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Well, it's taken a month, but we're finally up and ready to go here at the COA English 1B site. I hope the class continues to evolve and develop as we explore the life of one Tupac Amaru Shakur, his work a lens whereby we can examine more closely the lives he touched and one could safely say he touched far more lives than we'll ever know.
Today, on the anniversary of his departure all too soon from the planet, we listened to Words of Wisdom , then discussed the themes, analyzed the writing and looked at his style: the repetition of lines, the visual imagery, his historic references and his ability to tie the philosophical to the concrete whether that is naming his heroes as the song ends, people like his step-dad Dr. Mutulu Shakur and his aunt Assata, people who sacrificed their freedom for their ideals. I guess we could say, Tupac did also, who knows where his steps were headed. I read that he was about to take control of his product and do somethings independent of the corporate industry, he and Biggie, so within seconds they were both gone.
Our discussion linked the lyrical content to the Dyson's tome, which made the discussion resonate on many levels. In my English 1A a student said that the poem incorporated themes explored in Liberty Needs Glasses (135). What Liberty needs is to take off the blindfold and watch what's being measured. Martin Luther King spoke of this too in his I Have a Dream speech, the part where he talks about the bank of justice and the check stating insufficient funds. He was going to give America another chance to make good on her promissory note.
In Wisdom, Tupac sounds short on patience, but then how long has King been gone? What about Malcolm and Kwame Ture?
On the 11th anniversary of Tupac's murder many of Tupac's peers are angry and tired.There is a great speech by Tupac to the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.
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Tonight there is an event at Suite 181, 181 Eddy Street @ Mason in San Francisco.
Visit http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/news/id.5679/title.bay-area-to-honor-tupac for information about what's planned.
Also this weekend, Too Short is performing in West Oakland at the deFremery Park, 18th and Adeline Streets, in Oakland. It's mentioned in the Too Short article I gave you. If you missed it, visit www.eastbayexpress.com.
In Wisdom MLK Jr. has been unfairly propagandized. I don't know if Tupac was familiar with Kings later speeches. The "peacemaker" is quite radical if one looks at those given just before he was killed, for instance, the Vietnam War, and the speech he presented to the striking garbage men in Detroit. Also, Malcolm X and King were not foes. In fact, Malcolm X went to Georgia to support King, but King was in prison, but he spoke at an event hosted by Mrs. Coretta Scott King.
But his point that we only have one official hero is well-stated. It is the same with resistance movements. The most popular one is the one Nat Turner led, however there were hundreds. Not a day passed that some African descendant resisted bondage, but we have no official account because the people do not write their history. No, history is the palate where the conquer er tells his version of the story. Perhaps Tupac in Wisdom, is cautioning us to tell our own stories and until they are published widely, beware of all others.
After our discussion we shared our homework assignment: Topical Invention where students were asked to identify sentences that were analogies, definitions, consequences, ot testimony. We discovered that many of the sentences easily straddled a couple of categories; it wasn't always clean. We also noted that Dyson often used multiple proofs, in one case to define his subject. See page 51-52 last paragraph. These sentences are all define, yet, structurally one is a comparison, another is a consequence, etc.
It was a great discussion, one where students were continuing to cross reference songs and poetry. We then broke into small groups and students began to develop a profile of Tupac. We will continue this on Tuesday. We will also begin to look at possible topics for essays students could write based on this book.
We also when discussing Words of Wisdom spent a few minutes on NIGGA.
What else? Oh, homework is to read Chapter 3 and list some of the reoccurring themes. Identify minimally 5 arguments, and develop 5 thesis sentences of your own. We will take each others thesis sentences and develop an introductory paragrapb from one of them.
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