Globalize me…I think. ISMLL 260-93

Literary history has shown that displacement, detachment, and disconnections have a way of creating a poetic in writing that holds its own place in literary studies. Susan Stanford Friedman focuses on the displacement and placement throughout literature in her essay, “Migrations, Diasporas, and Borders.” Her essay is a “preliminary mapping” of literary scholarship on migration, diasporas, and borders rooted in her own foundations in cultural theory. According to Friedman the recent (last few decades) interest in the mobility of peoples and the writing they create—the development of migrations, diasporas, and borders as a field—can be attributed and described by one word, globalization. Although the meaning and cultural significance of this new era of globalization is often debated, Friedman in fact claims, “globalization is not a new phenomenon, although the naming of it is new, indicating heightened awareness of what has been there all along” (261). So the act of globalization has been around all along, we just got around to naming it when its existence became more apparent on a larger scale. Throughout history peoples, cultures, and societies have crossed paths, making exchanges in language, custom, and tradition whether it was deliberate or not. Today, we can attribute nearly all of globalization to the rise in technology, and as Friedman assures, “The Internet has transformed the diasporic experience of many through the formation of virtual communities connecting the far-flung with those still back home” (261-62). Friedman continues that literary scholarship has moved toward a transnational perspective and that this new globalization is changing comparative literature through the development and effects of Geography, Anthropology, and the ever-evolving identities of writers and storytellers on the move. That although migration, diasporas, and borders hold their significance apart from each other, they are closely tied in their collective connections to culture, identity, language, and the memory and desire creating the history and future of literature on a world-scale.

The globalization Friedman speaks of is apparent in daily life. From the comfort of home I am able to reach into the depths of other culture—read about traditions, learn of language, and book a flight to just about anywhere I desire to go. Although sitting here in front of the computer lacks in the purity of being physically in a different place, it still represents a virtual reality that we, as a society, are exponentially getting accustomed to. As the mailbox at the driveway has stooped to an all-time low of being the holder of only coupon books and junk mail my inbox overflows with emails and the latest news in national affairs, world issues, and even sports updates. I have a good feeling (as I’m sure others do as well) that this is nowhere near the pinnacle of our technological endeavor. We are still at the threshold of a mountain of possibility and the advancement we face will likely bring us even closer together as a globalized world. Ironically, the virtual reality of cyberspace brings us together by keeping us apart, and I only hope that at the top of this mountain is a long plain of progressive existence and not a downward slope into an unknown abyss.

Identifying Identities ISMLL 245-59

I am Asian-American whether I like it or not—whether I signed up for it or not. Everything I do, everything I say, and everything I don’t do will be accompanied by the stereotypes and assumptions that come with my racial/ethnic (even social) identity. The issue of race has always had a big place in literary studies and has played a pivotal role in taking literature to where it is today. In his essay, “Race and Ethnicity,” Kenneth W. Warren seeks “to account for and critique the appeal of race to literary critics over the past two decades and to suggest reasons we ought to modify or resist aspects of that appeal” (245). His essay reports on the many scholars throughout recent literary history who reject the notion that race is an aspect by which we should (and could) categorize ourselves. Warren accounts for the writing and work of numerous philosophers, scholars, and activists ranging from Henry Louis Gates to W.E.B. Du Bois. Overall, Warren comes to the understanding that “although race appeals to observable features that are biologically determined, it must be understood not to derive from those features” (248-49), and with a better understanding of the “social construct” of race we come to a better understanding of literary history as a whole.

If in fact “This knowledge does not and should not be expected to give us tools to fix current inequalities” (258) then why the heck are we writing extensive critiques and essays about it? Is it that we enjoy discovering how jacked up history has been to minorities or any form of the lesser? Or maybe it’s because we feel that talking about it will help soothe the wounds caused by decades of racism and ridicule? Well, I feel that we talk about it because we have to—we talk about it because we should. Regardless of whether Warren believes that this knowledge should give us tools to fix current inequalities I believe that the act of talking about and revealing past inequalities is a tool in itself for ameliorating present injustices and possibly reducing inequalities in the future. As long as it’s an issue that affects us as a society, awareness is something that we need to push back and forth between schools of thought, amid scholarly articles, and amongst individuals. We need to talk about where we’ve been in order to have a better understanding of where we are. This awareness of current social progress will ensure that we get to a better place in the future—maybe even to the point where the hyphen in my own identity will someday be obsolete.

Metacommentary: “Working” Claims. TSIS 123-32

The final chapter of Graff and Birkenstein’s They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing focuses on the art of metacommentary. According to Graff and Birkenstein, “metacommentary is a way of commenting on your claims and telling readers how—and how not—to think about them” (123). They explain further that metacommentary can be seen as the narrator of your writing, guiding readers through complicated ideas and keeping them in check when meaning is seemingly obvious. So if you say something in the main text of your writing, the “metatext” is where “you help readers interpret and process what you’ve said” (124). In other words, metacommentary is like the narrator from The Wonder Years, always supporting or refuting the things protagonist Kevin says and does. Coupled with his metacommentator viewers have a deeper understanding of the character of a kid growing up in suburban United States during the 1960s. Metacommentary exists to clarify and elaborate ideas and discussions—making writing more substantive—offering writers avenues to “work” their claims.

Reading this chapter once again verified a type of notion that I’ve realized more than a few times when reading this book. I realized that I already do the things they are teaching—maybe not as effectively as I should be—but without necessarily knowing I am doing it. Metacommentary is a part of my writing already but I’ve never known its name and that it has a defined purpose in effective writing. In other words, I include metacommentary in my writing only because it seems like the right thing to do—it seems logical to elaborate on certain ideas and claims. However, I never realized the gravity of what it is I am actually doing, and the effectiveness of doing it better. The template section of the chapter is what tipped me off to this revelation. I’m almost certain that I’ve used just about all of them in my writing, and a few of which I know I use near every time I put pen to paper or fingertips to keys (if you will). Still, this realization that I’ve been using these moves without necessarily utilizing their full potential is both disappointing and enlightening at the same time. What I mean is that I wish I had known what I was doing from the get-go and maybe my writing today could be better. On the bright side, this new knowledge may possibly help in making tomorrow’s writing a little better than today’s. Better late than never right?

The Dichotomous Dynamic Mix of Academic and Personal Voice—Let’s Rock. TSIS 115-22

In their template-filled instructional book They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing authors Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein maintain that much of academic writing today consists of a careful combination of both academic and personal voice. Though they hold to the importance of Standard English they also reveal, “relaxed, colloquial language can often enliven academic writing and even enhance its rigor and precision […] help[ing] you to connect with readers in a personal as well as an intellectual way” (116). In other words, the grip of Standard English on academic writing is loosed and the more relaxed lingo of a writer’s own voice is mixed in, meshing to create a new kind of hybrid voice in writing. But Graff and Birkenstein signify that this combination of voice must be done in a careful and deliberate manner. They offer, “a simple recipe for blending the specialized and the everyday: first make your point in the language of a professional field, and then make it again in everyday language” (119). So it helps to write academically and then follow it with a less-standard translation of what you tried to say with big words. Overall, the key to mixing styles is to have a strong awareness of audience and purpose when writing. Taking into consideration who will be reading and for what reason it is being written, a writer should take discretion in deciding how much (if any at all) of their own voice will be interwoven throughout the text. When done appropriately, writing can be as scholarly as past and even more far-reaching to present and future readers.

What this means for me is a big, “Whew!” (my apologies for use of exclamation). Right when I’m thinking my lack of “scholarly vocabulary” is going to be the downfall of my academic career, Graff and Birkenstein tell me that everything is going to be a-okay. In fact, if I can manage to find a decent compromise between my personal voice and the short list of “big” words I do know, my writing can actually become more effective. Still, as much as I want to jump for joy, there is a bitter reality that comes with the innovations of voice meshing: That Standard English is still the “standard” and everything else is categorized into the sub-realms of “personal voice.” To be honest, the combination of academic and personal voice does not come as smooth in all situations. For instance, how appropriate is it for a first-year resident student to mix the broken English spoken on a regular basis with the academic voice of writing? I’d assume it to be unacceptable. Even after 36 years in the US, my mom still answers the door and phone with an unassuming, “What’s a matter you?”—which somewhere along the way came to mean, “Hello, what can I do for you?” Imagine if she started mixing her personal voice in with the standard of academia. However, with a glimmer of hope, Graff and Birkenstein do mention that the current changes in writing to include more personal voice is a positive aspect of the evolution of writing into a discipline ranging farther across previously drawn lines—both cultural and social.

Building bridges between bridges TSIS 101-14

This chapter is good. It has five sections. I think it’s too long.

This is exactly the kind of sentence disconnection Graff and Birkenstein are attempting to teach against. Not only are the sentences themselves disconnected the ideas behind each are far from each other as well. In chapter eight of They Say / I Say, they tackle the issue of “connecting the parts” of sentences and writing as a whole. Throughout the chapter they insist upon the importance of connecting your work and suggest, “that you converse not only with others in your writing, but with yourself: that you establish clear relations between one statement and the next by connecting those statements together” (103). They continue with the importance of transitions, pointing words, key terms and phrases, and repeating with difference when it comes to making your writing as clear and effective as it should be. On the whole, Graff and Birkenstein not only successfully highlight the necessity of paying attention to such detail, but in support, offer a surplus of tools and techniques to effectively assist in the process.

Upon reading this chapter I’ve realized that with every chapter of TSIS I read what Graff and Birkenstein have to say ends up having a direct effect on how I write. Especially when I write for these blogs I find myself intently focused on utilizing the tools taught in each specific chapter. In this case, after reading about the importance of connecting sentence and thought, I’m paying extra attention to make sure my ideas do not go off into tangents (as they often tend to do). In other words (as I humbly use another transition term), even as I write this sentence I am trying to figure the best way to reflect what I’ve already mentioned about my newfound need to connect my sentences. This particular chapter and others have raised my awareness, making me a more critical reader of my own work. Though it makes for a more tedious amount of work on my part, I think Graff and Birkenstein would be proud to know that the kind of book they have written was far from in vain. Though at first I wondered, “Why teach stuff that is so obvious?” I now understand that sometimes the obvious is most often overlooked, or in my case, often neglected. Therefore, in conclusion, and to sum things up, I think, as a writer, I am in a better place. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

No interpretation necessary ISMLL 160-70

In his essay “Interpretation” Jerome McGann studies the different approaches in the interpretation of text—scholarly, performative, and by indirection. Though ultimately McGann supports the idea that any interpretive process is “open-ended” he recognizes that within the scope of the various critical approaches to interpretation, meaning and the derivation of meaning can be multifaceted, offering present-day scholars (and students) a barrage of methods for discovery. McGann offers that, “In the experiment of interpretation, meaning is initially important as a catalyst in the investigative action. When the experiment has […] finished, meaning reappears in a new form, as the residues left behind for study and analysis” (168). So the search for meaning is an ongoing process, where the meaning that was once discovered becomes an aspect of a whole new meaning to be realized. McGann sides with Ford Madox Ford when he called interpretation, “a game that must be lost.”

So by repeatedly losing a previous interpretation of a text we win with the application of a new one. Only the victory is (and should be) short-lived because we know that when an interpretation is put out there it becomes subject to critical analysis and eventually a re-interpretation all together. McGann explains that the highest level of interpretive scholarship is called the “definitive edition” (162). In class, we also took some time looking for some definitive work available to us. My question is, If interpretation is an open-ended game, then exactly how definitive is something labeled definitive? I guess it’s as definitive as an interpretation can get. Or, scholars feel like they’re done with interpreting a certain work and are satisfied with what they’ve agreed upon (like beating a dead horse, or better yet, looking for fruit in an orchard already harvested multiple times). If we never labeled anything “definitive” then we run the risk of over-interpreting—or taking a text to a place it has no business being. So before interpretations start getting too absurd, better to stop the bleeding while the text at hand still has something definitive to offer. It turns out that the processes of finding meaning themselves are open to interpretation as well. So while in this storm of interpretation, find solace in my assertion that for this blog, no interpretation necessary. It’s just a blog.

B-L-O-G, blog. TSIS 88-97

Gimme a “B,” “B!” Gimme a “L,” “L!” Gimme an “O,” “O!” Gimme a “G,” “G!” What’s that spell?! “BLOG!” In They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, authors Graff and Birkenstein insist, “When you are careful to explain who cares and why, it’s a little like bringing a cheerleading squad into your text […] urging your audience to keep reading, pay attention, and care” (96). They maintain that any text, in any circumstance, holds a greater interest and relevance to whoever is reading when it is clear about the “so what?” and “who cares?” questions. Readers want to know who out there besides the writer really cares about what is being said. And further, they want to know what a writer is saying has anything to do with anything that really matters.

With these questions in mind let’s apply them to the reasons why we B-L-O-G, blog. A few years ago as a returning undergraduate student I used to think the essence of writing and studying was discovered at the touch of a pen to (actual) paper. But recently, the facets of graduate studies—discussion boards in cyberspace, extensive online research, and the blogging I’m currently doing on my laptop—suggest that education (at all levels) has taken a turn into the infinite and exponentially-growing realm of technology. This is how “school” is done now-a-days. Those of us still holding on to how things used to be are way beyond the feeling of needing to make the plunge and cross over—buying a laptop, joining a social network, and finally learning how to use email. With this, blogging matters because it’s become a part of being a student whether we were aware of it or not. The moment we accepted the syllabus that included weekly blogs as course requirement gave it a whole new meaning. What began as something for a grade is quickly evolving into a way we communicate with others and broaden our horizons as writers and students. Blogging has become a staple in a large part of society, finding a niche in various disciplines of academics, political scenes, and even sports writing. Blogging has come to represent the voice of the individual and collectively the voice of larger groups the individual may be associated with. Ultimately, some of us blog because we have to and a good number of us blog because we want to, because we can. In the scope of an ever-evolving society we turn to advances in technology to take us to new and uncharted territories of experience and learning. By these means, blogging has found its way into our workplaces, homes, and even our classrooms.

Naysayers everywhere TSIS 74-87

I walk up to the “self checkout” counter conveniently located at the front of the supermarket. After fiddling with the touch screen and scanning and rescanning items because the voice is telling me I’m doing something wrong I eventually get all my items into the plastic bags thoughtfully placed adjacent to me. Though this process usually takes me twice as long as a regular checkout line would, when I have the option I usually take it. All you people-persons out there might be thinking, “How much more anti-social can you get?” or “In today’s world we’re getting less social interaction and more computer interaction.” Though your uber-social-butterfly view is quite understandable it doesn’t change the fact that more people today want to get in and get out, take care of things and go. Sure we pass each other in the street without a second glance but imagine all the time we save when we skip the pleasantries and get things done. Paper or plastic you ask? Well, another reason I like the self checkout is because I can make my choice without having to worry about what Shirley the manager or Tim the box-boy are going to think. I just take the liberty of using the plastic bags and even at times double-bagging for soda bottles or milk. Those who would oppose this decision might say that paper is better because of its durability and its recyclability but still, I have my reasons for preferring plastic. Besides, I re-use them as trash bags, lunch bags, picking-up-dog-poop bags, and heating-up-tortillas-in-the-microwave bags. Plastic bags are a part of my daily life. Environmentalists would suggest that I carry my own bag when shopping for groceries—and believe me I’ve tried—but, I always find that the one or two fabric bags I bought for $2.99 each are never enough to hold everything. Plus, I can’t afford to be shopping at Trader Joe’s or Henry’s all the time. Organic is good, organic prices—not so much. Although I realize the various objections towards my grocery shopping habits, for now I’m going with what works best for me. If any consolation, I try to save and use all my plastic bags to extend their use as much as possible; and, every time I leave the self checkout stand I always leave the on-looking employee at the small counter with a “Thank you” and a “Have a nice day.”

According to Graff and Birkenstein texts become more convincing when we integrate anticipated criticisms and objections (74). My first reaction was, “Why would anyone object with what I’m saying?” Then, remembering the chapter on agreeing and disagreeing I realize that there is an objection for almost everything. And many of these objections can be quite credible. The objections listed above regarding my supermarket preferences are grounded in reason and surely deserve my attention. I find that when I give them this attention it helps to explain my own reasoning more clearly. Who knew that opposition can actually work in my favor? When done correctly, it seems, this is very much the case.