"The Pedestrian"

19 February 2020: I keep telling my students this semester that I wish every one of them was in every one of my classes because the material keeps intersecting in such unusual and unexpected ways. In American Ethnic literature, we've been wrestling with questions about identity, racism, and double-consciousness. In Young Adult Literature, we've wrapped up our discussion of Monster and are about half-way through The Hate U Give. In my seminar on gender and humor, we've finished Phoebe Robinson's book and spent our last class discussing 2 Dope Queens. 

So today's poem-of-the-day just really hit me. I love its use of the sonnet form, its title's double-meaning (as a noun and an adjective--as in, this is just an ordinary occurrence), and its quiet devastation. Give it a read.

Back to 2 Dope Queens...

18 February 2020: Spent part of this morning grades students' "Listening Responses" to episodes of 2 Dope Queens, an assignment in my "Gender and Comedy" seminar this semester. Basically, I told them to pick any episode, listen carefully, take some notes, and write some things down.

The students loved the podcast. Loved it.

And the assignments? These were really good. I am telling you, even their grammar was better than usual. What? How? A Phoebe and Jessica miracle, especially impressive for a show that isn't even producing new episodes anymore.

"Uppity"

12 February 2020: “But it turns out for me that carrying on isn’t enough. Holding my head high and rising above doesn’t make me feel strong or fierce. It makes me feel stifled. Almost as if I am choking on a tiny injustice and that one of these days, the right injustice is going to lodge itself in my throat and take my voice and my very last breath. Therefore, the only reliable protection for me is to speak up. On that day with that White Director, I made the choice to never again be quiet, to never again suck it up. I challenged him. And I will do it again. If that make me uppity, so be it. At least people know I’m no longer a vessel they can use to act out their racist feelings. They will know that I think I’m worth fighting for. They will know that I have a fire burning inside me. They will know that I’m alive.” --Phoebe Robinson, in the hit-it-out-of-the-park ending to her chapter called "Uppity" in You Can't Touch My Hair

Having so much (smart) fun teaching this book this semester...

“Dear Future Female President: My List of Demands”

8 February 2020: “When you get sworn into office, yell, 'I'm a feminist,' and then throw your fist in the air like you're Judd Nelson at the end of The Breakfast Club....Don’t be trifling about being a feminist…[do] the actual work of trying to make things equal for everybody. You’re going to have to roll up your sleeves and get dirty in order to create a society that takes women as seriously at the men. The type that encourages us not to define ourselves by who we go to bed with at night, but by who and what we see reflected back at us in the mirror in the morning. The type that recognizes that women are not a monolith and that they have wildly different experiences informed by their race and/or sexuality. Be that beacon of light that we can look toward. Be the feminist who will help normalize the idea of Feminism for society. Be the feminist everyone needs. No presh.” --Phoebe Robinson, You Can't Touch My Hair...

I am re-reading Robinson's book for my Gender and Humor seminar. In her blog post last week, one of my students wrote that she wasn't really "very feminist," but if you know her, you know that's not true. Like so many young women, she just doesn't really know what the word means. I can't wait for her to get to this section of the book.

[A really interesting addendum: Robinson notes that if this first female president is a woman of color, she'll need to "chill out." "You need to be hella low key about your feminism, at least during the first term. This sucks, but them's the breaks, Madam President."]