A Note About Spring Break

During Spring Break, I will be away on vacation in the Caribbean. I will take many pictures for my blog and share them when I get back to Michigan! Have a good break, everyone!

My (First) Journey Through the Novel Vive la Paris by Esme Raji Codell

Vive la Paris by Esme Raji Codell is a children's book that deals with the deep themes of bullying and the Holocaust. It is also the book I chose to experiment with when we embarked on a journey of cutting and marking up books today in class.

Thylias suggested that we could begin by crossing out things we didn't want read, and highlighting things we wanted read, or wanted to emphasize in the text. So, I started by highlighting lines and words that I liked. This was slightly difficult, as I had never read the book before (so I didn't really know what to look for), but that made the project even more interesting - I was judging the text on an individual word and sentence level, not as a whole, which is an unusual way to view a book.

The first words I highlighted were the first two words of the book: "Excuse me." I really liked that the book started this way; it seemed like a catchy, captivating introduction and made me want to read more. I also highlighted other words on the first page that I thought seemed interesting and important, such as "piano lessons." I did not find any words on the first page that I wanted to cross out or obscure.

The first page of Vive la Paris

By page three, I had decided to start crossing words out as well as highlighting them.

Page 3 of Vive la Paris

When I arrived at page four, I noticed that the words I had struck through on the previous page appeared as different crossed-out words on the next page. It was as though I had accidentally obscured words on page four.

Page 4 and 5 of Vive la Paris

Sometimes I would cross out words that would appear on the next page as just blue lines (since the Sharpie I was using was blue). This happened when there were no words on the next page where I had struck through on the previous page, like these pages below.

The two photos above are of pages 7 and 8 of Vive la Paris

It was very interesting to examine which words had been purposefully crossed out and which words were accidentally obscured. Sometimes I would think about striking through a word (or group of words) on one page, then go to the next page and cross out some words. Once I turned back to the previous page, I found that the words I had considered crossing out had been obscured by the strike-throughs on the next page. Here is an example of this below. On page 120, I crossed out "some words in squiggly letters" (near the top of the page), which inadvertently crossed out "You're lucky to be alive" on page 119. I had previously considered crossing out "You're lucky to be alive," but had decided against it. Interestingly, crossing out other words on the next page also crossed out these words.

Pages 119 and 120 of Vive la Paris

I found this process of working through the book and crossing out certain words fascinating and enlightening. I will continue to work with this book during and between future classes - perhaps even tearing out a page and leaving it outside at the mercy of the elements, and seeing how that changes the experience of the book as a whole. For now, the book will remain in the library cabinet while I go on vacation for Spring Break.

Letter sent!

(I know I'm not five years old, but this picture was too cute not to include on my blog!)

I just sent an email to my mom's family member who is very knowledgable about our family history. Hopefully she will be able and willing to support me during this project and impart knowledge about my family to me that I wouldn't otherwise be able to find out. I will eagerly await her response!

More cloud shapes!

Shapes in the clouds...

When I was a child, my friends and I would often lie in the grass and watch the clouds to see if we could find shapes in them. In the film A Beautiful Mind, there is a scene in which John Nash is on a date with his future wife and he shows her that he can find any shape in the stars. This scene reminds me of my cloud-watching days.

It has occurred to me that clouds are also a form of book, since they can move and form shapes, and these shapes can tell stories. However, to tell stories, someone else (like one of us children, for instance) must project these stories onto the cloud shape. So are the clouds really telling a story, or are we? It's an interesting concept to think about: is the book really telling the story, or is the author telling the story?

Cloud shapes can be interpreted in many ways. In the picture below, for example, I see a polar bear. I asked my roommate what she sees, though, and she said she sees a dog. I think the fact that cloud shapes can have multiple interpretations also qualifies them as a form of book.

The Importance of Cultural Background

Our discussion in class on Tuesday reminded me of another reason that doing a “family tree” project is important. We were talking about cultural background and its importance in our lives. Pauline mentioned that people with more “diluted” cultural backgrounds often have trouble identifying with one culture or another. I think that this conundrum must be especially difficult for people who are – or even just appear to be – of more than one ethnicity.

Although I am of only one ethnicity, my background is actually fairly diverse and diluted. My father is half Swedish and half Italian, making me one-fourth Italian and one-fourth Swedish, while my mother’s background is a disparate mixture of nationalities, including Scottish, English, Russian, and German. Although my background is all western European, each country where I am “from” has a completely different culture and distinct traditions. Thus, I have never thought of myself as very connected to my cultural backgrounds, but rather as “American” – more than anything else, anyway. For instance, my family has never really had a particular kind of food – like Italian, for example – that they make because that food is a part of their cultural background. We eat all kinds of cuisine – Asian, American, Italian, Indian, French, Mexican – and we don’t really eat any one kind more than another.

As a child, and even sometimes as an adult, I felt jealous of friends because their cultural background was clearer and a bigger part of their lives. I think having a distinct cultural background as an important part of your life can be nice because often there are large communities of cultures, and people can connect to each other based on their shared cultural background. For example, there are certain neighborhoods in many cities where there is a dominant cultural background, such as the Irish south end of Boston. Similarly, many people at Michigan are Jewish and make friends by going to Hillel and joining the Jewish community here. Sometimes I wish that I had a certain community that I could join and feel connected to the people in it based on shared cultural background.

I think that learning more about my family and my ancestors will make me feel closer to my own cultural background and the various nationalities that comprise it.

Plans for my project!

After telling my mom about my new project, I asked her if she had any suggestions for where I should start. I am most interested in tracing my mom’s side of the family because it is her great-aunt (ish – I’m not sure about the exact relation) after whom I am named (my middle name, not my first). My mom advised me to contact her cousin, who is very interested in genealogy and who has actually already done some work trying to piece together our family tree. Since this cousin does have a Facebook, I feel that it will be fairly simple to get in touch with her and to learn about my mom’s side of the family from her. However, I am planning to wait a few days – maybe even a week – to contact her because that side of the family is experiencing an emergency right now, and I want to give everyone time to process and face this family situation.

As for the final form and presentation of my project, at this point I am thinking that I would really like to create a family tree using posterboard or something, and actually draw out a tree. In addition, since I know that we are all descendents of the stars and planets (stardust), I would probably attach stars and other space objects (planets, comets, the sun) to the tree, perhaps with pipe cleaners. (I am imagining a colorful, artsy project in my head that might not truly happen as I am envisioning it, since I have very little visual artistic talent.)

I guess I’m imagining something kind of like this, with stars attached to the top.

I’m really excited about my project and I can’t wait to get started!