Today we met in A-232 again. We will meet here for the rest of the semester unless someone reserves the room (smile). I passed out a lot of handouts to help students with "Invention" strategies which is the technical term for developing ideas to write about. We listed topics or themes on the board after practicing mapping the word: "abuse." We also looked at a sample outline, one a handout, the other one I wrote on the board. Each assigned essay needs to include: a completed Initial Planning Sheet, an outline and a peer review using Microsoft comment and including a response to a set of questions (another handout).
In Writing about Literature we looked at Feminist Criticism as a lens to use when discussing this first book. Step out on a limb and try something new with this first essay. It might not work, but perhaps the experience will prove instructive (smile).
Again, I suggest students find a motif, a theme and follow it across the terrain of a few stories or a symbol and look for deeper meaning as you note the style, tone and imagery the author uses, along with characters to explore a specific theme or an overriding theme or thesis you set out to prove.
Is the author telling the same story over and over again through a variety of lens? How adept is she at portraying male characters? Are there any male characters who are more symbol than flesh and blood? What is the point of this creation?
How many main characters are there in The Dance Boots? How many stories are there? What makes one story or character unique? What character(s) make you want to know more? Does the author deliver?
How is The Dance Boots a hero's story? Who are the heroes or heroines? Is the hero or heroine without flaws? What good is their super power, if they can't protect themselves from the enemy? The hero cannot even save its young?
What do you think about Stan when his back story is revealed? Louis? Other characters who have such promise as children and then life happens and this potential is stifled, interrupted, killed or maimed.
Is there any hope offered in The Dance Boots? What is this hope? Who holds it? Who embodies it? Are there any characters who disappoint the reader with their choices? Are their any who blow their chances at a better life or is this a dream rather than a reality?
Linguistically and perhaps culturally The Dance Boots only allows readers so much access. How does this effect one's reading of the text and its interpretation? Is access difficult? Let's say LeGarde Grover intends to make her audience work, what are the benefits and/or disadvantages of an uneasy or inaccessible work?
Is mystery one of the residual outcomes? Are questions another outcome? What are your questions? Do you raise them when the answers are not evident or do you raise them and then locate the answers? Are unanswered questions okay?
To what end?
As an outsider looking in, what does this distance between the reader and the work allow to happen in the eventual interpretation of the work.
When one writes a book that has a historic context, does the reader feel compelled to do research into the era or time period? What happens when readers resist? Is the reading then shallow?
Homework
Read in Writing about Literature the section on Feminist Critique. Bring in a completed Initial Planning Sheet and an outline. Look at outlines in Hacker under "The Writing Process."
