The Power[ful] Paper

How do I even begin to criticize a paper written by the professor? That would be like walking on thin ice....I truly want to do well in this class and not fall through into the freezing water of a "C" on my transcript. Yikes! But as I read the essay, typically looking for things I could disagree with, I found that my points of rebuttal were assuaged as I read more and more. Powers, you covered it all! But I suppose I'd just like to muse on the topic of reading, as prompted by this essay.

So, Powers obviously thinks that reading is important, particularly in a time when the act of reading is declining in the US, and when multi-ethnic culture must be understood through its literature, though this not being the only way. But I still want to go back to that question of reading and its value...why is it important? I guess when I ask the question, Im not implying that we should perpetuate illiteracy, but I am questioning why Powers wrote a whole essay on why understanding other cultures through reading is so important. I would like to ask why we truly cant understand them through other means. Why through their literature and not through their music or visual art....or even knowing them and interacting with them personally. Do we think reading other cultures is so important because we are English professors and students? Would the art major or international business major or music major agree that we reach other cultures through literature primarily? I think maybe not. And I also wonder about reading being a construct of the upper class, the educated class, the intellectual class. Once again, when I read my words, I feel like Im advocating for illiteracy, but really I just want to understand what reading is, what is its essence, why does it exist...(I might be spacing out a bit seeing that its past my bedtime) but can an individual understand and become enlightened by multi-ethnic culture without reading it? I understand that in today's society, it is only obvious that literacy means power; we can go places and be who we want to be when we can read and write, yes, I know this, but can we have this mobility through other means as well, like I stated previously with other disiplines?

Oooo, I wanted to comment on something else mentioned in the essay. Powers writes, "Readers of Toni Morrison in Beijing, Schenectady, Caracas, San Antonio, Fresno, and the Bronx belong to one another in a particular and important way, a cultural communion they share with one another that they don’t share with the neighbor in the next apartment or across the back fence, however much they may share a life in other respects." I was intrigued by this quote because I dont often experience this connection with anyone, though I am an English major and read at least five or six novels a year. At least. And I believe they are good ones. I dont believe I have the kind of experience Powers is referring to because I seriously do not have book discussions with anyone outside of class. Maybe I will tell a friend about the plot of the current book Im reading or even ask a foreigner I know if he or she has read a book Ive read, possibly making that connection Powers talks about, but it never goes beyond these surface literary interactions. I think Im to blame but so are my other literary-minded friends. Why dont we want to talk about literature? Is it just for the classroom? Frankly, I think this is true for me sometimes. Sometimes Im afraid Ill seem too scholarly if I talk about what Im reading, even if its with a friend who read the same book. I wonder why this is? Youd think Id be proud of my education, but Im even more self-conscious of looking condescending and pretensious to the people I encounter daily, some of them students. I wonder if this is just my problem, or others can relate...

African is to Africa as Native American is to United States

I think Ngugi wa Thiong'o's essay presents little to be argued. I completely agree with him that African universities should dismantle the dominant emphasis there is on their English departments and instead focus on their own indigenous national literature and languages. I do agree with Ngugi when he writes that literature is not natural, nor does it impart truth and beauty, instead the content of our literature syllabus, its presentation, the machinery for determining the choices of texts and their interpretation were all an integral part of imperialism and domination in the colonial phase and now in the neo colonial phase. I believe this, especially for African countries. He is even more agreeable when he says that Africans should not discredit European or English lit and language, but that they should not be the dominant emphasis in that continent. Where things get interesting is when we bring this issue back to our country, the United States.

We are quick to present the issue of expanding our English departments to include (with significant emphasis) Post-colonial and World lit, but I think the issue really deals with Native American lit if we are going to talk about recognizing the literature and the languages of an oppressed minority in a country where white Europeans had invaded and colonized. Hello, what about the Native Americans? Did we forget them? They are our Africans, so to speak, if not in much smaller numbers. Yet even then, this shows the extent of how much weve oppressed them and then forgotten them; I dont even know how many Native Americans are still living in the US. It is easy to say that there probably isnt a lot of them because thats imperialistic thinking-- we have wanted to be rid of them and forget it-- but our own indigenous groups need to be recognized too, possibly before the Africans and Asians and Indians. I would be all for expanding our English departments to include Native American literature, and not just as this cute little side note of a week in appreciation for our indigenous groups, but rather a comprehensive panorama of how our ancestors shaped our country today. Truly, I feel like they have more than they are given credit for. We seem so sympathetic to the Africans and their literature-- there are whole schools devoted to it--but why dont we talk more about the Native Americans? That's what I want to know.