power, or revenge. It’s their ambition that makes them dangerous.

The Lola, from the title of this novel, a young Latina woman who has grown up in South Central Los Angeles, doesn’t really match up with a classic Femme Fatale from the movies.  She wears a white cotton wifebeater and baggy cargo pants.  When she walks her pitbull  around the neighborhoods, she pulls down  a hoodie.  All you can see is her dark lipliner and tough chick attitude.  She's not looking to attract your attention. For the most part, she is known at Garcia's Girl.  Garcia is a local drug dealer, head of a gang called the Crenshaw Six.  If that is the way people regard her, that's fine.  On the surface she wants to keep a low profile. But still waters run deep.  Inside, she dreams of becoming the Heroin Queen of Los Angeles.

   I bring up Chrissie Hynde, for I have read how the difficult road she took to become the leader of the Prentenders. At the time she tried to make her rock dreams happen, no one would listen or respect her here in the U.S. – I mean, most women rockers were thought of as back-up singers  - so she fled to England where she sensed a new and exciting atmosphere of change and defiance taking shape.   Most of us today call the music PUNK.  Still, the same type of challenges she faced in this country, she met in England.  Maybe, the Brits were even more misogynous than we were back in the States.  Chrissie  mustered all of her attitude and confidence to try to connect with the right musicians, but they must have not been ready for her.  They didn’t want to listen to any foul-mouth, aggressive American woman.  They were PUNKS.  That was part of who they were: They didn't take suggestions or ideas from women.    Chrissie must have felt CRUSHED.  She was writing her own songs.  She was playing her own guitar. She had the look they did.  What’s the Problema?  Where would she go if she struck out in London?  She began drinking heavily.  Maybe mixing in a little coke and heroin.  That’s when she learned THIS: If she could just get he male counterparts in her group to think that they were the ones that came up with songs  (that she herself composed) like “Up the Neck,” “Brass in Pocket,” Tattooed Love Boys, “ well, that just might get her through the door.   These guys were such pendejos.  She was an entirely different type of female.  They didn't know what they were dealing with.  If she could just figure out how they could think of HER songs as THEIR songs, she could eventually take over.

Like Chrissie, Lola sees herself as much tougher, smarter and ruthless than the men in her life.  If her gang, the Crenshaw Six, is to gain any power or respect on the streets, she realizes she will have to take the bull by the horns.  I mean, if she doesn’t do it, no one else seems capable.  When we are first introduced to Lola, she seems relegated to a very minor role.  We find her in the kitchen with the other chismosas of the neighborhood baking cookies for their drunk boyfriends on the patio.   But wait!  Lola is listening a lot, but she is not saying anything.  Right from the get go, I can see she is different from all the others in the conversation.   She’s a woman with vision.

How did she get this way?  She didn’t know her father.  Her mother was a Crack Ho who often sold out her daughter for drug money.  Yeah, that’s right.  Her mother was so deeply  into her addictions, she would lead her drug dealers into her daughter’s bedroom in exchange for a fix.  Lola somehow raised her little brother into adulthood.  She loves him, but he grew up with the same neglect she did.  He’s a moron.  Lola can’t count on him for anything.  Maybe that’s why she’s so mean. She hooks up with Garcia, not for any love, but for opportunity.  If she stands close behind him, she just might be able to develop some power of her own. “Girl knows to go after the leader,” snaps one chismosa in the kitchen.  But she doesn’t know the half of it.  Lola has been sleeping with a succession of gang leaders in succession.  Some of them are now dead. In each relationship, however, Lola learned a bit more about the rules of the street.  Gradually, she’s climbing to the top.  Let this bitch talk all she wants.  Lola has bigger fish to fry.

I’m not writing a book report here, but author Melissa Scrivner Love places Lola right where she wants to be.  Right in the MIDDLE of the violence and chaos of a local gang war.  When a major drug deal goes bad, the cartel shows up at Lola’s door.  This is the Mexican cartel, the brutal organization that controls the streets of South Central.   They want their DRUGS and their MONEY.  Lola doesn’t seem to be at fault for anything, but because she is supposed to be Garcia’s woman, the cartel makes it clear that she is going to be the first to die a slow and painful death if the matter isn’t resolved in one week’s time. Lola is on the CLOCK!  A bag of money is gone. TWO MILLION IN CASH.  The drugs have disappeared.  Garcia has no clue what to do.  Her Hector was responsible for fucking up everything.  Lola has seven days to figure things out, and she’s not going to rely on these pendejos in her life.  To show everyone she is in charge, she cuts off her brother’s finger with a kitchen knife.  It serves him right.  If it wasn’t for him, she would be in this mess.  She shoots a rival drug lord’s girlfriend in the face.  The girlfriend played a minor role in the drop.  Once Lola finds her and gets her to admit to it, she kills her without a second thought.  She means nothing to her or the Crenshaw Six. This is just the beginning.  It’s going to be a ruthless seven days.  Garcia knows what she is capable of.  He doesn’t have much to say.

No more spoilers alerts, but Lola is a Femme Fatale.  She is clearly ANGRY and DEVIANT.   She stays focused, for all her life has prepared her for these circumstances, a matter of LIFE and DEATH. She’s HALF VICTIM and HALF PREDATOR.   When Chrissie Hynde wrote some of her biggest hits, her band members began dropping dead one after another from drug overdose.   It took to age 32 for Chrissie to become a band leader.  This is when her husband left her with their only child.  For how many years  would a 30-Something women like her be able to rock her audience?  She says the lyrics she wrote for her song “Middle of the Road”  is her credo: “ "My personal discipline has been to try to stay in the middle, always, no matter what I'm doing. If I buy a jacket and it comes in three sizes, I want a medium. You have to learn how to temper yourself and hold back till you get to the end."

Both Chrissie and Lola know what’s most important.  They will do what it takes.  They are both suvivors.  Gatas Negras.

 

Jay's OPEN-ENDED RESEARCH QUESTION Post - The Beatles

Rock stars come and go, but the Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan television show in February 1964 changed the world forever.  Before Ed Sullivan, few people in  this country had ever seen or heard the Beatles. This was before the internet.  Television at the time offered maybe three to four channels. Ed Sullivan was a variety show.  Every Sunday night, families gathered around the television set to watch Ed Sullivan introduce his comedians, juggling acts, tap dancers, stuff like that.  But, on this night, more than 73 million people were tuned into the show, the largest audience of all time.   They wanted to know what was so special about the Fab Four!

I read about singer songwriter Roseanne Cash’s memory of the night in her memoir.  She was only eight-years-old at the time but she said, “I loved the Beatles so much, it was physically painful.”  Of course she was not alone in this sense. Witnesses in the Ed Sullivan CBS theater say the crowd screamed so loud, you couldn’t even hear the words of the songs.  No one had ever experienced the sound, look, and/or vibe of a group like the Beatles before.  They were good looking.  They had long hair.  And, Man, they could play! Lives were inspired on this night.  Like Roseanne, young people (and old) all around the world picked guitars and/or began writing songs as soon as they could.  I know that because I hear it all the time on radio station interviews with rock stars.  If they were around in 1964, they claim to have watched the show.  They loved the music.  They loved the style.  They were just blown away.

The Beatles gave them something to dream about.  John, Paul, George and Ringo were poor boys from Liverpool. They started with nothing, and they made it big.  Boys and girls, men and women, that’s all they wanted from the time they saw them on the Ed Sullivan show, to be Beatles. Almost 60 years later, and the Beatles are still HUGE.  John and George are dead, but not forgotten.  Paul and Ringo are still selling out concerts, and they are in their eighties.  Today, many of my students listen to the Beatles and write essays about them.  Whatever they meant to their fans back THEN, there are plenty of fans that feel the same NOW.  As I write this, few of my readers will recognize the name of Ed Sullivan, but some of them will.  They will know that Ed Sullivan introduced the Beatles to this country, and it hasn’t been the same since.

Below: The Beatles singing "Twist and Shout."

Jay's NIGHT OF THE IGUANA Post - Tennessee Williams - Despair on the Beach

  Earlier this month I read a memoir about alcoholism that included the life and struggles of legendary playwright Tennessee Williams. The book, called “The Trip to Echo Spring,”  written by Olivia Lange, shed light on hardcore drunk writers that despite their addictions were somehow able to produce some of the most brilliant literature we know.  Maybe someone reading this will have read Tennessee’s play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, or seen the movie version featuring the great Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor.  The former protrayed a bitter alcoholic/anti-social character named Brick who felt the need to distance himself from the people closest to him.  His family.  Each time he would run off, they asked him where  was he going?   He said, “Echo Spring.”  That’s the name of his favorite bourbon.  Apparently, he was always on the verge of losing his “shit.”

From what I’ve read of Tennessee, much of his writing is based on his own personal traumas.   Just like Brick in his play,  Tennessee didn’t go by his birth name.  His parents named him Tom.  Apparently, this name didn’t suit his nature.  Neither did his family.   He left home at an early age to follow his poetic heart.  He dreamed of becoming a writer.  Along the way he grew anxious, depressed, and suicidal in his attempts to publish his work.  He turned to alcohol and seconal to calm himself down.  Drink became his method to hold everything together.   And it did for a while.  Maybe for a 10-15 year stretch where  at a certain point, literary critics began to include him in a the pantheon of greatest American authors.

By February, 1983, however, he had lost his touch. He was still writing plays, but not on the level he once did. Maybe, like twenty years before, after he wrote Night of the Iguana. In 1983, He was found dead in his New York City hotel room on East 54^th Street.  His friends would describe him as haggard and miserable.  He would be the first to admit it.  On numerous occasions, he has explained the relentless tension and depression that comes with his job.   He looked to drugs and alcohol to steady his nerves. According to the coroner’s report, he choked on a bottlecap for the eyedrops he needed to clear his vision.  He would hold the cap on his tongue or underneath it while applying the drops  to his eyes. Later, the chief medical officer changed the report from asphixia to possible suicide. His autopsy showed a high degree of seconal in his stomach.  Many people in the know believe that story of asphixia was created to protect his legend.

Why am I concentrated on SUICIDE today?  It’s because after I read Echo Spring, I immediately sought out one of Tennessee’s more famous plays.  I found one.  The Night of the Iguana.  It may be one of his last successful works. For the next twenty years he began his steady decline.  I’m glad I read Echo Spring first.  I see a lot of Tennessee’s most tragic qualities in his protagonist, the defrocked Reverend Shannon.  The play begins with Shannon climbing the steps of a rustic, seaside Mexican hotel.  This takes place in the early 1940s.  Here, Shannon doesn’t look like a priest;  rather he looks like a drunk.  His eyes are bulging and he is sweating right though his clothes.  Shannon claims he is ‘feverish.”  Soon thereafter, he admits he might be having a mental breakdown.

  In the playnotes included in my copy of Iguana, Tennesse was a frequent guest of these types of seaside resorts in Mexico.  Far off the beaten path.  When he wrote this particular play, he was unraveling himself.  His love relationship with his traveling partner was gradually disintegrating.   This was in the 1940s, and Williams was gay. Quite possibly, he may have felt the world closing in on him.  He had nowhere to turn. In this day and age, he risked prestige and success of his profession if he were to reveal his sexuality.  The “Iguana” in the title of his play, is a lizard hotel staff kept tied with a rope to a post underneath the hotel until it was big and fat enough to eat.   The symbol of the “Iguana” just may have captured Tennessee’s feelings of clausrophobia and paranoia. He, too, must have felt trapped.  If he couldn’t change his life soon, he may have been headed to the same fate. The clock was ticking. 

I chose to read Tennessee’s Iguana: One, for my interest in it’s Mexican setting off the coast of Puerto Vallarta; and Two, for the appearance of Richard Burton in the 1962  film version of the play. I’m not to sure that Tennesse had any influence in the selection of Burton for his play, but if he was looking for a out-of-control drinker, he could find no better. Before ever beginning his film career, Burton was already known to drain three bottles of vodka per day.  When he starred in Camelot with Julie Andrews, he boasted he could drink a bottle of vodka through the matinee performance of the play, and then consume a bottle of brandy during the evening performance.  Quite possibly, many of th scenes shot on location captured Burton in the midst of a full blown binge.  According to legend, Burton started his drinking on the set at 7:00 a.m with beer.  By the time his scenes were completed, he could polish off a case. Tennessee knew all of this.  He was on call near the film locations should there be need for re-writes.  Tennessee wrote the Shannon/Burton character with his own self in mind.  The torture of his characters was based on his own mental state. From the beginning of the story, Shannon/Burton becomes increasingly hysterical.

My favortie scene in the play comes in Act Three.   Shannon is clearly in the stages of a mental breakdown.  He is now a defrocked priest and an accused rapist. ( He appears to have a nasty obsession with teenage girls - For both a priest and a tour guide, this can become a career ender.)   He realizes the jig is up.  Soon he will have no job and nowhere to go.    He threatens to dive in the ocean and “swim” all the way to China.  The owner of the hotel – and his only friend it seems – recgonizes this behavior.  She has seen it before.  He Is not joking about a swim; he is contemplating suicide.  In the play, she calls for her staff to tie him up with rope  in his hammock.  In the movie, however, they add a scene where Burton escapes from his hammock, and sprints down a jungle trail to a cliff overlooking the ocean.  The man was determined to die.  You could see it in his eyes. The scene ends with Burton diving headfirst off the cliff towards the Eastern sun, the younger staff members in hot pursuit.

I’m not writing a book report here, but I’m glad to integreate serious drama into my reading. In a few of my English classes, I assign theater pieces instead of novels.  My students appear to enjoy William Inge’s Bus Stop.  I share film clips of the Marilyn Monroe version in class.  I say this because at the time of the film’s release, Marilyn apparently was suffering from the same scrutiny and pressures Tennessee experienced.  Sadly, they shared a similar fate.   When we read passages of Bus Stop  out loud in class, I believe my students experience a connection with the Marilyn character they are reading.  When I share the stories of Marilyn’s real-life battles with mental health issues and drug addiction, they delve deeper into the story.

At the end of The Night of the Iguana,  the defrocked priest and compulsive rapist, Shannon, descends into the darkness of the hotel to seek out the fat lizard.  For Shannon’s  entire stay at this hotel, the iguana has been kept tied up under the hotel’s veranda at the end of a rope. The metaphor may never had been clearly illuminated in the first 130 pages of my copy, but at the end of the play Shannon feels a spiratual bond with this reptile.  He says to Hanna, another desperate traveler at the hotel: “The iguana? At the end of its rope? Trying to go on past the end of its goddam rope? Like you Like me!”   The play ends with Shannon cutting the rope and setting the iguana free. We imagine the iguana scurrying back to the cover and safety of the jungle.   I’m led to believe that Shannon has somehow learned the importance of taking control of his own life.

Both Tennessee and Marilyn died with high concentrations of seconal in their bloodstreams. In the fifites, these pills they became addicted to were called “blue devils.” Of course they made things worse by mixing their consumption with alcohol. Tennesseee and Marilyn lived lives of high-anxiety and ever-increasing drug abuse.   This is why I enjoy seeing  their work on the stage and screen.  Their real-life struggles shine through in their characters.  When we discuss these types of dramas in our classroom workshops, we go well beyond a "retell" of the stories.   My students seem to perk up and identify complex elements of the characters they are asked to analyze.

I tell them, to read these works, it’s like watching a car accident.  You just can’t look away.

 

 

Jay's SUMMER MEANS FUN Post - English 110 Readers Trip to NYC - Students Create Big Apple Scrapbook

  I know about Actors Studio from reading biographies about Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Al Pacino. In the fifties, Marilyn’s greatest fame as an actor became her greatest disappointment. She was so beautiful that she couldn’t land serious roles. At a certain point, Marilyn left Hollywood to spend a year training with the world's leading experts in stage and screen at the Actors Studio in New York.  Her goal was to take her acting to the next level. Method actors dig down deep inside of themselves for a memory or an experience  that will help them recreate the true emotions of their character they are playing.  The Actors Studio has its origins in early 20th century Russia. A very serious student and lover of the theater named Konstantin Stanislavski came up with the system of Method Acting. It was about KEEPING IT REAL. Stanislavski was opposed to the study of traditional acting technique. Instead he encouraged his students to look inward – not only to UNDERSTAND the role, but to FEEL the part. Method Acting often requires complete immersion in a role. That means an actor does whatever he or she can to “wear” the part - to put him/herself into the shoes of the character. To prepare for his role as Bob Dylan, Timothée Chalamet learned how to play the guitar and harmonica. On the set, he wouldn.’t respond to anyone unless they addressed him as “Bob.”

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This Summer 2025, I plan to read a novel with my classes I recently plucked off my shelf here in Mexicali. It's called Paradise Travel, and it is written by Jorge Franco.  I'm not giving any spoiler alerts, but it focuses upon the American Dream - two teen-age lovers, Marlon and Reina from Medellín, Colombia, who successfully make the long, ardous journey to New York City but learn tough, life-changing lessons along the way.   I like this novel, for the CHANGE in characters that happens right before our eyes.  Both Marlon and Reina become Hard and Knowing.  They are entirely different people at the end of the novel.  Did their journey to the U.S. change the way they saw each other? How did their struggle to fit in, to find their place, to define their identities...Affect Their Love?

To make things interesting, I will ask my students to COMBINE their READING with their RESEARCH of novel's setting, NEW YORK CITY

• Our classes meet for three hours per day, four days per week, six weeks total -  We have a lot of standards to cover. 
  
• I plan to devote a portion of our Wenesdays for my students to collaborate on a New York City Classroom Scrapbook
• Each student will be required to research a NYC person, place, idea to share with the rest of us -  I just may go with the Actors Studio (see above.)
• This means SIX days, SIX different assignments. - I will expect that each assignment will be submitted on Canvas before the end of the day.
• I will emphasize, CREATIVITY, ORIGINALITY, and INTEGRITY in their work.
• Students will have the FREEDOM to choose their own NYC TOPICS - I shouldn't have to  PUSH them - They should take PRIDE in their own work.
• Our Final NYC Class Scrapbook will DEEPEN our understanding of the novel - The weekly assignments will BOOST student grades - EVERYONE WINS!

Jay's Tips - NYCStarter Set - GO FOR WHAT YOU KNOW - Choose what YOU want to WRITE about!

Jay's Practice Picks:

• Before you get started, I encourage to brainstorm a list of 3-4 ideas.  Like this:

White Castle is a restaurant chain known for its "sliders," small, square hamburgers, and its distinctive white castle-shaped buildings.  They are also known for offering a variety of menu items beyond burgers, including chicken, fish, and plant-based sliders.

We begin our first Wednesday with a NYC Breakout assignment.  I will ask my students to share their NYC ideas with the rest of us on Padlet.

My  rules are FEW.   Students' opportunities to express thensekves are MANY.   I've created a grid to brainstorm and classify their ideas from the beginning. 

Jay's Note:  

• I haven't been to New York City in like 40 years.  I know about as much about the City as my students do.
• But, here in Mexicali, I have a lot of BOOKS on my SHELVES.  I have a lot of ideas to choose from
• They may think they KNOW NOTHING about NYC, but THAT'S THE POINT - Each Wednesday, we will collaborate on our Padlet to RAISE our NYC KNOWLEDGE

Below, I practice my Actors Studio contribution to our Final NYC Scrapbook. Over the next six weeks, I plan to re-read our classroom novel Paradise Travel.  The MORE I know about NYC, the MOREI will get out of it. 

Jay's NEW YORK, NEW YORK Post - Postcards from the Edge Assignment - Summer Session 2025

  To introduce my SUMMER 2025 students to their assigned novel, Paradise Travel.  I ask them to use their research skills to familiarize themselves with the setting of New York City.  Of course, few of us will have little understanding for NYC, but  that's why we want to dig in before we start the serious reading.  There is point where one of the main characters, Marlon, refers to the city as "The Beast."  Many of my classes are online.  This makes it difficult to work in groups and/or share idea  From my personal expeience, talking about what I read, or for that matter writing about it, leads to greater personal understanding and enjoyment. 

I chose Paradise Travel off my shelves here in Mexicali.  It's about two young lovers, Marlon and Reina, from Colombia that journey to New York City in search of a better life.  I've read the novel now four times.  TWICE in English.  And, TWICE in Spanish.  I realize now the characters in the novel didn't do their research before they embarked on their trip.  They had no idea what they were getting into. My hope is for my students to avoid making the same mistake they did.  I've designed this assignment to give my students a better feeling for the novel. 

Each student will choose a famous New York City landmark, person, event, idea that will lead to a 2-3-page well-crafted informational essay.  The  essay must be TYPED in 12-point Times New Roman Font and follow MLA guidelines for a college paper.  Each essay must also include a properly formatted Works Cited Page. I will assist my classes step-by-step through this process, but to foster college readiness, much of this work will be done independently.  At the time I write this post, I've opened a book called New York Bucket List: Adventure Guide. From these pages, I'll provide a list of suggestions for my students to choose from: "Empire State Building"; "Strawberry Fields John Lennon Memorial"; "Harriet Tubman National Park"; "Alice in Wonderland Statue."  On Canvas, I  plan to provide a link to a slide show of famous New Yorkers.   

• 
  NOTE TO MY STUDENTS:  Choose a RESEARCHABLE topic that will provide you with enough  information to help you develop an INTERESTING essay to share with your classmates.
• To practice this assignment, I'm choosing the famed Chelsea Hotel.  This is where Sam Shepard and Patti Smith carried on a brief and torrid love relationship.  To me there is nobody more interesting than Sam and Patti.  (See Above.)  I proudly own several books written by them or written about them. 

Required Components of this Assignment:

• 2-3 Pages typed in MLA format
• Use of at least 3 legitimate sources (maximum is 5 sources)
• Use of specific evidence, properly cited to support your topic.
• A well-crafted essay that contains at least 6-8 paragraphs
• A properly formatted Work Cited page

Here is the FUN PART:   As a warm-up to the essay, students will address an old-school style postcard (300 words) to their classmates on Padlet and/or our classroom discussion board.

The "Back" of Jay's Practice Post Card:

Saludos from New York City: This picture is of two young lovers who are two of my literary heroes.  On the left, that’s playwright Sam Shepard dressed in a long-sleeved polo shirt with a strand of hair falling into his eyes.  On the right, that’s poet Patti Smith looping her arm around Sam’s shoulder.  I studied Sam’s works for my Masters thesis in English. Patti is famous for converting her poetry into song.  Very soon thereafter, she became the Godmother of Punk.  In 1971 they carried on a brief and torrid love affair at the Chelsea hotel.  For a few years, Smith rented a room with a balcony. That’s where this picture may have been taken. Neither of them are smiling, in the convential sense.  That doesn’t mean they are not happy.  But the photo clearly captures their attitude.  This is an exciting time for both of them.  The world is changing, and they are both making their contributions.  They don’t care what you think.  The Chelsea Hotel is where Sam and Patti wrote the play Cowboy Mouth.  It became 27 pages long and it  took them two days to finish.  This happens in Patti’s room  #1017, the smallest room in the hotel  One day, Sam comes up with the idea of writing the play together.  Patti tells him that she has never written anything like a play, but that doesn’t matter to Sam.  He pulls his portable typwriter onto the bed in between them and tells her it like this:  You start with a detailed description of the setting.  Pale blue walls.  A white metal bed.  A small sink and a mirror and chest of drawers.  That’s pretty much it.  Sam wanted his character to be called “Slim.”  A dude who looked and acted like a coyote.  He then pushed the typewriter towards Patti and told her it was now her turn to type.  Patti wanted to call her character Cavele, “a chick who looks like a crow.” In my English classes this semester, we are reading a novel called Paradise Travel.  It’s about two young lovers from Colombia who come to New York City to seek the same things Sam and Patti did. Their names are Marlon and Reina.  They are both dreamers.  They find themselves in the same type of beat-up room, but that’s OK.  All they want is the chance to be free. Paz, J. Lewenstein

I hope my students have as much fun as I did with this postcard idea.  Everyone should be able to come up with a great topic.  New York City is a BIG place.  That's the point. I can't wait to start the essay.

Jays TRIP TO ECHO SPRING Post - Olivia Laing's Drinking Memoir - Straight Look at Bent Authors - Alcoholism in the Land of the Giants

  I’m not sure WHEN or HOW it happened, but at  early age, I became drawn in, sucked in, to the books written by boozy, drug-addled authors.  For me, this may have been in high school, and I didn’t even drink or smoke.  At age 16-17, I probably got turned on by Stephen King’s strange,  nightmarish novel about a haunted hotel, The Shining, that transported me far, far away from my dull, monotonous teenage  life.  Maybe this was my introduction to serious literature.  The novel was huge – like 600 pages.  It felt like a telephone book in my hands, but once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down.   Later, from reading Stephen K’s  memoir On Writing, I found out he did so much blow when he was a young author starting out he couldn’t even remember writing a few of his first novels.  Hunter S. Thompson was a brilliant writer bent on self-destruction.  Here is what he wrote on the first few pages of his masterpiece Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: “We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”  When I reached the last page of this book,  I immediately  sat down and began reading the book from Page One again.

Jim Carroll may have been the first writer I would call my own.   He was a New York City high-school basketball star who wrote his own memoir, The Basketball Diaries.  OMG.  He was playground legend who played on All-Star teams with Lew Alcindor (later to become Kareem Abdul Jabbar) and was recruited by Hall of Fame college basketball coarch Al McGuire.  He was cocky, fearless, and unstoppable on the court.  As a teenager, he published his own basketball memoir. The pages focused a lot LESS on basketball and a lot MORE on pills, codeine, heroin. I was too young and  inexperienced to understand the problems these writers endured away from their typewriters.  It didn’t matter.  Their personal lives were beyond me.  I was hooked on their writing. 

So this week, I read Olivia Lange’s alcoholic, drug-abuse memoir The Trip to Echo Springs - not so much for her use, but for her deep dive into the lives and writing of her most beloved and troubled authors:  Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Tenessee Williams.  As a young British scholar, she toured this country by herself  in trains, planes, and automobiles to explore the stories behind the stories. I read all of these authors in grad school, and I can still remember the passion and insight my professors brought to our classroom discussions.  They could recite literary passages from memory.  They shared their knowledge of the men behind the stories.  We all laughed when they spoke of each author’s alcoholic escapades.  Olivia L found the title of her book  book  from Tennessee Williams' play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."  Surprise! The protagonist of the play is a hardcore drinker much like the author himself.   His name is Brick. On stage when he says he’s "takin' a little short trip to Echo Spring," everyone in the theater knows he is headed to his liquor cabinet.  That’s where he keeps his best scotch:  Echo Spring.

I grew up with stoners and drinkers.  I can’t remember if they had their own euphemisms for getting high.  It was always funny to see them drink or smoke before school.  When I saw them, I was probably shooting hoops at a nearby park.   I say it was funny, because I couldn’t understand why or how it was so important to get high at 6:00 in the morning.  I mean, these guys were the coolest guys I knew.  Later in the day, the girls were going to smile at them.  The guys were going to look up to them.  I'm concentrating on my follow-through,  and  they're getting “wrecked.“  I could draw a straight line from them to Jim Carroll.  I would have traded my life for one day of his.  He is who I wanted to be.  A guy equally adept at driving the baseline and writing beat poetry.    I'm not sure what went on in his brain, but he must have turned heads wherever he went.  Can you imagine the life of a NYC basketball star -  thousands of people screaming your name, and all you are thinking of is getting high?

Fifty years later, I’m reading Olivia L, and I'm finding out things I didn't really know at the time I read these authors.  I mean this was before the internet. It wasn't so easy to find intimate details about writers lives.   I appreciate each of these guys for their obvious dedication to their craft and their fierce discipline to get their work published. In reading Echo Spring, some may say they worked themselves to death.  I think Olivia L would say 'drink themselves to death' was closer to the truth.  Olivia L expresses clearly and often, there is no common denominator between creative geniuses and hopeless drunks. Some of the addiction could be attributed to brain chemistry.  Other addictions may arise from childhood trauma.  I don't know.  My professors didn't either.  They said the distance between us and them is too great.  Any intelligent analysis of their trauma would be pure speculation.  So we didn't talk about it.  In Echo Spring, Olivia L leaves us with the haunting facts that four of the six Americans who have won the Nobel Prize for literature were alcoholic.  She says, "about half of our alcoholic writers eventually killed themselves." 

  Hemingway rose at sunrise and got down to writing by 7 a.m. or so.    This was if he had been drinking heavily or not.  Because of a back injury he suffered in an African plane crash, he was forced to write standing up.  He would position his typewriter chest-high on top of a bookshelf.   Every day he wrote,   Hemingway would record his daily output ranging from 500 to 1000 words per day.   Living hard, writing from within, he famously said,  then moving forward; this was the life of a writer.  I don't have to tell you that drinking dominated his personal life. His drinking exploits are well documented in his own writing.   At age 61, he angled a hunting rifle underneath is chin and pulled the trigger. 

Currently I'm reading Tenessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana. The primary character, the reverend Lawrence Shannon,  is at the end of his rope in Mexico. A defrocked priest,  he's clinically depressed or alcoholic, or both.  In this play, his journey takes him to a remote fishing village near Puerta Vallarta, Mexico. He is now reduced to working as a tour guide for a second-rate company.   The setting is beautiful, but the water haunts him.  Lawrence wants to make things right in his life, and the best option seems to be swimming to China - killing himself.  In Echo Spring,  Olivia L relates Tenessee's recurring fantasy to die at sea.  From his home in Key West, he asked that his dead body be sewn up in a cloth sack and thrown overboard north of Havana. He wants to go down like his favorite poet, Hart Crane, who committed suicide in the same location.  

My favorite part of this book comes when Olivia L links her favorite alcoholic authors with a “water” motif.  I’m not sure I understand the connection, but each night Hemingway returned home after a terrible drunk, he calmed himself down by vizualizing the fishing holes of his childhood.  He let his mind drop through the darkness of the cool, cool water.  Raymond Carver wrote poems about the streams that tumble out of the mountains near his Yakima, Washington childhood home:  “I love them the way some men love horses or glamorous women.  I have a thing for this cold swift water.  Just looking at it makes my blood run and my skin tingle.”  John Cheever’s most famous short story, "The Swimmer,” has a drunk protagonist trying to return to his suburban home by swimming across his neighbors’  backyard swimming pools.  Maybe all of these guys Olivia chose to write about saw water as a symbol to wash away their pain or dilute their sickness. I could have never recognized this metaphor way back when I was introduced to the genius of these authors.

I'm so happy to have found this book.  I know I must come from a completely different background and viewpoint, but I share in the Olivia's love for her favorite authors. She grew up in a family of alcoholics. Her writing displays an intimate knowledge for their struggles. While the bulk of my experience with these authors comes from the writing itself, Olivia L brings new life to the men behind their typewriters. She strips away the glamour; she humanizes our literary heroes.  When I first read Jim Carroll in high school, I would shoot baskets into the night at park near my house.  Dribble, dribble, dribble. To the left or to the right.  I could shoot it, from near or far.  I could go to hoop with either hand.  When I say 'into the night,' I mean in near total darkness.  Even through the cold. The wind.  I didn't stop when the rain came down.  I just didn't want to go home. I wanted to be like Jim. It mean't everything to me.   At a certain point in the last fifty years, my worship of basketball stars has gradually converted into a reverence for literary giants. Olivia L does us all a favor to share the personal struggles of our favorite authors.

This is what know now: for all the traits I idolized in these writers, these guys had to be more Sad and Lonely than I could ever imagine.

 

 

 

 

Jay's HEMINGWAY CURSE Post - Quote Sandwich

Recently, I read a novel based on Ernest Hemingway's final days, Adios Hemingway by Cuban writer Leonardo Padura.  Near the end, the famous writer suffered extreme bouts of depression. Back then, the doctors prescribed electroconvulsive therapy.  This is 1961. I'm not sure if these sessions gave him any relief, but I believe they severely hampered his ability to write.  Shortly after his release from a psychiatric hospital,  he took his own life with his gun in his own house.  This wasn't mentioned in the novel I read, but thirty-five years later - nearly to the day - his granddaughter Margaux Hemingway joined him in a family pattern of suicides.  Below I write a brief paragraph about "The Hemingway Curse."  In doing so, I attempt to show my students how to incorporate quotations into their essays.  I provide them with three basic steps. I highlight the quotation in yellow.  I hope this works!

(Introduce It!)  Mental illness ran in Ernest Hemingway’s family.  The famous author’s father – he was a successful doctor -  shot himself with his own handgun.  That was just the beginning of the family pattern of suicide.  Hemingway’s brother and sister also followed suit.  In 1961, Ernest himself followed a stay in a psychiatric hospital for severe depression by shooting himself dead with a shotgun.

(Quote It!)  The podcast You Must Remember This devotes an entire episode to the “The Hemingway Curse.” Narrator Michael Schulman explains, ”On one hand it [the family name] represents literary genius and international glamour…  On the other hand, the Hemingway legacy is steeped in mental illness, alcoholism, self-destruction, and suicide” (4:59).

(Explain It!)  Most of us in English class have read of the tragedy that befell Ernest Hemingway, but few know of the demons that terrorized his granddaughters,  Margaux and Mariel.  This podcast focuses upon the pressure they must have felt to follow in the footsteps  of their famous grandfather’s adventurous spirit.  They both seemed to have inherited his talent and attitude.  Margaux became a super model at the age of 18.  Little sister Mariel, the actress, was nominated for an Oscar in her second movie.  Apparently in the Hemingway family manic depressive illness was also passed down through the generations.  Margaux is known to have killed herself with an overdose of painkillers at age 41.  After her sister committed suicide, Mariel must have realized it was her “turn.”  Instead, she chose to dedicate her life to helping others combat mental illness and family pressures. Following seven family suicides, her story is one of survival.

Here is how my Hemingway Curse Quote Sandwich may look at the top of my research paper: 

Mental illness ran in Ernest Hemingway’s family.  The famous author’s father – he was a successful doctor -  shot himself with his own handgun.  That was just the beginning of the family pattern of suicide.  Hemingway’s brother and sister also followed suit.  In 1961, Ernest himself followed a stay in a psychiatric hospital for severe depression by shooting himself dead with a shotgun. The podcast You Must Remember This devotes an entire episode to the “The Hemingway Curse.” Narrator Michael Schulman explains, ”On one hand it [the family name] represents literary genius and international glamour…  On the other hand, the Hemingway legacy is steeped in mental illness, alcoholism, self-destruction, and suicide” (4:59). Most of us in English class have read of the tragedy that befell Ernest Hemingway, but few know of the demons that terrorized his granddaughters,  Margaux and Mariel.  This podcast focuses upon the pressure they must have felt to follow in the footsteps  of their famous grandfather’s adventurous spirit.  They both seemed to have inherited his talent and attitude.  Margaux became a super model at the age of 18.  Little sister Mariel, the actress, was nominated for an Oscar in her second movie.  Apparently in the Hemingway family manic depressive illness was also passed down through the generations.  Margaux is known to have killed herself with an overdose of painkillers at age 41.  After her sister committed suicide, Mariel must have realized it was her “turn.”  Instead, she chose to dedicate her life to helping others combat mental illness and family pressures. Following seven family suicides, her story is one of survival.