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Reading: Marlon James says in the Acknowledgments of A Brief History of Seven Killings that at some point while writing, he didn't know who's story it was: scenes out of place, half and fully-formed characters -- "no spine" as he called it. Then a friend asked him, "What if it's not one person's story?" And then the novel came info focus. I'm a sliver into this nearly 700-page tome and enjoying the weigh of each page. On my weekly quest to unbreak my brain, the focus a novel of this length and form will demand is much welcomed.
Teaching: #BreakBeatLit is off into Sophia Quintero's Show and Prove. The characters and actions in the novel map rigidly to a 1983 BX hip-hop world -- crews, lyrics, records, places. In fact, it might be a bit heavy handed in this regard. But this quality has given the class the chance to think about the affordances of such a hip-hop world and how the characters navigate these affordancdes with themselves and one another. This is a worthwhile question since it's one we can also ask ourselves today.
Writing: Remember in The Matrix when Neo finally sees its green code running throughout the world? He's seen the scaffolding -- the form -- that makes up his reality. Well, that's how I am with this forms piece: I can't unsee it because these sociopolitical patterns constitute so much of our lives and, for the purpose of this article I'm writing, teacher education programs. Given the provocative application of the idea in literary studies, the piece is also causing me to ask quite directly, what if we read schools like we read novels? There's more on that to come.
Listening How come nobody told me about Sault? Or maybe you're just finding out, too. Either way, it's Sault all week long.
Listening bonus: Jean Grey's version of "New York Shit" was so much better than Busta Rhymes'. If you're following along, though, you're not surprised. But it's so much better that I had forgotten he even did the song until I came up on this nice piece in the always reliable SO! blog.