This week Tom Hothem, member of the Core committee and associate director of UC Merced’s Merit writing program shared his story on how he has made California his own. Tom explained that in order to understand yourself you have to understand where you live. Dr. Hothem created a great roadmap for his California story that showed his path to understanding himself and where he lived. Hothem used his own viewpoints and shared various author’s interpretations of California. It is vital that you understand where you live in order to accurately portray yourself. Tom uses literature from Californian authors such as Mark Twain, John Muir and Jack Hicks who explain their interpretations of California. Ones interpretation of California can be closely related …show more content…
to Lipsitz, “Its all wrong, but it’s all right”, where the author provides various examples of creative misunderstanding of ones culture.
Creative misunderstanding can be related to Toms’ lecture because we can’t understand ourselves until we understand where we live, and it is the same with literature where we can’t understand certain literature until we understand the background behind it. Tom’s lecture, Some Snapshots from the literature of California used literature from John Muir, Mark Twain, and Jack Hicks where he was able to relate their California experiences to his. The book Highway 99 showed the literary journey through California’s Greater Central Valley Tom’s current home town. Laura Cunningham's depiction of San Francisco, Old and New was also an aid that helped Tom explain how his hometown has changed throughout history. Hothem provides various examples of places that have allowed him to make California his own such as Merced River, Hornitos Road, and Williams Peak Hike. All of these places can be described with different perspectives, but the only one that is important is the perspective through which you experience it. In Toms’ word, “It's easy to describe place. We often see it through others' eyes- but individual experience of places is always unique” (Tom Hothem). It is important that you experience every place through your own eyes and your own opinion because that is what it will make that experience special and yours. In Lipsitz, “Its all wrong, but it’s all right”, the topic of creative misunderstanding is described.
Creative misunderstanding is when two or more cultures communicate they tend to misunderstand each other quite a lot but it’s not bad because they create more meaning. Lipsitz states, “The light seemed to focus all the warmth in the room on me as I belted out Hank William’s “Jambalaya” in my eighth year-old voice… and that was the beginning of the whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-ohs that would become my trade mark as a singer” (Lipsitz 405). Here Bennett was mistaken with the lyrics to Jambalaya she was corrected and the whole group was supportive because she made it her own. Lipsitz also states: “‘I know Pete Seeger is Black,’ he replied, ‘Why should I change my mind just because I see his face?’ In this instance, blackness becomes a political position, something determined more by culture than by color. Although the African is factually wrong about the meaning of Seeger’s identity within the context of U.S. culture, his ‘misunderstanding’ also contains a strategic grain of truth” (Lipsitz 409). Lipsitz is correct because for some people certain things are different than what it would be to others, like Tom said we all have different perspectives on things and what is important is what you value your idea to be. Cheech Marin “La Bamba”/ “Twist and Shout” mix-up in Born in East L.A. is also an example of creative misunderstandings because it has shown how cultures can be mistaken yet they
can relate so much if you are able to make them your own. Ultimately, what the key point to take away from both Lipsitz and Dr. Tom Hothem is that even though their might be different ideas the one that should be valuable is yours. You are supposed to make your own ideas even if they conflict with others perspective because there will be plenty of perspectives and the one that matters is yours. Just like Lipsitz “Its all wrong, but it’s all right” there is many creative misunderstandings but you have to make sure that you make them your own. To conclude you must make sure that you understand yourself, but make sure tht you understand your hometown first.
James J. Rawls perspective of the California Dream consists of promise and paradox. People from all over move to California in hopes of finding opportunity and success. However California cannot fulfill people’s expectations.
“California is a story. California is many stories.” But whose story is heard? What stories are forgotten? In the memoir, Bad Indians, Native American writer and poet Deborah A. Miranda constructs meaning about the untold experiences of indigenous people under the colonial period of American history. Her memoir disrupts a “coherent narrative” and takes us on a detour that deviates from the alleged facts presented in our high school history books. Despite her emphasis on the brutalization of the Indigenous people in California during the colonization period, Miranda’s use of the Christian Novena, “Novena to Bad Indians,” illustrates an ‘absurd’ ironic stance amidst cruelty and violence. The elocution of the Novena itself, and the Christian
Bobbie Ann Mason and Sherman Alexie are two modern authors who write about their different childhood experiences and their hopes and desires for futures outside of the customs they were accustomed to. In her 1999 excerpt “Being Country” from her book Clear Springs: A Memoir, author and essayist Mason describes her childhood on a farm in rural Kentucky. Despite her childhood being pleasant, she rebelled against the simplistic confines that type of lifestyle demanded (106). Alexie writes in his essay from 1997 “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” of life on the Spokane Indian Reservation where he was born. He tells us how he used his love of reading as a way to escape from the Indian world and found success outside of the reservation. Even though they came from different cultures, Alexie and Mason were exposed at a young age to similar outside influences that helped shape their self-identities. As a result, they both envisioned futures that were not only ambitious but different from the lives they had been born into.
“Freedom was in the very air Californians breathed, for the country offered a unique and seductive drought of liberty. People were free from censure, from Eastern restrictions, from societal expectations.”1
Thirdly, the setting of the story is set in Salinas, California. Ironically, the author was born in Salinas. It is the time of the Great Depression and middle-class has been hit hard. The story begins in Weed, a California mining town.
During the late 1840's California did not show much promise or security. It had an insecure political future, its economic capabilities were severely limited and it had a population, other than Indians, of less than three thousand people. People at this time had no idea of what was to come of the sleepy state in the coming years. California would help boost the nation's economy and entice immigrants to journey to this mystical and promising land in hopes of striking it rich.
Montana today is place that is still very similar that of a hundred years ago. Ranching and farming out east, mining still goes on in Butte, fishing is big along the western rivers, and now there is a new boom, with oil and natural gas throughout the state. As John Steinbeck said, “I’m in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love. And it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it.”
People who thinks of Thornton Wilder primarily in terms of his classic novella “Our Town,” The Bridge of San Luis Rey will seem like quite a switch. For one thing, he has switched countries; instead of middle America, he deals here with Peru. He has switched eras, moving from the twentieth century back to the eighteenth. He has also dealt with a much broader society than he did in “Our Town,” representing the lower classes and the aristocracy with equal ease. But despite these differences, his theme is much the same; life is short, our expectations can be snuffed out with the snap of a finger, and in the end all that remains of us is those we have loved.
A famous writer by the name of John Steinbeck, who was also born in California, is the
Starr, Kevin. Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
California, the Golden State, a place where people from around the world come to for the
Scott Momaday was born on February 27, 1934, in Oklahoma. His mother was a literature teacher and his father was an art teacher. Momaday’s parents both where authors and taught on Indian reserves. Momaday was forced to adjust between two cultures from an early age; although, he views this situation as an advantage, both in his life and in his work. After receiving a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of New Mexico, he submitted a few poems to a creative writing contest sponsored by Stanford University. There Ivor Winters, professor and established poet, secured a scholarship for the young man and became his mentor. Momaday remained at Stanford to earn a master's and Ph.D. in English and continued to write fiction and poetry. He came out as a highly successful writer of many books, and his literary career full of outstanding achievements. House Made of Dawn, his “classic first novel”, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In his writings, Momaday ha...
My third and final source is by Downs and Wardle, “Teaching about writing, righting misconceptions”. The main point of the article Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions:(Re) Envisioning “First-Year Composition” as “Introduction to Writing Studies” is to inform the readers what FYC (first year composition) is, and all the changes needed to be placed in this pedagogy, or teaching to actually be effective in a student’s college life and even after graduation. The FYC has been using the same method of teaching for decades, and most of the professors teaching through this system do not even know half of what they’re supposed to know. Through the FYC, we as students are supposed to learn the basics of writing, but yet there are still issues
Problems in every society usually derive from one specific thing. Miscommunication. How many times have you gotten in an argument or a disagreement with someone over what someone said, and then you later found out that that person meant something completely different from what was running through your head? How many times have you gotten off the phone with someone—someone important, --and wondered, what in the world were he or she talking about? I often get this feeling after class.
In their essay, ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ (1946), William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, two of the most eminent figures of the New Criticism school of thought of Literary Criticism, argue that the ‘intention’ of the author is not a necessary factor in the reading of a text.