10/22	Almost a woman
10/29	Graphic	Materials are sent the week before
11/5	Poetic memoir	Materials are sent the week before
11/12	Fun Home	Dani, Haley, Beck, Linsey
11/19	Stitches	Cynthia, Clare, Andrea
11/26	The girl who fell	Mia, Sienna, Kat

The Group Presentations:

The Intention of the presentation

1.     When you take authority over material, transform your relationship with it in order to create an experience with others, the reading heightens, becomes more significant and you search for opportunities that may not come up in your weekly reading. This presentation allows you to approach the material using your own creativity and your own way of learning to both take it in and present it out.

2.     We find the classes that provide the greatest variety are most interesting. By giving you the opportunity to conduct this session, we benefit from the perspective you bring to the work.

The Expectations

1.     you collaborate in designing the presentation, prepare well and do your reading and research well in advance

2.     you have 40 minutes (or more) to engage the class

3.     you can use any approach you wish—go toward the talents of the group—good researchers? Good actors? Artists? Puppeteers?

4.     You focus on the material in the book, both in approach and in literary significance

5.     You give your class something new to think about—from research or the way you present the material

6.     You are organized and you have contingency plans in case something isn’t working out

7.     You use everyone in the group

8.     You may assign group work, writing, or any activity that will help the advancement of engaging with the literature

9.     You will designate the in-class writing for that day

Some Topics of Interest that will guide your discussions:

• The validity of memory

• The child’s voice

• Defining place through experiences

• What makes a story of childhood

• Angle of discovery

• Adult perspective

• Looking back at the narrative

• Recreating/embellishing/?fictionalizing

• Poetic elements

The Evaluation

The group gets a grade as a whole. Your colleagues will respond to an evaluation that will include the following accomplishments:

·       The group was prepared and organized

·       The group engaged with the book that provided an interesting perspective or deeper understanding

·       The group showed creativity in their approach

·       All the members of the group contribut3e

Worksheet on Developing a Final Project in Topics in CNF

The Requirements:

If you’re doing a paper

·       15, u/g, 20 g pages

·       Investigates elements of graphic memoir based on the literature we’ve been reading

·       It should also include two outside sources—that means theory research—could be about narrative, memoir, comics, graphic novel, voice, post-therapeutic memoir, etc. In other words, you can translate theory written in reference to other kinds of dramatic narrative to apply to our work.

·       Use At least two books or deep investigation into one

·       The documentation is MLA

·       Gear it as if you are writing for the AWP Chronicle—professional, clean and thorough, with evidence and suave.

How you find a topic if you don’t already have one

Ask a few questions:

What is the most captivating or compelling or quizzical question that came up in the class?

Or

What patterns did I see that were repeated or violated in the literature?

Or

What forms were particularly engaging?

Or

What blog rocked your world?

How can the doing this paper/project advance or illustrate my understanding or cnf techniques/literature?

Form:  What is my strength when analyzing a text or an idea? Ex. Do I recognize the author’s strategy? Am I more story-based?

Approach: Does comparing two or more texts feel more fulfilling or an in depth dive into a single work fell more fulfilling?

Idea: do I want to talk about a craft idea that patterns across books, challenge a known wisdom, or go right to political and social implications of the books? How can I go about practically illustrating my ideas?

Creativity: what creative approach can I take with this paper/

The Requirements:

If you’re doing a project

A project is the same as a paper in three ways:

• it shows evidence of deep investigation into one or more of our books
• it references two outside sources—you must provide a bibliography

·       Investigates elements of graphic memoir based on the literature we’ve been reading

A project can be a creative presentation that translates the elements of the coming of age memoir in a way to the audience to enhance the understanding of our work. The projects are 8-10 minutes and can be an oral presentation with visuals, a film or any other creative idea that you use. Again, you must help us investigate ideas about the books and have referenced some thought around it.  It’s best to run these by Elmaz before going ahead.  Get her approval by November 5th

Sample Papers:

1.     How Voice and Body show the passage of Time in Stitches and Fun Home.

2.     The parent/child antagonism in Change Me and  and Why Be Happy

3.     Struggles of immigration and colonialism on the child in the formation of identity in Almost a Woman, and School Days

Sample Projects:

1.     Map of territories of childhood in Zeus Daughter –create a physical map with illustrations of major events in each location and their meaning

2.     Panel of teenagers from why be normal, Fun Home, and Almost a Woman discuss rules of adolescence and how to break them

3.     A series of poems that use the words of characters to illustrate their coming of age.

All projects and papers will be presented on the last day of class in mi casa.

Magical Realism in School Days

Patrick Chamoiseau’s School Days deftly crafts a story-telling narrative of a little boy entering the education system in a colonized country of Martinique. Most of the memoir is narrated in the third person by what feels like an old story teller, hovering over the little boy as he goes between home and school. The tone very much encompasses the wonder of someone telling a bed time story or a fairy tale. This story-telling tone sets up the memoir for powerful moments of magical realism that occur in the text. The mild magical realism functions as a way for the reader to see what the little boy experiences through his child eyes. Rather than the ignorant child perspective we’ve seen in other works, we get fantastical elements as a way of inhabiting the little boy’s mind through the lens of the story. The magic moments are not super overt, but they certainly add tremendous imaginary setting “Heading off to school in the early afternoon, you encounter skittering dust devils,” (55) as well as character development, “When you looked into his eyes, you could see the claws and fangs that hadn’t found an outlet, and above all, you sensed a relentless vampire-hunger that made him a thousand years old” (80). These descriptions, in conjunction with kid’s story style names such as “Big Bellybutton” effectively establish a vision into the little boy’s consciousness. 

The added drama from the fantastical elements encapsulates how children understand time differently and can have difficulty imagining the future. “The little boy clutches Mam Ninotte’s hand even more tightly. He hears his name. The world falls to pieces” (34). The severity of Mam Ninotte leaving the little boy at school without her, to him felt as though it meant she would never return. The little boy’s inability to imagine a future where he sees her again for him felt as though the world was falling apart. The author employs dramatic language to impress upon the reader the little boy’s emotions.

There are also moments in present-time, when the adult version of the little boy directly addresses the reader to share his waning memories of figures from his childhood: “Mam Saliniere, I have only the wispiest memories of you. Your name. Your genteel manners. Your benevolent patience. My hands clapping while you sing” (29). Although rich memories do not persist in the adult perspective, these moments distill certain longevities, such as Mam Saliniere’s tenderness, “but these things nourish the quiet splendor of a tenderness I can’t put to words” (29). As a reader these adult perspective directives help us to locate what were the more important parts for the little boy after we’ve watched the entire scene play out.

Shifting Perspectives in Patrick Chamoiseau's School Days

I really loved reading this book. I feel like part of the reason I enjoyed reading it was the way the author played with prose, narrative voice and point of view. The prose felt really active and alive. I think part of this was the Respondeurs, but I also think it had to do with the changing perspective. It was like watching a one-man play--the narrator switches from observing the little boy, to being the little boy, to being his current self looking back, to a collective perspective, to talking to the little boy. We discussed in class the effect different perspectives has on the reader. A first-person present point of view has vitality and urgency but it can also feel overwhelming or claustraphobic. A third person point of view looking back is able to reflect and notice things from both the child and the adult perspective. This narrative distance allows the reader to take in the story without feeling 'trapped' in it, but it can also feel heavy handed.

Patrick Chamoiseau did something unique that we haven't found in any of the texts we have read so far. Most of the book is written from a very close third person perspective "the little boy" instead of "I".  This technique gave both the immediacy of a child's perspective while including the narrative distance that reminds the reader we are observing a scene from the past.

"Discovery: he held the chalk with his entire hand (either one), like a dagger." (21)
"The little boy had never considered the world from this angle." (40)

This perspective felt almost like watching a movie, or a theater performance. The reader is invited to watch, to listen, to absorb the feelings, colors smells, to react, but the narrative distance is always implied. In a way, I felt more 'included' as a reader because I felt like the narrator made himself know. The reader is sharing the wonder, the joy, the disappointment vicariously along with the narrator.

The shifting point of view also added to the visibility of the narrator. Chamoiseau consciously includes the problem of memory when recreating scenes from the past:

"Man Saliniere, I have only the wispiest memory of you. Your name. Your genteel manners. Your benevolent patience. My hands clapping while you sing." (29)

"My first Teacher...What did you look like?" (39)

These first person reflections are interjected into descriptive, active scenes from the past. The details, the imaginative descriptions, the emotional resonance all make these scenes real. The inclusion of these reflections reminds us that they are reconstructions, representations of the essence of the experience. This also gave the book the feeling of a play; we know the scenes are intentionally created to tell a story. The narrator speaks directly to the characters as if time has frozen.

"Monsier le Directeur, I speak of your silences, your bearing, your neatness that was proof against all perspiration in spite of the sun's hammering," (72).

The ability to manipulate time and distance (go back in time/freeze time/talk to one character at a time) emphasized the power contained in authoring ones own history. The narrator is able to speak directly to Monsier le Directeur through the medium of the book--something he could never do when he was a boy. The roles are reversed--le Directeur is unable to respond instead of the boy. The little boy is the keen observer, the intelligent authority. I felt like there was a remarkable sweetness to this technique. Monsier le Directeur is humanized, taken beyond the larger than life command he had over the children and we see him as an adult navigating a strange and hypocritical post-colonial world. We also glimse the teacher in this way so that we see that everyone is acting within a larger social and cultural context.

The narrator also aligns his experience with one that is shared. When the boys are waiting in line to
get their immunizaiton shots, the narrative switches to a plural perspective.

"Waiting in line, we could hear stifled cries." (111)

The reader is reminded that although the narrative tightly follows the little boy, his frustrations, shame, excitement, wonder, must also be echoed in the boys around him. Each of the boys has his own perspective and reacting to the specific experiences Chamoiseau describes. The stifling of language and shaming of identity, the legacy of colonial racism, the collision of cultural values is an experience Chamoiseau illuminates in the particular, but also reminds us of its immensity.

There are also a few times, often in the hectic intensity of the playground in which the narrator uses "you".

"As you approached the traingle, the enemy went right for you. If his mab touched yours, your stake was a goner (and so was your joie de vivre)." (99)

The lines have a natural urgency in describing the rules of the game. It is almost as if the reader is being prepared to participate in the game. At the same time, this participation happens from a distance, we can taste the intensity but the consequences are not ours. This perspective also reads as the older narrator talking directly to the little boy. The author is embodying the boy, drawing upon his memory.  He speaks directly to his boy/self near the end:

"There's the odor of bleach, the smell of fresh paint that ushers in the New Year...Camphor means sickness..Do you remember the dreamy meloncholy of vetiver?" (112)

The book contained the conversation between the author and his boyhood self, between the author and his environment, between the author and the authority figures in his life, as well as between the author and the reader. The shifting perspectives created a more whole scene, more intact and aware of what is missing. As a reader, I felt like I had the safety of narrative distance as well as the urgent vivid aliveness of the first person present. There is also a sense of humor infused within this distance; the author reveals the ridiculousness and hypocricy of things that are high-stakes to the child self. I was able to see through different lenses without feeling 'stuck'.  School Days mirrored worlds past and present within the embrace of a visible narrator, rituals (like the Repondeurs) and particular voices and the result was mesmorizing.