We're out at my folks's house a lot because they always want to see the baby. Anyhow, I usually wind up in the attic or the garage digging through boxes of all my old crap. Last time I came upon an embarrasingly half-assed paper I wrote for my Black writers class.
The paper was titled
Flattery and Humbleness in Slave Narratives. It was a not-too-thorough examination of the narratives of ex-slaves who had escaped to the North. The object of any autobiography is to get at the unvarnished truth; but that wasn't so easy a task given the social climate of the time. Even though their patrons were liberal Northern abolitionists, the ex-slave had to be very careful not to appear overly haughty or argumentative in their tone.
In my opening (see above) I say that "some of these authors" had to appear humble and nonthreatening to their audience and overcompensate with flattering gestures to their "superiors" and patrons. I say "some of these authors" because I only read one of the books and didn't want to give away my one source in the intro. Here's Maya's (the graduate student instructor who graded the paper) sidenote:
Good clarity--go for the whole pie though, and state which
authors up front--in a short paper it's better not to keep your readers guessing.Then later I cite my source and say "he goes on to apologize for the "rough" and unrefined" condition (?!?) of his narrative." Note the use of the manga-like question mark and exclamation point in parentheses. She didn't like this:
Your paper has a fairly formal tone which contrasts w/ informal gestures--articulate the problem here.
Next major bungle (see above) is the start of this sentence:
"On the first page of Equinao's narrative he says something that I don't entirely understand..."
Maya:
What don't you understand? And if you don't understand, why is it forwarding your thesis? Direct confessions are helpful to your reader when they clarify, point out textual tensions, demonstrate reader experience, etc.; but not when they have no apparent or accessible meaning.
In my concluding paragraph, I ask the reader a series of questions regarding how these narratives were received when they were written; which, ostensibly, should've been answered in the body of my essay. Do I answer these questions here to end on a strong note? Naw--I decided to leave it up in the air. My answer is "No one will every really know." Here's Maya again:
Are you sure? There are diaries, letters, book reviews from readers of the period.Final deserved beatdown from Maya (but with a beyond gracious preamble):
Daniel--your writing is very strong; you are very eloquent and have the skills and capacities to do a thorough and sustained literary analysis--unfortunately, it seems like you didn't have the time to concentrate on this assignment. Your thesis has the potential to lead you into interesting considerations but it collapses into (A) points you cannot make adequately without examining other texts of the period and (B) generalizations about Equiano's depiction of Westerners/African women that don't do justice to the texts or your writing and are unclearly linked to your thesis.
Also, this paper comes dangerously close to not fulfilling the course requirement for the paper which stipulate an examination of at least TWO texts. One paragraph on Harriet Wilson does not constitute a sustained engagement with a 2nd text. Good jod--considering these limitations.Ouch! I guess Alan Alda's character from
Crimes and Misdemeanors was right: comedy is tragedy + time.
My wife just got us a subscription to the New Yorker. We'd been talking about it for some time. We already take Newsweek thanks to my dad. We also used to get The Economist. That was way too overwhelming and dry. We desperately needed something between Newsweek and The Economist. The NYer fit the bill. Gives you a little bit of this and little bit of that. It can get overly high-brow but it also covers pop music and youth culture; albeit from a 40-year-oldish perspective.
