Nicole be Thinking...

I love being black. Its one of my favorite things about myself. I've been in Critical Approaches all semester learning about different theories and methods for critiquing and analyzing literature. So noooow… we're talking about American Multiculturalism and African American Literature. This section is starting to bother me. First… This quote: "Eventually [Phyllis Wheatley] became the best-known American poet in England. Writing in the neoclassical style of Alexander Pope, she composed verses that reflected her privileged status, not a slave mentality" (Dobie 218). What exactly is a "slave mentality?" Ok… she wasn't illiterate like she was supposed to be. She wasn't a mammy. She probably wasn’t working in the fields. So perhaps in writing her poetry she wrote what she was feeling, what she saw. She was a slave so whatever mentality she had was a slave mentality. There's no universal mindset for any group of people and the suggestion that Wheatley ...

I'm HAPPY THANKSGIVING(!!) is over. Don't get me wrong… I like the food and the fam… but I like them both in small doses… I can do with out the heavy food that I'm gonna be eating for weeks until Christmas. I can do without the embarrassing and redundant questions about school and my personal like. I'll pass on screaming kids throwing ice and ignoring their mothers. But all in all it was a nice holiday… Aunt Vivian's strawberry cake is still the best… Last night after the festivities, I was perusing Fandango… looking for something to see right now (at 11ish) and I was amazed at my options. Though there are other movies playing right now, the only ones with showings close to midnight are animated movies or movies aimed at a young audience. Opry Mills mall opened for business at midnight for Black Friday, so I expected all of the movies to have midnight showings. However, Ninja Assassins, Old Dogs, The Blind Side, Planet 51, the new Twilight movie, and Fantastic Mr. F...

OK... SO... i'm up... which sucks because i have to be up at 6 to take my brother to school (whose idea was it to start school at 7am???). i can't go to sleep. i've been up fixing the template for this blog. i was watching medium . now i'm done with the template. medium has gone off. but... i'm still not asleep. my insomnia comes in waves... i'll have it REALLY bad for like a week... then it tapers off until i'm damn near napping every time i sit down. and then somehow it starts to build again. what's more is that i cannot read after a certain time. i mean... these books for school. i can stay up all night writing papers. but i can't do the reading. i already read the chapters that we'll be discussing in class, so that's good. but i could be reading persepolis for adolescent literature. or terrorist for contemporary american fiction. i should be doing that if i'm going to be awake. OH! i know i said i was gonna write a short story ev...

My life is like a dream. Daddy's always telling me, "Jane, get a job. Don't you want to get anything for yourself?" But why would I want to do that? He pays for everything. I do as I please. I have everything I could ever want. Daddy gets me a new BMW every year. My penthouse condo is huge. I don't even have to touch my trust fund. The money supply is endless. This is the American dream. I'm educated, too. I went to the best prep schools. And scholarship was very important to my sorority. We had to maintain the chapter GPA to have parties, so thanks to them I graduated college cum laude . And Daddy knows just about everybody in this town. I could work. If I wanted to. I know I'm lucky. I could be poor. Ew . The thought gives me chills. I don't know much about poor people, but it seems to me that if they just went out and got a job things would be ok for them. I mean, nobody tells them to have all those kids if they can't afford it. But the govern...

I orignally wrote this in November 2006. It still applies. That kind of makes me sad. Makes me pesimistic about my future. Three years have passed - almost exactly - and somehow not a lot has changed. Well... No. A lot has changed. But these things are still true. This is still all I need from a man. This man still does not exist in my life. You tell me... Am I asking too much? [btw... I promise I'll post short stories and my deconstruction paper later... I've been sooo behind.] alI i need is somebody nice. somebody who's not trying to screw me... and i mean more than just sexually. someone's who's not trying to make a fool out of me, or trying to make me jump through hoops. i need somebody who's not constantly testing me for no reason. someone who isn't trying to control me. someone who doesn't think he's smarter than me. someone who doesn't want to use me. someone who isn't out to take away my pride. someone who likes who i already am. some...

I want my American dream. Yeah, I'm in this cell right now, but my situation ain't always gonna be messed up. I'm gonna get my Navigator with the rims. I'm gonna have a ass mansion. With an elevator. Jacuzzis in every bathroom. I'm gonna have money out the ass. And the bitches . They're gonna love me. I can hear them calling my name: " Rahim!" Forget middle class. I'm going all the way to the top. That's what this country is about, right? Starting with nothing and ending up with everything? I want Bill Gates money. I'm not trying to be just comfortable. I gotta buy my mama houses. I gotta make sure my baby mamas got all my kids straight. I'm going for mine in these streets daily. I flip my cash on the regular. And until I got the money I want, if you got something I want, I'm gonna take it. Simple as that. What? Education? Fuck that. It takes too long. I got my diploma because high school gave me constant customers...

People read a text and interpret it based on other texts they have read and personal life experiences. Structuralists believe that "things […] have to be seen as part of a larger structure to which they belong" (Dobie 152). It is with this intent that readers read; we look to attach a text to its larger structure. Stories are read and characters are perceived based on the meaning a reader gives to signifiers within the text. There are flaws in interpretation because "language […] is arbitrary, conventional and based on difference" (Dobie 154). Deconstructionist critics seek to prove that there is no transcendental signified. Since texts are "dynamic entities that are given new life with repeated readings and through interactions with other texts," meaning changes depending on the reader (Dobie 155). This changing signified becomes apparent when applying this theory to A Family Supper by Kazuo Ishiguro. In the story, the narrator is returning to Japan to vi...

Joey never got used to being a husband or a father. He loved Alicia and he loved their kids, but he always thought they started too soon. The two had been college sweethearts, everybody's favorite couple. Joey was the popular frat guy, Alicia the sexy sorority chick. Things were great for them. When Alicia got pregnant halfway through their sophomore year, they eloped and were married before finals. He figured he always would, so it didn't matter when or how he married her. Besides, Cecelia's birth didn't slow them down at all. He never missed a function or a frat party and she took the baby to all her sorority meetings, thrilled that one day her daughter would be her "soror." In his the drunken haze that were his undergraduate years, Joey managed to graduate on time and be there for the birth of their son, Junior. Degree in hand, Joey took the first job he was offered so Alicia wouldn't have to work while she finished her studies during the summer. Soon, ...

Bernice never wanted to go to her high school reunion to begin with.   They were never nice to her. But things had drastically changed in the last ten years. Her undergraduate years were spent at predominantly black Howard University and the hell they gave inspired change. Weight Watchers helped to rid her of the extra twenty-five pounds of "baby weight" she carried. Her teeth were perfectly straight thanks to the braces she wore through college. Lasik had repaired her vision and no longer were her light brown eyes hidden behind thick-rimmed glasses. Her inner diva had emerged. Convinced she could do anything in the world, Bernice took the high-profile divorce of a Hollywood starlet as her first case. She channeled all the anger she had repressed from high school bullies and directed it at the poor man. Bernice took him for everything he had. Over the past three years she had built a reputation for being one the most sought after divorce attorney in Los Angeles. With her cred...

I have lots of story ideas. Or so I thought... I decided to write a short story every day this month. Thus far the only good thing about that declaration is that this month only has 30 days. My ideas don't come as well as they did before I was committed to writing them down and presenting them. On top of the slow ideas... School doesn't stop. At least... Not for me. This was homecoming week at TSU which means nobody came to class. Nobody cared about deadlines. Nobody was trying to learn. But I am. And I have another Critical Approaches journal due Monday. This theory is Deconstruction. It makes my head spin but I think I can do it. (Yall can determine that on Monday with DMC). I also have an annotated bibliography due Tuesday. And I have to reread _The Bluest Eye_ by Wednesday. SO. Writing stories in all that is difficult. And then there the internet situation. Wifi at home sucks so my stories just sit on the laptop until I can get somewhere to post them. Maybe somewhere along ...

It was the first day of the fall semester. First Year Composition. I sat in the back of the classroom and watched them enter, their nerves all over their faces. The white board in the front of them read, "EXTRA CREDIT will be given" in red. There was a neat stack of paper on the table by the podium. The class filled quickly and the students sat quietly, waiting. The space in front that was generally reserved for the professor was vacant. Students began to stir, unsure what this freedom meant. "She's not gonna show. I heard this is her first class and she's only 24." a guy by the door said. "She better be hot." a masculine female in the back offered. The class laughed nervously. "But come on guys. She can't be 24. It takes a lot to become a professor," the studious girl in the front of the room interjected. "That just means she's gonna be one of those nerdy types who finished college at 12." More laughter welled in the cl...

David left me two months ago. I shrugged it off. The break up was inevitable. Seven years my junior, he never had much to talk about. He called me "his cat" and I hated it. Thirty made me too young to be a cougar. Still, something about his smile made me feel at home. That smile made me forget that he stared at younger women when we were out, that I had paid tuition his last year in college, that he insisted I keep my hair long because, since I was the color of smooth chocolate, I wouldn't look right "bald headed." I told myself that the sight of his house key on dining room table was a godsend. I took a long bubble bath, as if that would wash away the last year and a half of my life. Now, I'm making the biggest step I can. I'm having my hair cut. Lorelle, my beautician, looked at me knowingly. Seventeen years prior, she had been the woman scorned sitting in the chair at the beauty shop. She chopped her hair off as a sign of her new-found freedom. She de...

Overview I decided to combine Kate Chopin’s “ Desiree’s Baby ” and “ The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I liked the twist at the end of “Desiree’s Baby” and knew when I got the assignment that I wanted to use that in some way. The film version of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” gave me some idea about the plot of that story and made me want to use it. Although the story is very different from the movie, I still enjoyed and thought that its element of fantasy could work with the twist from “Desiree’s Baby.” I also really liked the idea of naming my mash up “The Curious Case of Desiree’s Baby.” The stories basically picked themselves. Mash Up Desiree wanted to leave Nashville. So at nineteen years old she tied up her long auburn-gray hair and bought some new orthopedic shoes. She looked in the mirror at the diminishing wrinkles on her face through eyes that seemed to be seeing more, better. Yes, she thought, I’m reaching my prime. Desiree set out to see w...

So... November is National Novel Writing Month. I don't really feel like writing a novel. I think I want to write short stories instead. I spend a great deal of my time reading short stories these days; I think it's only right to write some. I don't think that meets the NaNoWriMo guidelines, though, since... my short stories won't add up to a novel at the end, but hey... whatever. If you'd like to participate, I encourage you to do so. It starts today. You have until midnight November 30 to have a 50,000-word work of fiction complete. It'll be fun! Tell a friend! =] www.nanowrimo.org