Identity Maps and Unfair Project In everyday life, we know that everyone has certain traits they identify by, mostly stereotypes. However, not everyone sees you the way you identify yourself. We decided to show that by taking a picture of ourselves and writing things we identify by, but also things that other people have identified us by that we disagree with.
Critical Theories We learned about many different literary theories we are able to use while analyzing literature, also know as lenses. Reading literature using different lenses can help understand and think more deeply about what the author is trying to say. The ones we learned about are critical race theory, psychoanalysis theory, postcolonial theory, queer theory, feminist theory, and reader response theory. I noticed a lot of them required questioning the characters and author and bringing it back to either our culture, social structure, or yourself.
We were tasked to use one of these theories and apply it to our book club book. I chose to use postcolonial theory to try to further my understanding in Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, which I will talk more about here.
Readings and Socratic Seminars
Serial The Podcast: Season One
We listened to a podcast as a class that was about a journalist investigating the murder of Hae Min Lee, a senior girl living in Baltimore. Listening to this podcast made me think about how many cases presented at trial, can look a certain way all based on the way it is presented. Despite the actual evidence or the lack of evidence, Adnan Syed, her ex boyfriend, was convicted for her murder. This also made me think about how many people in our prisons are actually guilty of the crime they committed.
Sarah Koenig, a journalist, tells the story of this case. I think she tells a lot of Adnan Syed's story because he is the one actually willing to talk to her and get his named cleared. Adnan says he didn't do it, and Sarah looks into all the evidence of the case. I think this eventually became Sarah's story the more she got involved and looked into it. I think the storyteller becomes part of the story once they become involved with figuring out the truth of the story.
I have not decided on if I believe Adnan is guilty or not. I think there is definitely evidence that could be used to assume that Adnan had did it, but not enough in my opinion.
Homegoing
This book is about the stories of each generation after the next. The thing that makes it so amazing though, is that it starts with the perspectives of two sisters in Ghana, who never meet or know of each other's existence. From there, it just goes from generation to generation until present day.
The author used imagery very often to describe many situations going on in the book. It was very easy for me to read and picture what she was trying to say. While reading this book, I knew I was going to have to write a paper on it in the end, so I made sure to try to keep in mind everything that happened. Something that helped me remember what I read was to just take a moment to reflect on what I just read. However, many of the stories in this book were very impactful on its own.
I didn't read my book through a critical lens as I was reading it, but I analyzed it afterwards using a postcolonial lens. I chose to use this lens because I thought it was most fitting since many of the characters had been slaves as well as lived in a colonized society.