Tag Archives: Book Groups

Endless Cycle

A photo showing the colorful slot machines, used for gambling, aboard a cruise ship. There are 5 in a row next to each other.
“Slot Machines” by ragingwire is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

While reading the final section of Heavy, I just felt shocked because it felt like I was witnessing history repeat itself. From a young age, Laymon’s mother had pushed for him to be excellent and would punish him whenever she felt disappointed, but she herself was just as flawed as he was. Not only that, but her harmful flaws and addictions seemed to be passed down to Laymon. Earlier on in the book, Laymon wrote about how he saw his mom gamble away a lot of money while they were in Las Vegas, and how she would continue to do this for a long time. Unfortunately, as an adult Laymon also developed the same gambling habits his mother had developed when he was a child. Even after throwing away who knows how many thousands of dollars and promising Flora that he wouldn’t return to the casino (220) he still did. A positive that came out of this situation was that Laymon was able to make amends with his mother and they promised each other that they would get better and she even promised to get help for her addiction (229). While Laymon was honest about never going back to a casino, it seems that his mother was never able to battle her addiction completely, so she continued lying to Laymon. Even when they were laying out all of their problems to each other, they continued to lie to each other, in turn continuing to hurt each other.

In a way this section really exemplifies how much Laymon is like his mother. They both struggled with addiction and constantly lied and hurt the people they loved. It makes sense that Laymon was hesitant about bringing a child into this world because he was afraid he would hurt them just like his mother and the world had hurt him (230). He was still suffering from years of trauma and still doesn’t understand how to deal with it in the healthiest way possible, a lot of people wouldn’t admit that willingly. After everything, I think the ending is quite ambiguous and that’s most likely because Laymon doesn’t know where exactly his story will go. Writing about everything that he went through might make his healing experience easier, but he can also continue to make the same mistakes, after all he seems to still be caught up in this never ending cycle of pain just like his mother.

Set Ups and Failure

You marched into your room, went in the closet, and came out with a belt. You brought one lash down across my shoulder. You brought another lash down across the front of my stomach. You went on and on about ruining the only chance I had to get free.

Laymon, 2018, 138
Image depicts a college library in sepia colors cape. It has a long entryway and has walkways with windows going from left to right.
Oberlin College’s Mudd Library

Laymon writes a lot about making huge advancements but then eventually crashing. The prejudices his professors and other classmates felt towards him and the other, few, Black students was extremely prevalent. They were accused of plagiarizing in English classes more than once (125). It’s clear that this PWI that touted itself as a liberal college, was run and occupied by racists. They didn’t even need to hide their racism because they knew they would face no consequences since they were the majority and this was their regular routine. To me at least, it’s clear that Laymon’s grades suffered because of everything he was enduring at this school. Not only was he being subjected to racism and death threats by his fellow schoolmates, he was also facing inner turmoil and hurting himself in various ways. This was not an easy experience for him, and his grades and his body suffered because of it.

When reading the quote on page 138, I just felt shocked. Laymon has already established that his mother would abuse him if he didn’t do the things she felt were right, but the fact that she still beat him after everything he had gone through was unbelievable. Especially since she had commented on his weight gain beforehand, you would think that she would connect the dots about why he had gained so much weight and had done badly in school. He had been successful and was able to publish different works of his in the school newspaper, but everything else he did was disappointing. He flew too close to the sun and was punished for it, by those unknown to him and those who were supposed to love him no matter what. Punishing him for what she sees as shortcomings and failures is why he’s the way he is. He will not be molded into this perfect person, because a perfect person does not exist. At the end of this section, it’s just clear that he needs more help than he’s ever gotten and a loving hand that doesn’t come with abuse.

Manipulative Liar

The night Kamala Lackey told me her secrets, I promised I’d never sexually violate or sexually abuse any woman or girl on earth. The existence of that promise was enough to excuse myself for lying to Abby Claremont and any other girl who wanted to have sex with me.

Laymon, 2018, 103

This particular section was a lot to take on. Laymon discusses his relationships with women and how he treats them.  In the quote above, he touches on his promise to never secually abuse/violate women or girls. Throughout “Hulk” Laymon brings up all of the situations where the girls around him would want to have sexual intercourse while they were drunk and how uncomfortable it made him, “Usually, I said no because my body told me it was wrong” (94). His understanding of consent and how the lines get blurry when one is drunk made Laymon disregard all of the advances women made towards him while intoxicated. I wonder if a part of this came to be because of the things he saw occurring at Beulah Beauford’s house. While he was mindful of keeping his hands to himself during these moments, it didn’t stop him from hurting women in other ways.

Although Laymon promises to never hurt women sexually, he still allows himself to hurt them by becoming a liar. I feel like the most unnerving part about him lying was that he took pleasure in it. When Laymon is crying over Abby, he tells his mother that it’s because her and his father didn’t try to make it work. When she begins to cry and apologize, it makes him “smile and tell more lies” (98).  Now he’s lying to his mother and all the other women and girls in his life. He is being encased in toxicity and gets pleasure from it. Since no one knew the truth about what he was doing he was still allowed to be and looked at as a “good guy” (103). It’s shocking that he is only sixteen years old and doing all of this. The contrast between 12-year-old Kiese and 16-year-old Kiese is staggering. The signs of being a liar have always been there since he was young, back then he would lie to save himself from trauma and I think that his trauma is still shaping his actions at this stage, however, it doesn’t excuse the pain he is and will cause to others.

I don’t know what Laymon was trying to convey by explaining that he wouldn’t take advantage of women sexually, but that he was also a liar. I think that in a way this is to show that at the end of the day he is just a human who has flaws. He isn’t a superhero like Hulk, there will be many things that he does that are wrong from a moral standpoint. Also, since he is writing this memoir as a letter to his mother, it might serve as an exposé of sorts. He’s letting her know all of the harm that he caused people because he enjoyed lying to women. I wonder how long he will continue to thrive off of being a manipulative liar throughout this memoir.

Class 16

Welcome to Day 1 of our book groups. Thanks to Kevin, Ashley, Luis, Yingrong, Spencer, and Zoe for posting your initial replies to the first section of our books. (Those named above posted by around 9:00, which is usually when I log on for class and prepare these posts for publishing.)

A few bits of business, about a) blog posts and book clubs, b) the impact of this work on your grading contracts, c) Essay 2 (which I’ve finished reading and commenting on), and d) where we’re going with Essay 3.

Those of you who have arrived in class prepared and with your work complete, you’ll work in pairs and then threes to discuss the reading. I’d suggest you start out by sharing what you posted in the blog. It’s OK to have started with summary but the best discussions will move quickly to responses. These responses will be based in the books.

What I’d like these discussion to yield is: a) 2-3 passages from your book that you might be interested in talking about more with others; b) 1-2 “big questions” from the section of the book you read for today. Again, this will drive your conversation in bigger breakouts.

Blog Posts for Book Clubs

For easy reference, here’s a blog post requirement review

  • You’ll write one post per week to our course blog (due Tuesdays by 9:30am)
    • It should have a title, tags, a quote from the text, an image or a link out, and citations
    • It should engage the reading and be between 200 and 350 words (2-3 paragraphs).
  • You’ll also reply to the people in your groups (due Thursdays by 9:30am) 
    • These should be thoughtful comments that engage the writer and their ideas
    • They should be 1-2 paragraphs, and should summarize what the writer has said before you respond with your own ideas — this is sometimes called the “known-new” contract

Incomplete Work & Grading Contracts

If you didn’t complete your assignment, a) I will mark it as late, and b) you’ll need to spend some time in class completing it. There will be breakout rooms for this. Please go to the room that corresponds to the book you’ve decided to read. Work turned in later than today’s class will be marked “make-up” and, eventually, “ignored.” Please review our grading contract to recall how this can affect your semester grades.

Essay 2 Comments & Required Revisions

You should check your preferred email address (whatever you indicated that was during the submission of Essay 1). I have sent feedback to everyone who turned in Essay 2. These were, generally, pretty good. A few were really excellent and we’ll look at them with the writer’s permission. Some need a small amount of revision, with the most common reason being either a missing reference to the peer-reviewed reading or a lack of a works cited page. Both are easily fixable. In a few cases there was a bigger issue; if that’s your situation talk to me after class this week.

Essay 3 Topics

While the specific prompts won’t be available until next Monday, after we’ve gotten underway with book clubs, I can say with some certainty the general topic choices you’ll have for this essay. We’re returning to a more traditional format, in this case a 1,000-1,500 word essay. Your choices of topic will be as follows:

  1. The Research Option: Using library sources from CCNY’s Cohen Library or the NYPL, pose a research question about a social issue that emerges from your reading and discussion of your book. Your essay should define that issue and give it some background using at least two peer-reviewed sources. That background should explain where your book enters into a larger conversation about that issue. And your essay should explore the way that issue shapes the experiences of the writer of this book. Examples abound but could include: immigration; identity; sexuality; gender; race; education; place; family; disability. And many more!

2. The “Struggle” Option: As we articulated the reasons we were choosing these books, many writers described an interest in the “struggles” these writers “overcame” along the way to becoming “successful.” If you pick this option, you’ll engage that idea of a “struggle” story (sometimes also called a “deficit narrative”). In what ways do these stories resist that trope? In what ways do they reinforce it? Were these stories “inspiring”, “depressing” or something in between? How do these terms help us as readers, and how is that a binary that limits our interpretations?

3. The Fly-on-the-Wall Option: Drawing on Alvarez-Alvarez and (to a lesser extent) P & E as models, observe your own group and at least one other group. Use social science research/data gathering skills like interviews and surveys to make an argument about the benefits and limits of book clubs in a pandemic-influenced college class.

4. The You-Tell-Me Option. Think up your own topic and pitch it to me by Nov 4.

See you in a few.

Welcome to ENGL 210

This is the Academic Commons page for ENGL 210: Writing for the Social Sciences.

Please read this post, and the earlier email from Aug 11 about our approach to “hybrid” learning. (There’s a PDF of that email here with your emails redacted. Some of this information has changed, but the spirit is the same.) Once you’ve read those documents carefully, send me a brief email from your City College address. If you can do this before our first session on Thursday, Aug 26, that’s great. If you send it by the start of the next class meeting, on Tuesday, Aug 31, that’s also totally fine. In that email, let me know your preferred name and gender pronouns, if you like, and a little about what brings you to ENGL 210. Please also let me know about any specific accommodations or adjustments that might help you be more successful in class.

A few bits of information that might be helpful before we meet.

Books & Book Groups

Our class uses the “subculture” of the book group to practice the skills of social science writing. You’ll have a choice of three books, and will read ONE. The books are available in the CCNY Bookstore. Again, you DON’T need to buy all three. Just one, and not right away, either. I’ll go over this more over our first week.

Digital Tools

This Fall, we’ll use a number of digital tools to work. The big ones are CUNY Academic Commons, Hypothes.is, Google Drive (including Docs and Forms), and Zoom. Most of these are relatively “low-bandwidth” and smartphone/tablet friendly.

CUNY Academic Commons

The Commons is one tool we will use a lot. You’ll use your CCNY email address to join the Commons. The instructions for how to join the Commons are here. Within the Commons, there’s our class blog (this is it). That blog is on our course site (the overall site you’re on now and every link in the menu above.) You’ll use the Commons as creators, too, designing your own four-page portfolios over the course of the semester.

What is the Commons blog?

Our blog is a place where the reading and writing work of the semester will get done. When we think and talk about the “world as a text,” this is where the words get processed. I’ll do most of this processing at first; you’ll do much of it by the end. I’ll invite you to the class group via your City College emails. Once you join the class site and class group, you should all have the ability to leave comments. We’ll test this out as early as our first week. As your instructor, I should have the means to leave public and private comments. Both will have their purposes as we produce informal writing.

What is the Commons group?

The ongoing link for the Commons group is here. You should get an email about it to your CCNY email. The instructions for how to join our Commons group are here. Readings and files and discussion threads are all possible uses for this. I’m still learning how to use this feature so we’ll see what works.

What is Hypothes.is?

Hypothesis is a social reading plug-in. You might think of it as a cross between Comments on Google Docs and the notes you take in your psychology textbook. We’ll use this to discuss a variety of readings as a group, including some of the writing you do yourselves. You can also make private notes using Hypothes.is. It works best on Chrome. The link to join the Hypothes.is group is here.

What are Google Docs & Drive?

Many handouts are originally written and shared in Google Docs. You may also turn in work in this way through Google Forms. The biggest use of Google Docs is our “Chalkboard” Doc. The “Chalkboard” is the definitive place to find all the work we do in class. As we move through the semester, we’re going to increasingly use our Commons sites for these purposes. But for ease, we’ll start it all in Docs.

The “Chalkboard” is a Google Doc in table format, screenreader accessible and mobile-phone friendly. By the end of the semester, it gets pretty long, and it can get very link-heavy, but the good news is pretty much any link we use in class starts there. Since I started using it in Spring 2020, students have found it helpful. We’ll need to see how helpful it is in Fall 2021, with a hybrid class.

“But I hate technology.”

This is, of course, a writing class and not a technology class. While our major assignments, exploratory exercises, disciplinary writing experiments, and other informal classwork will certainly develop some of your digital literacy skills, the main goal of that work ahead of us is to nurture your capacity as a reader, writer, researcher, and active, accountable, engaged member of this academic community.

We are also a “HYBRID” class. This will mean each of you will attend class in person at a few points in the semester. You’ll need to show vaccination status to CUNY through CUNYFirst. You’ll need to wear a mask at all times, per CUNY policy. And you’ll attend class in groups small enough to space out (ie: to stay 3 feet apart), with the exception of October 21 and December 9 or 16, when all students will attend class. (Even then, we may “stagger” arrivals or move class to an outdoor space, weather permitting). Much more on this in a later note.

Again, please send me an email after reading through this document. You’ll also want to look at our class site as it develops between now and Thursday.

Links

Tasks

  • Read this post and our syllabus
  • Send me a brief email;
  • Think about which ONE of our three books you’ll read this semester.