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
if you're not wearing pants, it's time to go home.
elisabeth bloomer
instructor, english
virginia tech
ebloomer@vt.edu
540.231.2445
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