No Name Woman

What I took most from Kingston's, "No Name Woman" was the mother's theatrical wisdom that she passed to her daughter. It was almost like code, "don't embarrass the family" made me chuckle. This story in a sense is a search for personal identity. In real life we do the same thing. 

I can definitely relate in a way because my grandmother use to do the same thing. She would use story's with a bad ending in order to "smarten me up" or keep me from doing something. And, am also very familiar with the ever so popular, "do not embarrass me" or "us" katie. So although, this story had a very serious connotation that surrounded it, I have to chuckle thinking back to this story using a different light.

Hopefully, this was not to inappropriate of a comparison. I wouldn't want to EMBARRASS MYSELF.

Suburbia

What thoughts did Ginsberg have that night? How about the, "neon fruit supermarket" and the "families shopping at night"! "A supermarket in California" may not be my favorite Ginsberg piece now that I have partaken in a presentation of the Supermarket and Suburbia. Fortunately for everyone reading this, you get to hear my real, personal opinion.

Personally, I think this all awful. We are completely destroying everything around us, one tree at a time. For example, there are 3 coffee shops, two of them both being Starbucks in the same 3 block radius. Is this really necessary. Do we really need 40 hairsalons, 15 banks and a million restraunts all on Mayfield road? NO. Wake up people, we are all conformists, when is someone going to do something about it?

Party

Ellison's, "A Party Down at the Square" is a gut-retching short story about a young man's experience watching an African American man get tortured and killed. The story was written in the modernist era, but sadly this narrow-minded mentality still exists today. 

For some reason, many of us are infatuated and intrigued by watching other people suffer. Often, when we feel we just can't "watch" or "look" anymore, or turn way, we don't. Because something inside of us likes to see other people suffer. The biggest examples I can use is our infatuation with the media's portrayal of the war, and even bigger, our infatuation with reality television. We don't watch reality television to watch every one get along, we watch it to see everyone degrade and tear each other apart. That is really what it is all about. Gotta love America folks!

Waiting .....

Clifford Odets, "Waiting For Lefty" is a dialogue of a group of people gathering to strike, and in this case they are cabdrivers in New York. They all seem to be "waiting" for Lefty, who is the strike leader. Unfortunately, Lefty ends up being a victim of the upheaval and is killed. More importantly, the underlying theme is their promotion of the communist revolution, during the depression.

Now, does it not seem like every-time we are having a major problem socially or economically, the government becomes ridiculously paranoid. Look at today, we are so paranoid that we identify every middle-eastern person as a terrorist. We have all of these new found "rules" and "regulations" for our "protection". Now, the government is using these issues to  violate our own rights and privatization, i.e. the 'Patriot Act". Yea, real patriotic. 

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

I find it amusing that I read Porter's short story the very next week after my last blog response. Granny Weatherall reminds me of many of the other older people that I know. Disgruntled and seemingly waiting to die. Everything seems to be happening more in her head than in real life. Hope seems to be her biggest let down for she has been left at the alter by her husband. It seems that she fears similarly that she has been "left at the altar" by God. Perhaps, maybe she has come to the conclusion that there is no god. Ah.. "there's nothing more cruel than this".        

Thank YOU, Langston

In response to Langston Hughes' poem, "Goodbye Christ", all I can say is thank you someone said it. Let me see, let me watch my words here. I believe in faith, and faith is amazing and spiritual and gives us all "morals". But, do not give me a book upon my ability to read words and force me to worship and open my heart to something that has been so commercialized, over written, and "swelled up" as Hughes put it. What have I seen and witnessed but the "story of Christ" and its inflammation of many sorts. This is my testimony. Let me believe what I want, let me ask the questions I please and do not silence me. Give me "free will". Count me in on Hughes' final words, "And nobody's gonna sell Me, to a king, a general, or a millionaire". I'll continue to make my mother cry and believe what I want.

 

Cleveland Frost

So, I was sitting in my drafty apartment in downtown Cleveland, and it was dumping snow Wednesday night. I picked up my book and started reading until I came to Frost's poem "Desert Places". The very first line I read included, "Snow falling and night falling fast, oh fast", and I could not help to think what similarities Mr. Frost and I both saw. He also talked about feeling absent-minded, lonely and empty. He made it clear that the snow symbolized not only whiteness, but blankness and nothing to express, which makes comparisons to people, and I felt it myself. He ended with, "To scare myself with my own desert places". Here he has make symbolic comparisons between nature (snow) and people, or even himself. And- I could not help but to make comparisons with the miserable falling snow, the miserable city of Cleveland and how truly miserable it makes me. Thank you Robert Frost and thank you Cleveland.