Reading Notes
ENGL 131
Table of Contents
“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan
- Tan claims she is not a scholar of English or literature, but rather that she is a writer.
- Writers, by definition, love language.
- Language is the tool of trade in writing.
- Multiplicitly of Englishes
- Speech filled with grammar, burden, nominalized forms, conditional phrases - standardization
- Consciousness of which Englishes we use when we talk to different people.
- A language of intimacy
- An ‘alternate’ language: vivid, direct, observation and imagery.
- ‘Broken’/’fractured’ English - what does it imply? Is being broken indicative of necessary repair?
- Belief in the correlation between one’s English reflects the quality of what they have to say.
- Sociologists and linguists may suggest that a person’s developing language skills are more influneced by peers.
- Language spoken in the family plays a large role in shaping the language of the child.
- Language tests, ‘fill in the blank questions’, and intrinsically built semantic assumptions.
- Writing using wittily crafted sentences - sentences to prove mastery over the English language.
“That was my mental quandary in its nascent state.”
- Envision a reader for the stores you write.
- Intent, passion, rhythms, imagery.
“Why Appollo 11 Looked so different to black America” by David Smith
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- Ralph Abernathy - successor to Martin Luther King as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SLCL).
- Appollo 11 was considered to be humankind’s greatest technological achievement - yet, most Americans opposed the mission and many in the black press questioned the expedition amidst rampant poverty.
- An inhuman priority - Abernathy urged funds be used to feed the hungry, tend the sick, houe the homeless.
- Billions for the moon and pennies for the poor.
- PR for the United States and the Soviet Union.
- The Apollo programme gave an impression of being a project of white America.
- Later, NASA began appropriating technology to improve the state of America’s inner cities.