The Easter story has been hammered into my brain since I was about 5 or 6 by everyone from my mother to the temperamental nuns who were responsible for my education. It was told to me in a way that I would never hope to understand, and thinking back on it, purposefully so: the mystical benevolent, scruffy haired godman with impeccable taste in white linens and a blinding golden aura reduced himself to a horrifying and humiliating unique punishment, died, went hand to hand combat with the devil, came back to life, walked around town and freaked out his friends, and flew into the heavens, having saved us all for infinite generations to come. Whatever the story, this meant I was not allowed to eat jellybeans for a month or say Hallelujah. Ever since I can remember, I attended solemn masses that reeked of incense and smoke, while the congregation hollered, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" Well, no, I indeed was not. In all actuality, the Easter holds little bearing on the sanctity of my soul as Jesus may have so earnestly intended. Being older, the Easter story is now more appealing to me as a special on the History Channel. I think less about Christ's mysterious powers and more about how crucifixtion was a common although vulgar punishment inflicted by the Romans and that the the successful "cross" was really a "T." I must say, that from a literary standpoint the Easter story, especially in the King James Biblical version, is an easily appreciable work of artful persuasion.

This is a remix of "If I Were a Boy" featuring R. Kelly. I don't think it's any less problematic than the original because it still puts the man in this traditional position of power ("how I work and pay the bills," etc) but at least it gets a male perspective in there a little bit. The song also points out that Beyoncé is making some broad categorizations about men in saying that women are always the victims in relationships. The one line I really like is "you are not a perfect woman, and I am not a perfect man". I thought it was interesting because we talked in class about how the video was one-sided and not entirely fair to men, and I saw this as a response to that.

A better title for this would be: "Your Brain on Stories," but still cool, I think.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?ref=todayspaper

I was having a conversation with a friend about "A Game of You" by Neil Gaiman and found myself having difficulty explaining the plot. Not because I hadn't read the text but rather, because it was just to bizzare. I had to preface everything with "oh God, okay, this is weird but....". (Especially when I had to talk about Thessaly cutting George's face off and nailing it to the wall.)

Although I didn't particularly find myself drawn right into Gaiman's world unlike others in the class, I do wonder how it is that Gaiman, among many other authors, construct this world that (some) readers can get fully engrossed in. Reason and logic are suspended as a reader encounters this fantasy world. While this is the nature of fiction, I can't help but wonder what the boundaries of fantasy are.

This made me think about the genres of "fiction" and "non-fiction". I looked up a definition that young children are taught which is akin to the definition that was laid out for me when I first started to read:

Fiction - The books that are made up by the author, or are not true, are fiction.

Non-Fiction - Books that are non-fiction, or true, are about real things, people, places, events.

I started looking into my memories when Anne asked us when we first felt gendered. My mother tells me that I had a “girly” phase when I was three, where I’d wear lots of pink dresses and lacy gloves and a white hat with a pink ribbon.  Instead of sleeping with a particular stuffed animal, I’d bring my favorite object of the day into bed. Once it was the frying pan from my kitchen set, and once my new pair of shoes.  But I grew out of that, and my mom bought me overalls and other clothes that didn’t have a particular brand or princess on it, and let me grow out my Dorothy Hamill.

Now I wonder if my gendered phases in my childhood caused how I’m gendered now—well, I’m certain they affected it somehow, but is it directly because of my inconsistent display of femininity? Or was I just born to be ambiguous?

In class, we agreed that A Game of You is scary because it shows us that the boundary we draw between the dream world and the real world is not as hard and fast as we like to think.  This doesn’t feel scary to me anymore.  Isn’t it exciting that the things that happen in our head have the ability to manifest themselves in the physical world? I know that my imaginings inform my choices and my identity and...that’s cool!   

1. Memory and Forgetting: For me, these stories beg questions about the point of telling non-fiction stories.  If we can never remember something with complete accuracy, why do we tell stories in the first place?  Does the third story answer this?  Is it good or bad that every time we remember something (tell a story) the memory takes us farther away from what actually happened?  Should we try to make technology so that we can remember stories accurately/does voice recording do this?  How has Henrietta Lacks’ story changed because of Skloot’s book and the BBC documentary?  How have our stories changed as we tell and re-tell them?