ENGL 364: Contemporary Latina Writers

Please respond to anything that interested you in Poet X.  Here are some prompts to get you started thinking:

• Discuss Xiomara’s physical body–how does she feel about her physicality at the beginning of the book and how does this change as we progress?
• Talk about this line in the book, from the poem “How I Feel about Attention” (p. 48):  “I look and feel like a myth.”
• Discuss how Xiomara’s ties to her own Dominican-American culture are complicated.  Yes, she chafes at church and under her mother’s control and her father’s neglect, but do you think she also draws strength and inspiration from her culture?
• Discuss the role of a secondary character such as Twin or Aman or Father Sean.
• For those of you who may be poetry-lovers, talk a little bit about form in the book.  Why choose poetry rather than prose narrative to tell Xiomara’s story?  Were there any particular poetic forms or allusions you noticed? Maybe discuss these in a bit more detail.  How do you think form affects function in this book?

Choose one of the four contemporary poems on the syllabus for tonight and discuss it.  In your discussion, you might want to do one of the following things:

• Provide a short explication of the poem, talking about what the poem means as it unfolds
• Discuss the poem in relation to a theme that we’ve examined previously in the course (religion/spirituality, male/female relations, female sexuality, figures from myth and culture, use of language/Spanglish, images of nature, the struggle against tyranny, etc.)
• Compare the poem to a work we’ve read previously in the class
• Choose some particularly memorable or startling images or lines and discuss them in more detail
• Talk about how the poet’s oral reading or performance of the poem affects or changes our simple reading of it on the page

For class today, please respond to anything that interested you in the second half of In the Time of the Butterflies.  Here are some prompts to get you started.  (I’ve included some from last week, since no one responded to them, and since we didn’t get to discuss the novel that much):

• What do you think it means that this book is historical fiction?  In such a work, how true to the “real” facts of what happened do you believe an author needs to be?  What kinds of things in the novel do you think may have been invented by Alvarez?  Does this fictionalizing of real history bother you at all?
• What about the “butterflies” of the novel’s title?  Why were the Mirabal sisters called the butterflies?  What do you think are the mythic or symbolic elements of this title?
• Talk about religion and the Mirabal sisters’ relationship to it.  How does the Church’s position change during the course of the book?  How does Alvarez’s presentation of the Catholic Church compare to other works we’ve read this semester?
• Talk about class/race privilege in the book.  What social class would you say the Mirabals come from?  When do we see darker-skinned characters or characters from other social classes and how are they represented?
• Discuss Dedé and her status as the remaining Mirabal sister? Why didn’t she join the revolution as the others did?  Do you think she regrets her actions?  Do you find her defensive?

Please respond to anything that particularly interested you in the first half of In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez.  Here are some prompts to get you started thinking:

• What do you think makes some of the characters resist authority while others bow to it?  What different kinds of things politicize certain characters, make them more aware of injustice? Please cite some examples from specific characters in the book.
• What do you think it means that this book is historical fiction?  In such a work, how true to the “real” facts of what happened do you believe an author needs to be?  What kinds of things in the novel do you think may have been invented by Alvarez?  Does this fictionalizing of real history bother you at all?
• What about the “butterflies” of the novel’s title?  Why were the Mirabal sisters called the butterflies?  What do you think are the mythic or symbolic elements of this title?
• Why do you think Alvarez chose to structure the book with the writer figure, the “gringa Dominican” (perhaps a stand-in for Alvarez herself?) visiting Dedé long after the events of the novel have taken place?   We could simply have begun with the story of the Mirabal family itself.  Why include the outside frame?  What do you think Alvarez gains with this choice?
• Why do you think the Mirabal parents’ relationship is important in the novel?  How did you feel about Papa’s hidden, secret family?  Did you have sympathy for him or not?  How do you think Mama contends with the troubled relationship?
• Talk about religion and the Mirabal sisters’ relationship to it.

Here are some questions you can respond to to get you started thinking about our discussion of “Woman Hollering Creek” and “The Husband Stitch”:

• Discuss Mexican telenovelas and the story of La Llorona, places in which Cleófilas in “WHC” attains models of femininity.  What does she learn from each kind of story?  How do they affect her life?  Perhaps compare the way stories shape feminine behavior in this story and in “The Husband Stitch.”
• What are we to think of Graciela and Felice in the story, the women who work at the pregnancy clinic?  How are they different from Cleófilas?  Does she learn anything from them?  Do you read the end of the story as pessimistic or optimistic?
• Why do you think Machado includes all the stage directions in “The Husband Stitch”?  What point do these serve in the story?
• Look at one or more of the specific urban legends that the narrator in “THS” tells.  What do these stories seem to teach her about social mores, female behavior, or anything else?
• “The Husband Stitch” is a strongly sexual story.  What did you think about this aspect of the story?  Was there anything interesting or unusual about the story’s presentation of sexuality?
• What do you think the ribbon represents in the story?

Please feel free to write about anything that interested you in The House on Mango Street.  Here are some prompts to get you started thinking:

• In the vignette “My Name,” Esperanza talks about her name. What do you think about her name and its multiple meanings?  Why are they important in the book?  What about names of other characters?  How are identities tied to names in the book?  How do names affect characters?
• Talk about homes and houses and living spaces as they’re represented in the book. Why do you think Cisneros chose the title she did?  Are homes liberating or constraining?
• Discuss Cisneros’ use of language and/or structure in the book. You might pick a metaphor (for example, in the story “Laughter,” Esperanza writes that ice cream bells “giggle” and that some kinds of laughter are “like a pile of dishes breaking”) or other piece of figurative language that seems unusual or appealing to you and talk about how it works.  Or perhaps discuss Cisneros’ claim that the rhythms and cadences of Spanish are everywhere in the book, even in places where’s there’s not one word of Spanish.  Do you see evidence of this?  Or maybe discuss her decision to use so many short vignettes and how this stylistic choice affects the reader.
• Talk about different models of women presented in the book. What kinds of women do you see? What does Esperanza think of her own gender, her sexuality?  Do you see her change as the book progresses?
• How do you think this novel compares with Viramontes’ collection of stories? What similarities do you see?  Do you notice any significant differences?

As you finish reading the collection “The Moths and Other Stories,” please feel free to write about anything you’d like.  Here are some prompts to get you started thinking:

• Choose one or more of the 3 key background figures in Chicana feminist literature–La Malinche, La Virgin de Guadalupe, La Llorona–and discuss places in the last 4 stories where you see this figure emerging.  Are there metaphorical references to her?  Parallels with certain characters?  Revisions of what these figures traditionally represent?
• Focus on a single story and discuss it. You might talk about how the story works on a technical level (narration style, point-of-view, recurring images/motifs, endings, etc.)  Or you might discuss what you think the story is about on a thematic level.  Did you like the story or not like it?  Why?
• Perhaps discuss a recurring theme that you see develop across several of the final stories:  maybe religion/spirituality; fragmentation; community; mothers and children; class relations, etc.

Choose one of the first four stories in The Moths to write about.  Discuss anything you’d like concerning this story.  What do you find interesting in it?  Are you confused by anything that happens? What do you think it is about?  Are there particularly memorable images, metaphors, or descriptions that appeal to you?  How does it seem to fit into what you’ve read of the collection as a whole so far or into themes in the course that we’ve been discussing?

Here are some prompts you may want to respond to for this week’s blog discussion:

• The snake is a complicated symbol.  What cultural associations with snakes are you familiar with? How do you think Anzaldúa uses the figure of the snake in Chapter 3?  What did you think about this?
• How does Anzaldúa seem to feel about spirituality?  Are there things about white culture that she believes oppress spirituality?  What did you think about this section of her essay  (Ch. 3, pp. 44+)?
• How does Anzaldúa imagine a new Mestiza consciousness in Chapter 7?  Where does this consciousness spring from, and what does she imagine it will be like?  What are your reactions to this section of the essay?
• What does Anzaldúa say about men and machismo in Chapter 7? How do you respond?
• What Anzaldúa’s and/or Moraga’s views on queerness and why do these seem to be important?
• Choose one of the poems by Cherrie Moraga on the syllabus to interpret and discuss in more detail.

For every day that we have assigned readings or films in the course, students may post a response on our class blog.  I will provide several prompts for each of these days to get you started thinking.  You may respond to the prompt if you like, but you may also respond to other students’ comments, or to anything else that interests you in the reading or film.  Blog posts must be at least 200 words to receive full credit for the day, and they must be posted before class discussion for the day.  Blog posts will not receive letter grades, but you will receive credit for the number of comments you post, with 8 posts equaling 100%.

Since I’m asking you to do some readings before we officially have our first meeting on Monday, September 11, you can get started on your blog responses by commenting on those readings. Respond to one of the prompts below or to anything else in the readings that interested you before our first class.

Prompts

• Interpret the poem that begins Chapter 1 of Borderlands/La Frontera.
• What was new to you, what didn’t you know, about the history of the Rio Grande Valley  from the Cochise and Aztecs to Spanish Conquest, through the independence of Texas and the Mexican-American War, up to the present, that Anzaldua details in Chapter 1?  How did you react to this history?
• Immigration at the Southern border is in the news quite often these days.  How does Anzaldua talk about illegal immigration in Chapter 1?  What are your views?
• What did you think about the constant switching from English to Spanish and the untranslated passages in Anzaldua’s work?  Did you work to read them or skip over them? What effect do you think she’s trying to achieve?
• In Chapter 2, Anzaldua writes that she had to leave home in order to find herself.  Do you feel this way sometimes?  How do your own experiences of leaving home and family compare to hers?
• How do you think what she says about lesbianism/queerness in Chapter 2 might be different if the article were published today rather than in 1987?
• Comment on/interpret the poem “el sonovabitche.”