Connection

Can't believe the semester is already over! It has flown by and I can't believe we have already finished all of our novels. I remember looking at the list of novels on the first day of class and wondering how we were going to get through them all. Never fear, we did.

Each novel brought something new to the plate, each one opened my eyes just a little bit more. Not that I enjoyed every novel, but each one had a distinct impact on my mind. Whether it was large or small, it doesn't matter.
Today in class the question was asked as to what the connections throughout the semester in all of the novels we read were. The first thing that popped into my head was identity, searching for an identity. All of the novels we read, the characters were in search for something that was missing in their lives, searching for answers but in the end they were searching for who they were. The characters were trying to find where they fit in, if they fit it and how. All of these characters I am able to relate to because of that element. I believe that we can never truly find an identity since we are always change, just like society. Thus, our identity will be forever changing as well. There might be some parts in our lives, just like in Paradise where you hit "rock bottom" and need something to change in your life since it doesn't fit. But in the end, there is not a single identity to form.

To jump to another topic quickly. I wanted to say that after reading all of the novels I think that I enjoyed Edward P. Jones the most, his novel All of Aunt Hagar's Children. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but my speculation is that it truly made me think. It made me stretch and search for answers that I didn't know how to find, or even know what answers I was looking for. When I am looking through the novels we read, I have a lot of annoations and highlighted portions in his novel, not of questions but of exciting and great details, or those "wow" phrases! Jones gave it real character in his novel and voice. He has something truly distinctive about him.

Tough Language in Tuff

"When Winston Foshay found himself on the hardwood floor of a Brooklyn drug den regaining consciousness, his reflex wasn't to open his eyes but to shut them tighter," (3).

With that being the first sentence in the book, my first thought was wow this is going to be a good but intense book! I love satire's and love the humor interweaved into it all. The one aspect that really stands out is Beatty's language that he uses. (Side note, definitely would not be able to teach this to high school students.) The language is blunt and a little shocking at first. I had to step back really quick and get into the mind set. Beatty uses the language he is using for a reason. He doesn't use profanity and the "n" word for just no reason. There is a strategy behind this. Because Winston Foshay is in a drug den at first, trying to get out, I think that it is not uncommon for this type of language to be used, it is not suprising. But for some readers such as myself, I was shocked because I am not used to that language.

Also, I found it extremely interesting that Winston explained his out of body experience in each level: Ten Yards Up, Ten Thousand Yards Up, One Million Yards, One Billion Yards, etc... and finally ends with:
"One Thousand Light-Years: I see the souls of Demetrius, Zoltan, and Chilly Most trying to find the happy hunting ground. "Where are we? Alpha Centrauri?..." (23).
And was asked if he found heaven up there. The answer was with beer in hand and cigarette in the other. Yes, that is the answer. This just sets the entire tone for the book- the satire that Beatty has written.

Fledgling in High Schools

One of our discussions last class was whether or not Fledgling would be an appropriate novel to read and teach in high school. Good question. The initial reaction was no, there is no way I would teach this novel in high school. Why? Fledgling is about a young woman vampire who was picked up on the side of the road by an “older” man. It is kind of creepy because the young woman looked like she was 10 years old, however, in vampire years she was about 50 years old. However, my reasoning was not that reason. A little bit further into the book, the younger woman and this man have sexual relations when he does not know that she is older than 10. And other than that, I had no other reasoning. And so then I realized that single reason alone is not even a solid reason not to teach this novel in high school.

High school students are not given enough credit with the type of novels they are “mature” enough to read or to just understand.
This wonderment had me search the banned books list online for high school students. While researching this online, with the novels listed, it explains why they are banned and the court decision and how many times it was challenged. It is sad, to me, because a lot of the reasons as to why some novels are banned is something that the students can use as a learning tool. They can take the information, and the history that is being taught in a novel to understand history and the past of our country. To learn about how ideals were different in the past, how it has changed and why those ideals were like that in the past. And for me, that is one of the reasons why I love literature so much, understanding the history and the time period it was written, to pull all of that information together to create meaning. I was truly disappointed in seeing that To Kill a Mockingbird was on the list of banned books because I was able to read that novel my tenth grade year in high school and that is one of the first novels I truly was able to connect with, dialogue with and create meaning with the history during that time. I do believe it truly is one of the reasons why I want to be an English teacher and fell in love with literature.
To bring this information together, I think that as society we do not give enough credit to high school students to “handle” the novel. There is some “hard” information to understand and issues, however, the teacher may have to address something that is off the mark for just a second, but then just move right along, get back to what the book is actually addressing. Fledgling does have a lot of underlying meaning which might be hard to address everything in a unit plan that is only about a month long but it isn’t impossible, it can happen. This unit plan would have to be very detailed and creative for the students to understand everything going on in the novel, the hard hitting issues that are all underlying in the text.

Well that is enough of that… I enjoyed Fledgling basically and it was one of my favorite novels in the course.

Shori's Amnesia

I am going to have to say that I agree that I am enjoying this novel and Butler however, I also like analyzing novels. Making Jones, Morrison, and all the others we have read so far in this class enjoyable as well. Maybe at the time I didn't want to speak up, saying that I liked them because I have to sit back and think about it for a while before I decide if I like a novel or not- more specifically an author.

Anyways today in class while we were discussing the question: Why does Butler write Shori with amnesia, what statement does it make? Somebody said that it creates a blank slate for her, to start questioning everything she was told when she was smaller and just agreed with it since she was taught that. Much like we are in society today, don't alway question ideals and what is taught, to be part of the status quo. Needless to say, though, this brings up the topic of identity. Since she can't remember who she was, what she liked, so on and so forth, she is creating a new self, in essence a new "Shori." So my question to you is, if you had amnesia but could remember everything you were learning for a "first" time, would you change your life? And if yes, what would you change about your life or yourself?

Symbiont Servant

When reading Fledgling, with Shori, we learn about the Ina society. In this novel, Butler invents a whole biology and anthropology of vampire life. It is established that these vampires outlive the human race, the Ina live for about 500 years or even more. When they are injured, they can self- repair, (Shori clearly shows the reader) on a diet of red meat. The Ina society live exclusively of human blood alone. They also possess an extraordinary sense of smell, together with more acute sight and hearing than human beings do; all of these senses come into play in their relationships with one another, as well as human beings. Unlike our society, the Ina society, female Ina are more powerful than male and are organized around gender- segregated extended families. The male young live with the family of their fathers, the female with the family of their mothers. The Ina also have complex relationships with their “symboints,” the human beings upon whom they feed. In the novel, vampires almost never kill their human prey; they live together with them, and have sex with them, in extended families of seven or eight human symbionts for each vampire. Whether male or female, vampires generally have symbionts of bother genders, and the symbionts often develop sexual relationships with one another. So all in all, Ina society involves both vampires and human beings, involved in complex webs of polyamory.

Since Wright is Shori’s symbiont I have been trying to figure out what it means to be the human symbiont of a vampire. As readers we see only human thoughts and feelings through her narration, however, how do we know that is only her human thoughts and feelings. Vampire saliva seems to be both addictive and antiseptic for human beings: the human beings experience an immense sexual pleasure from being bitten, and quickly become dependent upon it. But with that, vampire saliva also results in their leading long and healthy lives: they never get sick, and they live much longer than ordinary human beings. The symbiont life seems to be ones servitude. Most vampires are ethical (however each individual reader wants to define that) enough to give their human prey some small amount of choice, to leave in an early stage of their relationship. So far, that is how far I have gotten through what a symbiont means…

Hate Crimes

Shoni and her "family" are dealing with hate crime. This wraps the ideal around the characteristics of what creates a sci-fi novel. Hate crim is still part of society today. This ideal of writing a novel that focuses in a wide lens, problems in scoeity is part of a sci-fi. I think that even though Fledgling focuses on hate crime, in a more narrow sense, it talks about hate crime with race. When shoni meets her father, she finds out that her mother is fully human, has been killed. On a quick side note, the scar and how the mother should not have been killed since she has more power- that reminds me of Harry Potter (sorry, total side note). But Shoni finds out that nobody knows why the other part of the community was killed, but the guess is it was somebody who was scared of who the Ina were- vampires. As Shoni brought up, anybody can own a gun or kill- everybody has the capacity to kill- just depends on the need and willingness. How Butler encompasses a couple societal problems is masked in how vampires are discriminated against. And, I think, it is a genius way to grab different cultures, perspectives, etc... to relate to different social groups. I guess the larger question is: how do we change this? Will it ever change? Can it change? Being aware of the problems in society to change this is the biggest obstacles. Why? Some people do not want to admit it is a problem. Perhaps, it will be an on-going question.

Hate Crimes?

As I am reading further into Fledgling I realize that this story doesn't directly correlate with race but instead with hate crime in general. Hate crime in general terms is targeting a victim because of his or her membership in a certain social group. Within the first 60 pages the reader did not know the identity of the vampire girl that gave the reader a chance to know the girl without an actual connection to who she is; it seems like the reader was able to ease into the novel and understand who she is. But when the reader found out the girls name, Shori, the reader also finds out that her "family" was hurt and killed. And since the families in this community were vampires, people are scared that they die from vampires, instead of understanding them, they want to get rid of them first.