Reflecting on our experience thus far in exploring literary genres, I have come to value the open space that is created for our learning. The seminar “genre” of the classroom allows for multi-way discussions with our professor Anne Dalke, peers, and visitors. The peer-to-peer activities and group blackboard brainstorming channel a collective group effort in breaking down the understanding of the literary genre and provide an open platform for shared ideas. In some sense, the classroom has grown to be a “gift economy” of mutual learning.  Also, the digital platform provided by the Serendip course website is a great way to extend our class discussion outside the three hours of weekly classroom time.  The weekly online reflection has been a useful exercise to participate in  the digital writing movement and to reflect on the past week’s class discussion and readings.

This week I was not sure what exactly the blog post was about. I want to build off of the information that we have been presented during the past week in the class presentations. I was extremely interested in both the language presentation and the story telling presentation. I found it interesting how in the first presentation we learned about the different languages and dialects spoken in Ghana. We were taught this information by students in the 360, none of which are from Ghana. Then a guest, a student, came to talk to us about her experiences as a student and a Ghanain in relationship to language. I was instantly struck by how I became uncomfortable in the classroom. In the begining when there was no one from the country being taught present I was comfortable learning about the culture and language. However, once a student from the country was physically present I became a lot more uncomfortable and uneasy. It made me wish that either we were not 'teaching' about Ghana or that the guest herself was talking instead. However, I then became even more frustrated. People of places are not always 'experts' or good representations of a place, but more importantly, no one person should be forced to be a 'representative' of a place or story. I do not actually have an answer or a final conclusion. I was just very confused myself after class on tuesday about what had taken place. What does it say about me as a learner? my comfort? my discomfort? What difference does it make who is 'teaching' and what they are 'teaching about? 

We talked in class about why any part of the book never addressed Binh flat out as "gay" as well as the fact that Binh feels he is singled out in France, but wouldn't be in Vietnam because there are others that look like him. It made me think about the previous class where we discussed the issue of having an image in our head that correlates to a word and just how imaginative we can be when we read or when we look at a picture; what are the limits of language and images.

In my mind, I can see Binh as stuck in his own image with limited words to describe himself. Others will see him and judge him for what he looks like first and foremost because he stands out. People already have his image in front of them and so they only have so many words to identify him. His image as a vietnamese man is stopping others from knowing Binh more deeply. By not directly addressing Binh as a gay man, I think Truong is giving the character more agency in the book. She doesn't want him to be completely identifable and by using the label "gay", Binh would be trapped in his own image and the gaze of others.

The book is constantly mentioning Binh's speech and how he can't find the right words in French to match his ideas in Vietnamese. By bringing up his limits in communicating with people, Truong is emphasizing another aspect we covered in Tuesday's class about how limited language can realy be.

I was troubled by our in class salt licking, not because I dislike salt, but because ordinary table salt, licked out of our hands, is so different from the way salt is described in The Book of Salt, and so contrary to how salt is used in cooking.  Throughout reading the book, and throughout class on Thursday, I had this unformed idea in my head that we never really got to understand the significance of the salt in the book.  Then, when we read parts of Jessy's post about the queerness in the book being a fact that is simply allowed to be an ingredient that, though it enriches the story and brings a complexity to it, is not overburdened that I understood what was vexxing me.

I wanted to go back to Maria Lugones article about world traveling after thinking about this concept in our daily lives. I recall in class when we did a comparison between world traveling and code switching through investigating their differences. In short, some aspects of world traveling included being present and listening, a goal of being at ease, and participating and observing in a open and accepting environment. We discussed code switching as a product and knowing what is expected and trying to fit into a particular situation instead of experiencing it with fewer predefined expectations. Lugones' idea of traveling between many worlds presents an idea similar to code switching but with different intentions: "Those of us who are "world"-travellers have the distinct experience of being different in different "worlds" and of having the capacity to remember other "worlds" and ourselves in them" (11). Through experiencing these different worlds, world travellers are able to be comfortable and expose themselves to many different environments and experiences shifts in their personality and ways they act. Lugones emphasizes that these are often not conscious and happen naturally due to the environment they are in (11). This differes from code swtiching where there are often active attempts to change oneself to fit into a situation. After reading this article and thinking about it in the context of daily experiences, there are many instances of code switching that happen regularly and shape the way we learn, act, and are perceived by others.

At the end of our class on last Thursday, Anne asked if we cared about the characters in the book. Acutually this is also my question. I felt that we put our focus mainly on the language during our class discussion, reading this book as a ‘textbook’ for an English course, trying to get something out of the writing style. Did we really ‘taste’ its taste? Or we just ‘analyzed’ its taste? To tell the truth, reading by only paying attention to the language itself seems a ‘cold’ way of reading for me. Analyzing the writing style of a book is definitely an important part of reading experience, but language, no matter how beautiful it is, is used to express people’s emotions.

Binh, not fluent in French, not upper class, not well educated, is a Vietnamese exile. He is the colonized in the land of the colonizer–an outsider in a way that Stein and Toklas can never quite understand. In Paris, Binh’s identity is reduced to his skin:

Part 2: http://youtu.be/VgLdnvKqlgU
Part 3: http://youtu.be/hunYSIHv34s

This past week my group presented about "NGOs in Ghana." On the topic of Millennium Develpment Goals, I said how Ghana was on track to accomplish their MDGs by 2015. With consideration to the time limit I was unable to go in depth on Ghana's specific progress on the MDGs so I will expound more on it here:

Over the past few weeks I have been studying NGOs in Ghana.  I was not very surprised by the information that I learned by specifically looking at Ghana but I was surprised by the role of NGOs on an international level.  The first question I wanted to learn when I was assigned this topic is what exactly is the role of an NGO?  Why does its name only describe a thing that it is not? Couldn’t there have been a more descriptive title than “non-governmental”.  I was interested to see how people in our class would respond to being asked to describe NGOs in one word.  I was not surprised that it was difficult for people to do because NGOs cover such a wide variety of interests.  Depending on the area of need, NGOs will help with poverty, healthcare, childcare, nutrition, microfinance, and education. 

Group A: Alice Fischer BMC, Kelsey Harris BMC, Jasmine Brown PW, Sharock Griffen PW

Group B: Ambrosia Johnson BMC, Rachel Kutten BMC, Tracey Hinnant PW, Sereanna Hughes PW

Group C: Brenna Healy BMC, Sonia Giebel HC, Brandy Jones PW, Kelly Klot PW

Group D: Christine Calderon BMC, Grace Loudon BMC, Quadirah Lindsay PW, Laniesha Love PW

Group E: Emma Rosenblum BMC, William Garrett HC, William McAden PW, Charmice McClain PW

Group F: Eva Sarma BMC, Jess Garner BMC, Baseemah Mitchell t PW, Michael Montgomery PW

Group G: Ellen Vari BMC, Roldine Richard BMC, Emani Outterbridge PW, Brittney Palmer PW

Group H: Raminta Holden BMC, Farrah Khan BMC, Stephon Sessoms PW, Charnelle Suber PW

Group I: Lindsey Darvin BMC, Hannah Davis HC,  Asia White PW, Zaneerah Wilson PW

Group J: Sarah Lovegren BMC, Yecica Urena BMC, Randall Wilson PW,  Travon WilliamsPW

I talked very briefly with Professor Franklin the other day about my experience in this class. I told him that I often find myself very opinionated and biased coming into class, and very confused going out. I told him it reminded me of entropy. But beyond that, it reminded me of a text we read in my ESEM last semester, called The Library of Babel, written originally in Spanish by Jorge Luis Borges. The main idea he had was that the Universe is filled with these hexagonal rooms, a representation of the amalgamation of the knowledge that everyone knows. One of the things I picked up from the text, is the whole notion that any attempt to establish order will always result in more chaos and disorder. He said, "Other men, inversely, thought that the primary task was to eliminate useless works. They would invade the hexagons, exhibiting credentials which were not always false, skim through a volume with annoyance, and then condemn entire bookshelves to destruction: their ascetic, hygenic fury is responsible for the senseless loss of millions of books. Their name is execrated; but those who mourn the "treasures" destroyed by this frenzy, overlook two notorious facts. One: the Library is so enormous that any reduction undertaken by humans is infinitesimal."