Global Literatures in English

EDIT: Apologies once more on Option #4.  I misremembered the way Oscar’s letter closes the novel–I thought much more of it was in his own voice.  If you’re doing Option #4, focus on either Lola or Yunior, not Oscar. Comment here for our third reading from Oscar Wao.  This is the section in which you’ll […]

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Let’s try something different for today.  In your comment, list a) a word/phrase/reference/etc. that you didn’t know before reading the book, then look it up and inform everyone else as to what it is, and/or b) a word/phrase/reference/etc. that you did know before reading, but suspect your classmates might not,  and then fill us in. […]

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Comment here for the first two chapters of Oscar Wao.  Consider this for today–like many things we have read this semester (Things Fall Apart, Beloved, “A Good Man…”, Angels in America, etc.), Oscar Wao begins with an epigraph quote.  But unlike those works, which quote sacred texts or high-brow poetry to give a sense of […]

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Comment here for Perestroika.  Some people already started doing this for last time, but let me ask it as a formal prompt this time: since Angels in America is in many ways structured via different couplings of characters, what pair of characters do you think have the most interesting relationship?

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Comment here for the first part of Angels in America.  We began discussing the functions of myth in culture last time, and in particular how its place has changed in the era of mass culture.  For our opening comments, I suppose, it might be interesting to pick any of the characters in whom you’re particularly […]

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Comment here for our two stories and three poems for today.  Our group will probably familiarize us with some of the names and personalities treated in those works, so I suppose we’ll leave that to them.  That said, you can find a lot of the references on Youtube (like Kate Smith on WCBS).  Our question […]

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Comment here for our last day on Beloved.  We’ll be brief today–what do you make of its conclusion?

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Comment here for Beloved, Part II.  The challenges to reading probably grow to their greatest intensity during this part.  I’ll probably just open this up to whatever comments and/or questions people want to raise in making sense of this section, especially during the interior monologue/stream-of-consciousness chapters. Some other non-novelist African-American writers of this period: Maya […]

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Comment here to finish off Part I of Beloved.  I had hoped we could start on Beloved today, so that I could at least clear up some problems people were having with the text.  You’re all absolutely right to observe that Morrison is doing weird things with time in the story, though the two main poles […]

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Just FYI, Queens College has an excellent readings/interview series, in which they’re able to attract some renowned writers to the college to speak at LeFrak.  Here are the three upcoming this semester–they’re all on Tuesday night, after our class at 7 PM.  I’ll be at them–find me there and I’ll give you extra credit on […]

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