toastykitten

I've been going through my old notebooks on which I doodled and took notes for most of college. I discovered, my final exam for the Chaucer course, which was taught by a cranky, bitter, old professor, where he wrote on my paper "You seemed pretty clueless in your midterm about Chaucerian tragedy - maybe you were missing the day I dealt with it in class. You still take Fortune too seriously - she stands for 'circumstances' - but you make a lot of excellent points in this paper. Good job." Ugh, it hurts even as I type it, and you know what hurt more? He wrote this in pencil!

He was the only one who had the temerity to insult his students that badly, though. (My friend got roasted pretty badly.) Most of my professors were pretty awesome - nice but they never put up with any bullshit.

I just finished re-reading bell hooks' Remembered Rapture: the writer at work, and I think I liked it better this time around. I still get annoyed by the repeated mantra "race, sex, class", but I think that's because I haven't read most of her work. Also, "breaking silence", which is a theme that comes up often in identity politics, and is most often assumed to be an act of empowerment for people of color, especially women. I have my problems with it, because I am often a silent person, and I don't really know how to describe my feelings about it, other than that silence often isn't valued properly. I don't mean in the sense of "not speaking up", but of taking the time for contemplation, for taking time to articulate, refine, think, etc. Does that make any sense?

I liked her take on Zora Neale Hurston, and her discussion of Emily Dickinson. Hooks apparently has the same taste I do in literature.

I just started Reading Lolita in Tehran. So far, it's a pretty engrossing read, and reading this right after Remembered Rapture brings up some interesting thoughts. Both are concerned with the systems of oppression, one overt, the other, rendered invisible, and it's fascinating to see how these women navigate their way to rebellion, to expression.