Contemporary Fiction

This week's reading explores contemporary fiction. It deals with authors Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Sandra Cisneros, to name a few. Their stories, like the contemporary poetry, are bold in both style and subject matter. My personal favorite from this selection is "Woman Hollering Creek" by Sandra Cisneros. Cisneros writes in English, but her style incorporates certain Spanish words and phrases into her work. A few examples are "en el otro lado," "farmacia," "burro," and "arroyo." The efect is that her work is very regional, in the sense that we never forget Cisneros's background. However, her subject matter--gender inequality--is so universal that it is not limited to any particular region.

Her work differs from other writing about gender discrimination in that it takes a very informal approach. That is, her language is conversational rather than flowery. Cisneros creates an image of a woman holding the "bloody fork she used to salvage her good name"--a reference to an abortion--describes her husband as a "man who farts and belches and snores," and says that the flowers are so red that they appear to be "bleeding a thick menstrual color." Before this contemporary period, literature focusing on women's rights did not take such a vulgar tone. But I believe the point of this period we are in is to challenge convention, to do something that has not been done before, and Cisneros accomplishes that.

The story has a happy ending: Cleofilas escapes her abusive husband in a pick-up (not some "pussy car," Cisneros says) and experiences cathartic laugher as she crosses Woman Hollering Creek--a symbolic name because not many places in the area are named after women. Cleofilas succeeds in fleeing from her inferior position in the relationship, therefore Cisneros succeeds as a women's rights advocate. I like her style because she empowers women to take a stand without presenting an angry critique of males in general and without glorifying women to the point that they almost appear on a higher pedestal than men. Her work is fresh and that is a nice change of pace from the classic literature to which our society gives so much importance.

[BONUS] Irish Folk Music Concert

I just returned from a concert performed by two Irish folk singers: Mairtin de Cogain and Jimmy Crowley. The music was very pleasant and I had a great time. The concert was held outdoors in the Shell and the weather was perfect. I expected more decorations for the event, but the layout of the stage was very simplistic--two microphone stands, two speakers, and an Irish flag. This layout facilitated enjoying the music without being distracted by visuals, which was nice.

Mr. de Cogain played an instrument I had never seen before; it resembled a tambourine without the bells and is played using something similar to a drumstick. The music was very relaxing and a few of the songs were funny. One song was about a female character who nagged too much and was drowned in the river for being a neusance. My personal favorite was about a woman named Maria de la Rosa. She is described as having green eyes and red hair, and as their singing created a beautiful mental image for me. I laughed when they said that she sings in Spanish, given the Irish theme of the event. I also enjoyed de Cogain's description of Ireland's geography--it is a big, fuzzy, green teddy bear lying down on its right side. Each time he provided the origin of one of the songs he would point to the part of his body that represents its location on the bear, err....country.

I am very glad that I attended this event as it was more entertaining than anything else I would have done. Also, this opportunity does not present itself often so I feel blessed to have been part of the audience. Now my desire to visit Ireland is greater than ever before!

Contemporary Poetry

This week's reading focuses on contemporary poetry. Authors include Rita Dove, Michael S. Harper, and Adrienne Rich. Having come even after the modernist movement, I expected the poems of these authors to be to most bizarre yet. I expected that they will find new ways to challenge old conventions of poetry and to create a style that did not exist before their time. In some instances, my expectations were met, but I found some of them to be surprisingly ordinary.

Rita Dove's poem "Fox Trot Fridays" is interesting in that the first 8 stanzas have two lines each and the final stanza only has one line. This form lends itself to rhyme with 8 couplets, but there is no rhyme scheme anywhere in the poem. Dove also uses enjambment a lot--most of the time there is no punctuation at the end of her lines, or even at the end of her stanzas. Her stanzas also often begin in lower-case. As for her subject, she seems to delight in the ordinary. In "Banneker" the subject does nothing but "lie under a pear tree," and she says of Parks in "Rosa" that "doing nothing was the doing."

Like Dove, Harper too celebrates African American culture. He wrote a poem for John Coltrane, a famous jazz musician, in which he immortalizes Coltrane's birthplace, music, and instrument. The form of this piece resembles jazz in that there is no overall pattern. It is not governed by rhyme, meter, or rules of grammar. Harper pays tribute to the four black girls killed in a church in Alabama in "American History" and to Martin Luther King Jr. in "Martin's Blues."

Rich is like Harper in that she admires civil rights leaders. Rich herself has struggled with homosexuality and her role as a female in society. Just as the girl in "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" is only a family member by default (there is no blood connection), females were not always welcomed in the male-dominated world of the past. She advocates gender equality in "Diving into the Wreck" by giving account of both the mermaid and the merman, also by following with "I am she: I am he." In her final stanza she says, "We are, I am, you are." The idea is that we are all one and the same; gender should not be a discriminating factor. Poems like this make her, in a way, a sort of civil rights activist herself.

After This- Alice McDermott

This week we are reading and discussing the novel "After This" by Alice McDermott. McDermott has been selected by the college to receive the Corrington Award. One of the things that sets her novel apart from others is its unusual structure--there is no distinguishable beginning, middle, and end. McDermott begins in medias res and does not wrap everything up neatly at the end. Some may think that this makes McDermott an inferior writer, but this is simply her style. Her goal is not to create and develop characters in the same fashion as other novels do, but rather to tell a story through a series of events. Another technique of hers is to bypass an entire decade in a single sentence. Therefore it is important that readers say alert while reading her work, lest they miss important details.

The novel is not only unusual in its structure, but also because of the many paradoxes it presents. For example, the docile son gets sent off to fight a war while the one who would make a good soldier stays in school to further his education. McDermott also gives accounts of fond memories as well as sad moments, making the tone both nostalgic and melancholy. This pair of conflicting tones emphsizes what seems to be her central point: there are good times and there are bad times, but life goes on.