RMST 202 Blog

 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...

 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 ...

 Week 5's reading is Agostino by Alberto Moravia, a very short yet interesting reading. I found this the easiest to read and get into so far, partly because it was only 57 pages and I could read it all in one sitting, but also because the plot and characters were pretty much immediately introduced. Readers are immediately wanting to know why Agostino is thinking the way he is. I did not find a single one of the characters likeable, yet I was still interested in the reading which I would not have expected. All of the younger boys were homophobic and just overall mean, and Saro was not a father figure, instead grooming at least one of the young boys. There is an overwhelming amount of description of characters bodies through the eyes of Agostino. He calls his mother large many times, focuses on Saro's mustache and six fingers on each hand, and goes into extreme detail about the boys bodies, especially when they strip naked to go swimming.  The most interesting part of this readi...