I finished Chapter Five and turned it in! Off my plate for a while, and I’m hoping only a few more revisions before it’s done all together.
We have come to terms now with having a baby, and I know it’s been ten months, but we’re a little slow on the uptake. We’ve decided for the foreseeable future not to force Seamus to go places when he is still at a stage where he mostly just wants to be at home. He does like going to daycare and going for walks, but he likes to sleep in his own bed, take his bath in his own tub, and sit in his own chair for dinner. Really, kind of what we all want.
In my Chicana/o Literature class we’ve moved from talking about texts written by women to those written by men. Interesting representations, especially when we started by looking at Cheech Marin’s Born in East L.A. I do think the movie is funny, but there are some elements to it that are clearly using sexist stereotypes for humor. So far, I would keep everything I’ve chosen to teach, but if I weren’t in Albuquerque, where Mother Tongue is set, I would probably swap it for a different coming of age social/political awareness novel–Under the Feet of Jesus.
On Monday, I had them read “Seventh Grade” by Gary Soto, and they admitted to being confused as to why it was on the syllabus, since it seemed so juvenile. But I was right in thinking that about a third of them want to be middle or high school teachers and this text allowed us to talk about the different expectations we have for texts we’d be willing or eager to share with our students. This all led to a discussion of difficulty and literary value. I certainly have opinions about this, but ultimately, I think the canon sells for parents of students. They want to know what their kids are reading, not so much for the censorship nature of it (although people leap to censor texts by writers of color and by women more quickly than they do something like Shakespeare or Swift, even though they’re pretty raunchy), but because they think there are magic texts that are going to make their children have more intelligence. I don’t know, like studying business because that’s how you get a job.
Really though, reading a variety of literature is what makes one smart at literature. And that’s why I keep taking time off my dissertation reading to read other fiction. Rationalization. Ahh.
The CEA–College English Association–conference in San Antonio is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I’m looking forward to seeing Myrriah and Carrie and Robin and Joe, presenting a paper, and doing some research. Somehow every single panel that has to do with Chicana/o /Latino/a Literature is on Thursday. That day will be busy and probably brain overloading, but it frees us up to leave for Austin early on Friday. I will not be bringing Seamus on this trip. After looking at the travel schedule and thinking about his needs, I think it’s a good choice.
Before that though, we have Spring Break, during which I plan to rest, read, and write. We also will probably ride our bikes, pulling Seamus’s adorable bike trailer along behind.
Academic Leigh Speaking 