1. Is “The Bell Jar” a novel? Why?
2. Is Plath’s portrayal of mental illness convincing?
3. How does our knowledge that the author eventually killed herself affect our reading of the book?
4. What does the book tell us about the historical era in the USA and its dominant world view, values?
5. Is there a connection between Plath’s “The Bell Jar” and Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”?
Some of the most powerful writing I’ve ever read and art I’ve ever seen is housed in the books Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology, edited by Amy Sonnie (2000). I began reading this text for my final paper with my femmey ‘I work with queer youth and that’s why I’m reading this’ hat. I’m working (successfully) right now to spread gender-neutral restrooms across Queens College (my undergrad home) and create a Queer Resource Center there: I am very much in the queer communities at QC, but as something of a friendly elder who has graduated and remains to work with youth to create things that need to be created. I came out almost nine years ago, and I graduated almost three years ago (not long, I know, but it seems like a long time in terms of where I am as compared to where I was). So, again, I came to this anthology and to this final paper idea of analyzing queer youth life writing as someone somehow connected to, but distanced from, queer youth.
The overwhelming emotional value that I got from journeying through this book, however, is that I am still, unabashedly and proudly, a queer youth myself. I never thought I wasn’t young, I just… I suppose I came to it thinking I could read it in a somewhat detached manner. I couldn’t. I could have written for that anthology, and I found myself taking lots of time I don’t have to write many fluid, narrative responses of my own (poetry, snapshots of life writing) as my way of interacting fully with the text. For me, that means that the text accomplished its goal: another queer youth finding herself in the veins of its pages. Hooray!
Hooray indeed. But I still need to analyze this thing for my paper. I’m thinking of two interconnected ideas. I’m thinking of affect theory, scriptotherapy, and how deeply emotions guide the creation (and reading) of anthologies like these. Rage and abandonment and fierce, fierce pride and bravery drench the pieces in this book. It is truly a work of relational life writing, because the art works featured in the book have their own breath and enter the readers’ lungs too intimately to be about some Other. It is a work of creating selfhood. (That’s my reading, anyway: I don’t know how people with different experiences than me might read it.)
And I find myself wondering about this selfhood, which really brings me to an academic core of what I think I will write about. What selfhood is created within the parameters of an anthology? What is denied, what is forgotten? Amy Sonnie was very intentional about getting a diverse range of young authors to write and submit art for this anthology. She noted apologetically in the beginning of the work the underrepresentation of transgender, intersex, and genderqueer people in the book. From my first read-through, I’m pretty sure there were more youth of color writing for the book than there were white kids, which I was thrilled about: in a culture where whiteness dominantly defines queerness, this is amazing, and it was intentional in a book that offers some of the most powerful critiques of the capitalist, white supremacist status quo I’ve ever encountered. Yet there was only one artist who wrote about experiences with physical disability, for example. Physical disability didn’t, in this anthology, figure as a crucial marker of “multiculturalism” that the title claims. Only one out sex worker was featured in the book, as another example. These shortcomings were not, like some other identities, apologized for in the introduction. What does that mean?
Further, though a few of the authors noted the desire to get married, the (beautifully) radical stance of the book did not give a home to conservative queers. On one level, I am absolutely fine with that. On another level, I wonder what that means for anthologies. How do anthologies serve as powerful political manifestos of underrepresented and radical views and lives? But does that ‘type’ these works, so that only people who are predisposed to radicalism read them? Is that a price worth paying (capitalist pun intended)? Would a conservative, middle class, white, cis, able-bodied gay man read this book? Do we even want him to? Is it more important to share ourselves with each other, or with “the world”? Both? If both, do radical-only anthologies serve us or hurt us? How do ideas about a work’s affect influence how we think (and, importantly, feel) about this? Would a text feel different, and therefore be less impactful, if such overwhelmingly beautiful, radical works were on pages directly opposite also beautiful, but less radical and therefore perhaps more exclusionary, works? (But this book was exclusionary, for the most part, of physical disability and sex work, so…)
These questions, for me, evoke questions of deep emotion behind the academic and highly political work of canon formation. Where is this book situated in the canon formation that anthologies often take part in? How do the politics of canon formation impact such works? Can there be a ‘radical canon’, or is the idea of canonization antithetical to revolutionary queerness? How does this work fit as a postcolonial text, a work of postcolonial canon?
In short, I am interested in questions of what anthologies do to transform submitted texts and to a readers’ experiences with these texts. I’m excited to start the journey of trying to figure things out, and I am content with the idea that I will probably open up more questions than I ultimately answer.
Heaven’s Coast is the perfect example of the writer’s (Mark Doty) desire of putting in words all his sentiments in a certain period of time. In this case, from the moment Wally, his partner, is diagnosed as an HIV Positive and later as a patient with AIDS, the reading is a mixture of feelings and his book, presented as a memoir, displays not only love, but also compassion, rage, sadness and impotency as the days goes by with a clear, but not imminent outcome: death.
As this subject is very hard to handle, Doty puts reality and romanticism in his words to approach it. He achieves the difficult task to make the reader feel his sorrow and loss, plenty enough to show how it is so difficult to let a loved one go, but to survive with almost any energy and a little will to live without the reason he lived for in the first place. With this in mind, is Doty evidencing his tiredness and almost necessity to this hard situation to end? Did he already make his mind around with the idea of being without Wally after the last months that were hard and unbearable?
The ‘refuges’ as Doty calls the houses/apartments where they lived, are the essence of the couple’s closeness and profound love for each other. Each of them had a different style and was described by Doty with enormous detail to let the reader feel through his words why they were so important in Mark and Wally’s relationship. But as the memoir develops, Doty takes a different approach in every one of them. Does this mean that his memories are changed by grief before and after Wally died? Does the change of scenery was needed to replenish the couple’s faith of avoiding the reality and surpass death?
As Doty presents the importance of taking advantage of every day since Wally was diagnosed, he asks what they would do with this time life has given to them. The memories he described, felt, as they were not only precious but also as normal as possible. In the memoir, Doty insists that he made Wally’s almost unaware of his concern of losing him which leads to an extreme isolation when he was out for work. Does the memoir represent the feelings of Marc Doty when he was away, two days a week, when Wally was decaying? Does his heart and mind needed to be strengthen (with his alone time) to be there for Wally physically and emotionally when he was back?
The importance of the moment of detachment, when Wally dies and he is cremated with only the quilt Mark Doty had sewed is a message of how the two of them were bonded forever. He describes how difficult was for him to let his partner go but it is how he describes the arrival of his ashes, in a cold box, when the reader realizes how difficult and somber this moment was for him. Doty tries to explain his desolation to the reader using common language and even asking questions, as he was looking for an answer from the reader. This memoir was written a few weeks after Wally’s death, which means that Doty’s feelings were still fresh and grieve was becoming relief. It’s Doty trying to release his inner sentiments by writing this memoir? Was it to soon? Or it was imperative to present to the world the difficult time an AIDS patient (partners, family and friends) goes through to achieve awareness and consciousness by society?
Mark Doty expressed: “Not that things need to be able to die in order for us to love them, but that things need to die in order for us to know what they are”. These words represent the main goal of Doty’s memoir. Wally’s death was not necessary but it helped Doty to really appreciate the relationship he had with him and over all, he met a different Wally in each of the stages of his illness and after all the suffering and misery, they loved each other no matter what. Is this work a way to present a common situation, the loss of a loved one, as authentic as possible, with memories that can be shared but not felt?
1) On the back of the book is included a line from the Washington Post Book World that says: “Doty is a gifted poet whose books have won numerous prizes, but even his considerable reputation could not have prepared readers for the astonishing beauty of these opening pages…. If one book survives the AIDS epidemic, it will be this one.” I took the last line to mean that many books written about AIDS will come and go, but this book will remain worthy. Do you agree and why? Also, would you really consider this book to be about AIDS or more so a perspective on grieving?
2) As we’ve been discussing in class, there is more to “life writing” than just recalling the facts or recreating a scene verbatim to tell the whole story. If you were writing the scene where Doty meets his lover for the first time (page 52 and 53), what would you write or show if this were a film? In the book Doty writes: “And if in fact I could reproduce here our conversation, I imagine it would be perfectly sweet but also thoroughly banal, on the surface, just like the surface of any such encounter.” How would you somehow include or at least try to capture the feeling Doty experienced when he wrote: “And what I found myself thinking was, Here you are at last.”
3) In class we had a discussion about what is true art. We all came to agree that Virginia Woolf definitely created art and not just literal true-to-life-story in her memoir. I remember thinking in class, but never saying: “It’s like saying what is a real representation of a human–an abstract human portrait by Picasso, a real photograph of a person, or a wax figure like one would see at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum?” I remembered having thought that when I came to the lines in Doty’s memoir (bottom of page 30): “When do we look at the plain nude fact of the lifeless figure? Pure purposelessness–and thus, in the absence of the spirit, strangely and completely present. Never having a chance to see it, to assimilate it our horror of it and go on to actually look, how would we know that the lifeless body is beautiful?” The question I have is: What do you take from that section, or what are your reactions to Doty’s reflections on the lifeless body?
4) What are your reactions to not seeing any photographs included in this memoir? Would realistic pictures have ruined the poetic fabric of the way in which this story was told?
5) On the surface we think of a person’s life as being linear: birth, life experiences, and then dying. Yet in telling the story of someone’s life: beginning, middle, end doesn’t always work. Doty wrote in the PREFACE: “This book was written in the flux of change; I wrote it not from a single still point but in the forward momentum of a current of grief…. What is healing, but a shift in perspective?” His opening reminds me that life, even on the surface, is not really linear. That we continue to uncover, go back, or wonder about the future in any single moment. The body may die, but does a spirit? Is something only dead if it is fully forgotten?
The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.
Angel’s in America, by Tony Kusner
Part One of “Angels in America”, subtitled “Millennium Approaches”, erupted on to the stage of the National Theatre in January 1992. Part Two, “Perestroika”, followed in November 1993. Since then “Angels in America” has become one of the most studied American plays, with over 30,000 copies of both parts sold in the UK alone. It has also been filmed for television by Mike Nichols, with Al Pacino, Meryl Streep – and Emma Thompson as the eponymous Angel.
The Normal Heart, by Larry Kramer
A searing drama about public and private indifference to the AIDS plague and one man’s lonely fight to awaken the world to the crisis. Produced to acclaim in New York, London and Los Angeles, The Normal Heart follows Ned Weeks, a gay activist enraged at the indifference of public officials and the gay community. While trying to save the world from itself, he confronts the personal toll of AIDS when his lover dies of the disease.
From: Shifra Sharlin
Here is an announcement from Shifra Sharlin about the new MALS online student journal.
The new MALS online student journal, ROOM 4108, will soon be ready to start posting.
It is time to start creating!
ROOM 4108 has a decentralized structure. Groups of as few as 3 students can work on creating and/or collecting and approving content together. This content can be collaborative or individual, strictly academic or completely informal.
Please contact me for advice, suggestions, encouragement, and questions.
Best,
Shifra Sharlin
Life writing through graphic novels has been a frequent topic in class, so I thought I’d highlight two interesting and relevant events going on right now.
First, Art Spiegelman’s Co-Mix: A Retrospective at The Jewish Museum of New York from Nov. 8 – March 23 provides an in-depth study of Spiegelman’s body of work: “This first U.S. retrospective spans Spiegelman’s career: from his early days in underground “comix” to the thirteen-year genesis of Maus, to more recent work including his provocative covers for The New Yorker, and artistic collaborations in new and unexpected media.” – See more at: http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/art-spiegelman#sthash.WDVzZSgD.dpuf and listen to a clip of Spiegelman’s recent discussion of his work on WNYC here.
Also, Fun Home, the graphic novel memoir by Alison Bechdel, has been transformed into a musical now in an extended run at the Public Theater. The play has gotten wonderful reviews, and offers us an opportunity to examine how a life story is changed, or not, when told in different mediums to different audiences. Bechdel’s graphic novel was itself an evolution from her earlier Dykes to Watch Out For comics, and opened her audience beyond the queer community; now “subscription holders at The Public” as playwright Lisa Kron jokingly referred to current audiences, are hearing this specifically lesbian tale. While there is undoubtedly overlap between populations, the Public Theater’s production will expand Bechdel’s audience even more. I wonder what the next incarnation of her narrative will be.
Good Evening Colleagues,
I would like to first thank everyone for a very meaningful class discussion yesterday. I really enjoyed hearing everyone’s insights about the text and their thoughts (one great thing about grad school). Following off the theme of collective memory, I would like to suggest some books that I felt connected like Dictee in terms of the theme of collective memory. Many of you have probably read the text or saw the movie or both.
The Joy Luck Club
I remember when I saw this film as a child. This was probably the first Asian American film I had ever watched. The Joy Luck Club tells 16 interwoven narratives about the relationship between Chinese immigrant mothers and their American raised daughters. The book is composed of four parts with the first talking about the mothers: Jing-Mei, Lindo, Ying-ying and An mei, all who make up the Joy Luck Club in San Francisco, CA. They tell their stories about their lives in China, their mothers and life in America. They all worry that their daughters will lose their cultural heritage and become immersed into the American life, losing their Chinese heritage as a result . The second set of stories are of their daughters: Waverly, Jing Mei, Lena and Rose – who talk about their relationship with their mothers. Here is where you find the disconnected relationship between mother and daughter, both who lived different experiences and lives. The daughters find their mother’s experiences irrelevant and old school, that living in China is nothing like living in America. The third section continues with the lives of the daughters and their problems with careers and marriage. This section brings together a great lesson: that regardless of where we lived, or worked, or our relationships, we can learn from one another. Just because we lived in a different time, in a different country, it doesn’t mean our memories and lessons are irrelevant. We can still learn from one another and that is what we see in the fourth and final section where the mothers and daughters finally came together in mind, spirit, and understanding. They learned from one another and understood their experiences to be relevant. This text is a fine example of a collective narrative and I share this with you not only because this is one of my favorite text but because it teaches us a very important but simple lesson…
We are not so different after all…
We value truth and authenticity in the stories we hear and in the stories that are told about us. We celebrate an ever more connected world, and point to the millions of people participating in online social networks worldwide as proof of our innate desire for community. But it isn’t real. The “friends” I have on Facebook are not the flesh and blood people I talk to, have meals with, confide in. Scrolling through my newsfeed is like reading a never-ending Christmas letter from that cousin with the perfect family. I see pictures of fabulous vacations, adorable pets, and joyous gatherings. I read a
stream of witty comments and assume they flowed from the keyboard in an unedited series of clicks. I’m left feeling slightly boring and unenthusiastic. So, after much agonizing over how it will be received and by whom, I post a status update and check compulsively to see if and how often it is “liked.” It’s exhausting and unsatisfying. And yet, I am compelled to keep going back. Similarly to parallel play by babies who don’t know how to interact yet – I build my tower of status updates over here and you build your tower over there. It’s all performance and voyeurism, not communication, and most certainly not community.
Why, then, the insistence on the label? Is feeling part of a communal whole so important that we will fight to keep up appearances? Are we really members of the communities we claim? What does that mean? Does getting on a mailing list make one a member of a community? Is it when you go to a meeting? What if you don’t volunteer for anything? Are we, by virtue of our identities, members of certain communities, or does membership require interaction? And what does this mean for life writing? Do we tell our stories differently online than we do in person or on paper? These are the questions I’m considering for my final paper.
I’m reading Alone Together, Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT as background material, and what I’m coming to believe is that our embrace of the digital as real is a frightening departure from human interaction that has grown apace with technology’s ability to provide us with a digital escape. In her discussion of robotics, Sherry Turkle writes that even the most primitive 1980’s Tamagochi was able to lead children to think of it as a creature in pain rather than a broken toy “…not because of [the toys’] sophistication but because of the feelings of attachment they invoke.” (44)
As a parent I was frequently warned that loss of creativity goes hand in hand with a decrease in imaginative play, but I wonder now if the problem is not even more corrosive to our human relationships. Turkle is primarily interested in the Robotic Moment and our human readiness to replace human interaction with time spent with companion robots. I believe that diminished value given to the authentic, the living, prepares us for online deception, which impacts the stories we tell online about ourselves and others and the way we tell them.
Additionally, Turkle’s study of children’s interaction with robotic toys and pets shows that the children incorporate the robots into their family narrative, identifying the My Real Baby toy as a sibling,
and experiencing anxiety and rivalries similar to real life families. Is it too big a leap to envision a time when biographies and autobiographies include “relationships” with robots as a matter of course, and to see “Facebook friends” as a step along the way?
