On Tue, 22 Apr 1997, lissa bloomer wrote:
> in response to nalo -- and also a bunch of other stuff:
>
> eye-yi-yi. i have so much reading to do. egads. i've never heard of -Bone
> Dance- so i'll give it a try. you know, this sounds really really really
> terrible, and i promised myself 7 years ago when i first started teaching
> that if i ever muttered the words i should quit immediately..........but...
> here are the words... i'm beginning to tire of trying fem works in a
> freshman comp class. i'm not complaining - i love my job and the students
> -- i think i'm obsessively worrying as constructive procrastination
since i
> have papers to grade. however, it's just that it's first of all damaging to
> my own persona, since it's hard to teach books that are so close to home,
> so personal, and so religiously a part of my core beliefs. ya know? it's
> hard for me to distance. for example, i used marilyn robinson's
> _Housekeeping_ (which Marlene Barr would certainly call "feminist
> fabulation", since Ruth and Sylvie both leave ((transcend)) the patriarchal
> world for another) in 1105, and felt quite emotionally drained. i wanted
> them all to love it as much as me, and when some didn't, it hurt. i want to
> use _Momaday_ in a class, but i'm not sure i can well. there are, maybe,
> 20 books that i'm not sure i could ever use in a classroom because they are
> so close to me. (the kind of books that i want to match the paint of the
> covers to paint my bedroom... the kind of books that smell of the bottom of
> my sachel...) and, strangely enough, most, if not all, of these books are
> feminist and of the sf ilk. and the more i read, the more i find i cannot
> share in the freshman english classroom. too scared? yes. and it sucks.
> that i have to, as nalo says, "bait and switch" is terrible. that if i use
> Ursula Le Guin's "Carrier Bag of Fiction" in the classroom and then am
> assumed a male-hating-radical-feminist-who
> is-going-to-automatically-fail-all-men is too.
>
> how does one teach a feminist sci fi book????? how does one teach a book
> that one loves without going insane? (( i know the "one should only teach
> the books that one loves so that one will be motivated" answer... and i
> know the "jesus, get some distance" answer.... and i know the "you must
> share all the books, you selfish geek" answer....and the "you should be
> teaching an optional class in an arts program" answer...and the "you need
> to go pay for your voice and get your damn phd" answer...))
>
> could you share your "delaney shelf" with anyone? ((and did you write that
> you HEARD him SAY something? wow. did you meet him?))((Le Guin and Delany
> are gods.))
>
>
> -lissa bloomer
I think that every teacher who cares about his/her subject goes through
this, Lissa. It's unavoidable. Eventually you develop a thick skin;
that's why I can still teach The Left Hand of Darkness even though I know
it will have only so-so success with many of my students. One trick is
to find a few books and stories that you really like and that do really
work. Those kind of successes can help. I use A Wizard of Earthsea,
Natalie Babbitt's The Eyes of the Amaryllis (in children's lit) Anne
Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, and Steinbeck's The Grapes of
Wrath, all pretty much sure fire winners.
Speaking of Le Guin as God. I met her last year at WisCon 20. My first
reaction was to think, my God, she's tiny! In my head she was at least 6
feet tall, of course. In reality she's like 5'4". Meeting Octavia
Butler, on the other hand, was the opposite kind of experience. She got
on an elevator I was already on at SFRA in Chicago 3 years back, and her
height and general presence were absolutely daunting. She's at least 6'1".
Mike Levy
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