Posts

Conclusions!

 Hello everyone! While I enjoyed reading books in this class and writing weekly blog posts, I am excited to be finishing up with all the work it required. I have definitely never taken a course quite like this before, but I think ultimately I enjoyed it.  Overall, I liked the books chosen that we had to read. My biggest pet peeve in literature based courses is when I don't find the readings interesting and I feel like when dissecting them we are kind of making stuff up out of nothing, but I felt like we were never doing that in this course. All of the books had depth and fostered discussions that I really enjoyed. I also think having the blog posts every week really made me interact with the readings more as there was that requirement to write 400-500 words about them. I have in other classes, sacrificed doing readings as I had other assignments due, so the blog post requirement helped motivate me to finish reading the books.  That being said, I definitely enjoyed reading some book
2 comments
Read more

The Book of Chameleons, Agualusa

 Hello everyone! This weeks book is The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa. It is narrated by a Gecko named Eulálio, who lives in Felix's house and witnesses all the people who go through the home.  I was originally confused about the title including "Chameleon" because the narrator is a gecko, and I thought these were two different animals. I did look this up and they share similar traits but are ultimately different animals. One fact I found interesting is that geckos are the only type of lizards that possess a voice which made sense that Agualusa would choose for the narrator to be a gecko. Upon completion of the book and reflection, I really like the title because it related to pretty all of the characters in the book. Chameleons are able to adapt to their surrounding by changing the colour of their skin to camouflage, which is essentially what Felix helps people to do as he creates pasts for people. Furthermore, the stories of each of the other characters be
1 comment
Read more

Money to Burn, Piglia

Hello everyone! Week 10's book is Money to Burn  by Ricardo Piglia, a thriller type book following a group in Argentina who commit an armed robbery, and then flee to Uruguay, where they were eventually discovered in an armed shootout.  I am not sure what to write about other than how disturbed I felt reading this. It was very heavy and there were lots of things to think about and digest. Apart from the obvious heist, steeling things and killing people, there was complete sexualization of a 15 year old girl, numerous use of slurs, graphic descriptions of a child's murder, and I think it was all just too much for me. The way the book nonchalantly explained horrific acts was unsettling. Even writing this I'm having trouble paraphrasing but for example on page 52 describing the way a man was drowned in a lake after he had sex with and chained a foreigner to a post. Another example, is when the 15 year old girl was being described and completely sexualized throughout the book. 
2 comments
Read more

The Lover, Duras

 Hello everyone! This weeks book is The Lover by Marguerite Duras, set during the French colonial occupation of south east Asia. It is an autobiographical story of Duras' family's struggles with death and poverty, as well as her affair with "the lover" a Chinese man who is 27 years old, 12 years older than her. Overall, I don't know what to think about this book. I understand where the author is coming from and how she may have genuinely loved him in the end. However, throughout reading I could not stop thinking about how I know the nature of this relationship to be entirely wrong.  I think the power dynamics in their relationship are important to understand how Duras portrays the relationship. First of all, the obvious age gap, she is 15 and he is 27, he has much larger level of maturity and understanding of consent than she could have. Second of all, he is very wealthy compared to her, and she needs his money, at the beginning even saying that the relationship
1 comment
Read more

The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector

 Hello everyone! This week's book is The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector, a short text that follows the diary or stream of consciousness of a narrator, Rodrigo, writing about a girl he had seen, Macabéa. Frequently, the narrator would question his own writing, saying things like "I'm not a professional" (pg 9). Knowing a bit of Clarice Lispector's background from the introduction, I thought this could potentially be a manifestation of Lispector's own reservations, being a "self taught writer" (pg viii).  I found some parts of this reading almost comical, sometimes at the absurdity of what I was reading or the narrators thoughts. For example, when he said "but I suspect that all this chitchat is made just to put off the poverty of the story, because I'm scared" (pg 8-9) because it seems like procrastination, which is relatable. I also laughed when he said "now I want to speak of this northeastern girl" (pg 10), spoke abou
6 comments
Read more

The Time of the Doves, Rodoreda

 Hello everyone! This weeks book is The Time of the Doves by Mercè Rodoreda, a book originally written in the romance language of Catalan, set in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. It follows Natalia and her life married to Quimet and Antoni.  Firstly, I already feel like I have so much to say about the translators note. I have been enjoying the inclusion of these at the beginning of these translated texts because I feel like it closes the gap a bit of what we miss from reading the text in its original language. I think it is a little ironic that we are reading the translated text yet the translator highlights the significance of the civil war forbidding Catalan, and the importance of it being used and taught in schools now. The inclusion of the historical context was important to this translated text because it highlights how this book stood the test of an attempted cultural genocide of Catalan.  I found Natalia's husband Quimet insufferable for many obvious reasons but there wer
3 comments
Read more

Black Shack Alley, Zobel

 Hello everyone! Week 6's reading is Black Shack Alley by Joseph Zobel, the longest book we have read so far. While past books were able to delve into topics in immense detail with only a small amount of pages, I liked that this reading had more space in order to fully explore its topics of colonialism, slavery, and growing up in this time. Specifically, it follows a boy growing up in Martinique, an island colonized by France, in the 1920s.  To touch on the inclusion of the glossary in the beginning of the book, I believe this inclusion was important, especially for a book that touches on colonialism. In this course we are reading translated versions of books that were originally written in romance languages, and including this glossary made me think about how we may be losing some of the original readings by reading translated versions. I think language is a very important part of culture and nationality that can be lost, so I really liked that some key terms were not turned into
5 comments
Read more