Week 15

Spanglish & Hinglish

Language isn’t just about words, communication takes place in all aspects of life.  The way we prepare our food, travel, where clothes or carry our heads.  It is incredible how universal facial expressions can be.

The movie does this subtly, language is not the key issue, though communication is more difficult without words, it is not impossible.  Learning doesn’t just take place through words.

I have been a long fan of this movie, it is interesting in its story and its critique of american culture.

The addition o f Hinglish in american culture could be more prominent.  The assimilation of other cultures into the United States makes us a better people

Week 6

The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory

Felicity:

1. Great happiness; bliss.
2. An instance of great happiness.
3. A cause or source of happiness.
4. An appropriate and pleasing manner or style: felicity of expression.
5. An instance of appropriate and pleasing manner or style.
6. Archaic Good fortune.

The word is powerful.

This a masterful lecture by Walcott.  Engaging and encompassing; the beautiful  pay of words is not something often experienced today.

“The performance was like a dialect, a branch of its original language, an abridgement of it, but not a distortion or even a reduction of its epic scale.”

The actions of men, the way the interact, their choices.  Dance and music are such important parts of language.

“Antillean art is this restoration of our shattered histories, our shards of vocabulary, our archipelago becoming a synonym for pieces broken off from the original continent. And this is the exact process of the making of poetry, or what should be called not its “making” but its remaking, the fragmented memory, the armature that frames the god, even the rite that surrenders it to a final pyre; the god assembled cane by cane, reed by weaving reed, line by plaited line, as the artisans of Felicity would erect his holy echo.”

Isn’t this the was of the modern world.

News from that week, ie what I was also reading

Diplomatic Talks Between North and South Korea Collapse Before They Begin | The Atlantic Wire
How Secular Is the Muslim Brotherhood? | The Atlantic Wire

Week 5

A Distant Shore by Caryl Phillips

This text was eccentric in its timeline and characters.  The story was told well though Solomon’s story was much more interesting than Dorothy’s.

The forlorn divorce school teacher with life regrets fails to enthrall the reader or provide sympathy.  Solomon’s life, his adventure to England and within England enthralled the reader and I found myself frustrated whenever I had to go back and read about Dorothy.

What I was reading in the News
2 Reporters saw Secret Police’s Methods
Egypt’s Democratic Mirage | Foreign Affairs