In-Class Writings.
8/31/09 Malcolm X - Marshall Tuck (Aug 31, 2009 11:43 AM)
1. Malcolm X, throughout the course of his life, asserted many arguments, most of which were fringe movements of afrocentrism and were concerned mostly with the empowerment of the black culture without compromise. His black power group was an extremely racist, cultural movement designed to promote the black race while destabilising white society. However, in Reading Culture, his piece that we read was based on the power of the English language and all the words in the English language, and how only through the understanding of language can you truly be free. While in prison, he began a quest to become an educated man, and although constantly associated with violent acts and general race conflict of the Civil Rights era, used his self-learned education to relate to his audiences in a powerful, albeit cantankerous, way.
2. He supports his argument by using examples from himself in prison and promoting himself as a demagogue of some sorts to the uneducated. He was very effective at getting across the message that anyone who has the desire and will to become learned can, and must, do so for the good of themselves and society as a whole.
1. Malcolm X, throughout the course of his life, asserted many arguments, most of which were fringe movements of afrocentrism and were concerned mostly with the empowerment of the black culture without compromise. His black power group was an extremely racist, cultural movement designed to promote the black race while destabilising white society. However, in Reading Culture, his piece that we read was based on the power of the English language and all the words in the English language, and how only through the understanding of language can you truly be free. While in prison, he began a quest to become an educated man, and although constantly associated with violent acts and general race conflict of the Civil Rights era, used his self-learned education to relate to his audiences in a powerful, albeit cantankerous, way.
2. He supports his argument by using examples from himself in prison and promoting himself as a demagogue of some sorts to the uneducated. He was very effective at getting across the message that anyone who has the desire and will to become learned can, and must, do so for the good of themselves and society as a whole.
10-5-09 Lu writing - Marshall Tuck (Oct 5, 2009 11:51 AM)
Lu, now, is a literary professor somewhere out in California at what I remember being an esteemed institution. This story is centered around her retrospection to her days as a youth and her journey to become literally proficient simultaneously struggling with her internal strife of identification with her family or revolutionary China of the day. She is a young, bright girl during the story and often seems to sacrifice her own intelligence for what she perceives society's expectations to be, leading the reader to wonder 'what if?' when it comes to her intellectual development.
While she is constantly taught to repress her true thoughts while writing, as evidenced by the government's general thought template brought down upon its citizens, she also yearns to truly think for herself. This 'double-think' meanders its way into an unsustainable means, as she can't truly believe two conflicting ideas at once.
Her conflict in this story is doubly interesting, as it more closely is a parallel between the conflict of her own self as well as a conflict of the two worlds around her. As she struggles with her own language and thought identity, China is struggling with its own conversion to a socialist state.
