jay's museum of college writing

Eve Babitz - I Used to Be Charming

This week I make the finishing touches on my Fall 2020 online courses.  Because I won’t be seeing my students face-to-face anytime soon, I try to connect with them through my writing.  In many of my classes we are writing about sixties decade.  My students are going to dig it.  I’ve put together some exciting  lessons about Protest and Change.  My summer class just  turned in essays about The Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter.  Women’s Liberation and The Me Too Movement. The Stonewall Riots. The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe.  To read their writing, you can click here to see our classroom website “Jay’s RIGHT ON for CHANGE NOW.”  Here is the link: https://sites.google.com/site/jayswriteonforchangenowsite/

It’s the results of a research project.  I hope I can push my students from afar to get into their reading.  For me to get started, I read Eve Babitz’s collection of essays -  I Use to Be Charming.  Below I write about Eve in my most recent classroom blog post.  She was a courageous spirit of the sixties.  We need more people like her today.

Jay’s Tip:  For easier reading on my Facebook post, you can “click”  on each panel to enlarge the type.

Hippie - by Paulo Coelho

This summer my students and I are writing in isolation, but I’ve developed a project to bring us closer together.  My reading of Paulo Coehlo’s recent novel Hippie has inspired me to assign my classes a Sixties Research Paper.  At home, my students must be watching the same images I am seeing on television:  Nation-wide protests, racial tensions,  violence in the streets.  So, in the spirit of the sixties,  I have encouraged my students to explore ideas of social justice, protest, and change.  The Civil Rights Movement.  The Women’s Movement.  Gay Rights.  Cesar Chavez and the UFW.  Already on our class discussion boards, we are sharing our views about Race, Gender, Power and Access. 

This summer we are on a journey, and we are all in it together.

Below I share my classroom blog post for Hippie.

J.C. Oates and N.J. Baker

During the Coronavirus Shutdown, I don’t see my students, but we exchange emails and assignments  daily through our Canvas technology.  They don’t know it yet, but I’m reserving the last two weeks of the semester for my “Project Marilyn.”   We’ll be working online in groups.  I’ve created collaborative research assignments for seven different phases and/or elements of Marilyn Monroe’s life.   An investigation into her real-life Death Scene will be one, but I suspect many of the students will enjoy discussing her stint in the Actor’s Studio. We’ve talked about the art of Method Acting in class.  Others will want to analyze her famous scene in The Seven Year Itch. What went into it’s production?  What did it mean for her career? Her marriage?  I just read Joyce Carol Oates’ novel Blonde.  In my post for my classroom blog – see below – I wrote about Marilyn’s intense commitment to her character in Bus Stop.

Project Marilyn is going to be both complicated and weird when we begin to exchange ideas from our self-isolation.   This semester we’ve discussed much about the woman behind the image.  I hope we all can learn from her struggles and feel her pain.  Maybe our writing will  be  something that can pull us closer together.

 

 

Misfit - Marilyn - en El Caballito

Famous poet Bob Dylan once said, “Life isn’t about finding yourself…. It’s about creating yourself. “ Marilyn Monroe  would probably agree.  She once said this: "A wise girl knows her limits;  A smart girl knows that she has none."

Today, the rain is coming down hard in Mexicali.  I’m inside preparing my course work for the next semester.  I’ve decided to read a lot of Marilyn Monroe in my classes.  I’ve found her story captures the imagination of my students like no other.  Today I write about the Adam Braver novel about her life,  Misfit, which I probably won’t bring to class, and the William Inge play, Bus Stop, which I will.  Below is a sneak peek of how the post looks in my classroom blog:

Blonde Poetry - Charles Bukowski

Next semester in English 110 we read an anthology of fiction and poetry titled Mondo Marilyn. It’s Mondo – this means the collection will be striking, and/or remarkable.  If it is about Marilyn,  I think my students will agree.  We’ll read about both Marilyn Monroe’s  life and her death, with notable authors like J.G. Ballard, Sharon Olds, and John Rechy.   We’ll write about her sexuality, beauty and tragedy.  An ode to Marilyn from Charles Bukowski appears on the very first page.  We’ll dig below the surface of his poetry and prose.  It’s my hope Marilyn, Buk, and the other writers included in this collection will inspire to elevate our own writing.   Below I get the ball rolling:

Sharon Olds - The Death of Marilyn Monroe

In several of my English courses next semester, my students will explore both the LIFE and the DEATH of Marilyn Monroe. I kind of stumbled onto the significance of Marilyn through a classroom discussion. I find her story captivates the interest/imagination of my students like no other. Our classroom text will be an anthology of fiction and poetry inspired by her beauty, dreams, and tragedy. I’m already preparing lessons for works from Charles Bukowski, Sharon Olds, J.G. Ballard, et al.

 

Below, I share a sample post from my classroom blog. Marilyn may have been an early victim to opioid abuse. Her doctors prescribed her anything she wanted. On August 5, 1962, she was found facedown on her bed- dead, naked and alone – in her Brentwood home. Did she die of an overdose? Or, was it murder? My students will research her life from the beginning to the end.

 

Lucy, Desi, The Mambo Kings, and Girl, Interrupted

This week, I concluded my summer of Girl, Interrupted by sharing my favorite scene in the memoir – author Suzanna’s Kaysen’s visit to the Frick Museum to see the Vermeer’s painting Girl, Interrupted at Her Music. (See below.) I think it clicked with my students. In groups, they in turn presented and discussed their favorite scenes. Their skits had titles like “Wrist Banger,” “The Taxi Ride,” “Foil-Wrapped Chicken; Staring at the Carcasses.” Our best writing we published in our new classroom website, Five-Paragraph Essay, Interrupted. You can find us here: https://sites.google.com/si…/girlinterruptedgoestothemovies/

I’m happy where we ended up. We developed mental illness research papers. We all agree that Susanna’s journey helped us connect the personal with the political and social movements that were and still are significant to this country. Students expressed new-found understanding and empathy in their blog posts for the struggle of others. We are all in this together. Below, I share my Girl, Interrupted writing with my most recent blog post.

"Yesterday" from Haruki Murakami

Tomorrow marks the first day of summer session. I plan to mix a little bit of music with a lot of writing. In my preparation this week, I searched for a few short stories and/or essays that bring a certain beat or rhythm to the classroom, if you know what I’m talking about. Haruki Murakami finds inspiration to write from listening to American Rock ‘n’ Roll and Classic Jazz. He says, “Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep reading your work.” I just read one of his short stories, “Yesterday.” It’s based on The Beatles song. I don’t know if it will be a hit with my students, but I enjoyed the weirdness of the story. Starting tomorrow, I hope to have my students search their musical backgrounds for their own writing inspiration. Below is my first blog post of the semester.

Connie and Bonnie - Character Analyses - They Crossed the Line of No Return

This week in my English classes, I encourage my students to look deep into the characters of our reading.  We’re discussing inner conflicts and external conflicts. Why or how do these characters make the choices?  What motivates them to do what they do?   I have introduced Joyce Carol Oates’s true-to-life, psycho-killer short story ”Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”  My students don’t know Joyce, but they know Ted Bundy from Netflix. Many parts of Joyce’s antagonist here can be seen in Ted.  

 Below, I model a character analysis for Connie, the protagonist in “Where Are You Going.”  She’s got an attitude gets her into trouble.  She crosses a line for where there is no going back…

 You just might say the same thing for Bonnie in the movie Bonnie and Clyde.

(For easy reading, please CLICK on panels to enhance screen size).

Sam Shepard, The Coyote, and Joni Mitchell

This week we are completing our class  blogs.  I’ve asked my students to organize their best reading, writing, and music for publication.   I’ll teach them how to create reading lists so they can keep tabs on their classmates over the X-mas break.   I encourage them do something artful with their blogs, but I’ve seen their writing.  Many of their posts will be deeply personal accounts of the lives they lead.   The music is the rhythm of our writing.  The flow of our words convey who we are.  

Below, I share my most recent blog post for my reading of a Sam Shepard biography.  Sam became famous in the early sixties for mixing his prose with jazz rhythms.  His writing was experimental and prolific.  You never knew what was going to come out.  “It’s like drumming,” he once said. “If you miss a beat, you create another.”  We’ll miss you, Sam…

To see Joni's appearance in the Last Waltz, please CLICK on the video below: