Alzaldua Response

SUMMARY:

In Alzaldua's article "Tlilli Tlapalli: The Path of the Red and Black Ink", she talks about how she became a writer and her process of writing. She is a Hispanic female author and talks about how she has to find herself in her work, and how it controls her life. She talks about how to be writer you have to trust yourself. She gives very descriptive examples of how she writes and reviews and so forth through her writing process.

SYNTHESIS:

I can connect her article to several other articles we have read. LaMott with "Shitty First Drafts" and how Gloria states, "When I don't write the images down for several days or weeks or months, I get physically ill." Which is similar to the way that LaMott says she has to let herself have a tantrum all over a paper just to get everything out before revising. She is also similar to Villanueva and Smitherman, based on her ethnicity and her writing. And also similar to Cixous because she uses her gender to give her writing more depth. 

DIALECTICAL NOTEBOOK:

RESPONSE:	QUOTE:
I think that this is very interesting how one thing can make her whole life change and she becomes a writer because of late night stories to her sister.	It must have been then that I decided to put stories on paper. 220
She talks about how when she needs to write and get all her thoughts down on paper she has no control over how they flow out onto the paper but later she can revise and organize them to fit together the way she wants.	The whole thing has had a mind of its own, escaping me and insisting on putting together the pieces of its own puzzle with minimal direction from my will. 220
She makes a comparison between her writing and a person. Giving examples of needing to be fed to grow and be nurtured into becoming something more.	The work manifests the same needs as a person, it needs to be "fed", la tengo que banar y vesir. 221
When she revises she concentrates on specific words and lets them simmer in her mind until they become something else and they have evolved into a deeper meaning.	I choose words, images, and body sensations and animate them to impress them on my consciousness, thereby making changes in my belief system and reprogramming my consciousness. 223

THOUGHTS: 

I really enjoyed Alzaldua's article. I loved the way that she started it, by talking about how she began telling her sisters stories at night and that led to her becoming a writer. I think that she was very similar to LaMott with the way she describes how she has a physical need to write, that it is her calling in life, that she depends on it to keep her sanity. I enjoyed Lunsford's article as well. I really liked the interview  with Alzaldua, it gave me more background and a better understanding of her style and other works. I can connect with her on how much writing means to us both, how sometimes we need to just get thoughts out of our head and watch them expand. 

Cixous Response

Terms & Definition:

whiteness: (noun) 1. the quality or state of being white 2. paleness 3. purity 4. a white substance
marginalized: (verb) To place in a position of marginal importance, influence, or power.
heterotypical: (adjective) of or pertaining to the first or reproductional division in melosis.
(Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/)
whiteness: a color like that of snow, milk, or bone.
marginalized: to treat someone or something as if they are not important.

(Cambridge Dictionary Online dictionary.cambridge.org)

heterotypical: different in kind, arrangement, or form. 

(Merriam-Webster www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary) 

Response:
These terms are misused and swept under the rug often when they are being used in an accusing manner. We try to pretend that people are not facing these issues in today's society, but they are still a problem. Individuals are marginalized based on their whiteness and if they are heterotypical. In Sociology, we have the wheel of institutions and it is broken up into different categories and based on nearly every aspect of your life you are judged, classified and defined by the institutions  It takes a long time for societies to change and learn to accept people as they are. However with institutions they change in a domino effect, one influences change in another and so on.

Dialectical Notebook:

Responses:	Quote:
This reminds me of Beger's article where he talks about how women are so aware of themselves, yet they are not verbally instructed how to become or how to do things differently.	But what strikes me is the infinite richness of their individual constitutions: you can't talk about a females sexuality, uniform, homogeneous, classifiable into codes- any more than you can talk about one unconscious resembling another. pg 247
Cixous sounds like she's giving a speech here, she makes valid points about repression and not being given a chance, but she also confuses the reader.	We the precocious, we the repressed of culture, our lovely mouths gagged with pollen, our wind knocked out of us, we the labyrinths, the ladders, the trampled spaces, the bevies- we are black and we are beautiful. pg 248
This makes me think of gender roles and how women have traits they must follow to be a norm in society.	She is reduced to being the servant of the militant male, his shadow. pg 250
This quote makes us realize that nothing can stop us or hold us back. We only think that we can not do something, when in reality we can do anything.	The Dark Continent is neither dark nor unexplorable.- It is still unexplored only because we've been made to believe that it was too dark to be explorable. 253
I liked this quote because it gives a very detailed example of how women are forced to go in after what they want and fight for a place in the world of writing.	If woman has always functioned "within" the discourse of man, a signifier that has always referred back to the opposite signifier diminishes   or stifles its very different sounds, it is time for her to dislocate this "within", to explode it, turn it around, and seize it; to make it hers, containing it, taking it in her own mouth, biting that tongue with her very own teeth to invent for herself a language to get inside of. pg 255

Alexander Response

SYNTHESIS: AS MANY AS POSSIBLE
This article ties to Flynn's based on how they both speak about feminism in writing and how it is involved in how people view themselves and others. It also focuses on identity like Gee and Wardel who also speaks about belonging and that also ties in to the article. Another similiar article is to McCloud and how self image is important to how you see yourself and how you allow others to see you as well.


DIALECTICAL NOTEBOOK:

RESPONSE	QUOTE
Student's styles are impacted by their identities and their ideas of the outside world and their beliefs. To enhance how they write and see themselves and others, many steps need to be taken for them to be better associated with different types of people and styles of life.	Put another way, our student's identities, informed by prevailing, politicized  and personal definitions of gender and sexuality, can have a significant impact on their participation in class, their sense of themselves as learners and knowledge producers, and, by extension, their engagement with writing as a mode of exploration, communication, invention, and discovery. pg 198
I think that if you know yourself better you are better able to do everything in your life, by not being concerned with how you see yourself or how others see you, you can accomplish your goals.	Some scholar teachers have suggested that such identity interrogation along the axes of sexuality and gender is important for both students and instructors. pg 198
I don't personally think that sexuality has anything to do with how a theory should be formed, no matter what the topic is.	At the same time, however, next to no scholarly work addresses directly how transgender or transsexual theories might inform a feminist composition pedagogy. pg 199
By paving a new road for people to explore down in uncharted territory we learn more about the people who see themselves as different or apart from the "norm".	But the aims of many self-identified trans activists and theorists are to create cracks in the monolithic structure of gender identity and to search for wiggle room in what William Pollack has aptly termed the "Gender Straight-jacket" (40-43). pg 200
Accepting students and instructors and even authors helps broaden the conversation of things that we do not know or understand about the GLBT community and other types of minorities.	Acknowledging the presence of the transgender-ed is useful not only for understanding those who are differently gender-ed or whose presentation or experience of gender falls outside our "norms":'but also for helping us interrogate the constructs of gender that we often take for granted as "natural" or "normal".
	I have asked myself and my students to think critically about how we compose ourselves as men, women, masculine, feminine, and even gay, straight, or bi. pg 195

By finding out how we see ourselves we can move
forward to learn more about ourselves and others
alike and not alike us.

THOUGHTS:
I did not like this article. I do not think that gender or sexuality is involved in the writing process. The only way I could see it being involved would be in the topics, like what the author chose to write about. I did like the stories at the end of the article though although the stories of how they became the opposite sex were involved and how they felt they should have been born that way. I think that the author makes a good point, but I think it is unrelated to English and writing.

VIDEO:

Smitherman Response

• 1 before you read activity
• I don't think that I have ever judged someone based off of how they spoke without seeing them. I think that this is because I was brought up to accept people for how they are. I know that if someone just heard me speak they wouldn't think that I was not educated or understanding of what I was saying.
• summaray
• In her article Smitherman ties ethnicity and background to language and identity. She says that the color of your skin determines how you speak and react to things others say to you. She separates English into two types; White English and Black English. She mentions that "Proper English" takes away from the individual and their identity. 
• synthesis (connect to at least 3 other articles)
• I tied Smitherman's article to that of McCloud, with the masks. In different situations and with different types of people you speak differently and that affects your identity as well as your "English" style. Smitherman also ties to Wardel who speaks about identity and belonging. Also ties to Swales with lexus, which is specific language tied to the community.  
• dialectical notebook (at least 4 quotations)

• Response	Quote
  This statement shows that English has not always been the top language that people spoke dominately.	You see, from the Jump, the English language itself, didn't command no respect, for Latin was the lingo of the elite. pg 189
  She explains here that race and social class tie into the way you speak and learn.	Both authorities and norms are based on race and class position and is simply attempts to make the "outsiders" talk like the "insiders". pg 190
  This statement says that no matter how educated you are if you are lower class you will not be seen/respected in the academic setting.	See, an idiomatic phrase like this comes from a "lower class" dialect (and a people) and gets no respect. pg 190
  She says for teachers to look past proper English and just stick to teaching the basics and not focusing on which English students are speaking.	Now, my advice to teachers is to overlook these matters of sheer mechanical "correctness" and get on with the educational business at hand.

  
  
• Smitherman QD7
• If you are not aware of the terms that you need to agree with, or are unable to provide for the needs of the community you will not be accepted and not be able to make progress and move up in levels of authority in the group. 
• your thoughts
• This article made me think of how language is specific to not only discourse communities but also ethnicity. Different types of people speak differently depending on where they are, who they are talking to, and what they are talking about. I think that she could have written more about different communities and their way of speaking rather than only white and black people. Her article seems very biased. 

Project 3 Update

Since the peer review, I have gone over a few of the things that didn't make much sense. I also added a few key points in like my methods, added on to my personal narrative and added a few quotes to help my paper flow better. I also had to review one of my sources to make sure it was respectable and accurate. Over all I think that the peer review helped me see the minor errors I was overlooking.

Flynn Response

BEFORE YOU READ:

I think that when children write at a younger age gender is more obvious in their writing. Like most little girls will write stories about princesses or happy things with happy endings. And boys will be more likely to write about monsters, danger, and other things boys are interested in. 

SUMMARY:

In her article she compares three different books. She also talks about how different genders write and also react to different situations. She talks about how she didn't realize how differently the separate genders actually did write, respond, interpret, and connect differently to the characters. 

  

SYNTHESIS:
I connected this article with that of Berger who talks about how women are always aware of their bodies and also identity as women. Flynn connects to Berger by stating that women identify themselves through writing which is similar to Wardel who also focuses on identity. Another author it is related to is Kantz, Flynn talk about how women are compassionate and nurturing, Kantz also talks about how to nurture creativity. 

DIALECTICAL NOTEBOOK: 

RESPONSE	QUOTE
This quote is saying that based on gender, that is how we should be taught and that is not okay. Children learn differently not only their gender but their overall preparation for education.	The emerging field of composition studies could be described as a feminization of previous conceptions of how writers write and how writing should be taught. pg 156.
Britton switches a common thought process that many people have.	James Britton, for instance, reverses traditional hierarchies by privileged private expression over public transaction process over product. pg 156
This could be true but studies show that this is all based on parent involvement with the child in developmental stages.	Feminist research and theory emphasize that males and females differ in their developmental processes and in their interactions with others. pg 157
This also could be proven right or wrong, depending on who is conducting the study. Children learn differently and respond differently based on their environments and backgrounds.	She argues that girls and boys develop different relational capacities and senses of self as a result of growing up in a family in which women mother. pg 158

 QD 3:

Women have always been silenced with their academic opinions and ideas.For so long our society has seen man as the only human that was intelligent and able to make decisions. Now that women have their rights, many other minorities are also being recognized for their academic achievements. 

THOUGHTS: 
I do not think that gender has everything to do with writing styles. I think that personal interest also has a role. Gender is sometimes over looked in importance, over emphasized or forgotten. As writers we should learn what settings it is best to let our gender show through our work.

Villanueva Response

BEFORE YOU READ:
When I first came to college I felt like an outsider where I lived. There were fourteen new people who knew nothing about each other. We eventually got really close but there are still somethings that we haven't told everyone that we live with about ourselves. We have certain people who are closer to each other than they are with others, but over all we are a very close group of people.

SUMMARY:
This article was very unorganized. Villanueva gives many different accounts, poems, stories, and pieces from his own book about how people of color are discriminated and face racism. He uses the exerts from other authors then compares and contrasts it to his own personal experiences and life.

SYNTHESIS: 3
First connection is to bell hooks, with the shared subject of how "colored" people are treated and how they react to different things in their lives. Second connection is to Bryson with the force of habit, people of a certain background or shared interest do not categorize themselves after a certain time, they let others do so and they do not correct them. Third connection, Wardel with a sense of identity and belonging, if you feel that you do both of these you are accepting of your heritage.

DIALECTICAL NOTEBOOK

RESPONSE	QUOTE:
This quote makes me think of how people have been told to act a different way based on their race.	And I'd say the need to reclaim and retain the memory of the imperial lords, those who have forcibly changed the identities of people of color through colonization. 172
This ties to how he used them in the way that based off of what happened in other peoples accounts ties into his own life.	The narratives of people of color jog our memories as a collective in a scattered world and within an ideology that praises individualism. 175
He talks about how the past makes us all who we are. This also ties to how using our individuality we can teach students in a different way.	Looking back, we look ahead, and giving ourselves up to the looking back and the looking ahead, knowing the self, and, critically, knowing the self in relation to others, maybe we can be and instrument whereby students can hear the call. 176
This ties to how he talks about asking the grandfather about the past so that it does not go unheard.	Now some part of that first impulse reasserts itself, fictionalizing, telling the story, reaching back to the heritage that is at risk of passing away quickly. 171
This ties to how discourse communities tie people together and how who you are as a person can possibly affect how you are received into the group.	Academic discourse tries, after all, to reach the Aristotelian ideal of being completely logocentric, though it cannot be freed of the ethical appeal to authority. 172
Even if we are not racist or have been around it growing up, eventually somewhere in life we will come face to face with it in some way.	Yet little things happen that betray the underlying racism that affects us all, no matter how appalled by racism we might be. 174

AE #3
People who were American citizens but have another cultural background and they are socialized to act American and forget their hertitage. Taking yourself up by the bootstraps is saying that you will learn your native style regardless.

THOUGHTS: 5
I thought this article was by far the worst we have had to read thus far. His organization was terrible and I did not understand the point he was trying to get across until the third or fourth page. He talks about academic discourse which we have never heard of, so maybe that is what he considers to be a discourse community. I did not like this article at all.