Dec. 7: Farzana, Anum, Sheik, Daliza, Yeshi, Fatimah, Eloise, Rocky, Brandon, Oscar, Andrew, Ruth, Annie
Dec. 12: Sam, George, Dante, Sumaiya, Julie, Shoshanna, Nudrat, Kody, Haein, Sabrina, Emily, Jiaming, Robin
*These are the days on which you present, not necessarily the order in which you will present.
Dear all, I have posted creative writing prompts and presentation guidelines under the Essay Assignments tab. I have also pushed the deadline for the creative piece for the anthology. You must now post that piece of writing to the blog before class on Dec 12.
In the Notebook of a Return to Native Land, I had difficulty grasping the understanding of the text several times that I have to re-read the page over and over to fully understand what the text meant. In the text “they would sell us on the town square and an ell of English cloth and salted meat from Ireland cost less than we did, and this land was calm, tranquil, repeating that the spirit of the lord was in its acts”, I started to understand the meaning after reading it over a couple times.
I did not what understand what they meant in the last couple of sentence meant so I searched for the definitions. In this land with “promising tender cane and silky cotton”, seemed like a good place until it says “brand us with red-hot irons”. As I read to the last sentence, I didn’t understand what the repeating of the spirit of the lord because if it was repeating, then shouldn’t the “lord” be something or someone thats doing good, instead of bad? The fact that it was repeating over again I didn’t understand what this spirit is. Throughout this book, I had to search up definitions on what I didn’t understand and put the words together.
“And be the tree of our hands!
it turns, for all, the wounds cut
in its trunk
the soil works for all
and towards the branches a headiness of fragrant precipitation!”
pg. 38
I had difficulty in reading this passage. Perhaps it was because of the personification of the tree having hands. I tried to keep this idea in mind while reading the remaining lines but fell even more confused when it talked about having wounds cut. I understand a human can have wounds but where does a tree have “wounds cut”? I dealt with this difficulty by just taking each line one at a time instead of trying to see the entire picture at once. By understanding the meaning of the individual lines and any significance it may have, I was able to see a bigger picture. I also needed to look up the word “headiness” because I wasn’t sure of what it meant. After realizing it means being intoxicating or rich, it made sense that the next few words described the fragrance.
A part of the book that I did not understand was: “Sun, Angel Sun, curly Angel of the Sun
for a leap beyond the sweet and greenish treading of the waters of abjection!” In the previous chunk of text, Cesaire narrates an erratic series of memories and thoughts that he has– the writing is almost a list of different scenarios and phrases that he is remembering. Following that, the line about the Sun confuses me because I don’t understand what his reference to the Sun means. Cesaire seems to get more specific with his description of the Sun when he says “Sun, Angel Sun, curly Angel of the Sun”. The Sun may represent a higher spiritual power such as God (Angel Sun) or it could be a higher power meaning white people, (curly Angel of the Sun– but the “curly” part throws me off because stereotypically speaking black people have curly hair, so maybe he is saying he himself is a “curly Angel of the Sun”?). The first time I read this sentence I thought he was referring to the Sun as white people, and so I read the second half of the sentence as sarcasm. However, reading more closely, if he is referring to himself or black people as the Angels of the Sun, then he may be trying to speak to his desire to “leap beyond the…waters of abjection”– the abjection caused by the experiences that taunt him in the passage before this line. The multiple different interpretations of this one line make it a little difficult for me to understand who Cesaire is addressing and why.
-Sabrina Rodriguez
The Notebook of a Return to Native Land seems to be a difficult read to me in general because the author relates ideas that I never would expect to be related. For instance, one part that confused me was when it stated, “I declare my crimes and that there is nothing to say in my defense. Dances. Idols. An apostate. I too” (Cesaire 19). The reason why this confused me was because random words were thrown together and I could not find the relevance and the correlation between these words and what the speaker was saying. In this quote, the speaker talks about how s/he admits that s/he committed crimes and there is nothing s/he can say to defend his/herself. Afterwards, the speaker says words such as “dances” “idols” and “apostate” which I could not understand. The notion of comparing ideas together reminded me of the Surrealism Introduction text by Andre Breton since he stated that if the relation between two realities is distant yet accurate, the image will be stronger. However, for me, it was difficult to create a strong image in mind since I could not relate the ideas “dance” “idols” and “apostate”. I had to reread it a couple of times and look up the word “apostate” to slightly understand the sentence better. Once I realized that an “apostate” is one who rejects a religious belief, I put it into context and interpreted the speaker to not really believe in religion or stopped believing in religion after realizing all the sins committed. Another way to deal with the difficult of the passage was to read the sentence that comes before or after. I read the sentence that comes after: “I have assassinated God with my laziness with my words with my gestures with my obscene songs” (Cesaire 19). Through this, I guessed that the idols might refer to a type of God that this person might formally worship since s/he has now “killed” God with his/her sins. As a result, I interpreted these sentences as the speaker having committed so many sins and realizing it, that s/he decide to renounce the idea of religion in general.
It is safe to say that Notebook of a return to the native land by Andre Breton, is one of the most complicated readings yet. Starting from the first few pages itself was pretty hard to make sense of. Whenever I started to actually get what it meant, something completely out of place pops up and I’m back to square one. For me the fourth paragraph in page four stood out to be the most difficult to understand. For example; the passage starts with, “At the end of the daybreak, the morne crouching before bulimia,” (Breton 4). Bulimia is an eating disorder, an obsessive desire to lose weight, overeating would usually end up in vomiting or depression. Morne, a small hill or mountain, crouching or bent low because if you look at it, a mountain is usually perceived to be an arc shape or bent over, before the bulimia which is the volcano erupting or vomiting. However I couldn’t make sense what the author meant by “on the outlook for tuns and mills.” I am not sure if the idea of bulimia, the vomiting, blood…. was used to describe the morne or the volcano eruption. Therefore, here’s what I did to make as much sense of the paragraph as I could. First of all, I looked up the definitions of all the words I wasn’t familiar with and also the words that didn’t make sense as to why it was in the package such as Bulimia, Morne, tuns and mill etc. Although it didn’t make sense even after defining all the terms, what I understood is that the volcanic eruption had consumed/destroyed everything making it a ditch of fear and there as nothing left but wind.
The book Notebook of a Return to the Native Land is difficult to understand from the first page. However, a passage that struck out to me the most is found on page 14, where Aimé Césaire begins to write about this idea of death which doesn’t go into context of the first few pages of the book. It’s as if this idea of death appeared out of nowhere and is hard to realize the meaning and context of the text at first. The previous page speaks upon speaking up for those who have no voice, but the transition into the line which says, “once again this life hobbling before me, what am I saying, this death…” (pg. 14) gives this ordeal of life being nothing but a buildup to one’s death. The author goes into exemplifying death as if we live throughout death. In order to understand this page of the book specifically, I had to reread the text numerous times while also looking for definitions of unknown words. The transition into this idea of death is a bit awkward, which created a confusion for me since the book speaks of one setting and message to a completely irrelevant thought. It’s as if he corrects himself when saying “what am I saying”, by stating that this life we live is just a pedestal for death. Hence the italics surrounding the word “death” creates a sense of emphasis and shifts the readers mind to a new subject, where in this context the shift was a bit difficult because there are so many that it’s hard to create an image. Overall, the book so far is quite difficult to understand as each paragraph seems to have its own message and meaning, but it appears to be more clear after reading the text over a couple of times. However, I don’t believe there is one meaning this passage specifically, just like the rest of the book, the meaning is based upon one’s interpretation.
The passage that struck me was very early on. The 4th paragraph starts out simply enough with at the first light, referencing dawn. From there is where things got tricky with the line “on this very fragile earth thickness exceeded in a humiliating way by its grandiose future”. I was not sure what the line was describing at first due to the oxymorons. To understand it I continued to read the passage with the context of the French colonized central American islands and their prevalence of slave plantations. That was when things made a bit more sense, describing a volcano destroying the island leaving nothing left but confusingly, “bubbling and a beach of dreams and the insane awaking.” From there I believe I understood what it the passage was talking about. The fragile Earth was a carribean colonial island. The humiliating way by its grandiose future refers to the relative prosperity felt by the plantations due to the inhumane practice of slavery. After realizing this I understood the final line better. The effect of the volcano was wiping the slate clean and returning the island to a beautiful paradise, (the beach of dreams), unimaginable by the modern human standard, (the insane awakening.)
While I was reading Notebook of a Return to a Native Land, I found pages 7-8 very difficult to understand. It was hard to keep track of what was going on. For instance, page 7 begins by mentioning the months as they pass by, but after November it starts talking thoroughly about Christmas, a holiday instead of mentioning the month of December. This disruption in the sentence structure forced me to reread it and make sure that I didn’t miss anything. I also found the ending of page 7 and the beginning of page 8 very difficult to understand because it was a very long and continuous sentence. I had trouble identifying what the sentence was about. For example, the sentence begins by talking about Christmas Day and then suddenly it starts talking about a Church. According to the text, “It had agoraphobia, Christmas did. What it wanted was a whole day of bustling, preparing, a cooking and cleaning spree, endless jitters, about-not-having-enough, about-running-short, about-getting-bored, then at evening an unimposing little church, which would benevolently make room for laughter, the whispers, the secrets, the love talk, the gossip…” (7). It was hard to figure out whether the sentence was focusing on the Church or on the events that occurred during the day. Overall, in order to comprehend the passage, I had to reread it over and over again so that I could make sense of what I was reading. I also had to search up the definitions of some of the words to better understand the passage.