jay's museum of college writing

Jay's CRIME SCENE Post - Death of Marilyn Monroe - Summary of Research Article - 60 Years Later - We Stil Don't Know What Happened

In Tortured Artists, we learn the sordid details of Marilyn Monroe’s untimely death.  When she first began living the life a Hollywood legend, she of all people probably knew she would soon become a dead one.   As a famous star, Marilyn lived her life under enormous scrutiny and criticism.  Drugs became an avenue of escape.  Sadly, she already had a history of mental illness in her family.  The combination of  pressure,  drugs, and  anxiety took her down a dark road for which there was no return.   For example, at the age of four, Marilyn’s mother was placed in an asylum.  Marilyn grew up in an orphanage.  Later she found out her own grandmother had committed suicide.  She must have thought mental illness ran in her genes.  At age thirty six, when she felt herself losing her looks, she intensified her drug use.   She didn’t know who she was anymore. She didn’t know if she was Norma Jean or Marilyn.  The writer makes little comment about Marilyn’s suicide or murder.  Instead, the writing reinforces the image of Marilyn’s living a life underneath a microscope.  What may have pushed Marilyn to her death just may have been us – a public that didn’t want to see her grow old.

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I'm not sure WHEN or HOW it happened, but my students listen to me a lot more closely when I'm talking about Marilyn Monroe. It was an ACCIDENT!  In class, I had  shared what I read in a book titled The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe by Donald H. Wolfe.  The author begins his book by painting a detailed crime scene.  On Saturday, Aug. 4, 1962, West Los Angeles Police Sergeant Jack Cleamons took the call at his watch commander desk. He was told to immediately report to the home of Marilyn Monroe.  The famous movie star had been found face-down, naked, and DEAD in her own bed, apparently from a drug overdose. When Cleamons knocked on the door, he sensed something was wrong.  Marilyn's housekeeper had answered the door.  She apologized for making him wait, but she had been in the back of the house doing laundry.  This was like at 4:30 a.m.  The housekeeper's name was Eunice Murray.  She had been washing sheets while the person she worked for was dead in her bedroom. 

When Eunice led the sergeant to see Marilyn's dead body,  Sergeant Cleamons was surprised to see two strange men in suits at Marilyn's bedside smoking cigarettes.  They introduced themselves as Marilyn's doctors. They were psychologists and they shared the conclusion that Marilyn's death was a suicide.  They showed him the empty pill bottles next to her bed.  They explained Marilyn's history with depression and suicide thoughts.  They also revealed they had discovered the body THREE HOURS before they reported Marilyn's death to the police.  While they were filling in the sergeant in on Marilyn's most recent background, Eunice's nephew was replacing a broken window in the same bedroom where Marilyn lay dead.  The doctors told Sgt. Cleamons that Marilyn's door was locked and they had to break the window to gain entry. Sgt. Cleamons was a seasoned professional.  He saw bruises forming on Marilyn's body.  She lay prostrate, like she had been moved.  This wasn't Sgt. Cleamons' first suicide scene.  Marilyn didn't look like the type of victim that would have swallowed more than fifty pills. Cleamons expected there would be signs of vomit and stress.  Before Cleamons could extend his inquiry, he was replaced by a superior and told to go home. It wasn't going to be his case, he was told. 

In several of my classes, my sharing of Marilyn's Death Scene has inspired many of my students to write research papers on the Life and/or Death of Marilyn Monroe. Of course, I ask them to write a summary of a research article.  I'm happy for them to discover an important historical icon.  They write about her childhood.  They define her  femininity.  Did you know that Marilyn was at the forefront of the Me Too Movement?  She was one of the first Hollywood stars to speak out about sexual harrassment in the workplace.  I know that because I read about it in a Gloria Steinem memoir.  A few years back, EVERYONE in my classes chose to write about Marilyn.  They all chose different facets of her life.  Later I titled the semester, of course, Jay's Project Marilyn.

I encourage students to explore their topics in a way they find the most INTERESTING.  From the beginning of the project, they maintain their research articles in a project binder. Maybe, the third week or so, we annotate our articles and summarize them for use in our research papers.  Below I share something they might see in a a canvas announcement or a classroom workshop.  I try to model my summary for a Marilyn research article I found in an antholgy here on my shelves in Mexicali:

 

I tell my students THIS: There is no ONE way to write a summary of a research article, but a summary of a research article will go a long way to building credibility with YOUR readers.  It shows you have done your homework.  You care about what you are writing. I plan for my students to arrange their  summaries high up in their research paper - Probably the THIRD PARAGRAPH.  Share their most important/interesting research. The charts WORK for them.  They often struggle with WHAT TO KEEP IN and WHAT TO LEAVE OUT.    Focusing upon 5 W's and a H makes for a good beginning. 

 

 

Jay's 'H' IS FOR HOLIDAY READING Post - Alice Munro's Runaway - Pedro Almovodar - Adriana Ugarte - Hache - Heroine - Heroin

   These days, en estos dias, I devote a chunk of each day to follow a Spanish-language telenovela on Netflix.  This one is called Hache.  From Spanish,  Hache translates to the letter ‘H.’  In this case,  H is for Helena, the protagonist of the series, a desperate single mother, who will do anything to provide a safe and meaningful life for her young daughter. Helena lives in the city of Barcelona, Spain in the 1960s. Her labor union leader husband has been wrongfully sentenced to prison for alleged communist activities.  With little chance of taking care of herself or her daughter, Helena fatefully hooks up with a local Mafia leader.  His name is Malpica and he controls the (H for) Heroin that is smuggled into the port of Barcelona. Helena finds herself up to her Head in drugs and murder.

But my title refers to my READING.  I bring up this series Hache for my appreciation of the principle actress, Adriana Ugarte.  She plays the desperate young mother who is forced by circumstance to enter a sleazy and violent underworld. Man, I want so bad to learn Spanish.  I've never been much of a television viewer or moviegoer, but I've developed my own system of learning to suppement my Spanish-reading with my viewing of Spanish-language telenovelas.  I enjoy watching Hache on Netflix, for I can stop the computer to replay anything I don't understand.  I've seen Adriana  U. before, maybe twenty years ago.  She starred in a World War II spy series called El Tiempo entre las costuras.   I found the novel in both English - The Time Between - and Spanish.   I read them both as I watched the series. Later, I did the same with another Adriana U. series, Las Palmeras en la nieve, based on a novel by Luz Gabas. In this story, Adriana U. is a young woman who takes a dangerous journey to Central Africa to find the truth of her family history.  For me learning Spanish is difícil.  My progress is painstaikingly slow.  I'm so happy I've found a Spanish-speaking actor to follow.  Often, in my classes, I ask my students to share their film knowledge in group discussions and activities.  They write about their favorite actors, and explain to me WHY and HOW they connect.  They share poignant scenes they remember featuring Michael J. Fox, Scarlett Johanssen, Jennifer Lawrence.  When they ask me about my favorite actor, my go-to now is Adriana Ugarte.   

I feel my Spanish-speaking self has grown up with Adriana U.  Recently, I came across her name in a Spanish-language Almodóvar film, Julieta. I don't know or understand much about Pedro Almodóvar, but this was a good find for me because I have the Alice Munro short-story collection on my shelves, Runaway, that inspired this movie.  Jaja.  If you thought Almodóvar's films come from Spain, you are correct.  Alice Munro and her stories are based in Canada.  I read that Almodóvar originally began production of his film in Vancouver, but he soon realized that his English skills were not advanced enough to capture the trauma of a Canadian protagonist.  He soon retreated to España.  That's where he picked up Adriana U.  I suppose Pedro M watches the same telenovelas I do.  Adriana U. is a brilliant actor.  I've never heard her speak in English, but she knows how to exude despair on multiple levels. In Julieta, she plays a classics literature professor that loses both her husband and daughter.  Her fisherman husband dies in boating tragedy.  Soon thereafter, her teen-age daughter leaves her behind, runs away, without a word or a trace, never to return.  Almodóvar chose to base his film on three consecutive short-stories from Alice M's work: "Chance," "Soon," and "Silence."  I find the title of the third story the most meaningful.   As a PhD in the classics,  Julieta is obviously a deep and complex woman. This may be one reason she feels so lonely from the beginning of the film to the end.    She's so passionate about her work, she may be numb to everything else around her.   Julieta's deep hearbreak comes from the silence that overcomes her character when she enters emotional confrontations.  When her husband cheats on her with her best friend, she has nothing to say to him, and when he washes up dead on shore, it's way too late to say anything at all.   Her daughter seems adverse to this part of Julieta's personality.  Like many teenagers she doesn't feel she gets the attention she deserves from her mother.  At a certain point, she runs away to join a cult where her she can satisfy her spiratual needs. 

I’m pleasantly surprised for the enjoyment I get in re-reading books off my shelves here in Mexicali.  I guess I have become  older and wiser.  I feel I connect better with the characters in Alice Munro stories than ever I have before.  Maybe it’s the SPANISH in me.  One of my students this semester wrote a research paper about the benefits of language acquisition. He argued that learning a foreign language helps you develop muscles in your brain you may rarely use. I probably will be the last one to know if I am any SMARTER.  My head doesn’t feel any BIGGER.  But, I can tell you I like Alice Munro MORE twenty years after I first read her.  I read her this time before I watched the movie.  B.A. Before Angela.   My favorite story in the book comes after the Julieta triology.  It’s called “Passion.”  It's about a young girl's quest for a "taste" of life.  She's kind of cute, real smart, and here is the most important point: she's really bored with who she is, but she doesn't know who she wants to be. I'm stunned an old man  like me can relate with young Grace, the girl who didn't want to be the way girls were supposed to be like. In fact  - as a young boy of her age - I could have related to her stubborness. Munro gives us the best of both worlds. She has the ability to take us in and out of time. In doing so her writing touches both our heads and our hearts.

In "Passion," Grace goes back to a scene in her life that she is never going to get back. That seems pretty clear. From the time she is an ambitious high school student thinking about teaching herself Spanish, Italian and German, to the time she brazenly chooses a sloppy alcoholic love affair, Grace had shown a courage to go her own way.
The story ends with the insight of an older woman. The older Grace retraces a key event in her life when she was able to leave her farmtown and work as a waitress in a lakeside restaurant. Grace paints a picture of a young girl soon to become a woman. She learns a new culture from the family she lives with. She learns of love from her first serious relationship. She approaches a sense of self-identity through the process. After all these years, we learn that Grace doesn't go back to this scene for any great memory of love or fufullment. She goes back to realize finally what her high school principal once told her before she began her adventure: what does learning have to do with life?

In this story she learns the hard way when at a crucial turning point in her life she abandons the reliable, lover in exchange for his sad, but drugged-out doctor brother. One was predictable. The other offered a "taste" of life. What does Grace know.  What did she know. Everybody who reads the story knows what was going to happen when chooses to hop in the car with the drunk and leave the other brother behind. My favorite part is the end of the story. The older Grace narrates with such sharp disappointment that it turns the landscape gray. No matter how smart she is now, she can't go back... She's lucky to be alive, and he's dead.

At my age, I can now say I can connect much better with the characters Alice M offers in her stories.  They are smart and beautiful, but they are hardly free.  In the story “Chance,”  the author writes, “In the town where she [Julieta] grew up, her sort of intelligence was often put in the same category as a limp or extra thumb and people had been quick to point out the expected accompanying drawbacks.”  In “Passion,” Grace scores very high marks in high-school Chemistry, Trigonometry, Geometry and Biology.  Her school doesn’t offer Greek, Italian, Spanish, and German, but in each, she learns to speak compentenly on her own!   Her parents loved her, and her teachers admired her, but no one was pushing her to seek out high-level academic education.  Alice M's characters grow up at a time where real success is to be sought out in  marriage and motherhood.

I feel the depth of depression in both Julieta and Grace.  Alice M deftly brings us inside her characters.  Pedro A paints  a story on their faces. My Spanish had deepened my empathy for other cultures and perspectives.  There are a lot of scenes in these stories where women characters in all stages of their lives sit alone on busses and trains, and stare out the windows at their lives passing them by.  It doesn't matter if it's in Canada or Spain.   I think I get it now.  These women  want to feel some control of their own destinies,  but their lives won't allow it.  Their only place to run away is inside themselves. 

Jay's FOR THE LOVE OF FAMILY Thanksgiving Post - The House of Broken Angels - by Luis Urrea - The American Dream

  It’s not to difficult to figure out WHO this book is about.   The first chapter is  titled “Big Angel’s Last Saturday.”  The first words to the novel: “Big Angel was late to his own mother’s funeral.”  In Spanish, Big Angel translates to Angelote, I mean, if I were to look it up, that’s what I would find, but I’m not sure if the definition does Angelote justice.  Angelote is the in the center of everything.  He is the patriarch of his family on both sides of the border that separates the United States and Mexico. From the beginning to the end of the book, he sets rules and expectations for how his friends and family are to act and behave, but apparently these rules don’t appy to him.  I mean, he was LATE to his OWN MOTHER’S FUNERAL   My mother doesn’t speak much Spanish, but she knows a lot of Yiddish.  In Yiddish they would call Angelote a “Makher,” someone who thinks he/she is overly important.  In Spanish, I think they call people like Angelote a “Cabron!”

I’m not writing a book report here, but I enjoyed this book so much, I read it TWICE:  once in  English, and then again in Spanish. It’s like the third or fourth Luis Urrea book or novel I’ve read.  Like many of my students, Luis has lived on both sides of the border.   Luis’s father was born in Sinaloa and his mother comes from New York. I’m not sure where they met, but Luis was born in Tijuana and raised in San Diego. In all of his books, he devotes ample time to his vision of The American Dream. From the beginning to the end in House of Broken Angels, Angelote has been on  a mission to create a better life for his family.  He has been estranged from his younger brother, also named Angel, but referred to in the novel as Little Angel (or Angelito).  Angelito has always despised his older brother for his Old-School, Macho ways.   Angelito is like a New-School Chicano, more sensitive and worldly.   Where Angelote is shown to scratch and claw for everything he has ever believed in, Angelito abandoned the family early to pave his own way.  The author’s BIG IDEA is to bring everyone together one last time before it’s too late, and spoiler alert:  HE DOES.

If I were to run in to Angelote, like at work, in the neighborhood, Starbucks;  I’m afraid I would never get a chance to know him very well. I would keep my distance. From my sideways glance, I can see  he’s got an attitude, like he thinks he’s Bigger than Life.  He has something to say to everybody, even the most casual of strangers.  In the first chapter, he throws party a for himself.  TO CELEBRATE HIMSELF.  Because it’s his party, he talks down to everyone.  I’m sixty-five, and he’s closing in on seventy.  The difference in age is not that much, but I would always get the feeling he’s talking down to me.  Like I just don’t know anything.   How can I?  I’m a gringo. He has lived his life with a chip on his shoulder.  He has fought his way up from poverty in Mexico to live the good life just north of La Jolla.  For forty years, he he has worked for Pacific Gas and Electric.  He’s now an executuve with his own desk.  He’s a boss.  He's a jefe.  This is the guy who takes great pride in his wristwatch.  It’s BIG.  That’s so everyone can see it.   To be exact, it's a 43mm Invicta Dragon Lupah watch.  The kind you might see on  the writst of a bomber pilot. He liked to tap it. Like it was a musical instrument.  I don’t think he’s making any fashion statement here, but he’s telling the world that he got to where he is now by coming in  early and leaving late.  He wants to make sure everyone knows that.  It doesn’t matter that no  one  really knows what he does all day.  That’s beside the point.

I DON’T LIKE WATCHES.  I do not carry a cell phone where I can access it so easily.  For me, once you begin thinking more the time of day, you think less of what you should be doing.  Watches are a distraction.  The symbolism is lost on me.  In college I studied Kafka.  Kafka super-power was his writing.  He is now considered a literary genius, but during his lifetime he felt overwhelmed by his own misery and loneliness.  From what I read about his writing process, he could create a brilliant sentence in one minute and want to throw himself out a window in the next. Wearing a watch could throw him off the deep end, for he would constantly check the time to see how long he had been sitting there at his desk pen-in-hand without writing anything substantial. I found this poem about Kafka in a book written by another one of my literary heroes, Raymond Carver.  It’s called "Kafka’s Watch."   Kafka may have been the polar opposite of Angelote, but for me their relationships to their watches will always remain significant. 

I feel the pressure of the full eight or nine hours even in the last half hour of the day.  It’s like a train ride lasting night and day. In the end you’re totally crushed. /You no longer think about the straining of the engine, or about the hills ofl at country, but ascribe all that’s happening to your watch alone. / The watch which you continually hold in the palm of your hand. Then shake. And bring slowly to your ear in disbelief.

  But nevertheless,  I LOVE Angelote.   I take full responsibility for going off track here with my Kafka/Carver reference.  But I can’t stop myself.  In reading and re-reading The House of Broken Angels, I begin to see the sadness that Angelote carries deep inside his heart. At first, I couldn't help thinking that Angelote was all about Angelote, but after 300 pages I see that his love for his FAMILY is bigger than his love for HIMSELF.  This is the way he rolls. He embeds himself into the lives of his family and friends, whether they like it or not. He CARES, but in seventy years he hasn't really learned how to show it.  In his mind, getting everyone in one place for one last party is the best of all worlds.  Only a few people know this:  He has terminal cancer, and his doctors have told him he only has days to live.  He's bound to a wheel chair.  He is suffering so badly, his daughters  need to help him bathe and go to the bathroom.  This has to be a painful ending for such a Macho-Man.  But, he's not going to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing his pain.  That's why they call him Angelote.

In the night before he dies, Anglelote feels good about everything he has done at the party, and for that matter, feels immense pride for everything he has done in seventy years.  NO REGRETS.  This leads us to a tender and naked moment he spends with Perla, his beloved wife.  Of course, he is on so many medications that prevent him from performing in bed, but that is not really his objective either.  He wants to tell his wife on this night, Perla, how much he loves her.  This is a tear-jerker, because the book begins with a chapter that describes the day he met her. It’s a poetic moment. This follows maybe 24 hours of difficult conversation with his little brother, Angelito.  They reminisce about pain and sorrow of their ongoing separation.  Their stories are different, but truths are the same.  FAMILY is EVERYTHING.

I’m sorry I may have implied Angelote was a cabrón.  Too few of us will understand what it was like for Luis Urrea to grow up in poverty-stricken, violence-ridden Tijuana, or for that matter, what it was like for Angelote to provide for his family in  third-world Sinaloa.  This book is full of sorrow and frustration.   Grief, sadness, regrets.   In the end, yes he does miss his own mother’s funeral. He can’t stand on his own two legs. He’s confined to a wheelchair.   He’s not Big.  He looks Small. But that doesn’t mean he will not push forward.  In the dawn’s early light, Angelote sees his American Dream come to fruition.  His family gives him the strength to do so. Today, he believes, and on to tomorrow. Luis Urrea writes, ”This is the prize: to realize, at the end, that every minute was worth fighting for with every ounce of blood and fire.”

Jay's PROOFREADING PARTY Post - Community Profiles - Student Collaboration - Making English Class Fun Again!

Writing for enjoyment is something we should all be doing in the classroom; like, I don’t mean we should dumb anything down to make writing EAZY,  but we should  look for ways to make writing FUN.  This semester, I have this queazy feeling in my stomach that many of my students not only hate writing, but they fear it.  I can see them shiver when I introduce my assignments – like  a cold wind  suddenly blows through the room and across their faces.   As a teacher, I try not to let their reactions scare me.  If they see frustration on my face, things are only going to get worse.  I mean, we are all in this TOGETHER.  How can I convince them of that?

It came to me this morning, maybe at 4:00 or so. I was out on the streets for my daily walk in Mexicali (I can’t run anymore because of a damaged hip) and  two cyclists came up from behind me out of the COLD and DARKNESS .  Their lights were flickering and their mouths were moving.  I think they were laughing.   I suspect they were on their way to cross the border for an extensive workout before their days get started.   They were talking to each other as if  they were at a Starbucks or in a cantina.  They paid me NO attention.  In Mexicali, I often see groups of bike riders taking on extreme workouts in the early mornings.  I wish I could join them.  They look like they are having  FUN. 

Jaja. I bet they felt the COLD a lot less than I did.  I thought how could I integrate the animation I heard in their voices into my classroom workshops?  Upon arrival to class, I suspect many students gear up for a SLOG.  For them it’s set in stone - they think wrting has to be hard work; otherwise it’s won’t become good work. My students sit STIFF at their desks, like they are waiting for a flu shot. But, this week it’s going to be DIFFERENT.  I’ve Invited them to a Proofreading Party.  Food.  Drink. Cheery Conversation.  Instead of writing in isolation, my goal is to get them to share their work. ENGAGE.  I bring in colored pens an amusing article about Chinese food to read.  I teach them how to identify errors in the text through the  use universal proofreading symbols. This week we to take ONE STEP CLOSER to SUCCESS in their English 110 courses.  Peer Review offers them the opportunity to provide and receive constructive feedback on their Research Projects.  Below, I provide the following information to help them engage with their classmates:

• Peer Editing Comment prompts
• Highlighting Instructions
• Jay's Sample Peer Editing Sheet 

Jay's Tip: I know.  I know, many of them may have little experience sharing their work with their classmates, but in my experience, it's always the BEST PART of the class. In Peer Review, my students find themselves writing for an audience.  SOMEONE THEY KNOW IS ACTUALLY GOING TO READ THEIR WORK AND RESPOND.   

THIS IS WHAT I TELL THEM:  Listen to the feedback.  Make the changes.  Feel more confident for the next assignment.  When I know someone is going to read my writing, I feel more FOCUSED and more MOTIVATED to get it right.  I want to get better with each assignment!

The purpose of peer review is to help each other advance beyond the current draft toward the finished paper. Writing is never done in a vacuum, and peer reviews demonstrate the way in which all writing is social, part of a community dialogue, and subject to change based on the responses of the particular audience. There is a triangular relationship among writer, reader, and text, with each contributing to the balance of the whole. Peer reviews make this dynamic happen.  At the same time, through peer reviews, students  learn effective writing strategies to apply to future papers.

Jay's Tip  to Students:  LEARN A PROFESSIONAL SKILL!

• Learn to become an ACTIVE and PRODUCTIVE participant at your job or in your future workplace.
• Your ability to provide positive feedback will enhance your value to the company or organization you work for.
• Please use the writing prompts listed below that will help you focus on effective questions or commentary to help your classmates.

THIS IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO DO:

• In small groups,  let's first talk about our Community Profile Topics.  Introduce to your classmates WHAT you wrote about and WHY it was interesting to do so.  You should have something INTERESTING to share.  Like, what did you learn?  What will be important for your classmates to know?
• This is when you will pass out PRINTED copies of your work to your classmates - Each individual of the group  will read  the first THREE paragraphs of his/her essay - OUT LOUD.
• This way, your classmates can read your work while you do - They will be able to identify your most important points and best writing.

Advice for Peer Review Participants: Don’t focus exclusively on grammar and mechanics. Your goal is not to edit but rather to offer constructive and helpful feedback.  Use a positive, encouraging tone, explain why a change should be made, and offer suggestions for effective revisions!

For starters,  When you share your work, the FIRST THING to do  is review the FORMAT of the work:

1. MLA heading is in order: student name, teacher name, hour, date (written out)
2. Title is unique
3. Title is centered and is in 12 point times font
4. Paragraphs are indented
5. Paper is double spaced with no extra spaces between paragraphs
6. Parenthetical notations are included

       Below, I provide a  few Peer Editing Prompts to help student feedback:

1. Title: What do you think of the title? Is it interesting, informative, and indicative of the

writer’s stance?  Is there an appropriate subtitle.  Did the writer make effective use of the colon?

* What would you say this essay is about.  Do you have a clear sense of why the writer is writing about this topic?

*  Now, do you care?  What is written here that may appeal to you or others in the class?   Is there something that grabs your attention?

2. Quote Sandwich: Has the writer made a good choice with the selected quote. I mean, does it capture your attention?  Is it interesting?  Now, do you want to know more about the topic?   Does the writer explain the  significance of the quote?

• Did the writer provide a little background for the quote?
• Is there an effective SIGNAL PHRASE to introduce the quote?
• Please check for PUNCTUATION. Quotations marks.    Periods.
• VERY IMPORTANT - Is there an in-text citation that follows the quote?
• Does the writer explain the significance of the quote?

3. Jay's Delayed Thesis:

•  Does the writer present an effective Research Question?
•  Before the thesis is presented, does the writer share bits and pieces of what he/she has read.?
•  Don't Forget: An in-text citation needs to be inserted to inform the reader where this informatin came from.
•  Does the THESIS appear at the end of the second paragraph - Is it in BOLD FACE - Has it been underlined?
•  DOES IT MAKE SENSE?
•   In  your own words, can you explain the author’s thesis or main idea?

4. Summary of a Research Article or Research Idea:

• Does this paragraph begin with a topic sentence - Is the main idea stated clearly inthe first sentence of  the paragraph?
• Does the writer identify the title of the article and the name of the author?
• Do you see specific reference/explanation to the WHO, WHAT, WHY, HOW elements of the article.
• Do you see appropriate IN-TEXT CITATIONS that inform you where the information comes from. 

OK, Now you know what to look for - Please use your HIGHLIGHTERS to identify key elements of writing - Like this:

( Use your own choice of colors - Use what is available)

Last but not least, LEAVE A POSTIVE COMMENT -  What is the best part of this paper? Did you learn something new.  Did you appreciate the effort?  What can you say to support your classmate?

•  Below, I share a Sixties Research Paper for Janis Joplin
• I used Word Annotations because it was easier this way for me to present a model of Peer Review on Canvas
• I took a SNIP of the first paragraph - I tried to follow my own  directions the best I could.
• YOU should be able to leave  at least  FIVE comments for your classmate.

TAG!  - YOU ARE IT! - Use the following Peer Editing Suggestions to Complete your Peer Editing Assignment - to be submitted on Canvas.

For me, the worst part of a writing class is having to write what the teacher wants you to write, not what you want to write.  That’s so boring for the students.  That’s even worse for the teacher.  Everything looks and sounds the same.  This semster my students have chosen their own subjects and topics  for a Community Profile project. Their writing about Teen Pregnancy, Immigration Struggle, Broken Homes.  My goal  this week is to provide a positive, trusting atmosphere for my students to share their work and collaborate at their tables. They will discuss important issues that affect their lives.   LESS of ME.  MORE of THEM.  From what I’ve read so far, my students will have more insight into each other’s topics than I will.  This is the FUN part of writing: when students have the opportunity to explore their personal thoughts and feelings, and know someone will listen and care.

Jay's THE COMEDIANS Post - Graham Greene Novel - Haitians in Mexicali - Political Tyranny - Island Voodoo - Elizabeth Taylor - Furious Love

I pulled Graham Greene’s novel The Comedians off my shelf when Trump began maiking up stories about Haitian immigrants eating dogs in Springfield, Ohio.  The first we heard about it was at the Presidential debate with Kamala Harris at the end of September.  He said it on national television:  Haitians in Springfield were eating neighborhood pets!  An estimated 12,000 or 15,000 Hatians who had come to Springfield (LEGALLY) to work now suddenly felt the threat of violence in the air.  Many have already left.  They feel the hate of MAGA supporting residents.  This story had legs!  Trumps lies stirred racial tensions which continued right up and through the election.  

I write this now because a few years ago Mexicali faced the same type of Haitian influx.  2000 Hatian immigrants showed up seeking ayslum in the U.S. but were denied entrance at the border.  Many have taken a very circuituous route to get here.  A large percentage of them began their trek in South America after taking refuge in places like Brazil and Venezuela, and then worked their way north through Central America and Mexico. Now their future, especially after our most recent election,  is uncertain. The Mexicali authorities have created twelve new shelters for the immigrants, but the fear of deportation looms over their heads. Any promise of asylum in the U.S. looks slim to none. 

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The past few years I have been re-visiting novels that I had read in college.  I remember choosing  Graham Greene to read for his ventures into far-off places like Vietnam, West Africa, Haiti… and Mexico. Not only did this author provide me an escape from my dreary life, but he also opened my eyes to new cultures and world views. Each of his novels offers thoughtful but desperate characters that find themselves in the middle of violent political conflict.  These characters seem to have good hearts, but they eventually turn bad.  They succumb to their surrondings.  There is no escape. I’ll never assign The Comedians in any class I teach, but I continue to encourage my students to expore books beyond the reading lists they see in their class syllabi.

I'm calling this a DARK novel, one of many I've enjoyed reading from this author.  From his first pages Greene has a special skill to create a sense of IMPENDING DOOM. He wrote The Comedians upon a visit to Haiti in 1954.  This might have happened shortly after his The Quiet American and soon before his Our Man in Havana. Greene is known for searching nightmare republics to create a tone and setting for his novels.  Certainly all three of these novels check these boxes.  The Quiet American focuses upon covert American operations in Vietnam that instigated a bloody war that no one wanted. Our Man in Havana reveals the nasty international espionage that preceded the Cuban Revolution.  On the surface, Greene's characters seem good at heart, but everywhere they look they see corruption and violence.    In The Comedians, the novel's main character and narrator, a man named Brown, befriends a man named Smith and another man named Jones.  Nothing is as it seems.  Each one has a backstory that is difficult to believe.  This is why Greene calls his novel The Comedians.  In French, the language of Haiti, there is nothing funny about the word "comedian."  It translates to "actor."  These three friends each face cruel, life-threating circumstances on the island, but they have no one else to approach for help.  This is the era of Haiti's evil dictator/president Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier, and his death squads, the Tontons Mancoute.  

 I'm not writing a book report here - That would be BORING - but I continue to post my appreciation of Greene's ability to convert his personal and professional experience and observations into strange, complex fiction.  Before he became a successful writer, Greene was a successful spy for his native England's military intelligence service, MI6, during World War II. Later, he made his money traveling to the world's troubled hotspots to report upon political violence and chaos. Greene's narrator in The Comedians,  Brown ( we never know his first name) is a a struggling ex-patriot hotelier in Port-au Prince, Haiti.  "Struggling" may be an understatement.  His hotel, the Trianon, has no occupants.  The novel begins on his return to the island from New York, where he tried to find a purchaser for his property.  He comes back by boat, and this is where he meets Smith and Jones.   Smith, who is with his wife, seems to be an honest and confident man. His wife tells everyone they meet he was a candidate for presidient of the United States in he 1954 election.  Jones is more of a shady businessman.  Over drinks, he says he is ex-military and fought in Burma.  Brown really doesn't know what to believe from either of them.  In everything Smith and Jones say, there is a shadow of a doubt.  This is the world that Greene knows so well.

When Brown finally makes it back to his hotel, it's really DARK in Port-au-Prince.  This is because of a black-out mandate to keep people off the streets at night. Anyone found outside could become subject to the brutality of the Tontons. At the bottom of his hotel's empty swimming pool, he shines his flashlight on a dead body. It's his friend Haitian friend Doctor Philipot.  Instead of the terror of being taken in by the Tontons at night, Doctor Philipot first slashed his wrists and then his own throat.  By the time Brown got to him, he had bled out in a pile of leaves. This is only the start of a pattern of terror that dominates the novel.  In the middle of all this gloom, Brown carries on a torrid love affair with the wife of a South American ambassador.  Of course they can’t make love in his hotel, for there are spies everywhere. They resort to clandestine trysts in the back of her car parked in front of aremote  statue of Christopher Columbus.  Throughout the novel, Brown is asked why has he returned to Haiti when the future looks so bleak.  She’s it.  She is  basically the only thing that rings true for him.  Her name is Martha, and she is the daughter of a Nazi general that was hanged at Nuremberg.  She has a little son with the ambassador, which means she will never get a divorce. Their relationship is bitter, sullen, and hopeless, but none of that matters.  She is as lonely as he is.  For Brown, Martha is the only thing that provides any meaning to his life.   He’ll risk everything and anything to be close to her.

Not surprisingly, the novel The Comedians was soon transformed into the film The Comedians. Graham Greene wrote his own screenplay.  They shot the movie in Africa because they knew they would never be left alone if they set the movie on the island of Haiti.  Not as long as Papa Doc was in charge.  The surpising part comes when you consider who was chosen for the starring roles of Brown and Martha.  Somehow the producers of the film were able to land Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.  This is not too long after the two Hollywood legends had appeared in Cleopatra, and then again in Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf. In Cleopatra, the two stars met for the very first time in the studio commissary.  Hardcore alcoholic Richard Burton, dressed as Marc Anthony, was trying to raise a cup of coffee to his lips, but his hands were just not going to stop shaking enough for him to take a sip.   Queen Elizabeth Taylor, dressed as Cleopatra, saw her costar in distress and quickly approached to help him in his time of need.  Apparently there was something about his lips, the coffee, and the way they were dressed, that was going to transform the rest of their lives.  Soon they turned their backs on their loving  spouses and began a FURIOUS love affair that would make them the most famous couple in the world.  Maybe ever.

I’m not sure what will happen following the results of our most recent election to the Haitans in Springfield.  Soon I expect to see a few of them escorted across the border that separates Calexico and Mexicali. It’s a sad state of affairs that a "Nation of Immigrants" will no longer live up to this title. Considering the dearth of resources in Mexico,  I really don’t know how the first wave of Haitan immigrants is currently fairing in Mexicali.  On occasion, I will see Haitan immigrants working in construction, or selling knicknacks on the street,  but I don’t know how and where they live.  The other day, a young Haitian mother opened the door for me at an Oxxo.  She held her baby in one arm, and took  I took two 20-peso bills from my pocket and placed them in her free hand.   She said, “Merci.”   That’s how I knew she was Haitian. I said, “ ce n'était rien.”  It was nothing.  It isn’t too much to be nice to a person new in the country.  I mean, we all come from somewhere.

 

 

 

Jay's JANIS JOPLIN BEFORE and AFTER Post - Leonard Cohen - Kris Kristofferson - Patti Smith - OD at Age 27

A beatnik was a fifties person who was creative, poetic and/or intellectual. Janis Joplin was a beatnik before she was a hippie.  This was 1958, around the same time John Lennon and Paul McCartney were putting the "Beat" in the "Beatles."  Beatniks wore dark glasses and dark clothes. They smoked a lot of cigarettes and listened to weird music. Be-Bop. Jazz.  They developed their own language.   Beatniks didn't care about being popular; in fact, they often sought the opposite because they considered themselves rebels against conformity. Janis read a lot of books and sang a lot of songs by black artists. Her friends and family in Texas didn't like that.

I just read a very cool anecdote about Janis the other day in a book of anecdotes called One on One, written by Craig Brown.  Previously I had read a similar book by Mr. Brown about the Beatles in which he records first-person meetings of  famous (and no-so-famous) people with the Fab Four. 

In One on One, Janis is shown sneaking into a hotel elevator before the doors close.  This is like 4:00 a.m in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, a few days before her scheduled appearance at the historic Woodstock Festival in 1969.  Janis is but twenty-four-years-old and relatively unknown.  She has released her first album, and her career has yet to take off. Inside the elevator, there was just one man, all alone. He too, was a singer-songwriter who had released his first album.  His name was Leonard Cohen.  He may have been ten years older than Janis.

Thinking of something to break the ice,  Leonard asks Janis if she is looking for someone.

Yes,” she replies. “I’m looking for Kris Kristofferson.”

“Little lady,”says Cohen, maybe pushing out his chest a little, “You’re in luck, I am Kris Kristofferson.”

“I thought he was bigger,” says Janis.

“I used to be bigger,” replies Cohen, “but I’ve been sick.

I write this, for Kris Kristofferson just died a few weeks ago.  Like Leonard Cohen, he became one of Janis’s lovers.  He also wrote the legendary song “Me and Bobby McGee” that became her greatest hit. It’s a song about discovering the world on your own terms.  There is a line the song about independence that goes like this: “Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. Nothin', don't mean nothin' hon' if it ain't free.”  What brought Janis and Kris together was what drove them apart.   They both wanted to be free, but they would never feel that way in a long-term relationship. how she would be lonely on days and how she was apart from her family. She had a dream and her dream was to invest in the music, which she did, but somehow she wasn’t happily fulfilled. It’s true having fame and having the success you wished doesn’t always make you happy especially if your not putting some fun into it.

My students will appreciate this excerpt from Just Kids: Future punk star and memoirist Patti Smith had wandered into  the restaurant El Quijote next door to the Chelsea Hotel.   There is a tequila party going on. Jimi Hendrix is there in a bowler hat.  Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane occupy a table in the corner of the room.   Patti, who doesn’t drink or do drugs, must feel high as a kite just the same – I mean, she has just walked into her own hippie dream.  Janis Joplin is there, her hair covered in pink, magenta  and purple boa feathers.  She looks powerful and electric.  She’s flirting with a handsome man.  This is when Patti is pulled over by a friend towards their table.  She hears the words addressed to Janis:  “This is the poet Patti Smith.”    Whoa.  Take a deep breath, Patti…

It’s the beginning of beautiful friendship. On this very night, Patti stayed with Janis.  The handsome man Janis was flirting with didn’t.  This always happens to her, Janis sobbed. She’s famous for saying, “On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone."  Patti was asked to take Janis back to the Chelsea and keep an eye on her. Everyone there knew the trouble ( and hard drugs ) Janis could get into when she reached such a state.  That night Patti stayed with Janis in her Chelsea Hotel suite.  Could you imagine what it must felt like to see your idol/inspiration fall apart before your eyes?  Patti tries to lift her spirits in the best way she knew how. Before she leaves, she writes a song for Janis and shares it on her guitar: When the crowd goes home / And I turn in and realize I’m alone / I can’t believe / I had to sacrifice you.

 “That’s me man,” Janis said, wiping her tears.  “That’s my song..”  Patti ties it together. 

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Below I use Janis to model a submission for a Visual Analysis assignment.  I ask students to share an interesting image in their research papers. They 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 CATCHESTHEIR  EYE?

Here, Janis appears on the cover of a Latin music fan magazine, La Mosca en la Pared.  The title translates to “The Fly on the Wall.”  The title implies that this magazine will give the reader a candid look at the subject of each article.  The phrase “Fly on the Wall,” is used to show a secret side to someone or something.  When someone says, “I wish I could be a ‘fly on the wall,’” he/she wishes to see what is really happening behind the scenes.

Unlike most of the images we see of Janis, she is not smiling or singing in this poster.  She looks glum.  Here eyes are dark. Her lips are turned down.   Her look doesn’t match the free-wheeling, crazy-ass rock-star of her legend.  In the bottom the poster, right below her name, a sub-title reads, “La Pequena Niña Triste.”  In this picture, Janis looks more like a young woman waiting in line at a community college to register for her classes.

The poster shows two sides to Janis.  First there is the Queen of Psychedlic Soul.  I mean just look at her hair.  It’s wild.  It’s bright.  She looks like a pink fire. She’s wearing her trademark jewelry. A collection of beaded necklaces hang from her neck. But, there is also the Janis we rarely see.  She looks insecure. Her face doesn’t express the same type of confidence we see on stage. She has her hand on her hip like she doesn’t know what to say or do.  The first thing I see when I look at this picture is the Janis we all want to see. She’s the girl with a dream. The one that ran away from home in Port Arthur, Texas to become a rock star legend. After studying the picture, I finally noticed the magazine cover featured two important names. The appeared to the right of Janis.  Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday were both blues artists that became great influences on Janis’s music and life.  Both Bessie and Billie died much too early in tragic accidents.  Janis would soon join them.  She died of a heroin overdose at age 27.

Jay's HAIR YEAH! Post - The Beatles Appearance on Ed Sullivan - They Changed the World! - Summary of Research Article Below

  In The Dead Straight Guide to the Beatles, author Chris Ingham explains how the Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in  in February 1964  changed 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. This was New York City.  Many call this place "the media capital"  of the  world.  This is where you can find some of the most important newspapers, largest publishing houses, biggest record companies, and most prolific television studios in the
world. The Beatles gave viewers 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.

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This week I'm doing TWO THINGS:  I'm teaching my students how to summarize research articles, and I'm reading the behind-the-scenes look at the Beatles' rise to fame in a book called 150 Glimpses of the Beatles by Craig Brown. Of course, there are more than  a few glimpses of the Ed Sullivan show.  From the moment Ed Sullivan announced the Beatles to a live studio audience, it was PANDAMONIUM.  The screams of the audience members nearly drowned out the music.  A writer on the scene from the New York Herald-Tribune compared the sound to the "terrible shriek the BMT Astoria train makes as it turns east near 59th Street and Seventh Avenue." [ Four years later, the Beatles called it QUITS on touring - They could no longer hear themselves sing above the roar of their own crowds.] In this book, many of my  favorite musicians share where they were and how they felt seeing the Beatles for the first time. Seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan changed their worlds. Crissie Hynde, aged twelve, who would become lead singer of the Pretenders, said "It was like the sex, but without the sex."  Tom Petty remembers how within weeks of the Ed Sullivan Show,  a wave of new garage bands, hundreds, spread across his native city, Gainsville, Florida.  My favorite quote from the book, comes from a rock star I grew up listening to in San Francisco, Greg Kihn. He says on the Friday before Ed Sullivan, he left school with his hair greased back like Dion, but on Monday, he and everybody else who saw the show, arrived at school with their hair ungreased and brushed forward: "That's how quickly it happened." The Beatles Revolution.

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In my next classroom workshop, I will attempt to teach my students how to create a SUMMARY of their selected RESEARCH ARTICLE.  Jay's Note:  There is no ONE WAY to write a summary. Below I provide them  a SUGGESTED model for arranging their ideas.  I chose to summarize a Beatles article I came across an anthology of my shelves here in Mexicali.  I summarize the night the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show..

First , I will encourage my students to understand the use of SUMMARY:

*  Second - Let's Read the Carefully :

            1. They will need  to decide amongst themelves, What is most IMPORTANT to their RESEARCH ARTICLE?

                 * Answer the FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

* Third - Let's use the following table to arrange the most significant Ideas in our research articles:

* In the table  below, answer 5 Ws and 1 H.  Each student should be responsible for contributing 50 to 100 word, insightful response in the space of each box. 

WHO?  Who or what is the main focus of this scene/article?	When the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in  in February 1964  they changed world forever.
WHAT?  What is the scene/article about?  What is the "Who" doing?	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.
WHEN? What is the timeframe for the action taking place.	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.
WHERE?  Where is the location mentioned.  What details are important to the setting?	This was New York City.  Many call this place "the media capital"  of the  world.  This is where you can find some of the most important newspapers, largest publishing houses, biggest record companies, and most prolific television studios in the world.
WHY?  Why is "this" happening.  Why is "this" important to the characters?  To the novel?	The Beatles gave viewers 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.
HOW?  How did "this" happen.  (Think Cause and Effect? ) How will "this" affect the story?

Fourth - Putting It All Together.

Jay's Sample Summary - I tried to follow my directions as closely as I could - I combined 5 important points from my table - It works. 

* Please note:  I chose to begin my summary by identifying where I found the information.

In The Dead Straight Guide to the Beatles, author Chris Ingham explains how the Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in  in February 1964  changed 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. This was New York City.  Many call this place "the media capital"  of the  world.  This is where you can find some of the most important newspapers, largest publishing houses, biggest record companies, and most prolific television studios in the world. The Beatles gave viewers 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.

I hope this helps!

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Jay's GREEN PANTS Post - Sandra Cisneros - "Geraldo No Last Name" - In-Class Annotation Workshop

Here is the sentence that resonates with me this semester: “Geraldo in his shiny shirt and green pants.”

I love this story by Sandra Cisneros because she says so much with so little.  What do we know about the young boy who died?  What do the characters know?  Not much except the color of Geraldo’s pants.

But, I mean what does Sandra have to tell us?  All of us already know Geraldo or people like him who comes to this country to make a better life.  They work long hours and live in shabby apartments.  They get up early and come home late.  They have little free time for us to get to know them.  But every so often, they are able to escape from their rat race, and we might see them at a party or a dance.

They are human lest we forget.  “Just another wetback,” Sandra writes.  We know their work, but we ignore their hopes and dreams.

That’s why I like the image of the green pants in the first paragraph. The green color represents hope, man.  Despite the hardships and challenges our immigrants face, they hold on to their dreams

The green pants says to me “green light.”  Geraldo, just keep going.

I think that’s what makes the story so sad.  Certainly Esperanza, the narrator of House on Mango Street, understands the pants.  Her name translated into English means “hope.” Marin, the last person to see him alive, must understand.  She spent hours and hours in the hospital waiting for someone she didn’t even know.

The green lets us see the invisible.

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In today's class, I introduced the process of creating effective annotations:

We are writing RESEARCH PAPERS.  I used Sandra C's "Geraldo No Last Name" like a PRACTICE BOARD. I asked students to work in groups of THREE. Each group was required to create a table of SIX annotations.    They could either create thier  annotations on STICKIES.  Or they could collaborate on a TABLE in WORD.  Like this:

GREEN PANTS AND SATURDAY SHIRT:  Geraldo seems like a guy who works all week.  Green might mean "Go."  Like, for a few hours on the weekend he finally  feels free.  I remember the "Green Light" from the Great Gatsby. It represented the American Dream.	Just Another Brazer:  This word sounds YIDDISH to me.  Something I might hear from my grandmother.  But, my students may have heard the word from their grandmothers.  Their MEXICAN grandmothers.  It sounds like BRACERO.  Many of my students come from hard-working farmworking families	They never saw the kitchenettes. They never knew about the two-room flats and sleeping rooms he rented…  Who is “THEY?”   THEY are US!  We see a lot of Geraldos walking the streets at 3:00 in the morning, but we don’t look. We don’t know anything about them.   We don’t care.  It’s like they are INVISIBLE. The workers at the Emergency Room don’t care either.
THEY MET AT A DANCE: I know Marin from reading Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street.   She's a beautiful girl.   She probably has many boyfriends, but this guy for some reason touches  her heart. Like Geraldo, Marin is from an immigrant family. She probably knows more about him than is provided in the story.

When we completed our GROUP WORK, I showed the class how to create their annotations online directly into a word document.

This skill is going to come in HANDY when we begin annotating FOR REALS with our own research articles.  Below I practiced with "Geraldo No Last Name" on the big screen in front of class. I tried to follow my own instructions - DO THIS - NOT THIS - the best I could.

For the next class, I've asked my students to bring THREE research articles for their COMMUNITY PROFILE project.

In the classroom, I will have laptops at their disposal.  If they feel OLD-SCHOOL - like me - they can create their annotations by hand. Below I provide a few models from past projects.

 I hope this works.  For me, I feel I DON'T LEARN ANYTHING unless I WRITE DOWN WHAT I READ.  I offer my students the skill to annotate to use as their own SECRET WEAPON for their own learning.  Today, my students looked ENGAGED!

 

 

Jay's ACCORDION CRIMES Post - Annie Proulx - La Sonora Dinamita - The American Dream

  I suppose you can call this novel an "Accordion Memoir."  Annie Proulx arranged her book into a series of immigrant stories.  The common denominator is a green accordion created by a poor campesino in Italy, maybe 130 years ago.  I don’t know much about accordions, but this one is a beautiful piece of work.   I will emphasize the word “Dreamer” here:  this accordian is created by an Italian artesan dreamer who plans to take his accordian to America and sell it.  In his mind, he will make more like this one to sell – and build a better future for his family.  The butttons of this  accordion are made of polished bone. Small oval mirrors in the surface of the instrument reflect rivulets of light. This Italiano carved a design of peacocks and olive leaves into the grill with a jeweler’s saw.   The accordion maker knows what he’s doing.  His instrument sounds better than it looks. Over time he has become an expert in reeds, bellows, and valves.  Annie P. describes the music that pours out of it this way:  “hoarse and crying, reminding listeners of the brutalities of love. Of various hungers. The notes fell, viting and sharp; it seemed the tooth that bit was hollowed with pain.” This guy is going to leave his wife behind and journey to “La Merica” to make it big.  He'll send for his wife when he has the money.  The world is a staircase, he says. In America,  he will take his family upwards.

Wow!  I dig this book.  Each and every one of the characters in this book come to America with similar dreams and ambitions, but they learn the life here is not always going to be a reasonable affair. The accordion maker was Italian.  In the chapters to follow, we will are introduced to Mexicans, Poles, Africans, Irish-Scots, Franco-Canadians.  They just keep on coming.  These immigrants come to America seeking a better life.   Most of my students come from immigrant families.  They write about the struggles and complications for their families to make it in this country. Fortunately, they write with Hope and Vision.  Not so much, the characters in this book.  They all run into bleakness and despair.  Racism.  Corruption. HATE.  Most if not all meet painful ends. I cant see myself reading this novel in any of my classes. It's relelntlessly  Dark and Vilolent.  It makes me think why would anyone still want to come to this country.  The answer, I believe is that they have romantic souls.   They wake up in the middle of the night with visions of a new life. Some of them flee their native countries to escape dire poverty and persecution. But others are driven by the idea to work hard and make something of themselves. 

Early in the novel, the author quotes another poor Italian immigrant: “I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. When I got here, found out three things: First, the streets weren't paved with gold; second, they weren't paved at all: and third, I was expected to pave them.”  I’m not going to tell you what becomes of the accordian maker, but over time, the accordion changes hands, cultures, countries, and crimes.

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But, I’m not writing a book report here; I mean that would be too hard.  The people and families that populate this novel come from different places under different circumstances.  The only constant is the little green accordion that shows up in every chapter. Instead of giving you a chapter-by-chapter, play-by-play account of the action – THAT WOULD BE BORING ON MY PART – Here, I choose to focus on a new cumbia group I discovered through Accordion Crimes.  The name of the band is Sonora Dinamita. They hail from Colombia, but they now make their home in Mexico. I have to assume that Sonora Dinamita is BIG on the use of accordions in their act.  I came across the mention of Sonora Dinamita in a chapter called  “Spider, Bite Me.”  It’s the sad story of a musical family that lives near the Texas/Mexico border during the1930s and 40s. Abelardo Relampago Salazar, he’s the old-school, macho Mexican father, whose life changed when he bought a little  green accordion  that he saw for sale in a barbershop window.  He becomes obsessed with the rhythms and sounds he learns to make and soon begins  playing a combination of jazz rumbas and Mexican polkas  at high-school and church dances; bars and cantinas; birthday parties and weddings;  for anyone who would pay a few dollars. He’s married to Adina who grows tired being treated like a second fiddle to a new accordion.  She’s sad and lonely for her life in Texas: “I have not had a night’s sleep since we came her,” she tells her baby [Felida]. “I have the luck of a dancing dog.”

I’m not so sure Abelardo is any more important or interesting than any of the other characters in the novel, but he’s the guy I will want to share with my students in some type of classroom disussion.  He’s Mexican Old-School.  My  students will be well familiar of this type from what we have read in class.  He encourages his sons to join him on the road with their accordions.  Together they form a banda.  The women are left behind left at home.   I’m not sure that Adina cares to go, but his daughter shares the same passion for music as her father.  Yet Abelardo scoffs at her: “A woman cannot play the accordion.  It is a man’s instrument.  A woman cannot get other musicians to play with her, nobody will hire you, your voice is not strong enough.  Your character is bad, you are disobedient, you have no future in the musical field. This goes without saying:  Felida grows up feeling NEGLECTED and INVISIBLE.  Her story make me forget all about the posionous spider that bites and kills her dad in his drunken sleep.   WHAT ABOUT HER STORY?

Sonora Dinamita is known for their sensual cumbias.  Their sound and rhythms may have begun with black slaves, imported to Colombia in the 1800s, who were forced to drag their feet when they walked, for their legs were CHAINED.  This movement became a shuffle.  According to what I have read, this shuffle inspired feelings of liberation.  The slaves  began to sing while they walked. This was the beginnings of the Cumbia we know today.  Here is the connection I try to make:  In Accordion Crimes, Abelardo and his sons play their  for a small audience in an empty theatre in Minneapolis. They were struggling to build their audience. This is 1955 or so. Like all the characters in this book, Abelardo must feel his dream fading and his life sliding down a slippery slope. He and his sons have no money, nowhere to spend the night.  The only thing they have, it seems, is a "thousand mile drive against blinding truck lights back to Texas, burning eyes, yawning and stopping for coffee."  And all for what?  This is what has become of their American Dream. Annie P, however, has created a pattern of time shifts in her book to give us a glimpse of the future. " In brackets, she shares what happens forty years later in the same house with a packed audience.  Sonora Dinamita takes the stage with their accordions, and their fans go WILD.   Much of the music Abelardo played on his little green accordion,was once means of liberation for slaves and with time it has become a means of freedom for everybody.  You probably won't realize it until you finish all the book, but Annie P  emphasis appears to be the role that immigrants played in making America the vital place it is today.

Most of my students in class have their roots in Mexico.  My  grandparents came to the U.S to escape Jewish persecution in Eastern Europe.  I mean, we are all immigrants. Everybody is an immigrant from somewhere, yet we have a presidential candidate that calls Mexican immigrants RAPISTS and CRIMINALS.  He boasts of his plan to deport thousands of young Mexicans who came to this country with their parents.  Reading novels like Accordion Crimes  forces us to examine our own thoughts and opinons on race and illegal immigration.  Trump’s hatred for people of color is not unique.  There is plenty of people like him that move in and out of our lives.  They say one thing, but they feel another.  They are dangerous. They are frightening.  THEY VOTE. 

Some day, I will share a passage from Accordion Crimes with my classes. This week we are reading Sandra Cisnosa.  Next week, it will be another prominent Latino writer, Alex Espinoza. By the time we complete the semester, we will have read a novel, Paradise Travel,  about two teenage lovers who journey to New York City to make a better life for themselves. From these readings, I’m happy to see many of my students research their own family immigration experience.  I feel their writing  valuable.  In their research,  they touch upon important historical an political issues regarding Imperial Valley.  In their family interviews, they drew out raw emotion. Their writing documents  the impact of social movements in their lives.  Many of them have become the first college students in their family.  In their community profiles, they give their family members a voice where previously there wasn't.

 

Jay's SANDRA CISNEROS Post - "Only Daughter" - Strong Women Fall Kick-Off

 In the first or second week of each semester, I share Sandra Cisneros’s “Only Daughter,” with my composition classes.  My students often connect with Sandra’s background.  She beat the obstacles of racism, sexism, and poverty in her world to become both an influential writer and  activist.   

Sandra’s childhood experience of being “the only daughter” proved to be a great training ground for a writing career.  In fact, it was her feelings of isolation and abandonment from her fathers and brothers that pushed her towards reading and writing. When she grew older, her skill for transferring her plight to the page enabled her to enter UC Berkeley and later become a powerful voice in American literature.  Her  House on Mango Street, for example, reflects many of the same childhood frustrations she describes in her essay.

One story after another boasts the voice of a poor young girl struggling to make sense of her loneliness.  When she writes in “Only Daughter” that she values her mistreatment from being an only daughter, I believe her. She learned how to convert her pain and confusion into beautiful, meaningful stories. In my opinion, her anger is her juice.

I bring “Only Daughter” into the classroom to provide a nice change from what my students are used to in their
English courses.  I want to give them material they can relate to.   I mean diversity speaks, but you don’t have to be a Mexican or a woman to enjoy Sandra’s stories.   At the end this narrative when Sandra returns  home to her family home in Chicago, something special happens between father and daughter, and everyone recognizes  and responds to the dynamic.   Before the father dies, he is able to communicate his deep sense of pride for what the daughter has become.  We break it down in  matters of culture or tradition,  but it’s not black or white or brown.  It’s all about the struggle to be loved.  It’s solid gold.

Who needs writing prompts when you read something like that?