Lesson Tag: Identity

 

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Today’s lesson will be focusing on the idea of Homeland. A homeland is more than just a physical space in which one traces back her or his own roots. The idea of having a homeland, versus identifying one’s nationality, weighs heavier, particularly but no limited to those living in some sort of exile, be it physical, spiritual, familial, etc. 

In his seminal work Imaginary Homelands, Salman Rushdie writes that “[i]t may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity…human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase. Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to the death.”

For Rushdie, the past itself serves a homeland in which we cannot escape, or see clearly a larger picture, the true picture. Our perceptions, our own truths, are created from wounds and skewed visions. 

Reading Assignment#1 : “Shadow Cities” by Andre Aciman

In his essay, Aciman writes that “I had come here, an exile from Alexandria, doing what all exiles do on impulse, which is to look for their homeland abroad, to bridge the things here to things there, to rewrite the present so as not to write off the past. I wanted to rescue things everywhere, as though by restoring them here I might restore them elsewhere as well. In seeing one Greek restaurant disappear or an old Italian cobbler’s turn into a bodega, I was once again reminded that something was being taken away from the city and, therefore, from me—that even if I don’t disappear from a place, places disappear from me.”

What do you believe Straus Park ultimately represented to Aciman?

 

Reading Assignment#2: “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” by Jhumpa Lahiri

 

After reading the story, consider the following questions:

(1) What does Mr. Pirzada himself symbolize?

(2) Why is national and religious identity in an issue throughout the story?

(3) What does his evolving relationship with the narrator’s family reveal about global events like The Partition?

(4) Why does the young narrator throw away  the candy at the end of the story?

 

Writing Exercises 

(1) Free Word Association: Without overthinking it, list the first 15 words that comes to mind when you think of “Homeland.”

(2) Now, list all the places you have lived. Even if you moved from a place at 6 months old, write it down.

(3) Thinks about how some of those places have changed; use Aciman’s essay “Shadow Cities” for inspiration. Choose a few, and explain how or why they’ve changed since you’ve lived (or still are living) there.

Once you’ve completed these exercises, review in depth your answers to all 3.

 

Writing Assignment #2

Using your answers from the previous 3 exercises, write a flash (short short) story about returning/not returning to a place the character(s) have lived before. It can be any sort of home/homeland– it is not limited to the idea of an actual space. The poem should be an exploration of how you define the word. It should be between 800-1000 words.

 

Guidelines, Submissions & Formatting for Writing Assignment 2

• Due Date: Sunday, January 31th, 6 pm.
• Submission Link: Submit to the FORUM (see below).
• Submission Format: Attach an MS Word document. Please put your name, address, email, website (if applicable), and phone number on page one in the top right corner. Page two and forward should have in the top right corner your last name and page number. 
• Forum: Upload your course-created work to your course and month forum so that the other students and I can read your work and give you feedback on your answers. Make sure to leave feedback for other students– you can leave questions, comments, suggestions, whatever you like. MAKE SURE YOU ARE UPLOADING YOUR WORK TO THE CORRECT FORUM AND COURSE.   
• Please make sure to contact me directly with any questions regarding assignments and technology. Contact me at newyorkrosebud@gmail.com   

 

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Welcome to our first lesson! What exactly constitutes identity? Race? Ethnicity? Gender? Sexual Preference? I’ve been exploring the idea of identity before I even knew the word for it: as a child I shuffled between two families, my mother’s Mexican family on the U.S.-Mexican border and my father’s family whom are, for the most part, Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem. My mother herself converted from Catholicism to Judaism before I was born, and while I was raised in an observant Jewish household, the influences of border culture and my Mexican relatives continually made an impression on how I viewed the world. Those two very different geographies were never as simple as leaving for another, and this made for quite an often contradictory, sometimes explosive evolution of self as I negotiated more than just identity among my extended families. Uneasy, uncertain, devil may care: that has been my world. 

 

 

After many years of looking toward the pasts of my heritages, I have come to the conclusion that identity cannot solely be measured in existing identifiers as race, religion or ethnicity (to name a few). Identity is an act of will, and it does not exist in a vacuum; no matter how resolute our individual beliefs, we each react to the world and sometimes, we change, both ourselves and our own point of departure. 

This week we will focus on the idea of Belief. Let’s take a look at NPR’s popular series “this i believe,” which has published and produced essays on the idea of Belief, ranging from a 14 year old’s experience with Asperger’s Syndrome to novelist Amy Tan’s making peace with her belief in ghosts  to one doctor’s creed that “Health is A Human Right.”

Feel free to explore the series, reading or listening to the different essays, before continuing onto the selected works.

Reading Assignment #1: “The Shawl” by Cynthia Ozick

 

 

Questions to consider:

(1) “The Shawl” is the first part of a novella written about women’s experiences and memories in the concentration camps of World War II. Do you believe Ozick makes that clear without being explicit? Next, write 1-2 sentences explaining who each of the following characters is: Stella, Rosa and Magda.

(2) What are the relationships among the 3? Does Ozick make these relationships clear?

(3) What does the shawl symbolize? How does its symbolism/fucntion change?

(4) How does the idea of belief bind the 3 characters together? How does it destroy them?

 

 

Reading Assignment #2: “Drown by Junot Diaz

 

Questions to consider:

(1) What themes did you find in this story? 

(2) How would you describe the storyteller’s voice? (For instance, he refers to Beto as a pato, which means “duck” in Spanish but here is a Dominican slur for homosexual; however, Diaz just not translate the word in the story. Why might this be?)  How does it make the story more original or authentic? Find 3 lines that seem especially significant in terms of voice.

(3) In what different ways does the speaker “drown?” Are these “little deaths”? How does each drowning change the character through the story?

(4) How does Diaz complicate his protagonist’s beliefs on manhood, masculinity, machismo and sexuality? Relationships? 

 

#1: Read or listen to 7-year-old Tarak McLain’s “Thirty Things I Believe.” Now, looking back at your own past (whether back to you own childhood or as recent as a year ago), list 10-15 things you no longer believe in. They can range from small to large in significance, and of course are not limited to religious beliefs.

#2: Choose 7 out of the 15, and write 1-3 sentences explaining why, where and/or how you lost these beliefs. If you need to explain more for some, that’s fine.

#3: Choose 5 out of the 7, and write 1-3 sentences how losing these beliefs has affected you as a person and a writer now. How are you different?  How has your writing changed? Again, if you need to explain more for some than others, that’s fine.

Once you’ve completed these exercises, review in depth your answers to all 3 exercises.

 

Writing Assignment #1

Using your answers from the previous 3 exercises, write a monologue about belief(s) lost. You can focus on one of belief in particular, or you can explore multiple beliefs.  Since this is the first assignment, I’m leaving this very open. Word count is also open, but should be no more than 1500 words.

 

Guidelines, Submissions & Formatting for Writing Assignment 1

• Due Date: Sunday, January 24th, 6 pm.
• Submission Link: Submit to the FORUM (see below).
• Submission Format: Attach an MS Word document. Please put your name, address, email, website (if applicable), and phone number on page one in the top right corner. Page two and forward should have in the top right corner your last name and page number. 
• Forum: Upload your course-created work to your course and month forum so that the other students and I can read your work and give you feedback on your answers. Make sure to leave feedback for other students– you can leave questions, comments, suggestions, whatever you like. MAKE SURE YOU ARE UPLOADING YOUR WORK TO THE CORRECT FORUM AND COURSE.   
• Please make sure to contact me directly with any questions regarding assignments and technology. Contact me at newyorkrosebud@gmail.com   

 

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