When choosing the required courses for my English major I have a habit of just choosing the course number and not looking at the description of what the course is about because I figure I’ll end up learning what the course is about when I start attending the classes. And that does happen but I feel like I learn what the course was about subconsciously after the course is done and then I piece together how what we learned in class relates to the topic of the course itself. In this course towards the end, the last few books that we started to read; Persepolis, The Sound and the Fury, Drown, Dreams from my Father and The Woman Warrior is when the term “global literature” started coming alive for me. The poems of T.S Elliot and W.B Yeats definitely had something they wanted to say from T.S Elliot’s “Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” who wanted to show how his insecurities manifested when he wanted to talk to women, to W.B Yeats whose poems though a little hard to understand, did sometimes have subtle hints to the turmoil of the time period he lived in. In The Heart of darkness by Joseph Conrad, the author, even though he might have been a racist himself, he showed readers the racism at the time. I feel like for me the book as a whole and the ways it showed racism, and greed at the time through Marlowe was something that spoke out more to me then it being a book that really made me think of the term “global literature.” I was more drawn to thinking about whether or not Conrad was a racist, and if the way he talked was to show the racism at the time, or if it was something unconscious.
Maybe it was the succession and the order that we started the reading the books in, starting from Persepolis and ending in The Woman Warrior that made me start thinking about the final blog and how everything fits so perfectly into the word “global.” Persepolis was such a different perspective and view from the poems and the books that we had been reading. It really showed how different life was for a young girl living in Iran during the Iranian revolution whose parents weren’t as religious as the nation itself was. When thinking about the word “canon wars” and trying to answer the question if whether this book would classify as something that would be considered canon literature I would say yes. Even though this book may have been put into a comic book type of format and some would argue that because of this it could not be classified as literary canon, I think this element is what added to the novel what a written format would not have been able to. Like in one of my blog posts I talked about how Marji’s pain and suffering for the death of her friend was expressed in one blank (totally dark) frame, and how it really showed me her anguish better.
When thinking of the term “global literature” I feel that family and the lifestyle of an individual in that place, area or time has a big thing to do with it, because it shows not only the different lifestyles and customs of that global region but it somehow helps the reader “connect” with the individual in ways they might not realize that they could. Especially if they themselves have parents who are not originally from America like myself. And that’s why I feel that these books Persepolis, The Sound and the Fury, Drown, Dreams from my Father, and The Woman Warrior are more “global literature” to me because they hold this family aspect of tying in the reader who might be in one part of the world to another because of a small similarity.
Although, I would put The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner as something that would be classified global literature I feel that it was one of the novels in terms of writing style I did not enjoy. In the time period it was written in, it gave the same perspective as Persepolis in showing how a family coped with the way life was at the time. William Faulkner makes it seem like the reason for all the problems in the family is this character Benji who has a disability, and because of him there is a lot the family cannot do, but as the book nears its end the reader realizes that Caddy, Quentin, and Jason are their own people and their problems have nothing to do with Benji. They are their own people and the lifestyles they choose for themselves are strictly of their own choosing even though they would like to blame the other. Dreams from my Father showed how a young black man survived in a time period in which racism was prevalent, and how he tried his best to make life better for himself and his black community. I felt this worked better than Heart of Darkness in defining “global literature” because it showed Barack’s life from when he was a young kid to him growing older and how his family and the decisions they made and the way they thought affected what he wanted to do in life.
Drown was probably my favorite book in the course. The word style and the simple but poignant wording is something that I have always enjoyed in books and this book had so much of it. Not only did Yunior talk about the tough times that his family had to go through because of their shortage of money, but he always added his own jokes and side comments that made the book even more relatable to someone from the same background. I would consider Drown and The Woman Warrior also part of canon literature because of the way just like Persepolis they are all stories that someone could maybe learn something from. I know there are standards for classifying something as “canon literature” and I probably am not using the right terminology when I am defining what “canon literature” is according to “scholars.” But I think that canon literature is anything that is well written and anyone can read and say that this story has a bigger picture. The Woman Warrior through the little stories that the narrator made up in her head showed the reader how indirectly Maxine wished to escape from the life she lived and how she hated a girl because she saw all the things she hated about herself in that girl.
Overall, I really liked the whole blogging experience and it was something completely new and unexpected for me. I have never had to blog for any of my other English courses and after taking this course I really wish that all English courses could be like this. Blogging really opened my mind a lot better and helped me free write in a way I don’t think I usually would have if it had to be in a paper form. When I write a paper I feel the need to make sure that all my ideas are in the proper order, and all my ideas connect with the sentence I am about to write; and this sometimes stops me from saying things I otherwise would have said. Blogging I feel opens my mind up a little more and I really enjoyed the experience.
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