HW for April 29 - intertextual Oscar Wao

Think of a book or popular culture artefact that you can relate with Oscar Wao and explain why. You can develop your proposal in the blog, so as to complete your participation credits. In any case, make sure to bring your proposal to the class of the 29th and be ready to discuss it. Thank you!

Junot Diaz and metafiction

a nice blogpost here: https://litreactor.com/columns/thats-so-meta-writing-a-story-about-writing-a-story

Wonderful Q & A by Junot Diaz

Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA8X6TUA83k

HW - for April 22 - Questions on Oscar Wao

Use the comment boxes to ask all the questions you would like to see discussed about Oscar Wao - and try to explain why those questions have come to your mind.

HW for Apr 20 (Oscar Wao part 1)

Answer one of these:

1. Discuss the relevance of the epigraph by Derek Walcott

2. Comment on narrative control: what layers of narration are there in this 1st part and how do they affect your access and immersion in the story?

Oscar Wao anotado

For the benefit of all of us here is a guide to the "nerdy" pop cultural references (and others)  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, http://www.annotated-oscar-wao.com/intro1.html

From Claudia Rankine's Citizen (2014)

“Not long ago you are in a room where someone asks the philosopher Judith Butler what makes language hurtful…Our very being exposes us to the address of others, she answers. We suffer from the condition of being addressable. Our emotional openness, she adds, is carried by our addressability. Language navigates this.

For so long you thought the ambition of racist language was to denigrate and erase you as a person. After considering Butler’s remarks, you begin to understand yourself as rendered hypervisible in the face of such language acts. Language that feels hurtful is intended to exploit all the ways that you are present. Your alertness, your openness, and your desire to engage actually demand your presence, your looking up, your talking back and, as insane as it is, saying please." (p. 49)