This past weekend, our daughter turned four (!!!), marking four years of parenting for my husband and me -- and four years of thinking maternally and paternally: you know, parentally. As I read "The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes" to her every evening this weekend (and some mornings!), I've found myself thinking about the role that books have played in our parenting. My students asked me if I read all of the parenting books when I was pregnant, and I did read a lot of them -- but really, the ones that have taught me the most have been the ones I've read her: the ones with messages I want her to embrace, the ones with sassy, spunky girls I (mostly) want her to emulate, the ones with mothers I aspire to be for her -- like the Country Bunny. The whole world is contained between the covers of books, it seems...
Happy birthday, Monkey-girl!
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Saturday, April 2, 2011
One of the scariest novels I ever read...
remains mere impressions in my mind now, decades later. I can't remember the title (even with 10 minutes of Internet searching) or the author, just the bare bones of the plot: a woman decides to leave her husband and two children to go to graduate school. When I read it (as an undergraduate), I just couldn't understand how someone could leave her children like that OR how she could live in the stultifying environment that was her life -- and the novel made it pretty clear that there was no middle ground. So I found the atmosphere of the novel claustrophobic.
Now that I'm the mother of an almost four-year-old, I have a deeper appreciation for just how gut-wrenching her decision must have been -- as well as less sympathy for her because she sidelined her own needs to follow a socially prescribed path, leading to heartbreak for her children. As we read Colm Toibin's The South and Michael Cunningham's The Hours, I'm sure we'll be exploring this dilemma from a multitude of angles.
Now that I'm the mother of an almost four-year-old, I have a deeper appreciation for just how gut-wrenching her decision must have been -- as well as less sympathy for her because she sidelined her own needs to follow a socially prescribed path, leading to heartbreak for her children. As we read Colm Toibin's The South and Michael Cunningham's The Hours, I'm sure we'll be exploring this dilemma from a multitude of angles.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Hiroshima moms?
We started the semester talking (albeit briefly) about Tiger Moms, thanks to the media storm Amy Chua stirred up. This morning, courtesy of Yahoo! news, we have the Hiroshima mom:
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/the-opposite-of-a-tiger-mother-leaving-your-children-behind-2460982/
I hope that by the midpoint of the semester, we're getting very uncomfortable with judging women-as-mothers' choices (and it's my sense that we are). That said, this article is perfect for leading into our post-Spring Break readings: A Doll's House, The South, and The Hours!
On a related note, I'm more than a little disturbed by our propensity for discussing these very difficult parenting/mothering issues ONLY through a lens that relies on Asian labels -- I think that says something very telling about our own culture's inability to discuss honestly what it means to parent/mother a child.
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/the-opposite-of-a-tiger-mother-leaving-your-children-behind-2460982/
I hope that by the midpoint of the semester, we're getting very uncomfortable with judging women-as-mothers' choices (and it's my sense that we are). That said, this article is perfect for leading into our post-Spring Break readings: A Doll's House, The South, and The Hours!
On a related note, I'm more than a little disturbed by our propensity for discussing these very difficult parenting/mothering issues ONLY through a lens that relies on Asian labels -- I think that says something very telling about our own culture's inability to discuss honestly what it means to parent/mother a child.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
#2 -- Things a professor likes to see -- and other pedagogical ruminations
I just wandered through my building and saw in several different nooks and crannies students of mine reading for our late afternoon class -- so fun to see their total absorption in the novel (Me Dying Trial)!
Which leads me to wonder again (as I did yesterday when I finished it) what they'll all think of the ending of the novel. I personally found the plot compelling and was totally sucked into Gwennie's perspective each time the narrative voice aligned with her. BUT... I found the ending a bit of a letdown: we got just enough of Peppy for me to be disappointed that we hadn't gotten more throughout the novel. It'll be really interesting to go into today's discussion with that reaction fresh in my mind.
As I explained to the class on Tuesday, in any literature-based course that I design and teach, I try to include 2-3 novels on the syllabus that are brand-new to me. I read a lot about them, to try to ensure they fit thematically, but I don't read them ahead of time. That way, when we discuss them in class, I can model for the students the experience of reading for the first time. I've read Frankenstein, for instance, a dozen times -- and I've read the 1818 edition, the 1831 one, the compendium of all the versions -- you get the picture. It's a novel I love, but I am far removed from the students who are experiencing it for the first time. And I think it's really important that there be moments when I literally don't have all of the answers for them, which this practice creates.
Which leads me to wonder again (as I did yesterday when I finished it) what they'll all think of the ending of the novel. I personally found the plot compelling and was totally sucked into Gwennie's perspective each time the narrative voice aligned with her. BUT... I found the ending a bit of a letdown: we got just enough of Peppy for me to be disappointed that we hadn't gotten more throughout the novel. It'll be really interesting to go into today's discussion with that reaction fresh in my mind.
As I explained to the class on Tuesday, in any literature-based course that I design and teach, I try to include 2-3 novels on the syllabus that are brand-new to me. I read a lot about them, to try to ensure they fit thematically, but I don't read them ahead of time. That way, when we discuss them in class, I can model for the students the experience of reading for the first time. I've read Frankenstein, for instance, a dozen times -- and I've read the 1818 edition, the 1831 one, the compendium of all the versions -- you get the picture. It's a novel I love, but I am far removed from the students who are experiencing it for the first time. And I think it's really important that there be moments when I literally don't have all of the answers for them, which this practice creates.
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