Gloria Naylor/Maya Angelou

AGENDA:

READING and DISCUSSION: Read and discuss Gloria Naylor's "The Meaning of a Word"  and Maya Angelou in The Bedford Reader

Zora Neale Hurston/Alice Walker/Dick Gregory

AGENDA:

Read and discuss "How It Feels to be Colored Me,"  "Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self"
and "Shame"

Bluest Eye Presentations

AGENDA:

Classes present Bluest Eye projects Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday

The Bluest Eye/Cholly and Soaphead Church Discussion

AGENDA:

EQ: How do these sections of the book contribute to Morrison's overall themes of race and identity?  

CLOSE READING: Using the study guide questions and the conversational roundtable organizer, examine the following sections of the novel in small group discussions for 15 minutes.

CHOLLY AND FATHERHOOD--searching for his father  155-158

CHOLLY AND FREEDOM/THE RAPE--159-163

SOAPHEAD CHURCH AND PECOLA AND THE DOG--172-176

SOAPHEAD CHURCH'S LETTER TO GOD/GRANTING PECOLA BLUE EYES  176-183

Find key passages that illustrate Morrison's themes of race and identity.

Share out to the class.

HMWK: Quiz tomorrow on vocabulary.  Practice tests on quizlet.

Finish reading the book, Projects due on Monday

The Bluest Eye Vocabulary/Reading Schedule Week 10/20-10/24

Week of 10/20-10/24
10/20 Discuss Bluest Eye  Winter/Spring sections  Maureen Peel, Geraldine
10/21 Discuss Pauline section, Read Cholly section (see handouts)
10/22 Discuss Pauline section cont.; Begin discussing Cholly section; Read Soaphead Church section
10/23 Discuss Cholly section and Soaphead Church; Read ending of novel
10/24 Quiz on The Bluest Eye vocabulary (see below--31 words);  Read aloud the "Pecola has blue eyes" section

The Bluest Eye projects are due Monday for presentation!

DefinitionsNotes & ExamplesWords Only

order:   List order  A to Z  Z to A  Easy to Hard  Hard to Easy 

1. swaddle
   wrap in swaddling clothes
   NOTES:
   

   "Swaddling clothes" are for babies. Velvet, fur, and pleats are not babyish, but the image of Maureen Peal being swaddled in her clothes emphasizes a wealth that allows parents to pamper their children. It also brings up the image of baby dolls and reminds readers of what Claudia did to them.
   EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
   

   She was rich, at least by our standards, as rich as the richest of the white girls, swaddled in comfort and care.
2. genuflect
   bend the knees and bow in a servile manner
   NOTES:
   

   Although the Latin "genu" means "knee" and "flectere" means "to bend", a person does not have to bend a knee to show a respectful or servile attitude. Like the girls in the example sentence, she can use her eyes to genuflect.
   EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
   

   Black boys didn’t trip her in the halls; white boys didn’t stone her, white girls didn’t suck their teeth when she was assigned to be their work partners; black girls stepped aside when she wanted to use the sink in the girls’ toilet, and their eyes genuflected under sliding lids.
   
3. fastidious
   giving careful attention to detail; hard to please; excessively concerned with cleanliness
   EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
   

   She never had to search for anybody to eat with in the cafeteria—they flocked to the table of her choice, where she opened fastidious lunches, shaming our jelly-stained bread with egg-salad sandwiches cut into four dainty squares, pink-frosted cupcakes, stocks of celery and carrots, proud, dark apples.
   
4. bemused
   perplexed by many conflicting situations or statements; filled with bewilderment
   EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
   

   Frieda and I were bemused, irritated, and fascinated by her.
   
5. equilibrium
   a sensory system located in structures of the inner ear that registers the orientation of the head
   NOTES:
   

   The given definition focuses on physical balance but equilibrium can also refer to emotional or mental balance. Because of the lack of "equality of distribution" (another definition of "equilibrium") in wealth and attention, Maureen Peal's presence throws Claudia and Frieda off balance.
   EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
   

   We looked hard for flaws to restore our equilibrium, but had to be content at first with uglying up her name, changing Maureen Peal to Meringue Pie.
   
6. epiphany
   a divine manifestation
   EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
   

   Later a minor epiphany was ours when we discovered that she had a dog tooth—a charming one to be sure—but a dog tooth nonetheless.
   
7. hostility
   violent action that is hostile and usually unprovoked
   EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
   

   But we had to do it alone, for none of the other girls would cooperate with our hostility.
   
8. haughtiness
   overbearing pride evidenced by a superior manner toward inferiors
   EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
   

   And when I thought of the unearned haughtiness in her eyes, I plotted accidental slammings of locker doors on her hand.
   
9. extemporize
   perform without preparation
   EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
   

   They had extemporized a verse made up of two insults about matters over which the victim had no control: the color of her skin and speculations on the sleeping habits of an adult, wildly fitting in its incoherence.
10. scorn
    lack of respect accompanied by a feeling of intense dislike
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds—cooled—and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming whatever was in its path.
    
11. macabre
    shockingly repellent; inspiring horror
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    They danced a macabre ballet around the victim, whom, for their own sake, they were prepared to sacrifice to the flaming pit.
    
12. animated
    having life or vigor or spirit
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    While Frieda and I clucked on about the near fight, Maureen, suddenly animated, put her velvet-sleeved arm through Pecola’s and began to behave as though they were the closest of friends.
    
13. placidly
    in a quiet and tranquil manner
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    Maureen disappeared into the store with Pecola. Frieda looked placidly down the street; I opened my mouth, but quickly closed it.
    
14. arsenal
    all the weapons and equipment that a country has
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    We chanted this most powerful of our arsenal of insults as long as we could see the green stems and rabbit fur.
    
15. antagonize
    provoke the hostility of
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    Her pain antagonized me.
    
16. relevance
    the relation of something to the matter at hand
    NOTES:
    

    To the nine and ten year old Claudia and Frieda, "wisdom, accuracy, and relevance" are heavy words that they believe in. To the author (and possibly Claudia as the older narrator), the triad of words carries a mocking tone, because it is being used to describe a white girl's angry claims that she is cute and that Claudia and Frieda are black and ugly.
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    We were sinking under the wisdom, accuracy, and relevance of Maureen’s last words. If she was cute—and if anything could be believed, she was—then we were not.
    
17. guileless
    free of deceit
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    Guileless and without vanity, we were still in love with ourselves then.
    
18. gainful
    yielding a fair profit
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    Such girls live in quiet black neighborhoods where everybody is gainfully employed.
19. shrill
    being sharply insistent on being heard
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    They are not fretful, nervous, or shrill; they do not have lovely black necks that stretch as though against an invisible collar; their eyes do not bite.
    
20. thrift
    extreme care in spending money; reluctance to spend money unnecessarily
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    Here they learn the rest of the lesson begun in those soft houses with porch swings and pots of bleeding heart: how to behave. The careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners.
    
21. dissolve
    become or cause to become soft or liquid
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    Wherever it erupts, this Funk, they wipe it away; where it crusts, they dissolve it; wherever it drips, flowers, or clings, they find it and fight it until it dies.
    
22. enunciation
    the articulation of speech regarded from the point of view of its intelligibility to the audience
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    The laugh that is a little too loud; the enunciation a little too round; the gesture a little too generous.
    
23. inviolable
    immune to attack; incapable of being tampered with
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    What they do not know is that this plain brown girl will build her nest stick by stick, make it her owninviolable world, and stand guard over its every plant, weed, and doily, even against him.
    
24. surreptitious
    marked by quiet and caution and secrecy; taking pains to avoid being observed
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    He must enter her surreptitiously, lifting the hem of her nightgown only to her navel.
    
25. ostensibly
    from appearances alone
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    He must rest his weight on his elbows when they make love, ostensibly to avoid hurting her breasts but actually to keep her from having to touch or feel too much of him.
    
26. constancy
    faithfulness and dependability in personal attachments (especially sexual fidelity)
    NOTES:
    

    Another definition of "constancy" is "the quality of being enduring and free from change"--this would also fit the example sentence, although it would change the tone of the triad. With the first definition, "order, precision, and constancy" would be three positive qualities. With the second definition, they would be three qualities that the author is mocking. Both tones apply and depend on the perspective of the colored woman, her cat, or the author.
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    A cat, perhaps, who will love her order, precision, and constancy; who will be as clean and quiet as she is.
    
27. satiety
    the state of being satisfactorily full and unable to take on more
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    As long as his needs were physical, she could meet them—comfort and satiety.
    
28. erode
    become ground down or deteriorate
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    The line between colored and nigger was not always clear; subtle and telltale signs threatened toerode it, and the watch had to be constant.
    
29. unabashed
    not embarrassed
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    Eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything. Unblinking and unabashed, they stared up at her. The end of the world lay in their eyes, and the beginning, and all the waste in between.
    
30. idle
    be idle; exist in a changeless situation
    EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
    

    In the long, hot days, they idled away, picking plaster from the walls and digging into the earth with sticks. They sat in little rows on street curbs, crowded into pews at church, taking space from the nice, neat, colored children;

THEY SAY/I SAY--Intros and hooks

AGENDA:

20 Top Figurative Language Terms Quiz

Work on intros for Argumentation (Persuasive  Essay) Writing


https://resources.oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/user/skaczur/portfolio2/Persuasive%20Writing.pdf

•  Agree--But With a Difference
• You need to do more than simply echo the views that you agree with; bring something new and fresh to the conversation.
• Open up some difference or contrast between your position and the one you're agreeing with.
• Point out unnoticed implications.
• Explain something that needs to be better understood.
• Remember: When you agree with one person, you are disagreeing with someone else.
• Disagree--And Explain Why
• You need to do more than simply say you disagree with a particular view; you have to offer persuasive reasons for why you disagree.
• Demonstrate that you have something to contribute to the conversation.
• "Duh" move = disagreeing not with the position itself, but the assumption that is new.
• "Twist it" move = agree with the evidence that someone else has presented, but show through  twist of logic that the evidence actually supports your own, contrary position.
• Qualifying (Agree and Disagree)
• Goes beyond and "is too/ is not" exchange.
• Keeps argument complex.
• You can tip towards agreement or disagreement depending on where you lay your stress.

CHAPTER 7: SAYING WHY IT MATTERS

• Answering the "who cares?" and "so what?" questions in your own writing.
• "Who cares?"
• Identify an interested person or group.
• Establish a type of contrast between what others say and what you say.
• Use of dramatic tension or clash of views helps your readers feel invested in what you are saying.
• "So what?"
• Link your argument to some larger matter that your readers already believe to be important.
• Hook your readers.
• Give real-world application of your claims.
• Frame it in a way that helps the reader care about it.

Literary Terms for Friday Quiz

hyperbole
irony
metaphor
metonymy
oxymoron
paradox
personification
simile
synedoche
understatement (litote)
asyndeton
polysyndeton
bildungsroman
Also know logos, pathos, ethos.  See links for more information:
sixminutes.dlugan.com/ethos-pathos-logos/

Go to Top 20 Figures of Speech

CLOSE READING The Bluest Eye-- A very important post

Dear Scholars,

Today I can really begin to call you scholars because several of you read The Bluest Eye closely and offered interpretations of the text in class which may or not be accurate, but showed a new awareness of reading into "what a writer writes" and what he or she is trying "to achieve." This is the stuff of LITERARY ANALYSIS. It is what English majors truly enjoy in seminar discussions in class and what doctoral candidates and professors write books about in college.

Maybe some of you will understand that so many things in a literary text are very deliberate--symbols, names, settings, language, style, dialogue, characterization, etc.--all those literary elements that a writer employs to create LITERARY ART.  Like painters, sculptors, musicians, actors,dancers, and other artists, writers use a craft with various techniques to try to achieve their artistic goals.

There are ways to talk about these things.  That's what you're learning--a lot of jargon, technical terms, etc.

Still, nothing can replace your insight as a reader whatever literary approach you begin to favor.
Uh, oh, is Ms. Gamzon about to introduce LITERARY THEORY!

Yes.  Hang on, because here it comes.   

https://rak12ela11.wikispaces.com/file/view/The+Bluest+Eye+Intro.ppt

The Bluest Eye AUTUMN

AGENDA:

1. Go over Bluest Eye vocabulary for test Friday

2. Review Homework from last night--CLOSE READING of the prologues

3. Characterization in the Bluest Eye

STUDY GUIDE LINK:

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/eye3.html

The Bluest Eye

AGENDA:

1. Go to library for book.

2. View and discuss videos

Videos--How Children View Skin Color

Girl Like Me
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAOZhuRb_Q8&feature=fvw


www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aol--Ni6YS8

Dolls

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybDa0gSuAcg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOHbtM9463c&feature=related

20/20

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTYn1WRCuoU&feature=related

Toni Morrison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ9vd0lLW2g
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=toni+morrison&FORM=VIRE2&adlt=strict#view=detail&mid=65D3864BE4CF5754827865D3864BE4CF57548278http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=toni+morrison&FORM=VIRE2&adlt=strict#view=detail&mid=65D3864BE4CF5754827865D3864BE4CF57548278

3. Read Prologues

HMWK: For tomorrow, read to pg. 38
Wed. Finish section "Autumn" pg. 58
Thurs. Read "Winter" to pg. 80
Fri. Vocab quiz, Finish "Winter"  pg. 93

Bluest Eye Vocabulary

1. abhorrent: [adj] repellent, hateful
2. acridness: [n] bitterness, acidity
3. addled: [adj] confused in mind, irrational, nonsensical
4. affluence: [n] wealth, state of material well being
5. ameliorate: [v] to make better, to improve
6. buffeted: [v] given blows, hits
7. chafe: [v] to rub roughly
8. chagrined: [v or adj] upset, bothered, irritated
9. complement: [v] to harmonize with, as complementary colors
10. covert: [adj] hidden, secret
11. dirge: [n] sad, mourning song
12. disinterested: [adj] without emotion or passion, detached, objective
13. dissipation: [n] squandering energy often through drinking excessibely
14. emasculate: [v] to deprive of manhood, to humiliate
15. epithets: [n] informal names, terms to refer to someone either in an endearing or in an insulting way
16. fabricate: [v] to build, to create
17. fervently: [adv] passionately, with feeling
18. fretful: [adj] anxious, bothered, worrisome, peevish
19. fructify: [v] to make fruitful
20. furtive: [adj] sneaking, hidden
21. harridans: [n] shrews, scolding, demanding women
22. interminable: [adj] neverending
23. irrevocable: [adj] irreversible, incapable of being taken back
24. malaise: [n] unease, illness

25. metaphysical: [adj] larger or greater than the physical, concerned with philosophical or spiritual matters
26. myraid: [adj] many, a multitude
27. peripheral: [adj] on the outside edges
28. pervade: [v] to infiltrate
29. petulant: [adj] sulky, spoiled
30. preen: [v] to admire oneself, to primp
31. pristine: [adj] pure
32. schemata: [n] order
33. solicitous: [adj] concerned about
34. soliloquoy: [n] (plural- soliloquies) speech spoken aloud to oneself
35. consolidate: [v] to put together (to make "solid" various things)
36. static: [adj] unchanging
37. strident: [adj] loud, clamoring
38. succumb: [v] to be defeated, to give up
39. tacitly: [adv] silently, understood without spoken words
40. timbre: [n] tone, quality of sound; as tone of voice
41. unsullied: [adj] undirtied, unpolluted

Tim O'Brien Video

AGENDA:

Tim O'Brien, Big Think

www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ivNokqT74