Southern Voices

Bastard Out of Carolina

2006-05-03T20:15:00.000-04:00

Where can someone start with this book? Allison does an amazing job at evoking emotions by dealing with very controversial topics. I could not put this book down. I know I was reading more in class while we were discussing because I wanted to read more. I am actually quite surprised I put it down a couple different times to focus on other things besides it.

The family connections were evident from the beginning chapters in the book. As you read further, you begin to meet the individual family characters and get to know them in the eyes of this remarkable child. I think the best relationship that was described other than her family was that of her "friend" Shannon Pearl. It was really tragic how she died. I hate how the mother automatically blames Bone for Shannon's horrific death. I just want to be like, maybe if you paid closer attention to your daughter instead of just going through the motions of being a mother, she might have been saved from this tragic ending. Bone knows that Shannon is essential for her to grow and develop. I think they clash so much because of their class status. Shannon must have been thinking in the back of her mind that since Bone offered her a seat on the bus, she had to return the favor even if that meant taking her on as a charity case.

I can see where the sexual abuse in this book is almost too much to bare. I know that this happens in real life and its disgusting. I am really glad that I had the opportunity to read this book. It's beautifully written in a language that is clear to understand. I was left questioning how Anney could love her daughter so much and shrug off the abuse that Bone was given. It's horrible. No matter how much you think you love another adult, if they are abusing your child, the choice seems to me to be easy; protect your child. I really think the class in its' entirity learned from this book whether positive or negative.

Ohhhh how can I forget the ending!! I do not like how this book ends. I don't like how it suggests that Anney left Bone to live a better life with her aunt. That's aweful! It's practically saying that you love your daughter, but you love the man who abused her and raped her more than her. I was kind of hoping she did kill Glen. He's a psychotic monster.

Dickey Poems

2006-04-26T16:24:00.000-04:00

I had a really hard time figuring out which poem I should write about on here that we haven't already discussed in class. I had it all figured out that I would talk about A Dog Sleeping on My Feet, but we discussed it in class on Monday. I was hoping to express how I could find a little hint of the poem being a dog dreaming of a fox chase, but I chose Cherrylog Road.

This poem had me at the beginning thinking that the narrator was a child exploring the junkyard of cars with fascination and fantasy. I even imagined that Doris Holbrook was a play friend who slipped out to come play and pretend in this magical junkyard of cars. Instead, if I was reading this right, they ended up having some kind of sexual escapade in the back seat of one of the "dreaming" cars in the "traffic" around them. I have no clue if I was reading too far into this but thats what seemed to be happening. On page 136, in the 5th stanza, "As we clung, glued together, / With the hooks of the seat springs / Working through to catch us red-handed / Amidst the gray breathless batting". To me this here says that not only were they doing something they probably shouldn't have been doing, but it excited them to have the chance of being caught.

I found a website that has some different takes on Dickey.. I think people should check it out. It even has Dickey himself reading one of his poems.
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/dickey/dickey.htm

Presentations

2006-04-19T20:32:00.000-04:00

I didn't really have a chance to comment on the presentations from last week. I was distracted with keeping my mom company at home while she recovers from her heart attack that she had at my softball game.

Everyone did a really good job with their presentations! I liked how people incorporated different visuals into their discussions. I was wondering if people who made the food could actually post their recipes on their blogs because everything looked and smelt so good. I believe that everyone's hard work definately paid off. I was surprised with the depth of the different topics. I also appreciated the work the one group did on the Native Americans. I have part Native American in my family's bloodline and I found it very interesting and attention grabbing when you presented us with the cassette of the speech that was given. I found it very interesting! Also, I remembered learning about the types of programs that Native Americans have included in their classrooms and your presentation refreshed my mind.

Flannery O'Connor

2006-04-05T12:46:00.000-04:00

For an author who focused around Christainity, a reader would have had a difficult time realizing that unless they had prior knowledge of it. After reading A Good Man is Hard to Find and The Displaced Person, I found myself wondering what morbid act of violence was going to become of the characters in Revelation. I did not foresee the endings in the two previous writings, especially how the entire family was killed off in A Good Man is Hard to Find. For the grandmother character to come to terms with her beliefs and actually genuinely believe in the few seconds before her death, was somewhat of a huge kind of relief, yet she died anyways. The character of the Misfit was obviously hopeless from the beginning, but I think O'Connor was trying to stress the fact that everyone can change. It may take a situation where a person is faced with a life changing decision to force a change, but it also has to do with the person's true desire to change and accept what they have said all along.

When I read Revelation, I kept trying to guess what aweful thing was going to happen to Mrs. Turpin. Her character to me seemed like a poser, someone who said they believed or did only one thing, when in fact, she completely was showing it on the outside. For a Christian follower to speak horribly of another human being in the way she did, she certainly wasn't practicing what she preached. You are taught to love thy neighbor and to treat everyone as you would like to be treated. Mrs. Turpin had everything coming to her. I didn't feel bad for this character at all. I felt like she got what she deserved, maybe not enough. The way O'Connor depicted her in turmoil with the hogs, trying to come to terms with everything that happened, was absolutely perfect. I think she did a good job of saying that the human conscience when comfronted with something that was morally wrong struggles with the comprehension if it was truly wrong or not. Yes, you can say that she shouldn't have been attacked, but to be comfronted in any manner was necessary in her realization that she had been in the wrong.

Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God

2006-03-22T19:05:00.000-05:00

I have to start by saying that I absolutely loved this novel and it was such a good change from what we have been reading story-line wise. Hurston uses romanticized notions of the Southern way of life and how easy it was for Janie's character make the transitions in order to follow her pursuit of love and self-identity. For this book to have been published in the late 1930's, it's definately a sort of ground breaking. Not many women in the not 1930's were as sexual and independent as this character was. She was in search of what she desired and curious to know/feel more about. Hurston acknowledged the fact that there were still "laws" that needed to be followed by the African American society, but she also pointed out that they had a society with codes of conduct all of their own. Janie was a mold breaker and the reader could tell that from the beginning of the book. She didn't care of other people's opinions of her. She pursued her desire to understand and find love. Also, to find self identity. I love how Janie is constantly in touch with her inner spirit and that is seen more towards the end of the book, after Jody dies. With the previous writings that we have read, love is absent from them. It is talked about or referred to, but its Hurston that actually has taken the concept and revolved it around her characters which gives them more depth and human like characteristics. I feel as if we all can relate to some of the characters in the novel. We all are like Janie at times when we're trying to find ourselves and look within to our spirits' true desires.

http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~gallaher/hurston/hurston.html

Hurston and Wright

2006-03-15T20:15:00.000-05:00

Wright's style definately was focused on protest fiction. There was nothing positive in his writings, just lessons he learned from his experiences. The Jim Crow south affected all that lived through it. Protest Fiction is the kind of writing that's main goal is to expose a social problem and advocate for social change. Wright did this perfectly. I personally liked how he kept his experiences in an organized fashion so that the reader could tell how much a person in his situation had to learn and act so that there would be no punishment. It's appalling how the African Americans were treated during this time period. Wright did an amazing job with his protest fiction in making the reader understand what he was going through and how morally wrong it was yet he still had to go through it.

Hurston on the other hand was a completely different style of writing. I enjoyed her a lot because she was so positive. Just because there was racism she had an attitude as if to say "well if you want to be like that, it's your loss". It was absolutely great. I do think that a big part of her attitude had to do with the fact that she was in a certain part of Florida and then in New York were the Jim Crow laws were hardly even spoken of except from Southern people. She used positive to off set the negative experiences of her life and she didn't seem to touch on it. She acknowledged the fact that she had experienced it and it was as if she just used it to add fuel to her fire.

Here are a couple links in case anyone is interested in reading further into Wright. I know we weren't exposed to too much, but there is still a chance that someone liked him.
http://www.english.uius.edu/maps/poets/s_z/r_wright/r_wright.htm

Oh more Faulkner

2006-02-22T18:34:00.000-05:00

So at this point I have tried not to give up total hope when it comes to reading him. I am just extremely happy that we are done! Hopefully the readings that are ahead of us are nowheres near his writings. They were very original, but mostly for the male audience... Sorry to the guys in the class, I'm sure reading the mushy women authors are the equivalent to Faulkner and I apologize.

Anyways.. I won't ramble on and on, so here is my blog. I liked the short story The Bear. Although it was a masculine hunting story, I liked how it was a very descriptive and it was slightly easier to follow along with. I thought it was ironic how it was Lion vs Bear. All I kept thinking was that it was two king predators verses. The king of the jungle, the lion, and the king of the woods, the bear. It was just a thought that was in my head when I was reading and I thought it was kind of creative whether Faulkner meant to do that or didn't. I can just pretend he did. I also liked how the idea of race being non-existant once people entered the wilderness. It was as if it was erased and everyone was considered equal. I don't know if I said this before in a previous post, but I like Sam Fathers character. I feel like Isaac really learned from him and he helped shaped the older character that we were first introduced to. The fact that he was part Native American was exceptional. It helps the reader to understand that he had such deep respect for the land and the animals in the wilderness, something that was passed on to Isaac as we had seen. The respect was shown in the value of the land with Isaac and Sam, how they seemed to be different than society. They didn't see it just as a vice that could be used for personal gain, they saw it as it truly was which was a lot more than soil.

Faulkner

2006-02-15T22:20:00.000-05:00

How can you start with Faulkner... I have to admit I am not a big fan of his writing. I didn't really like the Pantaloon in Black. I couldn't follow the tone shifts and I actually got confused with the characters at certain points. In part of the short story, I got confused with Rider, I don't know if anyone else did, but I couldn't keep focus enough to really get into the story. I did realize that this was not like the other short stories from Faulkner. It offered us a different view with relationships like community and family. There was no concrete relationship. I just don't have a lot to say about these readings because they just weren't that attention grabbing. Although I do have to admit that The Old People did help us to understand how Isaac became the person he was in the first short story. I liked how Sam was characterized in the short story. I felt like I could really get into his character.

More on Kate Chopin (LOVE HER!)

2006-02-07T21:13:00.000-05:00

This woman's style of writing for her time period was extremely unique. I can't get over it. I apologize for writing another blog on her, but I definately feel that Desiree's Baby could use a little talking about, especially when paired with the other reading we had to do by James Weldon Johnson. I liked how these readings were paired together to held give a theme for us to read. It's astonishing how even if you looked white and had someone in your family line that were of african origin, you were still considered unpure (One drop rule-Even if you have one non-white ancestor you are still defined as black). At the end of Desiree's Baby, I was left wondering if Armand felt any guilt at all with Desiree's death. If he didnt feel anything, I just don't understand how cold hearted can someone be even if it was just a short story. I mean, he drove her to do that. She was so totally disturbed with the rejection placed upon her when it really was his own fault as we found at the end. I kind of hope that Chopin did intend to use a little guilt in the last lines of the story. You could say that since he was burning everything, erasing the two from his memory and reality, he could of been in such guilt that it was his own fault. It's just an opinion. I'm not sure.

A couple links that a good for Johnson's works if you are interested are as followed. They both are used for two different colleges and may be of interest to people who liked his work.

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/johnson/johnson.html

http://www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/amlit/johnson/johnson.html

2/2/2006 Kate Chopin

2006-02-02T20:42:00.000-05:00

I absolutely loved reading Kate Chopin! Her style of writing made it so easy to get through the reading. While reading "At the 'Cadian Ball", I couldn't help but picture this as part of Gone with the Wind or something close to it. I have to admit the slang that was used was hard to understand in some points, but once you got the jist of it, it was not too difficult. I especially loved how there seemed to be some forbidden love going on between Alcee and Calixta. I feel that Calixta settled for Bobinot because it seemed that Alcee was out of reach; that he was something she lusted for and did not think to be actual love. I'm not really sure. All I know is that when it came time to read the follow up to this, The Storm, all the tension that you could sense in the first reading was released during the pages. I felt as if I was reading a romance novel where you wanted the two characters in the scene to be together even if it meant adultery. During this era, it was wrong for women to write about adultery. The stereotypical Southern woman would never dare think of it because it would be against her pure and helpless nature.

If anyone else is interested in further reading some of her work, I found a website about her that has links to some of her other works. It isn't an official site, someone made it through their angelfire account, but it does provide links to Chopin's work.
http://www.angelfire.com/nv/English243/Chopin.html

1/24/2006 My Thoughts on Jefferson

2006-01-25T17:40:00.000-05:00

When I first looked at the homework for the other day and saw that we were reading Jefferson, I thought to myself, well this could be interesting considering he was the author of our Declaration of Independence and our third president. I had no idea what was in store when I started to read his Notes on the State of Virginia. I did not know that he was such a hypocrite in his writings. He would say one thing and then a few lines below it, completely contradict what he had previously said. For instance, he wrote about how slaves should have freedom, yet he was a slave owner himself. I don't know if it is right for me to say this, but in my own opinion politicians are like this still today. They say one thing and than we can find them later on saying something to contradict it. I do believe that these readings help give us insight on what the developing country was going through at the time with different viewpoints and conflicts.

1/18/2006 just a little something

2006-01-18T15:13:00.000-05:00

Since this is the first time I am creating this before I have started to read, I just figured I would write something here so it's not empty on the first day it's created. lol. Happy Birthday to my first blog for this class! :-)

more to come tomorrow

Courtney