Karen Daniel

Web Review

For my web review, I sought out essays that addressed some of the same questions that have been plaguing me since the beginning of the semester.  I began with Essay 5 from 2004 (Ashley Salter’s?), then read Penny O’Neal’s essay from summer 1999, and finally, I read Joel Carter’s essay from Spring 2006. 

Beginning with the essay from 2004, Assimilation, Resistance, and Points Between, I was both interested and dismayed.  Interested because the author compiled a list of questions that closely emulated the questions I had been formulating.  I liked the author’s review and ideas concerning Ms. Moore and agreed with the idea that Ms. Moore was a confusing and interesting character which she articulates by telling us, “I do believe hers is a complicated position somewhere between resistance and assimilation.”   However, as much as I liked the author’s views on Ms. Moore, I found her critique of James Baldwin’s No Name in the Street to be less refreshing.  She asked some interesting questions though, such as questioning exactly who had assimilated, Baldwin or his childhood friend.  A good deal of this essay centered on the guilt of the characters in the stories, and I think that is a strong common thread in the material we have read thus far.  Where I really liked this essay, was when it began to challenge the idea that the dominant culture is stereotyped so negatively in immigrant and minority literature and to question why and if this was productive.  The author is obviously disturbed by some of the conversations and essays addressing the material in this class, as am I at this point.  Her assertion that focusing on the middle, and thus on common grounds, is, I believe, the strongest point.  Otherwise, we end up reading stories like Report from the Bahamas, and missing the point by seeing only the anger that got us there. 

The next essay I read was Penny O’Neal’s, Be Careful What You Wish For.  This was not a midterm, but rather a research project.  In it Penny discusses the ideas of guilt and irony in the stories of Baldwin and Rodriguez.  I really liked her discussion of irony as that was the same recurring theme I picked up on when reading these pieces, especially Baldwin’s.  She does a great critique of the irony of Baldwin using the dominant culture’s educational system to allow him to become successful, and thus “attack” the very culture that gave him the skills to do so.  I think this is a common problem with minority culture.  She also addresses the idea of Rodriguez’s guilt at assimilating to the point of losing his native language.  Honestly, I think this is a sensitive issue that does not receive that attention it is begging for.  Of course one is more successful if one learns the native language of the culture they are living in.  How could it be any other way?  The better spoken a person is, the easier they work and live in society.  Rodriguez obviously agonizes over his loss of his native tongue and O’Neal does a good job of analyzing this. 

The last midterm I read was JC’s from spring 2006.   Honestly, I found this essay a little hard to grasp onto because he does so much in such a short period of time, but, as usual, he does a great job of getting to the heart of all the issues.  JC begins by describing all of the stages of immigration and links the classroom readings to the different stages.  He follows with a similar critique of the minority readings, and then contrasts the two. 

It is always interesting to me to do these web reviews as they are so helpful in focusing my ideas for my own essays.  Additionally, reading the essays of other students tends to either validate or discount my own thoughts about the different writers and their pieces.  I often discover things that I had not noticed when I originally read them through.  In this class, I think the web readings are especially informative as they allow us to “listen” to the thoughts of others and respond or elaborate on them without the complexities apparent in our classroom discussions.  Sometimes it is easier to deal with issues such as these in writing, and in private.  Of the three essays I reviewed, I faced the irony of the fact that the first one most closely emulates my own thoughts and questions about our class objectives and readings, while at the same time, I think the essay is somewhat defensive which can be counterproductive.