Issuu

C R I T E R I O N a literary journal

2019

© 2019 Criterion. All rights reserved. Criterion, a journal of literary criticism by students, is published each spring by the Loyola Marymount University English Department through the support of the Denise L. Scott Memorial Fund. Edited by undergraduate and graduate English majors, Criterion seeks contributions representative of undergraduate and graduate writing within the department. Submissions are preferably in any form, except by the author, without written consent from the editor(s). Please address correspondence to: Criterion Loyola Marymount University Department of English 1 LMU Drive, Suite 3800 Senior Editor Eva Enriquez Reviewers André Enriquez Andrea Gomez Claire Granich Emily Kim Vaneza Paredes Sophia Semler Faculty Advisors Graphic Designer Rena McInerney Olk

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CRITERION a l iterary jou rna l

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SENIOR EDITOR Eva Enriquez REVIEWERS André Enriquez Andrea Gomez Claire Granich Emily Kim Vaneza Paredes Sophia Semler FACULTY ADVISORS

GRAPHIC DESIGNER Rena McInerney Olk

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Feminist Image. Mila Beliso

Angelo Antonio

Courtney Harshbarger

Sydney Delaney

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Dear Readers, As social culture continues to shift and grow over time, so does our ability to use the medium of English to express experiences and perspectives as they a part of Criterion for three years now, I believe that the changing climate of our journal in the past few issues has moved in tandem with contemporary culture, and is nothing short of a testament to the continued relevance of literary writing. I believe more so now than ever that the works being produced by the students in the English department capture the adaptability and the

our authors that capture interpretation at the intersection of the scholarly and the deeply personal. The ability of English to convey exponential thought and a matter of what you choose make of it, and embodied as a examining works through an intersectional lens, drawing from experiences with struggle in their own lives, and tackling facets of the human condition, such as I want to sincerely thank not only our wonderful writers, but also this year’s team of hardworking editors who dedicated their time alongside our writers to produce the following work. Thank you also to our graphic designer this year, Rena McInerny Olk. A very special regard to our faculty advisor, Dr. and patience in its creation process for yet another year, and for serving as a personal role model for me since my freshman year at LMU. Thank you to Dr. Ross and the English Department for the ongoing opportunity to contribute and commit to Criterion. It has been an honor to play a larger role in the journal this year, and I extend my gratitude to family, friends, and those close to me for being steadfast in their support. With that, I proudly present Criterion 2019. Keep paper crusading. Éva Enriquez Senior Editor Class of 2020

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COMMODIFICATION OF THE “BAD GIRL”: CO-DEPENDENCY, MOMENTS OF RESISTANCE, AND SEARCHING FOR ANTI-FEMINIST IMAGE BY MILA BELISO

Mila Beliso is a senior English major from Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is an editor for LA Miscellany and a participant in the a Teach for America 2019 Corps member, and plans to teach high school Great Gatsby, A Clockwork Orange, Ham on Rye, Less Than Zero, Ava, and The Art Lover. 19

Being labeled a “bad girl” a bad feminist, especially in the highly scrutinized world of pop music. The bad girl trope is rooted in infantilization, in which the female in question is reduced to a misbehaved version of her childhood self. The bad girl form of rebellion is not necessarily an intellectual revolution, though it does have its place in feminism. Because the archetypal “good girl” stems from the patriarchal values that dictate female expectations, the subversion of goodness proves useful to feminist movements. The problem with badness as a feminist trope lies the female badness is used to cater is used solely for monetary gain. The feminist notion of “girl power” began as a fundamental manifesto for girls exposed to the constant threat of violence in the American punk rock scene. The “Girls to the Front” slogan as popularized by musician and critic Sara Marcus was an attempt to protect

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young girls who were groped and physically assaulted in punk mosh pits. Girl Power took a commercial turn when the Spice Girls used the dresses, and peace signs. Suddenly, the term no longer represented female anger and rebellion, but instead became a symbolic merchandising tool for the pop group’s growing brand. In this way, feminism and pop have a complicated and contradictive relationship. Though pop music has the power to contribute to feminist movements, making social change accessible to mass audiences and artistic interactions, it can also commodify these social movements. For the purpose of this essay, I will analyze both the public and artistic image of Lana Del Rey, who “bad girl” of pop music. I will focus on songs by Del Rey that I believe encompass themes associated with the bad girl image, and an unconventional feminism largely unexplored by academics. I argue

“bad girl” image in a public sphere, failing to make intellectual headway when applied to feminist movements or when examined through a feminist lens, though her music may inspire scale. Arguably, the themes that surround Del Rey’s lyricism both subvert and cater to the male gaze honest expressions of Del Rey’s emotional life. When the male gaze/ listen is removed, her lyrics employ both aspects of feminism and the bad girl archetype. I will utilize various critical responses written about her albums, to consider Del Rey in a social context as it pertains to both pop music and social change. Sophisticated and moody, Lana Del Rey (formerly known as Lizzie Grant), is a musical contradiction her unique lyricism. Her image is undoubtedly cool, having crowned

“Video Games,” which put her on the forefront of pop music, illustrated an oversaturated and empty Millennial existence that resonated deeply with millions of new fans. Del Rey is not the

fact, most of her lyrics revolve around

the lyrics: “My old man is a bad man, but I can’t deny the way he holds my hand.” The lines that follow detail a

of my loins, be a good baby, do what I want.” Del Rey is not unaware of the connotations surrounding her Lolita references, and uses the Lolita archetype to compartmentalize her own experiences with abuse. Del Rey likens herself to Lolita, whose innocence is preyed upon by deranged men, but uses the darkness of that experience as a form of empowerment. dependent relationships with abusive

a clear appropriation of the gangster archetype for art’s sake. Her hit single

sexual power over them.

While she plays the victim on the surface, there is an underlying mystique to her lyricism that mirrors her sexual prowess, which she uses to give men the illusion of control. Music critic Barry Walters writes about Del [Lana Del Rey] captures the paradox of attempting to seek liberation through ultimately enslaving obsession. She loves her men as a junkie needs miracle. And although she looks to them for salvation, she’s met with sickness because she romanticizes destructive forces that fortunately cannot last — love like lightning, sex like tornadoes, pillow talk like thunder. It takes a certain kind of genius to be that foolhardy. (Walters) Del Rey manages to merge being “enslaved” and “liberated” via these encounters with dangerous men that she simultaneously fears and controls. Though she glamorizes abusive relationships, the portrayal is

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abused relationship. Romanticizing the relationship is akin to excusing, compartmentalizing, and becoming complacent in it. In that way, her lyrics outline the psychology of abuser modern artistry. According to Walters, feminists like Madonna because of her rather than cultivating independence. He writes, “She celebrates the bacchanalian excess of peers like The Weeknd while immolating herself in smart people squirm. Her songs exude the pain her paramours repress through drugs and sport sex, and their implicit subject is addiction” (Walters). It is true that lines from stay and pray with him until the end” and “I’m not afraid to say that I’d die in the sense that they illustrate toxic note clichés. However, it can be problematic to analyze the lyrics of

female artists with the assumption that their impact was unintentional. These lyrics are meant to liken relationships to addiction, and while this isn’t new to pop music, it is new in the context of the bad girl, who is

in her descriptions. However, some of these aesthetic choices can seem

portrayed here as a hopeless romantic rather than a rebel. In a way, Del Rey brings honesty to the bad girl trope, revealing vulnerability and nuance. Though Del Rey’s artistic portrayal of addictive tendencies serves to complicate the bad girl

prison culture, which actual bad girls

devalues the bad girl image by relying too heavily on organized crime tropes, with little regard to realism. Del Rey’s song “Florida Kilos” playfully outlines the life of a drug dealer’s girlfriend. She writes the lines: “guns in the summertime”, “prison isn’t nothing to me”, “you believe me, don’t you,

The idea that Del Rey is unphased by the possibility of going to prison undermines the real danger of violent

of experiencing. In this song, Del Rey’s badness is solely performative. She is writing through a mask, as a sort of persona poem, for artistic value. Though doing this as “art for art’s sake” has a positive intellectual purpose, it remains problematic in a into a mainstream public sphere, the implication of reality can hardly be removed. This is where pop music like museums and galleries, because the poeticism is being experienced in

yayo, yayo, yayo” to set a cinematic and Blow. The aesthetic value of Del Rey’s lyricism comes from songs like

archetype for artistic value rather than monetary, having gained critical attention for her use of troubling imagery. In the Pitchfork review of her

her concrete details, the poeticism

Mark Richardson insinuates that Del Rey purposely wrote “Florida Kilos” to polarize her fans and critics: You can feel Lana Del Rey inching into territory where she’s daring you not to like her, and by the time you get to the Ultraviolence bonus track “Florida Kilos”, a Harmony well be called Spring Breakers: The Audiobook, you begin to remember why many people (Richardson) Harmony Korine, famously known same seedy and troubling themes as Del Rey’s music. The way Del Rey uses her unconventionality to entice critics and stir controversy is yet another trope of pop music, or another way pop artists commodify rebellion. While Del Rey is often regarded as music, moments like this arguably centric objective of pop art itself. The

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way we interpret her music varies on feminist lens, her disregard for

seem counterintuitive to intellectual rebellion. Through an artistic lens, her utilization of the bad girl trope works to create a unique musical and lyrical aesthetic, oftentimes unexplored by pop artists. Besides establishing herself as the infantilized bad girl and delving into the psychological inner workings of a domestic abuse victim, Del Rey’s lyrics demonstrate small moments of resistance that contribute to a possible feminist identity. In her song “Gods & Monsters”, she paints

instead functions in a mythical and antiquated fantasy world. In language of male sexuality, writing lyrics like: “In the land of gods and monsters, I was an angel lookin’ to get fucked hard” and “fuck yeah, give it to me, this is heaven, what I

truly want, it’s innocence lost” (Del Rey). By using language normally associated with both male sexuality culture, she satirizes both her own itself. She even writes, “like a groupie incognito, posing as a real singer, because life imitates art” as if to address male critics and inequity in rock culture. The “imitation” Del Rey refers to, is profoundly existential but also resistant. She uses her own infantilized persona to imagine herself sifting through a world of violence, embracing the pain that causes her “innocence lost” rather than being silenced. Alternately, any subservience or fetishization she demonstrates is solely for her own pleasure. Though in “Gods & Monsters” she illustrates herself as a damaged “no one’s gonna take my soul away, I’m living like Jim Morrison”. Here, she stops comparing herself to an angel and instead likens herself to a male rock star, who is often regarded

Del Rey lives between two identities through her music, the powerful rock star and the groupie. Though this is a moment of subtle resistance in Del Rey’s music, her use of Jim Morrison furthers the idea that male musicians are valuable, while female singers are “incognito” posing as real singers, as she establishes earlier in the song. Ultimately, her ascendance into Jim Morrison imagery is empowering for to feminism, because her ideology is operating within patriarchal notions of power. While I have found that Lana Del Rey toys with patriarchal expectations of women’s sexuality, being both subversive and submissive for her own pleasure, her rebellious image is not meant to serve any feminist identity. In fact, she has that is where my research becomes implicated by her intention as an artist and its interpretation. When the male gaze/listen is removed, the songs depicts an honest and tragic portrayal of an abused woman, who is both repulsed by and addicted

to her own sexual power over men. However, as a pop artist functioning the public sphere, Del Rey’s own commentary perhaps contradicts any empowerment found in the lyrics. In an interview given by James Franco as a contributor to the renowned V Magazine, Del Rey made the following comment about feminism: For me, the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept...I’m more interested in, you know, SpaceX and Tesla, what’s going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities. Whenever people bring up feminism, I’m like, god. I’m just not really that interested. My idea of a true feminist is a woman who feels free enough to do whatever she The statement is reminiscent of her lyrics, in that it causes the listener to question the artist’s intentions the purpose of controversy, or is Del Rey truly dismissive of feminism

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American woman? Lana Del Rey’s brand of empowerment brings artistry to the bad girl image, aestheticizing aspects of life as a rebellious woman in ways previously unexplored by pop musicians. For example, albums like Stripped by Christina Aguilera and Reputation by Taylor Swift are straight forward in their assertion as rebellious eras. Generally, the pop artist emerges from her infantilized, bubblegum image into her sexuality. For Del Rey, the image has always been a subtle mesh of bubblegum and tragedy, rich with concrete imagery that sets her lyrics apart from other pop artists of her time. Most importantly, Del Rey’s empowerment is only meant to be empowering for herself, and perhaps an individual that shares her niche through a feminist lens, her brand of empowerment fails to make intellectual headway. Ultimately, pop music’s focus on controversy, shock value, and imagistic tropes as

outlined in this essay, make the genre

movements and can be damaging to social change. Still, autonomy plays a

Aspects of Lana Del Rey’s music demonstrate a subtle resistance that can be deemed empowering for individuals who identify with her

humanity as they navigate patriarchal spaces, which makes Del Rey’s brand of rebellion a continually relevant

unique sentiments, but the lyrics

discourse.

patriarchal forms of sexual liberation. Her statement that women should “feel free enough to do whatever they want” undermines reality similarly to “Florida Kilos” disregard for its own problematic portrayal of drug culture. Undoubtedly, the goal of social movements is to attain a necessary liberation or freedom, and to establish basic rights. The Bad Girl title has been of sexual freedom and intellectual since the early 1990s. As she has stated in interviews to promote her newest album Lust for Life, Lana Del Rey mostly writes lyrics for herself. This furthers the notion that what is empowering for an individual does not necessarily serve larger

Caramanica, Jon. “Review: Lana Del Rey, a Character No More.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 6 Sept. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/arts/music/lana-del-rey- lust-for- life-live-review.html gabriel-bell. “Lana Del Rey Addresses Her ‘Anti-Feminist’ Quotes.” NYLON, NYLON Media I, LLChttps://Nylon.com, 9 Nov. 2018, nylon.com/articles/lana-del-rey-interviewjames- franco. Richardson, Mark. “Lana Del Rey: Ultraviolence.” Pitchfork, Pitchfork, 16 June 2014, pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19449-lana-del-rey-ultraviolence/. Yarrow, Allison. “How the Riot Grrrl Movement Sold the World on Girl Power.” The Daily Beast, The Daily Beast Company, 7 July 2018, www.thedailybeast.com/howthe-riot- grrrl- movement-sold-the-world-on-girl-power. Walters, Barry. “Darkness Comes Alive: The Paradox Of Lana Del Rey.” NPR, NPR, 20 June 2014, www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2014/06/20/323943849/darknesscomes-alive-the- paradox-of-lana-del-rey. .

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FROM NOTHING TO SOMETHING: SURVIVALISM, CLASS, AND LITERACY SOWER BY ANGELO ANTONIO JR.

Angelo Antonio Jr. was born in Edwards Air Force Base located just north raised in the middle of the Mojave Desert, the distance that characterized his isolationist upbringing eventually fed into his natural attraction and inquisition into any and all walks of life, particularly at the urban center. He graduated graduate student in LMU’s Masters Program of English Literature set to walk

Something: Survivalism, Class, and Literacy in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower” was written for Dr. Dermot Ryan’s fall 2018 “Pastoralism” course, and was also presented at the MELUS Conference in March, 2019. 29

“Now she was outside again. In six years, she had gone from nothing to nothing.” -Lauren Olamina on Zahra Moss, Parable of the Sower

In her seminal 1984 essay, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women

women throughout history in order that we read into the black feminist perspective as the quintessential key to subverting preexisting relations of power and subjugation. This spirited appraisal of such a perspective could be read as the pretext to Octavia Butler’s novel written only nine years later, in which both works share a remarkably cosmic tone. “The future of our earth may depend on the ability of all women to identify and develop

nor the earth that supports us” (Lorde

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123). Even if only simulated here, between Lorde and Butler’s main that “the Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars” (Butler 77). Whether or not Butler deliberately adopts Lorde’s blueprint for the main character, Lauren Olamina, is nonessential to the more important fact that both texts engage with, either by envisioning or implementing, the exclusionary perspectives with the black feminist perspective. Such young black girl granted the highest charge of leading humanity out from apocalyptic ruin. And for good reason, much of the scholarship that surrounds Parable of the Sower does the work of concretizing praise for Lauren. According to Peter Stillman, professor of political science and expert on utopian political theory, Lauren is the means through which we are able to imagine and achieve utopia:

class, sex, religion, marital and familial status, sexual preference, personal history: Earthseed breaks these down, ignores them,

text called Earthseed, all of which is constructed verse by verse as she and her followers head north. All the while during its construction, Earthseed is

reshapes them, and breaks them down again. Lauren is the living embodiment of the

free of useless abstraction. After all, “Earthseed deals with reality, not

hyperempathetic syndrome, where she feels what others feel, symbolizes the suspending of barriers and the creation of unity across them. (28) In this and among other similar readings of Lauren’s symbolic character, she is viewed as a leader of the human race who is working for its betterment. Her hyperempathy ends up proving to be her greatest gift, as Clara Escoda Agustí puts it, “represent[ing] the painful and pleasurable process of

(Butler 219). It is for these reasons, precisely, that readers and scholars with something valuable to say. As readers, we are attuned to her much in the same way that her band of followers in the novel is, as not merely readers but listeners. Alyson Earthseed, the text within the text, is able to extend itself out to the reader

experiencing the other’s world beyond a mere willingness to understand

notes: “the imaginary construction of other possibilities, other ways of being, enable us to rethink our lives and how we constitute them and our identities within them” (213). Much of our obsession with Lauren follows our

rare pragmatic version of a savior

writings as instructions to avert the

and forewarns us with. But perhaps Lauren is not all that we make her out to be. Perhaps we give her more credit than she herself would claim. She tells the reader, “I’ve never felt that I was Earthseed, not any of it. I mean, I’ve never felt that it was anything other than real: discovery rather than invention, exploration rather than creation” (Butler 78). How much,

she claims that the answers already precede her? The implication is subtle, but key: the modes of existence that inspire Earthseed’s emphasis on change and adaptability already exist here on Earth. Suppose, then, we take the above mentioned statement as her most important piece of advice as we skeptically reassess how much Parable of the Sower is actually geared toward the new. Stars: Change, Community, and the Absent Father in Octavia Butler’s

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Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents the essential groundwork for this paper. Skeptical of the postmodern, “progressive ideal of change” that many scholars draw upon when reading Parable of the Sower argues that change is actually that which is resisted in the novel, the “dominant socioeconomic logic of the functional norm of the world Butler

he equivocates change and instability with the chaos that is Butler’s apocalyptic world: culture begins at the moment at which postmodernism starts to reveal itself not as a liberatory moment but as the cultural and made way for a new structure of social regulation, as the very impulse, thus, that made the into a form of capitalism based upon change and productive

chaos possible. This transition, as Butler’s novels suggest, is widely perceived as an If we read Lauren’s journey as a way of coping with a society frighteningly characterized by change, the trajectory switches entirely. Every step that Lauren takes, or more so every Earthseed verse that she writes, can putting structure back into place.

we demythologize Earthseed as a would have it, Parable of the Sower’s narrative of “settling the stars” is not that “locates the future in a return to the past” (1339). This paper contends that as a result of Earthseed’s oxymoronic, rejection and thus teleological departure from an apocalyptic present

trajectory is a “pragmatic return to a Fordist, repressive, yet ordered, stable, and paternalistically protected social arrangement that stands opposed to the chaos surrounding the walled community” (1338). By refusing the postmodern utopian narrative, Parable of the Sower then becomes a novel about reconstitution

the survivalist space, namely, Zahra Moss. In our uncontested following of

there is no just way to summarize here the depth and complexity of

into survivalist discourse, it may serve us best to understand, in brief, the tradition from which survivalism in literature emerges. Contrary to the belief that the pastoral has long since disappeared, pastoral theorists

which this paper follows in order that

of Zahra to an act of plagiarism that discrepancies among class literacy enable.

assert the pastoral as a continuing mode, “the broadest, most enduring and inclusive category of aesthetic from its formal properties, as a genre does, but rather from a special perspective on human experience” (Marx 210). The pastoral then, at its core, is less interested with nature itself and more with “a particular

culture dichotomy (211). Survivalist literature places this same question as we should come to understand, energizes survivalism in the same way it energizes the traditional

viewing Parable of the Sower through a pastoral lens, we are able to pay closer attention to Lauren’s vectors, not only the direction in which she proceeds, but more importantly, the rather understated spaces she departs. THE TRUE SURVIVALIST Parable of the Sower is very much a tale of survival that begins in the direction away from the urban center. We identify Lauren’s nostalgia

plan to escape or supersede the chaos and lawlessness that has surrounds who leads us out from the city and into

and distrust of urban progress and a

humanity’s new beginning. However,

modes of existence. Survivalist texts like Parable of the Sower, then, are “the consequence of modern times and a means by which modernity will be understood” (Mitchell 5). In short, nostalgia is the means by which both pastoral and survivalist

believes, “the traditional American dream of individualism fails,” we should remain rather skeptical of the spotlight scholarship places on her (18). While Lauren’s literal movement through the survivalist space and participation in the survival act

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cannot be argued against, I contend that survivalist discourse should not be interested in her as the primary In order that we shift our focus accordingly, we must begin with revelations in Lauren’s character understanding as a rather ironic trait to coexist alongside her hyper empathy. In his essay, “Of Gifted Children and Gated Communities,”

her educational environment. Aware of this, and taking matters into her own hands, Lauren’s bold decision to educate herself with survivalism 101 texts gives us hope for her success. She tells Joanne, “I’m trying to learn whatever I can that might help me survive out there. I think we should all study books like these” (Butler 58). However, once Robledo falls, we see in she truly is. “I am one of the street

analyses of “gifted” protagonists to bring forth the claim that context greatly inhibits the gifted child’s potential to achieving utopia. Rendering Robledo as an antagonistic space, Texter encourages Lauren’s departure. “Possessing the rage to mastery, both gifted kids must leave behind their postmodern gated them, in order to realize themselves as individuals” (478). In a critique against the many educational forms within Robledo before its fall, Texter reads Lauren as incompatible with her

homeless, alone, full of books, and once Lauren exhibited great promise in her foresight, we learn all too quickly the vanity in her preparations. protected all our lives. We’re strong and healthy and better educated than most people our age. But we’re stupid out here” (Butler 181). Lauren’s own realizations invite us to try to relocate where the true survivalist knowledge comes from, as it does not come from the books or herself.

Many critics are not blind to the failure of survival texts in the novel, and most actually see its failure as the pretext to Lauren’s authoring of a new one. But Earthseed comes

Within the middle of the narrative, particularly at the junction between Lauren’s sheltered lifestyle and the apocalyptic wilderness, Zahra Moss emerges as the most important

invent nor inform her present mode of survival, but instead, is informed by it. Contrary to its prophetic tone, Earthseed puts into words what has already transpired before her and the group. It reads as a documentation of lessons learned from the present.

teacher, and producer of knowledge. Born a slave, homeless, and then sold

we can view Earthseed not as an imaginative text, but a coping one. “The function of Lauren’s new belief

by providing the community with a set of beliefs that will allow them to accept the chaos that surrounds them” (1337). While Earthseed, in contrast to religious texts, boasts its unique base in reality, we are apt to overlook that practicality can also mean tried and tested. Survivalist knowledge that comprises Earthseed already exists, and it precedes Lauren’s written form.

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Lauren acknowledges Zahra’s return again. In six years, she had gone from what appears to be a sympathetic moment, Lauren’s hyperempathy is unable to predict the change that is to occur. Following the collapse, Zahra’s emergent survival expertise redesigns the entire group dynamic, the suddenness of it all sparking confrontation. Zahra says to Lauren, “I don’t need you to tell me how to live out here. Eat your peaches” (170). Eventually, Lauren submits to the new leader of the group, and it is not long before Lauren becomes quite candid of Zahra being her teacher. “I’m inexperienced,” Lauren continues, “But I can learn. You’re

going to be one of my teachers” (173). As the three press onward, Zahra survival tips: buying and reselling at Hanning Joss and suggesting that they suck on apricot pits to quench thirst. Recalling Texter’s article, we can read Lauren’s survival ‘preparedness’ with skepticism and her survival education as incomplete, as “not fully developed by existing education systems” (478). Here, the juxtaposition is made between Lauren’s theoretical knowledge and Zahra’s experiential knowledge. More importantly, the novel contrasts Lauren’s months of preparation with Zahra’s impossibility to prepare for the life she was born into. How is it, then, that we lose Zahra as the novel pushes forward? Her time in the foreground is rather

novel’s treatment of books as old and obsolete generates an explicit call for new forms of authorship. A call, however, in which only the literate qualify.

Literacy as a recurring extract knowledge from reading pervades Parable of the Sower on multiple levels. In addition to Butler as the main author of the novel itself, there is Lauren, the author of two texts: her journalistic entries and Earthseed verse. The central act of to record or make sense of. “Writing about a thing,” says Lauren, “makes it after the fall of Robledo, that writing is the only method for Lauren to proceed. It is an active form of coping with the unknown. “I have to write. I write. There’s nothing familiar left to me but the writing. God is change. I hate God. I have to write” (158). the novel’s driving act: Earthseed’s assertion that “God is Change” is thus less

a way to embrace change but to reduce complexity by transforming change into the basis for a universal system

and unable to read implies life or death. Additionally, it holds that in Butler’s dystopia, literacy is still viewed as a skill that can mobilize an

replacing complexity and

the novel also puts into plain sight which class that literacy most likely resides. Such a reading brings about a certain awareness toward Zahra, that “[w]hen we speak of a broadly based women’s culture, we need to

centralized, stable rule/dogma. (1338) The only struggle in the novel that outlasts the act of survival itself is right ideas and putting them to words. “Sometimes writing about a thing makes it easier to stand” (Butler 113). Parable of the Sower equivocates But what about those who cannot read or write? What is their role in making way for human destiny? On a very basic level, the novel depicts dramatic consequences for the illiterate. In writing about the dangers of buying water from water peddlers, Lauren notes, “The fact that most peddlers can’t read makes the situation worse. They sometimes poison themselves” (201).

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available for producing art” (Lorde and privilege generates Zahra’s strong desire to learn from Lauren. “Teach

never completes Zahra’s education on its pages. Richard Mitchell says all survivalist literature seeks to answer one question: “who shall create?” (5). Parable of the Sower answers the question rather quickly with little the main author of the novel. Slow Violence

and the Environmentalism of the Poor, we come closer to learning about what makes Butler’s dystopia so unique. In Butler’s Southern California, the basic dystopic elements degradation, and crime. Upon closer inspection, however, we see Butler’s dystopia riddled with characteristics lawlessness, extreme racial inequality, shortened food and water supply, a dramatically widened income gap, corporate slavery, and the armed privatization of communities. In this subset of dystopic elements, the

visible, and spectacularized. attention to violence that is invisible, “neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive” (2). If concept of slow violence and apply it to the world within Parable of the Sower, we see how apocalypse, too, to the poor and lastly, if ever, to the rich. Stillman adds to this point by making an observation on Butler’s very rich, survival and betterment

present. It is the reality and proximity of Butler’s dystopic world that make it uniquely menacing.

of the poor says that because we cannot see slow violence, it furthers

anxiety with Butler’s world is a direct result of our noticing that these elements are already pervasive in our society today. Our inability to notice is due in part to our normative conceptions of violence as immediate,

who become its frontline victims”

violence and a vulnerable subset of

characteristic invisibility. In choosing to focus on Zahra, we attempt the

voice. work, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” she attempts to answer the question put forth in its title, illuminating the same complications we encounter the invisible.’ Spivak, too, is deeply invested in capturing what does not take form. The silenced, for Spivak, is the subaltern. “When we come to the concomitant consciousness of the subaltern, the notion of what the work cannot say becomes important” (82). Spivak invites us to look at the empty space that surrounds a text and remain critical to representation. Consequently, when we look at Zahra Moss, we must take note of her relationship to both texts, respectively: Butler’s novel and Lauren’s Earthseed. Zahra Moss exists in the former, but in the latter, she does not. Zahra is present in Parable of the Sower the world in which we as readers see

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her walk about and hear her speak, even if only for a moment. In relation to Earthseed, however, although her survivalist knowledge is the essential text, the true author is left unattributed. Although there is reason to believe that Lauren would resist claiming Earthseed as a product of her sole authorship, the outcome remains the same: Lauren gradually reassumes producer of knowledge within maintained by literacy’s privilege that never abandons her, even at walls’ collapse. Lauren is able to utilize her nostalgic impulse to imagine, escape, and subvert the survivalist space to Acorn. In this, we gradually in Lauren’s character, one we can sense in Stillman’s rather generous reading. “Instead of assuming autonomy and independence as a singular being, she interacts with others, learns about them and herself through these interactions, and

develops new purposes and enhanced understandings for herself

act, fading Zahra into the periphery. In the place of nostalgia and its

oriented nostalgia is doubly purposed in overlooking a crisis of the present. In the subtle plagiaristic act, the antagonism between characters of to notice, but once found, lends

class survivalism feeds and is then subsumed into the constructed, sacred text. But from the brief moments where Zahra shines forward as learn where in society survivalist practice has already preceded survivalist preparation. Spivak says the “subaltern as female cannot

locating the voice of the subaltern. To be sure, Lauren Olamina remains a breakthrough character in her own right within representations of gender and race, but it is Zahra Moss who contributes a vital class component to our understanding of survivalism.

texts in Butler novel succeeds in simultaneously revealing a text and its excluded form (104). We are given the opportunity to hear the muted. In addition to the widely shared understanding of Butler’s novel as a “postmodern vision of a progressive politics,” Parable of the Sower also documents the violations

Agusti, Clara Escoda. “The Relationship between Community and Subjectivity in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Extrapolation, no. 3, 2005, pp. 351-59. Buckman, Alyson. “‘What Good Is All This to Black People?’: Octavia Butler’s Reconstruction of Corporeality.” Femspec, vol. 4, no. 2, Mar. 2004, pp. 201–218. Butler, Octavia. Parable of the Sower. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 1993. electra.lmu.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db= cat00322a&AN=linus.b3715760&site=eds-live&scope=site. sider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, 1984, pp. 114-123. Marx, Leo. “Does Pastoralism Have a Future?” Studies in the History of Art, 1992, p. 209-25. Mathias Nilges. “We Need the Stars: Change, Community, and the Absent Father in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.” Callaloo, no. 4, 2009, pp. 1332-52. Mitchell, Richard G. Dancing at Armageddon : Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times. University of Chicago Press, 2002. Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press, 2011. ---.“Slow Violence.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 26 June 2011, www.chronicle.com/article/Slow-Violence/127968. Stillman, Peter G. “Dystopian Critiques, Utopian Possibilities, and Human Purposes in Octavia Butler’s Parables. (Essays on Octavia Butler).” Utopian Studies, no. 1, 2003, pp. 15-35. Texter, Douglas. “Of Gifted Children and Gated Communities: Paul Theroux’s O-Zone and Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower.” Utopian Studies, no. 3, 2008, pp. 457-84.

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THE BACKGROUND: QUIETER VOICES IN SHAKESPEARE BY NATHAN FAUST

Nathan Faust is a Senior English major from Portland, OR. This is his first time being published in Criterion after having his poetry published for the past three years in La Miscellany. He is currently finishing his thesis, a poetry book about love and identity, exploring his family’s history and his own adoption. After graduating in May, he plans to do whatever makes him happy. He’d like to thank his family, friends (except Yash), and encourage people to stop moving to Portland. The city’s full.

BASTARD WITH A SMILE Is not this your son, my lord? I have so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am brazed to it. My friend called me after reading Lear. He liked the play, was as confused as I was, and had one pressing question about Edmund. How could he have done this? Imagine one whose fault was being born, that through no ill will of his own, he brought shame to his father’s name. Drive your father and brother out, shade lead them to the wasteland you so often wandered, walking cold across the waste. unwanted one bastard boy who let you come in from the cold enveloped in the warmth of your father’s arms? The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its

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warmth.

My father learned I existed when I was one. He came on a December morning, saw my face, the same eyes, and walked away for fourteen years. I was cold for fourteen years. Edmund has been cold, as well.

BAC KG ROU N D ON BA S TA R D WI T H A S M I L E The idea of the creative poetry project stemmed from the conversa tion we had before beginning King Lear, that productions of the show often skipped the opening scene be tween Kent and Gloucester, when the Earl introduces Edmund. My friend

20). In that one sentence, Edmund is introduced as unwanted, his mother is insulted, and he is shunted to the side.

at Gonzaga also read this scene, then

learned about me when I was one, then didn’t come into my life until I was fourteen. We have a great rela tionship now, but there’s always the

of Edmund in Shakespeare’s King Lear” that “Edmund does not have a place in the world of the play, nor maintain residency in it. He appears here only temporarily, an intrusion into this world, as he is an intrusion to the family that acknowledges him without legitimizing him and thus leaves him unable to inherit” (Capet) The bastard earl appears in the play as an antagonist, yet, like every other problem in the play, came about through the actions of the powerful

imagine that, for your entire life, your father looks at you like a stain upon his name. Gloucester introduces Edmund as “a knave [who] came something saucily to the world before he was sent for,” then proceeds to talk about how much fun it was to create him (1,1:

Gloucester need not make him the next earl, but he chose to treat Edmund with such dismissive cruelty that it remains no mystery as to why his son rose against him. Edmund was not asking for the keys to the kingdom, simply the chance to be loved as Edgar was. Indeed, he is not

didn’t get Edmund’s motivation for acting against Gloucester and Edgar, whereas I felt that I understood it per fectly. I’m openly adopted, so I know I have a great life, but it was rough

life, an entire life of being second to his brother, an idea supported by

a monster at all, good does appear in when he says “some good I mean to do,/ Despite of mine own nature,” a nature which Gloucester himself created (5,3: 243). Edmund serves as another example that the characters in Lear create their own problems, while also connecting to any reader who may feel like an outsider due to their family situation.

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LESSONS Don’t be alone at night, and if you’re with a white woman, keep your hands visible. Don’t touch her. -Told to Lawrence. Wake up, Othello, they’re banging at your door, those with the law on their side. You have been waiting for the night when you are dragged from your bed and marched through the street. How small they look beside you and how large you must be in their eyes, ebony skin blending into the night. The ceilings are high in the palace, my lord, and the council coils around each other as there you stand, lonely man, rock against the raging ocean.

looking into the faces of white men. Those who gave you power and can with one word take it away again. You are a general, but you are also a black man.

you’re forced to constantly focus on how others will see and react to you. -told to Daythun

forward into the breach, Othello, let not slings and arrows break you. You are their general, you are their king,

so watch what you say. The thoughts slip through their mind, conscious or not, at what a You speak with a tongue of glass, silk, your lines in this performance written for the protagonist. Remind them of your strength, what you have done for their city, but feel their eyes on your back. The sounds behind you are swords being drawn. You expect a blade to sprout through your chest. Force your body through the emptiness within you, Othello, and press on under the lights. Tell them the tale of Desdemona and of how she loved the Moor.

the right, prove it later not then. Keep your head down and your hands visible. -Told to Mo

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You have convinced them, they believe you,

as rain falls on the canal outside. You live, Othello, you live, and that’s all you can ask of the night. Outside, you swell to your majesty as the Duke places the armies under your command, yet inside you know that it doesn’t matter on what ground you stand what you believe in what lands you rule what battles you win what power you command what titles you have what weapons you carry what clothes you wear what car you drive what words you say what woman you love what it boils down to in the end, Othello, is that YOU ARE BLACK and that’s all they see. There are some people who won’t like you, because of the color of your skin. In their eyes, you are black, and that’s all they need to know. -told to Nathan

BACKGROUND ON LESSONS

in “’And wash the Ethiop white’: femininity and the monstrous in Othello,” Shakespeare uses the unthinkable union of Othello and Desdemona talk to underscore the entire wavering tone of the play comes from his eloquence and countenance, as “Desdemona was was the charm, this was the philtre,

that it was Othello’s demeanor and words which won over his wife and the council of Venice, elevating him to the seat of power he holds. However, Othello himself can no longer be seen as “black,” as black people do not speak and behave as he does. Othello is othered in Venetian society, an outsider, as he is a black man with power and multiple white men under general behaves, no matter the battles he wins or the titles he brings to the

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city’s glory, he is at the mercy of the council, as he remains a black man. Othello’s legitimacy as a person of importance rests on the fact that he is seen as more than his skin tone. While I read this, Booker T. Washington’s speech at the Atlanta Exposition came back to me, as Othello’s position sounded reminiscent of the thin line the professor was forced to walk. Washington’s main goal was the

to submit to slavery or choose death and extinction, as did the aborigines, he chose the better part, that which perpetuated the race” (Washington 128). As Washington stood in front of the crowd, speaking eloquent words in ebony skin, he was forced to consider the impact of his words: advocating Americans, while recognizing that the wrong word would be the end of him. This connection forced me to think about Othello in terms of today, the idea of the black man facing down society, and led me to the idea of the

poem. While I could give facts and statistics over and over again, the truth is that, as a black man in America, there are certain lessons that I had to be taught growing up in order to avoid being treated unjustly

longer a general with titles, but simply

injustice behind those words.

in front of the Venetian council runs parallel to the trial of black men in the face of America’s police state. From the day I began walking home by myself, I was told certain lessons about how to behave, so I wouldn’t be relationship to Othello, I reached out black men learn in order to survive police. Othello’s trial is nothing new, applicable even 500 years later: that black men cannot be their authentic selves without being considered suspect or threatening. In this poem, I tried to encapsulate not the cracks appearing in the play itself, but the singular fear of that moment. Like Booker T., if Othello says a word wrong, he is no

COLORED PEOPLE HISTORIES ARE TAUGHT AS ELECTIVES

The man sitting outside of the pup tent is 53 years old.

wears swim goggles, four layers of clothes, and peace pipe and he calmly blew smoke in the boy’s face). The Some brought tepees, some brought tents, others are sleeping in his mouth, swallows it whole, and smoke slowly rolls from his ears.

“Fuck the pipeline,” he says to nobody but the moon, before unzipping his tent, climbing inside, and falling asleep. That night, he dreams of a hunched, huddled creature in a cave. Caliban.

the wire fence placed around the husk of the building have caught their mothers discussing the impending Whole Foods in hushed tones the boys to get jobs in the building, while the other mother does not. The names Fred Hampton and Shaun King have been tossed around.

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So far, all four people mentioned in this section of the poem are black, as is the mangled

boys how to kill the wizard whose careless white hands are extending down their block like a legalized plague, but they and one of the boys grabs him by the throat and slams him to the pavement, while the other watches. They hold him there while he gurgles, then they let him go, and he gets to his feet and slinks around the corner. They took all their rage out on him, and have none left for the white people.

Caliban. Did you know, white man, that every earthquake which shakes your city comes from the rhythms of dancing brown feet, millions of them, above and below your earth, and that every life you take simply adds to the dance?

Caliban, again.

BACKGROUND ON COLORED PEOPLE HISTORIES ARE TAUGHT AS ELECTIVES My inspiration for the Caliban poem came about from his speech to Prospero, introducing himself to the audience, saying “This islands mine by Sycorax my mother, which thou tak’st

the Federal Government is purely broken promises on one side, where the Government consistently treats cruelly and breaks promises made came to a head once again during the Installation of the Keystone Pipeline

all the subjects that

you have, which

sty me in this hard rock” (1,2: 331). Through this quick exchange, the audience learns that Caliban was good to Prospero and Miranda

thinking about Caliban’s island being invaded by Prospero, I couldn’t help but connect to the Pipeline, where the Government is taking even more continuing the ethnic genocide of the

but then the sorcerer betrayed him, forcing him into slavery. As I read this, the two groups who immediately came from all over the country [traveled] to have been cruelly treated by white

Dr. Miscolkze’s American Gothic class, where we discussed Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer, a book about Americans towards white people. The relationship between Indians and

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to camp in a nearby meadow and show solidarity with a tribe they think is once again receiving a raw deal at the hands of commercial interests and the U.S. government,” showing that the tribes refuse to give in (Heim, Post). While the contested land may not be their own, they are standing shoulder to shoulder against injustice, creating one nation out of many (Post).

Caliban’s independent spirit runs parallel to their passion, both of whom power much greater than their own, yet neither of whom refuses to give up The section about the two black boys came from my own experience, not in that direct situation, but from observing my home city of Portland, OR. Oregon was founded as a state with the express purpose of being a white utopia, yet black people arrived anyway and were forced to live in only certain areas of the city. Today, those locations are known as predominantly black locations, yet, in the same vein through rising housing prices which cannot be met by a majority of black families, due to the American

High Country News). Whole Foods

friendly lifestyle scream luxuries which historically marginalized groups

survive on a day to day basis. Caliban’s island being taken from him is a perfect example of colonization, and his subsequent marginalization speaks to him being at Prospero’s will, yet not able to change his living conditions, forced into slavery. My intent with the poem is to see a moment from people’s lives in the same vein as Sherman Alexie, as I admire how he uses metaphor as fact, one example of my style imitation being “The man puts the cigarette/ in his mouth, swallows it whole, and smoke slowly rolls out of his ears.” I want to casually slide in a scene that cannot happen, underscoring the improbability and impossible nature of the venture at hand, but also emphasizing that anything is possible, although framed in a realistic situation. I want this poem to convey the magnitude that rests behind singular situations, inspired by Peter Hulme’s “Prospero and Caliban,” where he observes that the audience of The Tempest is “made aware that Caliban has his own story and that it does not begin where Prospero’s

begins. Space is opened, as it were, behind Prospero’s narrative, a gap that allows us to see that Prospero’s narrative is not simply history, not simply the way things were, but a particular version. In that gap, Caliban is at least allowed to begin his story” (Hulme 241). In America, white history is taught as the mainstream whereas other cultures’ histories are taught as electives, a perspective which rules out the potential for many other voices to be heard. Hopefully, this poem can bring a little light to their moments.

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ISABELLA TRIES TO FIND WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE TO ASK WHY SHE NEVER RESPONDS I see you in the face of a boy sitting with his mother in a row of folding chairs in the gymnasium of Woodrow Wilson High School in Beckley, West Virginia, where the performance has to be as the community center is taken this

ocean, but has quietly watched his brother practicing in their shared bedroom

Even Juliet spoke, William. You gave her the best lines.

“Give me my Romeo and when he shall die/ take him and cut him out in little love with the night and pay no attention to the garish sun.” Juliet spoke and she was thirteen.

It’s 7pm and I wake up in the back room of an internet café. I look out through the pages into the eyes of a Malaysian woman. She silently reads, looking over me in her mind, my body hidden under my habit. She sounds out the words, checking along with an English pronunciation guide, throat forming unfamiliar sounds in the same way a water droplet runs along the side of a curved glass bowl. Measure for Measure is yet another book checked out from the English library. Her younger brother lives in Chicago and she wants to surprise him with all the English she knows. Crow’s feet form on the sides of her eyes, the same formed beside yours when you wrote about a fool. I want to reach out and touch them but I have no arms. I live between worlds, William.

The Elizabethan Theater in Ashland, Oregon. The Southern Oregon air is thick in the twilight, the show is about to begin. The actress playing me is young, her

on the lips, maybe slip tongue. You would have liked that. I hope she does. I want an answer, William. I’ve waited too long.

A husband plays me, now. He stands in the bedroom of his house. He read a synopsis of the play online before he took his mother to the show, and is now running through the women in his head. He wears one of his wife’s dresses. beautiful. He looks beautiful, William. He stares at himself for a long time downstairs. He never says a word. Did you know this would be your legacy, William, to bring the world together? and slap you across the face, then kiss your forehead, and curl back into your soul.

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BACKGROUND ON ISABELLA TRIES TO FIND WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE TO ASK WHY SHE NEVER RESPONDS Ever since reading Measure

the Duke’s command to Isabella, that “for your lovely sake/give me your hand and say you will be mine” (5,1: 488). Here is the ultimate moment that shows just how truly unfair preserve her celibacy through her dedication to God, she almost sees it taken by Angelo (with her brother’s support), then is saved, only to be propositioned by the Duke. Yet, next comes the second most interesting point, that Shakespeare never says what her response is, neither through stage direction or line. She could go either way, renouncing her vow and committing to the Duke, or turning him down. I am still curious about what her decision would be, even a month after reading the poem, so how must she feel after four hundred years? Subsequently, the route I elected to take with the poem is describing how frustrated and confused the character

she wants from William is an answer. However, underlying her desire is the idea of the good the ambiguity Shakespeare, she sees the good the play does for people, making them question the world around them. The aspect of this poem I never foresaw was Isabella existing in the viewpoint of the husband. As I was writing, I suddenly had the idea of silence, and what that can truly mean to some people. My story is not one

hard to pin down. I am transracially adopted, so it has been a journey to I could hardly imagine what it must be like for somebody who cannot even identify with how they appear physically. In the section concerning the husband, I had the idea in my mind of someone loved, who has a good life and wants for nothing, on the outside. However, on the inside, they are someone more, there is still a journey left to be had. However, due

to societal norms, their identity must still be hidden. In my eyes, the crux of Measure for Measure is the fact that the Duke play at any moment, yet chose to not do so, as it did not directly pertain to his life. While he eventually did the right thing, it was the Duke’s initiative which allowed the play to end as a comedy (in marriage) rather than tragedy. Yet, the Duke does not realize that he is silencing Isabella. In “Transgressions and Surveillance,” Jonathan Dollimore writes that “Measure for Measure, unlike the proclamation or the statute, gives the marginalized a voice, one which may confront authority directly but which more often speaks of and partially reveals the strategies of power which summon it into visibility,” reinforcing the idea that this play is special in that it allows for change and power dynamics to be addressed (Dollimore 188). Through the husband, I wanted to underscore the point that everyone has been silenced in some way, whether or not by their own choice.

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Measure for Measure explains that sometimes, whether theater or real life, that through all the noise we have to look at who is not speaking.

UNTITLED LEAR POEM I knew this would not last, Cordelia, that death comes calling for kings, as well. You will marry and I will die

Tell me you love me, my darling. hello Lear how are we today

empty eyes swallowing the moon, gaping cavity in his chest,

I understand the pain now, daughter mine, you and your own realizing that the god promised to you is no longer on the way. young ambitious king of this age the world is vast and it is yours The storm tears my skin, Cordelia, takes out my eyes, and I wish these aged hands could reach into the sky and corral the lightning.

Rain lashes my body and my withered arms cling to the wind. If I could hold your heart in the palm of my eroding hand,

i would tear down the walls of this gilded home conquer the hall with sit on their throne and

ride into battle at your side, my love, old hands clutching the reins sword in hands burning towns alongside foreign knights, your knights,

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into battle against my own. Pride for you, my love, head held high to face the day. Lances down, charge, and you’re wading through the world Lear the lips of feudal lords upon your signet ring adding more earth to your map high atop your charger you stare across the plain at the sons of childless mothers boys who barely know how to hold a sword

and they scream yet their screams pale in comparison to those of goneril regan and Cordelia the sun the moon and the stars daughters pulled squalling into the world by your hands Lear those hands by which the world turned and fathers died and you sit on the throne your own hands built clawed out of stone

and holding on to your golden crown but enter Lear with Cordelia in his arms place your still frame on the ground, as if you sleep and the slightest touch of a blackbird’s wing will bring you back to me. Your body lies before me, Cordelia, close your eyes with trembling hands. My worst fear comes softly through the door. Break, heart, I prithee break.

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BACKGROUND ON UNTITLED LEAR POEM

we read King Lear was, although I truthfully couldn’t understand the spots where Lear was going mad, that the underlying emotion of the entire play centered around love, namely between parents and children. In the play, Lear has power via his station world of the play, leading up to the plot actually beginning. We begin the play watching Lear relinquish power for his idea of love, which he subse tears his heart out through honest love, not the charade that the king wants. Following up on the dynamics of the empty love declarations, Stan ley Cavell writes in “The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear,” that the king “wants something that he does not have to return in kind, some thing which a division of his property fully pays for. And he wants to look ing precisely because he knows she is to expose both his plan for returning false love with no love, and expose the

being loved, of needing love” (Cavell 244). The hurt and betrayal the king feels comes not from a belief that Cor delia does not love him, but that she would not play along and give him the false love he desired. Following his lost love of Cor delia, Goneril and Regan take from him the last remnants of his power through station. This betrayal too blindsided Lear, who was blinded by his power, as his two older daughters ladies who were able to pull to wool over their father’s eyes (Cavell 245). After Regan’s dismissal of him, we see that he has banished the one who he desired. At the beginning of the poem, I gave Lear twinges of senili ty that come with age but dove into his mind after his time on the heath. Attempting to represent the madness itself, I decided to go back into Lear’s mind, exploring the time of his youth. it is a physical representation of his

power, and acts as his domain through which he can reward and punish. Lear scratched, fought, and clawed his way to obtain his lands, then fought to keep them, as well. In rewarding them his life. Even when faced with a lack of love, the king can fall back on the memories of his youth, yet allows madness to creep in when he is not in the present situation. However, in the end, Lear as a play revolves around love and re lationships. The king’s fury towards Regan, calling to be touched by “no ble anger (2,4: 272)” and crying that his “heart shall break into a hundred

“Break, heart, I prithee break” (5,3: 313), tenderness showing itself upon learning that essentially everyone else is dead, including Cordelia. So much emotion in this play is tied into the power of one’s actions and the love wanted to explore Lear’s love of Cord elia while losing everything, displayed against the memories of his successes.

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believes, the truth is that he is an old man, a fallen king.

“Bastard with a Smile”: Capet, Race. “A Re-Reading of Edmund in Shakespeare’s King Lear.” The Montreal Review, Feb. 2012. Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Edited by Grace Ioppolo, Norton, 2008. “Lessons”: Newman, Karen. Essaying Shakespeare. University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Shakespeare, William. Othello. Edited by Grace Ioppolo, Norton, 2004. Washington, Booker T., “The Future of the American Negro.” Boston, Small, Maynard & Company, 1899, pp 127-156. “Colored People Histories are Taught as Electives”: News, High Country News, 28 May 2018, www.hcn.org/issues/50.9/race-racHeim, Joe. “Showdown over Oil Pipeline Becomes a National Movement for Native Americans.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 7 Sept. 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/national/showdown-over-oil-pipeline-becomes-a-national- movement-for-native-americans/2016/09/06/ea0cb042-7167-11e6-8533- 6b0b0ded0253_ story.html?utm_term=.14c7290f39d3. Hulme, Peter. “Prospero and Caliban.” Othello. Edited by Grace Ioppolo, Norton, 2004. Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Edited by Grace Ioppolo, Norton, 2004. “Isabella Tries to Find William Shakespeare and Ask Why She Never Responds”: Dollimore, John. “Transgression and Surveillance.” Measure for Measure. Edited by Grace Ioppolo, Norton, 2010. Shakespeare, William. Measure for Measure. Edited by Grace Ioppolo, Norton, 2010. “Untitled Lear Poem”: Cavell, Stanley. “The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear.” Edited by Grace Ioppolo, Norton. 2008. Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Edited by Grace Ioppolo, Norton, 2008.

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MULHOLLAND DRIVE AND THE GOTHIC NATURE OF LOS ANGELES BY COURTNEY HARSHBARGER

Courtney Harshbarger has been enamored with the Gothic genre since childhood, when she learned that Frankenstein was written by a teenage girl. interests when she took an “America Gothic” course with Dr. Robin Miskolcze in the fall semester of 2018. In the class, she dissected Gothic books, essays, Gothic space. When Courtney was introduced to David Lynch’s Mulholland gothic elements that lie beneath the surface of the city. It was this, along with a looming deadline, that led to the writing of “Mulholland Drive and the Gothic 69

Classically gothic spaces turmoil within. They are often dark and stormy, warning of the danger to come. Los Angeles, however, is gothic dipped in gold. It sells itself as

in it, and to see that its treachery is inescapable. Mulholland Drive exists

city for the poorly masked social exploitation that makes it a living gothic space.

Angels with perfect weather, a perfect

everyone seems to know that at the heart of the city’s claim to fame undeniable sense of dishonesty. In fact, L.A.’s most famous neighborhood

false narratives as being better than real life. Filmmakers have even upped the ante by shining a spotlight on the pitfalls within their own industry. Some do so more successfully and truthfully than others, but David Lynch has achieved something entirely unique with Mulholland Drive. Lynch does not merely invite his audience to He asks them to partake in this hypocrisy, to immerse themselves

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the unique aesthetic of Los Angeles as a gothic city. The town tries to build its reputation on being better

celebrities, and sheer capacity for partying. Umberto Eco describes this strange phenomenon, stating “once the ‘total fake’ is admitted, in order to be enjoyed it must seem totally real” and that “technology can give us more

based cities such as Disneyland, but his descriptions also closely resemble Los Angeles’ constant limbo between

the mediocrity of day to day life, so people pour their money into the pockets of an industry that creates these false worlds for them to enjoy. experience that not only rejects life, but sets out to improve upon it carries ominous undertones. Even under the guise of being fabulous, every facet of the city is tinged with vapid lies. façade, it is actually the city’s admission of guilt that makes it all the more treacherous. Filmmakers and other insiders will admit to problems within the industry so long as they can shift the blame toward sympathetic or trivial outlets, such as celebrity

when it comes to deeper issues, there

maker Harvey Weinstein managed to maintain remarkable power in the industry alongside the “open secret” of his frequent sexual abuse. Those writing the script of a morally bankrupt Hollywood are usually

those with the most power in the industry. They reveal just enough to garner interest, or enough to seem forthright, but not so much that they implicate themselves in what truly lies beneath the surface. It is equivalent to politicians who gain a following for presenting an image of authenticity, even if the only thing they are honest about is how deplorable they are. People see a supposedly sincere This is what makes the gothic nature of L.A. so utterly disturbing. The city maintains a shocking duality between hellish underbelly of the industry. Most satirical works and critiques take a step back from their subject and provide heightened examples of a system’s pitfalls, but Mulholland Drive exposes the darkest horrors of Los Angeles by by thrusting viewers into a chaotic frenzy of people doing the jitterbug backgrounds. A critic notes that “it is as if the sequence cannot sustain the

counterfeit sense of joy that it is trying to convey, cannot manage to conceal the uneasiness and desperation that are lurking just beneath the surface of the image... the jitterbug sequence enacts in a condensed form a complex ambivalence at the heart of Lynch’s aesthetic: the way the cinematic image can create moments of startling power and irresistible appeal while at the same time revealing itself as something that we don’t want to acknowledge” (Vass, 12). Just like Los Angeles, what should be a beautiful and joyful scene instead bears a looming sense of deception. From the beginning, Mulholland Drive imagery that encapsulates the mysterious nature of the city. are actually fairly straightforward as the audience follows Betty, the stereotypical female ingenue, who become a star. A strange amnesiac woman shows up in her aunt’s house, but they quickly become friends and

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eventually lovers. Everything seems to be going surprisingly well until the narrative that was so carefully crafted is thrown out the window. Viewers eventually realize that Betty may actually be an idealized dream thought up by a woman named Diane, who is severely depressed by her life as a failed actress. By the end of the which scenes and characters, if any, were “real” and which were “false.” This mirrors the uncertainty of the Los Angeles narrative: one can never fully about itself because any single detail may be fabricated. Whichever narrative may be the most “true,” there is certainly

as a fantasy of what could have been and as the quintessential Hollywood together, one becomes the other. For example, Diane dreams of a perfect life for herself: her name is now Betty, and she is a naïve, cheerful girl

chasing the stereotypical Hollywood dream. She could have a wonderful life if this dream held any truth for her, but in reality, no such dream exists. Todd McGowan points out that in the

You wouldn’t need doppelgangers

the real because it makes evident a place where the symbolic order breaks down” (McGowan, 80). It is for this reason that Lynch heightens the fantasy of the production. Even though it can come across as something akin to a psychotic fever dream, the uncanny nature of the

narratives, but only so long as they can properly imitate real life. Lynch is pointing out the hypocrisy in this type of thinking by purposefully using an incoherent narrative that still manages

had souls” (Carney, 1). Ironically, he is the exact type of person that Lynch is critiquing in “Mulholland Drive.”

and its contradicting values do not trying to capture its essence.

of the city is surely nothing like this wild movie on paper, but in terms of the ups and downs of city life and the turmoil of navigating the industry, nothing captures such an experience quite so well. For an industry built on falsifying things, some critics still enough. In an interview, critic Ray Carney says “You wouldn’t need all trap doors if you had anything to say.

through their very consumption of it. Whatever their opinion may be, audience members become critics as they make judgements about the entertainment value of the experience. Because of this, they are participating in the very same transactions that are being critiqued by what they are watching. With this, Lynch also shows the immense and inescapable power that the industry holds over the population. It is impossible to

inhabit Los Angeles without somehow enabling the industry or becoming complacent in its dirty deeds, even involuntarily. It has taken hold of the entire town. In other cities, billboards advertise lawyers and outlet malls,

agree with. The director’s beautiful

changing signs advertising the next

two innocent people on the way. An aspiring actress has to face sneering casting directors at an audition. There are countless narratives like these

squeezed the essence of this chaotic minutes of broken portraits depicting lost dreams and impossible fantasies. Mulholland Drive not only ridicules the abstract concept of the

It makes directors, actors, and writers contend with their participation in the city’s constant state of corruption. Many of the scenes that feature these archetypes can seem entirely inconsequential in the search for a coherent narrative, but in the case of perfect sense. A faceless movie mogul pulls the strings in a moblike display of power, forcing a snarky director into cinematic choices he does not

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with the pool boy. There is a plot to kill a young star, but it goes wrong in a car crash that erases her memory. Someone related to the murder plot

yet in spite of their incoherence, they begin to form an accurate, albeit stylized portrait of the seedy side of Los Angeles. Given the abundance of the result of one group criticizing another. Rather, it criticizes all of the characters while still allowing the audience to sympathize with any of them. After all, Lynch is not indicting how everyone contributes to its dark side in their own way. ways that imitate the many styles of movies and television. The opening

scene is reminiscent of a creepy action into a romantic comedy between two

television, comedy, and circles back again, never settling in one place for very long. There are even snippets

evident during a scene in a theater where two men onstage continually remind the audience “no hay banda,” meaning that there is no band and all sound for the show is a recording. Even so, Betty and Rita cannot help themselves from becoming emotionally invested and crying over

there is the femme fatale who plays with the main character’s heart, the rings out over and over, reminding pass at an actress, and the naïve new girl in town. These archetypes and styles may be fake, but the more they are used and watched, the truer they become. Just as viewers become lost in the scary, confusing world of the frightening and confusing world of L.A. The fear does not come from some looming monster, but instead because of how accurately the scenes industry.

technically real, but rather a recording of actors doing their jobs. manages to critique Los Angeles culture by embodying the emotionality of the city and calling out the hypocrisy of its fans and critics alike. The fantastical and consistently

ways to experience the unique gothic atmosphere of L.A. without actually living there. Lynch has managed to cut

fact that Lynch does not try to hide into this recorded nightmare. Just like no one will ever manage to truly

of Mulholland Drive, the seemingly

for as long as they exist.

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Carney, Ray. Interview by Shelley Friedman. The Seductions of Stylishness, 2004. Eco, Umberto. “The City of Robots.” Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology. Edited by David L. Ulin. The Library of America, 2002, pp. 582-590. Lynch, David. “Mulholland Drive.” Film script. 1999. McGowan, Todd. “Lost on Mulholland Drive: Navigating David Lynch’s Panegyric to Hollywood.” Cinema Journal, no. 2, 2004, pp. 67-89.= Vass, Michael. “Cinematic meaning in the work of David Lynch; Revisiting Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive.” CineAction, no. 67, 2005, pp. 12-23.

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MISANTHROPY BY SOFIA MEISBURGER

Sofia Meisburger is an English and Political Science double major with a Journalism minor. Prior to attending LMU, she spent her life living in Asia and has traveled across the world. Of all of the places she has been, Indonesia and Thailand are the countries in which she feels most at home. Some of Sofia’s favorite topics to write about include surrealist literature, Oscar Wilde, and poetry. This essay was written for an introductory genres class on poetry taught by Professor Sarah Maclay, whose compassion and care towards her students is matched only by how inspiring she is to them.

“There is poetics to water, in water, with water, because water” (Shaw). This is how Kent Shaw opens his review on a body of work separate from his own: Harmony Holiday’s A Famous Blues/Go Find Your Father. Yet it remains consistent and rings profoundly true for his own debut collection of poetry, the Winning Calenture, a magnetic, hallucinogenic whirlwind wherein

fascinating concept to explore when writing and eventually laying out the order of poems in a collected book. Poems do not necessarily have to be chronologically ordered by the time anyway. Including seasonal cues in marking a passage of time, or perhaps a divergence from the main linear timeline of the book. Kent Shaw’s collection is striking in that much of his work in Calenture revolves

and metaphysically drowning on the surface of the ocean. Shaw’s

explores his uniquely seasonal and geographical vulnerabilities through an eclectic gumbo of assigned diction and metaphor. Through a distinct juxtaposition of the images and associated motifs of spring and summer, Kent Shaw’s Calenture illustrates the chaos of desire, the entanglements of the head and heart, and the painful process of falling out of love. The passage of time is a

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the poems that do not explicitly call back to the sea, he mentions other, more intimate aspects of his life that occurred during the seasons of spring and summer. These seasons repeat and recur so often in the text that they become something more than a particular weather. Spring becomes something larger and more abstract: a moment in time, years passed, a person or place or thing. Summer is yet another intangible “thing,” marked by its transition out of spring and

into something that is both wholly separate and stubbornly attached to season. From a reader’s perspective, it would be apt to note that “thousands of poems have been written about the with a fair share of them tend to approach a new one with questions in mind about how it connects with the tradition created by earlier spring poems and about whether (and how) adding another such poem to the

writers have incorporated the seasons, and how their interpretations can often set a precedence or standard for future writers. I personally have always been a fan of Thoreau, and have found that his layered meanings behind certain elements of nature are especially insightful. He inspires much of my own work. On the seasons in general, Thoreau has written that he to know her moods and manners” (Richardson 1), and on spring itself:

“When I think what were the various sounds and notes, the migrations and works, and changes of fur and plumage which ushered in the spring and marked the other seasons of the year, I am reminded that this my life in nature, this particular round of natural phenomena which I call a year, is lamentably incomplete” (Thoreau 1). It is initially unclear what these seasons meant exactly to Shaw, and indeed it is not the purpose of this essay to interpret or assume their meanings (though I likely will anyway). In examining a few of his poems and lines regarding spring and summer, I hope to reveal the distinct mood Shaw has created, and the kind of melancholy delight one feels naturally inclined to rejoice in while reading his poetry. I also hope to try and understand the secondary and tertiary stories Shaw has interwoven between the lines and in the background of every few poems. within a published poetry book are not typically chronological, we will look at a few of Shaw’s poems out of

their published order. This is the order I believe best portrays Calenture’s underlying story as the seasons pass. We will start with the beginning of

exciting—if not reckless—notion, but a good thing nonetheless. “Even the magnolias would know / not to bloom in this cold drenching

with the very last reluctant tendrils of summer, as well as some of Shaw’s

writes in the opening of this poem. Immediately, the reader grasps onto

a catastrophe,” (4) Shaw writes in “Devotion is too much like this river.” In a later review of Pink Reef, a collection of poetry by Robert genre of “catastrophic poets” to not only write about your personal tragedy, but also to create a vivid and dynamically felt sense of that sense of tragedy built by the poet, not assumed.” Shaw’s own courage in taking emotional risks and bearing an intimate vulnerability shines through tenfold in Calenture, though interestingly, the element of “catastrophe” shines through in almost every poem but this one. Catastrophe, in this sense, is an

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metaphor of blossoming magnolias in stubborn weather. “This is a state “spring is a river littered with the toes of careless children” (7). This distinct, unusual imagery again reinforces a mood of innocent recklessness, the catastrophe Shaw freely consents to of spring. Other abstract choices and romantic phrases such as “a history tasked to hold it all back / which seems a good way of describing the beginnings of a dangerous, yet exciting romance that coincides with the beginning of spring. This narrative must then necessarily turn to Shaw’s “Serendipity, or How I would

insinuate an explosion,” which appeared in the text approximately ten

lines of the poem, Shaw writes: “what this love means is the spring when the world is so abundant” (8), which is some time has passed and the narrator especially curious when considering the line “[God] may provide too much abundance” (12) in the poem “If the “The day we fell in love the peonies manna tasted of honey,” signifying had bloomed / tinsel spilled out of a turn to the beginning of summer. the drain pipes like rain / & robins replaced the blooming magnolias of the previous poem with peonies—this

seemingly eternal saga. Calenture’s last poem set

intentional or it may not. In the case of the former, this discrete element might have been included amongst the

Word of God would be the colour of spring,” which expresses certain distrust not only in this abstract concept of spring interwoven in Shaw’s work, but also a growing skepticism of God himself. It is clear in the line “God should lead the little children / into his traps hopefully”

such as dahlias, lilies, and impatiens, to represent an overall tonal cue of femininity (in regards to his wife and mother) or romance. Further down in “Serendipity, or How I would insinuate an explosion,”—which, as an aside, really is a beautiful title—we

back to the impatient, careless kind of love Shaw expresses devotion to in the previous poem. At the concluding

in some sizeable, but undisclosed way. In the Acknowledgements page of Calenture, Shaw writes that he is “personally interested in the relationship between the abstract and the concrete, and the use of tone to help inform the meaning of [his]

poems” (84), which is evident not only in “The Word of God would be the colour of spring,” but in every poem in explicit—only hints and feelings and auras. “If the manna tasted of honey” takes place seemingly at the beginning however, it is situated within the leap from the previous poems on spring that appear much later (the exception being “The Word of God would be the colour of spring,” which is only two pages after “If the manna tasted of honey”). Clearly, there is some thought put into the order of these poems, as having this may be an indication of an early innocence or peak moments during spring and summer. Our narrative expectations may lead us to believe a linear progression of events is the most rational way of ordering things, but by mixing in all these memories amidst other poems of nautical longing and oceanic torture, Shaw

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boat rocking, or an ocean tide ebbing opens with “This surfeit of days — the summer / each day appears like streets in a subdivision / planned In these lines alone, we get a very sobering—but not entirely grievous account—of Shaw’s summer days. His life as it currently sits is fast, tedious, and confusing. There are numerous paths and directions he could take each summer day, but with the passing of each day, even more streets appear. The streets, Shaw writes, are arithmetic I call misanthropy at the baggage from “yesterday’s” arguments or news, and a very calculated kind of distrust building at the corner of the streets. Again, Shaw is very discreet in his implication of emotions and memories, but the tone alone carries an intangible story that is powerfully by stating: “it is so much like sorrow this God / who provides

in abundance / and he may provide is seen between the lines of some of Shaw’s other poems, we see a weakening trust and loss of faith in God and his creations. These ending lines also closely resemble the line “what this love means is the spring when the world is so abundant” (8) in “Serendipity, or How I would insinuate an explosion.” If spring, and more importantly love, are thus analogous with abundance, then writing that God may indeed provide “too much in abundance” (12) suggests a more disillusioned perception of love now that the spring has passed. This disillusionment is subtlety,” which clearly mimics the title of “The Word of God would be the colour of spring,” though its content is subverted. Where the latter is airy and optimistic, the former is clearly much more jaded and fatigued. “We sat together an audience / waiting for darkness / to combine with the darkness / that comes with a storm”

darkness that will only emphasise another kind of upset that “comes with a storm.” Shaw alludes to this storm in many of his poems in Calenture, and they seem to be a metaphor, in within a relationship. “We call this not speaking / a learned wind / pushing against the screen door all summer” the atmospheric mood of troubling, awkward silence that has escalated as the summer has passed. “The swallows rush at the storm / they apparently believe / it is their only this poem, and how he may be saying have appeared to be the only way out of his uncomfortable situation at the time. In “Like the forgetfulness or the prison of words,” an unusually mathematical simile reappears

arithmetical called misanthropy”). It is clear in the poem that by this point, summer has neared its end and Shaw

creek / there you said the spring has spring is a sullen equation” (4), and “I remember the spring when there were only two days / one they called promise the other was compromise” storm’s anger” (12) and how it likely caused his faith to be shaken (14). This poem transitions well into “And we knew love deranged,” which is truly the last vestige of summer and any of its remaining tendrils. The poem begins, “The truth is you have withered perhaps / immediately we get a sense of deeper understanding and acceptance from Shaw’s perspective. He is no longer angry or bitter at the storm that has torn through summer. Where his foregoing poems had peculiar gaps between words or phrases in a single line—perhaps to radiate a staggering and stilted mood, or give a staccato kind of rhythm and cadence—“And we knew love deranged” is entirely “a storm has marked the edge of this

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moment we know immediately that whatever kind of romance with the spring Shaw had, it is clearly over and done with. The consistency by which Shaw keeps meaning in certain words or imagery, like in spring, summer, and the storm, are truly dazzling and sometimes a little bit dizzying. When

a storm arriving in spring / and one 5), we know immediately, without even having to think about it, what Shaw wants us to think and what your desire / to imagine the summer creates a subtle, heartbreaking elegy in only two lines at the end of this poem. In Robert Hoss’ A Little Book on Form, he writes, too that “a single line is a naked thing. It is both light self, if it is syntactically complete” (5). Shaw’s line of “the summer as loneliness” especially came to mind

when reading this passage. Having fully accepted the changing of the seasons and every other change it has brought with it, Shaw writes in “A preoccupation and what will come next” that “You won’t be the summer where I choose to hide” (5), and this line paired with the title of the poem itself leaves a lot for the reader to digest and ruminate on. I hate to sound repetitive, or to use the trite cliché of sounding like a broken record, but Shaw has so expertly crafted assigned meanings to his words that his narrative remains incredibly vivid and consistent as it bobs and weaves throughout in Shaw’s triad of titular poems nicely and succinctly summarises these consistent tones and moods in its is always / more pressing but I have

a preference of summer over spring, he has hinted his spring to have possessed. I believe that this is a certainly truncated) analysis of Shaw’s

all the chaos and closure it may bring. Hoss, again aptly, writes in A Little Book on Form that “a sentence, unlike actions in the world, is a opposition an end. The tension in the sentence between its action and its stillness is a allow you, the reader of my work, to infer only by tonal cues how pertinent this quote is, not only to these starting lines in “Calenture (1),” but in all the works by Shaw I have presented to you today.

perfectly with his overall sense of disjointedness and unpredictability. These lines also suggest, unexpectedly,

DeMott, Benjamin. “Learning How to Imagine the Poem: A Proposal for the Teaching of Literature.” English Education, vol. 20, no. 2, 1988, pp. 71–87. JSTOR. Hass, Robert. A Little Book on Form: An Exploration into the Formal Imagination of Poetry, Ecco, Harper Collins Publishers, 2017. Shaw, Kent. “The Word of God is a subtlety.” Calenture, edited by Jack Myers and Roger Weingarten, University of Tampa Press, 2008, p. 9. ---.“If the manna tasted of honey.” Calenture, edited by Jack Myers and Roger Weingarten, University of Tampa Press, p. 12.---. “We installed our windows with lyres.” Calenture, edited by Jack Myers and Roger Weingarten, University of Tampa Press, 2008, p. 13.---. “The word of God would be the colour of spring.” Calenture, edited by Jack Myers and Roger Weingarten, University of Tampa Press, 2008, p. 14.---. “Calenture (1).” Calenture, edited by Jack Myers and Roger Weingarten, University of Tampa Press, 2008, p. 41. ---. “A preoccupation and what will come next.” Calenture, edited by Jack Myers and Roger Weingarten, University of Tampa Press, 2008, p.53. ---. “Serendipity, or How I would insinuate an explosion.” Calenture, edited by Jack Myers and Roger Weingarten, University of Tampa Press, 2008, p. 59. ---. “And we knew love deranged.” Calenture, edited by Jack Myers and Roger Weingarten, University of Tampa Press, 2008, p. 71. ---. “Devotion is too much like this river.” Calenture, edited by Jack Myers and Roger Weingarten, University of Tampa Press, 2008, p. 73. ---.“Pink Reef: by Robert Fernandez — Reviewed by Kent Shaw.” The Rumpus, 18 Dec. 2013, http://therumpus.net/2013/12/pink-reef-by-robert-fernandez/ ---. “A Famous Blues/Go Find Your Father by Harmony Holiday — Reviewed by Kent Shaw.” The Rumpus, 13 Dec. 2014, http://therumpus.net/2014/12/a-famous-bluesThoreau, Henry David. “Spring.” Nature’s Panorama: Thoreau on the Seasons, edited by Ronald Bosco, University of Massachusetts Press, 2005, pp. 1–25. JSTOR.

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NOW YOU SEE HER: GENDERED BODIES OF THE VISUAL, RACE AND FEMALE BY SYDNEY DELANEY

Sydney Delaney is a second-year graduate student in English Literature, with a focus in 20th century African American Diaspora. She attended Pitzer at the Claremont University Consortium, with a BA in Art History and Italian Literature. Sydney attempts to use language as a bridge between our visual, artistic, and psycho-social realism as marginalized voices and bodies. She will be publishing research on narrative embodiment of the African American male in Black memoir. She enjoys dark chocolate, the beach, and chewing minty bubble gum on long flights. Sydney wrote this paper for Dr. Alexandra Neel’s “Visual Cultures” class.”

care people might take to learn how to see faithfully from another’s point of view, even when the other is our own machine. That’s not alienating distance; that’s a possible allegory for feminist versions of objectivity. -

Donna Haraway, Persistence of Vision

Smiling, she threaded a tapestry needle, then carefully wove of a strand of pure gold into the center of the beggar’s eye... reaching for the needle already – but the pictured eyes would glitter as though they were alive. -

Gillian Bradshaw, Imperial Purple

My discussion here follows ability to 1 create scenes wherein a character can visibly not belong or hide in plain sight rather than choose to belong to herself and her chosen place in

an inauthenticity that is sometimes

society. Assuming such privilege and space is possible, there is a limited

reinforced by normative or white society’s discomfort with the inability

skinned African American women whose context for racial passing and

based on skin color, surrounding aesthetics and physical presentation.

Black personae. As with characters in the novella Passing, Larsen cultivates

Larsen’s Passing

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(I consider my own experience as an ambiguously ethnic writer), this mimics the story of the tragic mulatta

xamining what George Hutchinson refers to as the central female characters’ “inability to merge ‘reality’ mental framework, I consider how

present themselves in Black Harlem’s cultured society. A key function of my discussion takes on the physical and sartorial intimacy that surrounds race Black women depicted as equal present as white and match wits. Racial binaries aside, the characters is collapsed into a paradox of personal taste set against conventions of identity.

thematically undermined by Larsen’s twist on individual agency. Where Irene seeks to appear to please and comply, Clare is often deliberately absentee to her motherly duties. Both women are depicted as being careless

or unconcerned in their performance of gendered roles yet are motivated by a desire to be socially poised and play with the ambiguity of their blackness as a demonstration of their limited agency. To examine these issues, I will meditate on what is hidden or revealed in pictorial language that necessitates how a reader may conceive a character’s interpretation of skin color: what is a guise to one is a burden of pride to another depending on where and how she chooses to live. The implications of this research look at ways in which Larsen integrates modernity and social space to situate behavior that are alarming, humorous, and unprincipled but often attractively pictured.

1 Intensive verbal description of visual imagery, either real or imagined, using vivid,

By unprincipled behavior, it is important to clarify how there is a predisposition in the story for readers to possibly compare Irene’s actions immoral behavior falls largely on Irene, who does not fully participate in her ability to enact the bond of Black female kinship. My consideration of the women’s behavior in certain spaces relies on narrative perspective central characters using art historical and interpretative methods of the visual. A unique historical moment from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Black women could curate for themselves a visual cohesion of what appealed to the aesthetic and social norms of the Harlem Renaissance amongst a broader rebirth of the belle époque2 for American bourgeoisie. Things like money, education and class

are constructs exhibited physically, or present consequences, like Clare’s yearning to be with black folks, the

fatalistic threat of being discovered as passing by white outside (Larsen space, stability, and class to point to normative assumptions of whiteness in the American colloquial sense, which maintains a chokehold on the writers and readers of Black literature, regardless of their racial background.

which politics, arts, music, theater, cultural

stability, allowing for a deeper focus on the disturbing subtleties of racial the Harlem Renaissance.

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Within the text, there are three scenes demonstrating how Larsen seems to pose Irene as the protagonist and places her perceived antagonist, Clare, as a mirror of sometimes sexualized competition. In analyzing this competitive gaze ekphrastically, I reference art work which mimics or contextualizes the visuals of the novella. A portion of this discussion involves a reading of Larsen’s thematic cycle of satirical, yet within the constructs of gothic genre and unstable narrative as they apply to early 20th century art and literature.

is an important point considering the rhetorical and visual context of Passing and becomes doubly advantageous considering the authority with which Larsen depicts the interiors and exteriors of spaces privileged for white people she herself was raised in as young Black woman. In a sense, Passing is a window into an immensely private and visually material and economic realism. Race and feminist theory image and otherized perception by looking at how Larsen merits the medium of the mulatta, or what I describe as an intermediary of race,

I will add that while the women

as Black and Clare lives as a white

advantageous and not. Rather than focus on the typical complexities of being a quadroon or octaroon3 black character, I will set aside the tragic tropes in pursuit of the personae’s

domestic life, servants, childcare, and garde. Thus, not only do they pass for white folks, but colored women living as the dominant class. This

beauty and physical appearance and consider how these attributes are emphasized and visually distract within Larsen’s descriptive language.

There is no singular approach for this form of racial formation where

OBJECT

approximates existence or freedom with her body, entertaining truths in her surroundings or society, but never fully within herself. It is a lack

As an observer of what J. Hillis Miller asks in What Do Stories about Pictures Want? I think Passing is an exemplar of what seems “especially dangerous [in] looking hard at the

dependence that Larsen pegs down (as in Quicksand) and plays out through the actions of Irene and Clare. Included in the critical framework considered in this discussion is what art historian Judith Wilson acknowledges as no singular approach that can cohesively cast the “visual,” or “theoretical,” or “racial” aspects of a creative text (20). Hence, my use of the art historical lens is an approach to capturing the politics of

canvas, giving yourself to gazing. The harder you look the more they seem to look hard back at you in an uncanny

Kendry view or situate themselves in the novel’s imagined spaces, of how awareness of feminine agency within the text, and some feminist critique toward the characters.

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Larsen calls the “Encounter” in Part One. The danger of prosopopoeia, or visualizing an object as a thing Larsen describes Irene’s reactions to the object of the purple letter. The narrator gives it and every letter thereafter agency that is negatively charged, transferring the charge from letter Clare sends to Clare herself.

Performativity, this is done through Irene’s view, where the narrator allows the epistolary object to represent the person onto whom the object transference occurs. It is almost as if the Clare character is the thing, whose minimized personhood, but grandiose objectivity, becomes a device of discord. (I will discuss this further.) According to the rhetorical person, Clare further becomes the narrative rests.4 Viewing Clare this way allows for what I interpret as or fetishized object as a plot device given personhood through appearance and aesthetic value.

4 Prosopopoeia. https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Prosopopoeia, “used to take some of

While focusing on the initial setting envision the narrator seeing Irene, who watches the undisclosed letter: “Furtive, but yet in some peculiar (Larsen 5). Might it likewise describe an exotic paperweight or imagined bird resting on her desk? Larsen buildup that helps the reader picture the sense of absurdity within moderations of the realism of her story setting. As readers, we are imaginings of the fetishized object which begin to color the narrative. I identify the initiation of the epistolary object to be the avoidant magnetism Irene possesses for Clare, captioned with “purple ink” of which Irene disliked in the idea of “opening and reading it” (5). The secretive fascination these women hold for each

unfavorable point of view on the shoulders of an imaginary stereotype. The audience’s reactions are predisposed to go towards himself.”

and somatic. It is an appeal to the body and Irene’s fascination with the opening and closing of something

almost vulvar and, from her the interiority of her room, her desk, or her “little pile of morning mail” (5), seems overly sensual and absurdly feminine. In her essay on “Reading the Body: Fashion, Etiquette and I cite what Miriam Thaggert refers to visual medium where “rather than directly stating their thoughts, [two communicate through exchange of yet subjective lens through which

which begins with Irene seated in isolation and anonymity, ends with her feeling revealed in a way more exposing than public detection of her race. Part of the indeterminacy Thaggert traces occurs in a modern space of somewhat cloistered whiteness. It is possible to imagine Hieronymous Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” from which Irene emerges as so much a part of the chaos

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immediacy distracts her gaze enough to believe she is settled in herself. The narrator observes Irene moving up an elevator, to a roof top where a “long window [and] gently moving curtain [suggest] a cool breeze” of “another world,” distant and calm (Larsen 9). Accordingly, it is in this space of cosseted modernity that feminine bodies on a level playing whiteness of space and a kind of norming of mindset towards the apropos performance for the racially ambiguous to demonstrate whiteness. A performed practice of fake it ‘till you don’t need to anymore.’ The narrator gives the reader time to establish Irene’s privileged “gazing people” (9). The narrative jumps from the external chaos of the streets, sticky bodies and sweltering heat, to represented in Irene’s face and body (powdering her nose, etc.) in a taxi to the supposed order of the mind

and refreshment of thoughts on the rooftop of a prestigious hotel (Larsen 8). The communication between the two women begins almost like a direct looking woman” smile surreptitiously at a waiter (Larsen 9) and while, woman attempts to pin down her neighbor’s social and personal identity with an indelicate directness. Their rekindled, tensely charged relationship foregrounds a narrative observance of something who becomes someone, or how “Larsen strives to resituate the black body, making it less recognizable by exploiting the intangible value given readers, we can sense the confusion through the description of details: where Irene gets bogged down exists a polarity of Clare’s bold reactions that occur through looks, eyes meeting, glances attempted, and gaze held or interlocking views of the two women The novella’s aspects of class and

etiquette are crucial to the way Irene and Clare distinguish themselves, writ large with the way they dress in are not their husbands, and perform a coquetry that seems to be outside racial bounds. But reminders of the racial past and its present oppressions seem to be part of what Irene avoids yet appears as through scenes of narrative demonstration (Larsen 51, In the construct of narrative, what is unstable are Irene’s judgement of her friend and her need for safety away from performance and consequence of race that is either too black, bawdy, politically realistic, or oppressively white. Where the zone of precise occurrence is in the through the narrator’s description.

The narrative in Passing presents cues to an unheroic

producing the reaction of “brilliant tendency to react with a colorful and physiological reactions to situations where, even when her friend is not present, or Irene is alone, Clare’s livingness (as threat to Irene’s insular world of moderated blackness) is metonymized through gaze. A comparison of their eye color, “Irene’s disapproving brown eyes,”

I describe as two overlapping themes: Irene’s hesitance and Clare’s yearning toward black female kinship beyond the social mores of racial formation. Even though Clare may have naturally her eyes are black, evidence suggestive of her blackness. A person’s eyes are proverbially said to be a window into reach into Clare’s heart, even as she pours her eyes out for companionship. In a line singular to itself in the text, the narrator encapsulates letter, an embedded story about their mutual encounter in Chicago

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warm olive cheeks” (Larsen 7). This description vividly weaves in Larsen’s the novella and casts an unnatural ekphrastic narration. Irene’s rashness is unprincipled but matches visually with descriptions of Clare in red, through which Irene sees herself as a childhood friend. Irene’s attraction to and fear of this burden in sense is like that which a sister holds for

ownership of race pride and Blackness which Irene maintains, Clare having long abandoned, and becomes reignited through their chance encounter. Hence, Irene’s visceral and colorful reaction can be described as antithetical to the “black feminist politics” demonstrated by Toni Cade Bambara and Alice Childress, where black “female kinship is a central (Burrell 78). I pause here to state

that a black feminist politic exists in the context of black women writing, not, as Robin D.G. Kelley helpfully asserts, in reaction to the black male’s presence or forms of sexism (Burrell 80). Continuing with the sisterly theme of Clare and Irene’s relationship, Larsen exposes the notion of kinship between black women as a falsehood, due in part because of how the women are, as characters, inauthentically black but still desiring experience and connection to their race as a source of comfort. I consider the possibility experience with her mother, being an only child and daughter of a white woman who is said to have rejected

of identity to these both racially An aspect of their Black aftermath of Mr. Bellew’s deprecating Black people as devils but jokingly

whereafter three old childhood friends part ways and the idea of kinship takes on importance. Clare later appears entering into Irene’s bedroom on the heels of their housekeeper Zulena, and assumes the intimacy of a close friend or family member. Both women are aware of the distance such an is prepared to let go (but not forget), Clare seeks to bridge the gap with an appearances.

I want to establish the “furtive” envelope Clare sends to Irene as an object and plot device: a way into the eye of ethnically mysterious and aesthetically fascinating representations of Irene’s idolized nemesis. The narrative beginning establishes Irene’s belief of Clare’s disregard for others, even though

Irene is plied with Clare’s visually and emotionally appealing letters, messages, and house calls throughout the story. But her appeal in person, as a wedge of magnetic antagonism between the two. Because Clare is often characterized desperately as a woman with a “having” or needy yet commanding way about her, this sets up a pattern for Irene to be read as more ethically or ideologically feminist. Where one woman appears to pander to husband’s use of the Irene does 5 her best to handle or manage her his job and black male oppression in the high era of lynching. This is not feminist, but both female characters try to free themselves from the trappings of motherhood and wifely duties. Thus, Larsen depicts a vivid scene of blatant racial visibility, where the feminist voice appears colorfully

Encounter. I view this scene as a satirical tableau vivant of etiquette and “exhibitions of conversational

modern interiority Larsen creates to nuanced motive of mocking outright essentialist bigotry through the use of descriptive imagery. While the concept of genre in visual arts does not always apply directly to literary work of the same era, some characteristics of late Romantic, Realism, and Impressionistic movements were during the Harlem Renaissance.

of Larsen’s novella, is a derogatory and universally abused term use by white people and others who would feign intimacy of and dominance over the black community and people of African descent, particularly in the

demonstration of Irene, Clare, and

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United States.

writers born in the late 19th century and whose exposure to periods aesthetic foundation from which to propel their own creative work. Here, I want to emphasize the visual importance of both these internal and external spaces and how as social objects as troublesome in the eye of the beholder.

FEMALE CRITIQUE OF COLOR(S)

In Art and Modernity, seeing what Larsen herself may have experienced in the growing number metropolitan cities: the rejection of the traditional in favor of the image and aesthetic of the moment. In the Chicago street scene where the reader witnesses the exteriority lifestyle, the ekphrastic description

serves as a series of visuals of heat, motion, and emotion. The title of the book, “Passing,” which is also a verb in motion, occurs as if through Baudelairean momentum, where one art historian states how “street modernity are determined by the space of the urban in a way appealing to those living in and visiting the city. some of the more dramatic scenes for characters in Passing, where the biological factor of race is revealed yet kept invisible (Larsen 55, 70). The architectural and aesthetic appearance is the shift of movement from the urban grounding to elevated private or interior spaces and moods. highlighted by Elizabeth Brogden, who uncovers the impressionistic emotion: “solar (over)exposure thus scrutiny’ in the tearoom, under which chill” (221), in which a series of contrasts ultimately land on the

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two women. I use Brogden’s visual analysis to point to the construct of their conjoined identity in their

gift in the creation of stories like Passing. Current critics and reviewers of her work invested in the dual

through pictorial language, Clare’s language, eye contact, use of gaze to to Irene’s intolerance of others. The narrator characterizes her close to an have spoken up (9). From the street to the table, the narrator sets up a focus on Irene to project her own insecurity and thus unstable sense of self. When her inner monologue suggests in the idea and accepts the possibility (Larsen 10, 11). European and African American heritage, was committed to her cultural and educational roots in major aesthetic and artistic movements in Harlem during the 1920’s. This heritage allows characters not only positions of duality but authenticity, which is her particular

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in similar biological embodiment of hybridity, notice with chagrin and amusement how little has changed in people since 1929 when Passing was published. Durrow is an ambiguously passes for black, white, and other but occupies exoticized ethnicities by the function of the observer and stigma. In a scholarly review and in her own text, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, Durrow points out the still prevalent absurdities of racial formation’s gaze. I consider with her work the opportunity Clare Kendry acts inside of, using key embodied moments to walk through the gaze and perform within the assumption, but call into question that one’s inherent desire or authentic self may be at stake (Larsen 15, 51, 55), race and gender aside.

In the cultural transition happening for mixed race couples to legally or illegally cohabitate and have children in the 20th century, color is no more equivalent to racial performance any more than gender performance is equivocated to one’s sex. What I mean here is, in and amongst people who identify as skin does not always dictate their level of blackness, but instead how others expect or perceive their behavior as persons of color within the marriage or family. This is key to considering how animated and lively Larsen’s concentrated descriptions of colored folk are in certain passages,

character is absent from this essay, I use the example of ekphrasis applied to Irene’s husband to describe the embodiment of elegance and from furniture to beverages to skin tone as part of the intimacy of cohesive imagery. Within the discussion of

external and internal drama are visual themes that overlap in exploring Larsen’s story of Irene’s reluctant yet cloying relationship with Clare, such as the functions of gaze, death, and thing to do is embrace her long lost orphaned friend, not only out of racial solidarity but also because they are humans in need of companionship that erodes caustic binaries of black vs. white social divisions. Yet these characters are portrayed as women to whom agency is key: Irene and Clare uniquely have an array of choices as women of color with whom to marry and classify their social lives in proximity to visible whiteness and social acceptability. PICTORIAL THEMES COME ALIVE Returning to visually depicting a medium of the mulatta or quadrooned racial formation, the feminist voice appears colorfully demonstration of Irene, Clare, and

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Encounter narrative. I view this scene as a tableau vivant of etiquette and “exhibitions of conversational embodiment and modern, urban interiority. Set in a temporary Chicago apartment where Mrs. Bellew plays hostess, she invites her two friends from childhood who pass, enter the private white Jim Crow space, and appear correctly enough to suit the browns of the furniture, the “startling blue” of Clare’s dress and the curtains, or a trio matching slim tall glasses range from “chocolate” brown, warm “amber,” and pasty or pinky beiges of skin that look like panty hose and bread dough, hair of sooty or shiny textile blues suggesting hues of a backdrop that seems somewhat 28). intentional by Larsen, like creating harmony in the frame of a painting,

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as it is by Clare Kendry orchestrating

blackness) in the literal tone of mulatta. When Mr. Bellew arrives, he uses a piquant form of endearment, and comments on her increasing tendency as she ages to gradually turn ombre, as if she herself might be blending into the surrounding tones of brown (28). The narrator begins to intermingle both visually and literally the image of brownness as a hidden darkness of impending doom with a sallow humor. Intervening among the

a falsetto of ease and clarity which was never really there to begin with, because he is white, and Clare’s negritude is proleptically exposed. The women satirically and symbolically transgress upon his (and thus society’s) constructed racial purity of whiteness. The use of color and embodied saturation through pictorial politics connects to this discussion theme of art.

by Vittorio Reggianini, “Ladies Having Tea,” there exists an equally stylized scene comparable to the three passing women at tea in a

mademoiselle’s golden dresses match the gold tone chintz of the draperies, so too does the sartorial blue of the curtains match the shade of Clare’s blue tea dress. The art of the late belle

painting (see inset, last page), the trio’s intention seems to rest on a interaction to relay an appearance to existent purpose: each woman is well suited to the setting and has merited discussion? The purpose is to capture the importance of performance and appearance, which symbolically and delicately rests on the tripod of Further, the viewer is witness to the jovial scene of three plushly ensconced afternoon tea. While this is not looking at painting as art for art’s sake, I will suggest that comparing a scene of three ladies appearing to have tea is more along the lines of art for story’s sake: their expressions are alight with and nuanced performance of social

those to whom the ladies are married or promised to: their servants, their dress makers, the craftsmen, and even the colonial compromise of tea itself. I think Larsen’s work approached the

imported letter paper was a necessary luxury for people of African American descent, whether they passed for white people or not. These characters are portrayed as women of color who pass and thus ironically have a choice of men with whom to marry and economic resources to classify their social lives in proximity to whiteness and social acceptability. My discussion

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of Larsen’s biographical experience of being seen in the world rests on the issue of not only gaze but selfhood. The trio of women at tea also considers the foreboding theme appearing in the world, in the children they each describe, as proof of some welcome, unknown or shameful the reader’s perspective, the story, like the painting, is complete in itself because it provides a visual answer for how one may view the situation in its own sociological and cultural complexity: the question and boldness of being and looking like a negro . As Judith Wilson queries in her essay “One Way or Another: Black Feminist Visual Theory,” “[who] is black? Then what is blackness? A category, a quality, an ideology, an experience, or some combination of these?” (20).

In my attempt to visualize the quadrooned female artist’s experience,

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I came upon an essay by Lorraine O’Grady discussing the compelling pitfalls of her art work series called Gaze: I soon encountered an encyclopedia of problematics concerning the black body: age, and skin tone. Especially skin

Which maimed body would be best retrieved as the ground of my biographic experience?... which body hue should I use class West Indian American

skinned product of rape? (Jones 210)

describes how easy it was for her to try passing in the South at a nice restaurant (170).

While this is a substantial piece cultural and historical lens, it aids in sharp perspective, as a writer who grappled with similar issues of hue and hair, racial pedestals and Ken/ a century beforehand. The quote above helps the reader, therefore, to consider distancing the cultural or creative lens to make even more room for the overwhelming bias that normative whiteness and its myopic power are already given in the novel, in order to accommodate issues the characters are dealing with in viewing themselves, “biographic[ally]” as people. Thus, I return to questions raised throughout Larsen’s novella where visual positioning of space and bodies takes precedence. To move in and out of the spatial framework of normative whiteness is to accept or reject and Larsen was willing to do both. In “One Way or Another: Black Feminist Visual Theory,” Wilson

also acknowledges that there is no formalized, concretely developed and applicable form to criticize and interpret the works about or by Black women. She asks “who is black?... Then what is blackness?” (20). In her main argument, Wilson humorously questions her previous understanding of feminism as informed not by social storied fact of biology couched in centuries of manipulative masculine her critical awakening to both Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex and Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Mask. So, I will ask: what is a black feminist? Did Larsen consider herself as one with such (possible) privilege? According to Wilson, much work remains to address the lack of theory to approach African and African American diaspora. Even as perceived gender and racial constructs become less plastic in some areas, they are necessarily maintained in situations like the academic and artistic while everyone is playing race roles or catching up to the idea that it’s all a

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“post” colonial sham. People who passed did so via appearance and socially according to the interpretation of others, but often held back from their labeled libel of abnormalities (in the hegemonic white male sense) as sources of creative capital. Larsen is an exception because she used her abnormalities (used here as pejorative term) often as a source of creative fodder in her stories. She was of her day who are both Caucasian and African American, like Gertrude Stein, Carl Van Vechten, and Langston Hughes. She dedicates the book to Van Vechten and his wife, Fania, whose character equivalents are Hugh and Bianca Wentworth. As an additional twist of satire on the illusive realism

production uncovers a lesson in the objective sense, as part of the purpose of Larsen’s work is ethical Larsen’s work in Passing opens up methods to track the novella’s visual palimpsest with a sort of ekphrastic genealogy, dating from the colonial (the scene of broken china at the competition in realism to maintain and almost surgically contort the human gaze using a racial and cultural lens one is sometimes born into and cannot avoid. My perspective as a mixed African American and Eastern European female writer is more position as a reader. It is possible to

names, which equal hue and white, emphasize their conceptual lack of color and desire to engage with and capitalize on the popular regard for of creative, colored visibility. On a subjective level, this investigation of literary and artistic

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idealistic space and racialized situation, while understanding the isolation and power of being visibly invisible, in an Ellisonian sense. Passing reminds me, as a reader, that the text exists to provide a rarely told story, and provides access into

Larsen’s experience of critiquing the

formation. Such work peels away the layer of modernity’s materialist agenda to reveal a skin of deeper issues, such as the Black woman’s and human desires.

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Bracewell-Homer, Pamela. “Introduction, Art and Modernity.” Art & Visual Culture: A Reader, edited by Lymberopoulou, Angeliki, et al., Tate Publishers, 2012.

Brogden, Elizabeth. “Color and Line: Scandinavian Post-Impressionism and the Figure of Passing in Nella Larsen.” Studies in American Fiction, vol. 44, no. 2, Fall 2017, p. 211. EBSCOhost, electra.lmu.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct =true&dbedb&AN=126795735&site=eds-live&scope=site. Byron, Lindsay, “Modernism from the Margins: Unruly Women and the Politics of Representation.” Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2013. https://scholarworks. gsu.edu/english_diss/107. Haraway, Donna. “The Persistence of Vision.” The Visual Culture Reader, edited by Hutchinson, George. “Quicksand and the Racial Labyrinth.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg, vol. 200, Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420081957/ LitRC?u=loym48904&sid =LitRC&xid=d3c4facb. Accessed 8 Nov. 2018. pp. 543-571. Hutchinson, George. “Nella Larsen and the Veil of Race.” Passing: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism, edited by Carla Kaplan, Norton, 2007. Jones, Amelia. The Visual Culture Reader. Routledge, 2003. Larsen, Nella. Passing: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. Edited by Carla Kaplan, W.W. Norton & Co., 2007. Marshall, Jennifer Freeman. “In Search of Heidi Durrow within a Black Woman’s Literary Tradition: On Reading The Girl Who Fell from the Sky.” Forum for World Literature Studies, no. 1, 2013, p. 27. EBSCOhost, electra.lmu.edu:2048/login?url= https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr&AN= edsgcl.334379966&site=eds-live&scope=site. Accessed 8 Nov. 2018. Nochlin, Linda, and Maura Reilly. “Sophie Calle: Word, Image and the End of Ekphrasis.” Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader, Thames & Hudson, 2015. Rabinowitz, Paula. “Blanc Noir: Rural Pulp and Documentary Modernism.” Black & White & Noir: America’s Pulp Modernism, Columbia University Press, 2002, pp. 105–120. JSTOR.

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Reggianini, Vittorio. “Ladies Having Tea - Vittorio Reggianini - Canvas Artwork.” Pictorem, 2018, www.pictorem.com/54072/Ladies having tea.html.7 Wilson, Judith. “One Way or Another.” The Visual Culture Reader, edited by Amelia Jones, Routledge, 2003.

VITTORIO REGGIANINI. Ladies having tea. circa 1900, oil on canvas. 7 Painted circa 1900, oil on canvas.

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