We’re going to work on replies to blog posts today. The handout we’ll be using includes all the posts that were up by this morning. If any more come in, it’d be great to have folks comment on them as well.

In class, we’ll work in big groups focused on your books. We’ll look at passages from the first section of the books you’ve read, and start thinking about the kinds of issues that are emerging.

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Some of the passages that we looked at focused on the grandmothers (Diaz 51, Talusan 24) and the way the offer care or don’t. Other people in caretaking roles, like Laymon’s mother, grandmother, and Renata (24), also came up.

Among the topics we discussed were

• the beauty standard and how it’s shaped by race and racism and colonization;
• the impact of such standards on individuals, even within affected communities (ie: colorism; one student’s comment about hair shaping their relationship to a racial identity in ways that were hard)
• the coping mechanisms of people in dysfunctional systems, including when to “draw a line,” and the role of social science in understanding that

For Tuesday, read the next section — pages are on the Chalkboard Doc and the syllabus. As you read, think about the stages in life these writers are going through. Are they becoming more independent? What kinds of choices do they have and what do they decide to do? What larger social forces do we see at play in these pages? What connections can we make to earlier parts of the book? To other texts?