Blog Paper

Ashique S. Berry
Dr. Paul Gleason
English 303: Non-Western Literature
October 8, 2008
Blog Paper:
Climbing the Reading Ladder
Reading is an activity that I have always enjoyed and felt privileged to participate in. At the beginning of this semester, I was just completing my 6th book for the summer, Richard Wright's Black Boy. I typically spend my summers catching up on literature that I hear referenced during the semester. I believe that the stage that I was, and am currently, at can most efficiently be described as an amalgamation of all three of the stages. (Although, truthfully, I still spend a great deal of my time reading literature by African-American authors, which is a reflection of the fact that I have a lingering position in the “Self” stage.)
The catalyst for my love of literature was its relate-ability potential. Since high school, I would read literature as though there were some common driving force connecting all forms of it. This force was the described to me as “the human experience.” Everybody hurts, so to speak. High school was a difficult era in my life, and literature provided for me a way of escape. Through literature, I could decentralize my thoughts and vicariously experience the lives of others. I found that reading books, listening to music, and watching movies about people in difficult situations took the edge off of my loneliness, and feelings of unwanted and uncomfortable “uniqueness.” It was at this time that I began to see commonalities in texts of all forms. Different texts could insight different feelings, but they could also remind me of each other both explicitly and implicitly. I didn't know it at the time, but I was picking up on intertextuality. My favorite book at the time was Alice Walker's The Color Purple. My initial response was very “I-centered,” but it was what I needed at the time. I read a great deal of African-American literature for the very purpose of finding myself. (I'm still lost on that one.) I never wanted to believe that my experiences were exclusive of others, this would only pay homage to my loneliness. It wasn't until English 150, in college here at Cardinal Stritch, that I began to truly decentralize the “me” from the text, and put names to the possibilities that I had seen in texts.
Deconstruction for me, was a word that represented an overhaul of all my preconceived notions, and prior taught conventions about literature and text. In English 150, we explored such a broad spectrum of texts, and in so many ways, that I began to see literature for all of its correlations, conventions, as well as varying contexts. All of a sudden literature could be compared to art, art could be seen in film, and film could be related to prose. Literature was no longer just books, by definition, in my mind. Text broke free of being words on a page. Everything is suddenly text. Whole movements of literary form existed that I had never even considered. I went from symbolism, to realism, to modernism, and beyond. We worked with paintings, and music, and poetry in relation to each of these historical time frames, and I was awe-struck. From this point, the next logical step was finding the agenda of the author. What was the point of writing this in the first place?
I was first introduce to foreign author's when I took a course called “Images of Women in Literature.” This is when I read the works of non-western feminist authors Helene Cixous, and Gayatry Spivak. In these works I began to wrestle with the issues of cultural decentralization and politics. The question of authenticity presented itself. How does colonization influence a culture's ability to retain it's original forms? Although as an African-American I have always considered my experiences unique from the average American, I never saw the truth in the fact that my experiences were still American. I drudgingly swallowed the hard pill that said that everything is not necessarily relate-able. I was completely removed from the experiences that these women wrote about, by way of respect for their individuality, and reverence for their authenticity. These women wrote about situations that are removed from Westernized culture. They wrote about situations that are removed from me. The purpose being just to let us know. Not for us, as readers and Americans, to necessarily say “I understand what that must be like,” but for us to say “I can't understand what that must be like.” These writers put us in the “know.” A binary is created between knowing things and being in the know. Literature becomes a way of documenting occurrences, in order that we may discuss them, analyze them, hold them to a light and examine their authenticity, and change ourselves accordingly. Literature becomes a small part of history (or her-story).
This semester, I have been re-confronted with the way that I view literature. I noticed that I continue to, whether by way of the subconscious or embedded education, symbol hunt and insist that stories follow the plot diagram. I demand that events make sense, and that the story ends sensibly. When we read Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories I was intrigued. I found the style to be fun and nontraditional. It was more like reading a sophisticated fairy tale. By the time we read Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase, I found myself feeling agitated. As I wrote in my blog, “For some reason, my brain seems to want everything to fit in their own places. I am a prisoner of my socialization, education, and over analyzations. This story challenges that part of me.” Reading works like this have been good practice for me. I related to absolutely nothing, and understood very little, in the Murakami piece, although I could read what was being written. It took about 60 pages into the story before I could vaguely follow what was being said. Class-time became invaluable to this aim. Murakami simply reminded me that the text is not about “me” but about the “why.” Complimentary to this, the “why” doesn't need to make sense. I suppose this puts me at number three mostly. This is especially apparent in my reaction towards the Roy piece. I fully realize the uniqueness of the culture in this story, and am attempting to preserve it's integrity in my mind, but not comparing it to other universally human experiences or historical occurrences.
I believe I am on the right path to solidifying this “world “ stage of reading development. My mind is open to the fact that, I don't know certain things, nor can I ever truly. But just as they say in therapy, “The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem.” In this case, “the more I know, the more I know that I don't know,” is the most appropriate phrase. This is what makes literature so wonderful in my mind. It is wholly multifaceted, and ever-evolving. Who knows, by the time I get this stage down there may be another.