Auditing: NVM Gonzalez

Hallo Readers,

Professor C confessed that he likes talking and hearing himself talk so for class he tried a different approach ( increasing student talk, to limit teacher talk ).  We worked with our groups, and presented our discussion findings.  I felt like an anthropologist observing the group interaction ( also as observer-participant ).  A leader emerged through a majority "encouragement" and consensus.  If there were an organized way of going about discussing literature ( it wasn't as apparent ).  The way the discussion began seemed to just "fall" into place.  Nonetheless, it was interesting how methodological my classmates were in analyzing a text. 

They'd start with the basic understanding of the text: setting, characters, themes, plot, resolution, et. al.  Then, they'd move to theory and interpretation.  And finally evaluation and further problematizing the text for future consideration ( to continue the dialogue ).  Yes the process is also recursive, students would go back and forth through these different stages of reading, but usually this pattern was how the discussion began using textual evidence ( relying less on memory of the text ... this tactic may make more sense for 2nd language learners/readers ).  The primacy of the word, the written word.

The leader in our group decided that a powerpoint presentation of our findings ( so tech savvy naman ) would be good so she delegated its production to the class beadle, who happened to be in our group [ class beadle is like a TA but undergraduate not graduate level ].  Our group presentation was more democratic.  Group members were encouraged to pick a section and lead the discussion ( the rest would fill in information left out/forgotten ).  After our presentation, Group 2 and 3 followed.  Of course, G.I. C [ the one who did magic tricks from the previous class session ] had ketchup sashe as hand-outs, coincidentally his group led the discussion of NVM Gonzalez's "The Tomato Game."

The works we read from NVM Gonzalez incorporated food imagery and symbolism ( a cultural benchmark; "we are what we eat" ) in his stories from his collection The Bread of Salt and Other Stories. ( plus the role of the writer in establishing a new literacy, never stop writing ). It's weird how the progression of these authors' writing subjects seems to resemble my own inquiry ( this is the first time I've been exposed to their work, so it's not plagiarism but maybe a collective psyche/consciousness/sensibility ).  We share similar ideas, we were exposed to similar environments, we had similar propensities/experiences ( just different time periods, and I'm not "published" still in the works, just fermenting, who knows if it'll ever be cooked, maybe raw forever ).