Slides

Slides

A Small Place Slides

“You may be the sort of tourist who would

wonder why a Prime Minister would want

an airport named after him—why not a

school, why not a hospital, why not some

great public monument? (1.1)”


Analysis 1:

• The Prime Minister of Antigua doesn’t want schools, hospitals, or public monuments to be named after him because tourists won’t see “that type of stuff” whereas airports are the dominant means of transportation for tourists, allowing them to be exposed to his name.
• The reader can infer that the Antiguan government doesn’t have its citizens best interests at heart.

• The Antiguan government caters to the needs of tourists rather than their own people, making sure they receive a quality (however unrealistic) presentation of the island.
• The Prime Minister believes that the best way to promote himself is through tourists who experience the impractical depiction of life and culture on the island.

Analysis 2:

• The following article by the IPS News Agency on “Poverty in Antigua” brings light to a reality often gone unseen by tourists and media
• Many people of Antigua struggle economically and the Antiguan economy is constantly fluctuating
• The article claims “there was no sign of life in the community”
• Schools and hospitals are severely underfunded, however, many tourist establishments including casinos and hotels flourish
• This ties into the false representation of the island portrayed by the government and also brings light to how little they value the livelihood of the Antiguan people rather than wealthy foreigners

A Small Place Slides

A Small Place Slides

 

A Small Place Jolah

Lonely Planet AD:

“On Antigua, life is a beach. Its corrugated coasts cradle hundreds of perfect little strands lapped by beguiling enamel-blue water, while the sheltered bays have provided refuge for everyone from Admiral Nelson to buccaneers and yachties. If you can tear yourself away from that towel, you'll discover that there’s a distinct English accent to this island. You'll find it in the bustling capital of St John's, in salty-glamorous English Harbour, and in the historic forts and other vestiges of the colonial past. Yet, Antigua is also quintessential Caribbean, full of candy-coloured villages, a rum-infused mellowness and bright-eyed locals that greet you with wide smiles.”

• Fantasy world like Disneyland
• The brochure presents a sanitized, safe, idealized, fantasy world paradise with picturesque beaches and coasts
• Still remnants of British slave trade and control over Antigua
• Racist undertone
• "distinct English accent to this island" "Yet, Antigua is also quintessential Caribbean"
• The sheltered bays only provide refuge for white British foreigners
• "Bright eyed locals" who cater to your every need
• The tourist dreamworld ignores the native Antiguan

A Small Place Quote:

“Antigua where the sun always shines and where the climate is deliciously hot and dry for the four to ten days you are going to be staying there; and since you are on your holiday, since you are a tourist, the thought of what it might be like for someone who had to live day in, day out in a place that suffers constantly from drought, and so has to watch carefully every drop of fresh water used, must never cross your mind.” (4)

• The tourism industry overlooks the actual day-to-day problems in Antigua
• Poverty, drought, corruption
• Antigua is not a perfect place. It is not idealized. It is not sheltered.  It is not glamorous.  It is not a fantasy world. There are problems and people are suffering.
• All of the natives are catering to the tourists for the “four to ten days your are going to stay there”
• Giving them priority over water
• Giving them the nicest beaches
• Giving them fake smiles and greetings
  
  
  
  

  http://www.lonelyplanet.com/antigua-and-barbuda/introduction

  http://www.davishunter.com/home/place/Antigua%20and%20Barbuda
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

A Small Place Slides- H. Oreck

"A Small Place" Slides

A Small Place Slide- Mbecerra

A Small Place Slide

Flashback

Kevin Tyson  

4/25/17

What did I do wrong. What did I do. My hands started to sweat, my mind started to race. Think Kevin what did you do. All of a sudden I hear “What are you two boys doing”. What were we doing? I know this may have been overreacting but I was scared. I guess I should explain what is going on. The day was proof that heat is unforgiving. Heat escaped the crackling asphalt as if it was straight from hell. First your tired achy feet, then to your clammy hands, and next to your head, causing beads of sweat to fall from my brow. Then I got a full view of who I was talking to. A sturdy Pasadena policeman. What did he want for me, I soon returned to the haze of my imagination, thinking about what I did. I was shocked, this cop pulled me over to give me a free slurpee from 7/11, not to start problems.

What does wealth mean to me?

Viewing everything from a safe distance. There are two Pasadenas. Below the freeway, above the freeway. I rarely visit the latter. My school is below the freeway. My home, my friend’s homes, my activities, my life. My view of Pasadena is seen through a macro lens, a unrepresentative lens, a unrealistic lens, a sheltered lens. Biking the streets of Lombardy and San Pasqual, swimming at the Langham, eating at the Valley Hunt Club, feeling uncomfortable. What does wealth mean to me? Growing up in Pasadena to a professor father and a curator mother was stable and cozy. My childhood was one for the books. I had the freedom to explore and the guidance to prosper. Now, at 16, I find these things not being enough. Security is no longer cutting it, stability is no longer sufficient. I long for adventure, a change of scenery, a big bang. Call it teen angst, but I’m no longer content with myself, and everything that comes along with that. Walking around Old Town, ignoring news of shootings and gang violence, swimming in friend’s pools. I’ve always been an open and an outgoing person, yet part of me has always wished I exuded more mystery, more enigma. Being an open book becomes tiresome when people think they know everything about you, and pushing the limits is my forte. Two stick-and-pokes, five DIY piercings, and many various hair colors later, I don’t feel any more like myself. I’m always seeking out a way to become more interesting, more cultured, more experienced. Los Angeles is a city with endless opportunities. The epitome of a cosmopolitan microcosm. But Pasadena? Not so much. Its stifling superiority complex leaves far too much room for self consciousness and a need for approval. I try to explore LA as much as I can, but with huge amounts of homework and no driver’s license, it’s proved difficult. Echo Park, Highland Park, Silverlake. Reaping the benefits of gentrification, drinking cold brew around the corner from an underfunded Planned Parenthood, calling poor neighborhoods “hipster” neighborhoods. All these places intrigue me to no end. Passionate cities with passionate people, busy and driven, a stark contrast to the botox infested, social status, and popularity-obsessed area around my school and home. Volunteering at Mother’s Club and spending more time above the freeway in a week than in my whole life combined, treating abandoned houses as playgrounds, giving a dollar to a homeless man. So who am I? Am I a stay-at-home mom with empty nest syndrome and an unhealthy Kate Spade addiction? Am I a starving artist with unshaven armpits and a vegan activist boyfriend? Am I both? Am I neither? These are stereotypes in and of themselves. Can I break free and redefine what it means to be cliche? What is wealth to me? Underappreciating the fact that I have the privilege to wallow in my shallow misery, the privilege of superficial sadness, the privilege of having space to find my way, the privilege of freedom of expression, utilized or not. Privilege.

TStimmler19- GOST Reading Slides

YSiegel GOST Close Passage Reading Slides

GOST Slide

KG: GOST Close Reading Slide

HDeverell19 GOST Creative

Helen Deverell

English II

Ms. Hume

4/12/17

The following found poems are from separate chapters using words and phrases encountered in said chapter. Aforementioned poems will explore certain motifs and themes in the novel.

Death

The family, huddled next to a dead bee in a coffin flower,  

watches a sunbeam crisscross in the clouds and  

realizes it was lent to them too briefly.

Their over-smiling lives have a size and a shape now-

now that grief has grieved.

Now everyone was a secret,

and sad breasts sat atop sad hips,

dropping and swinging like

sad stars from sad skies.

Loss

For practical purposes,

with bombs come fear and foreboding.

Even he knows that

red-veined weeping is futile

when one cannot tame morality.

Just weigh the odds and accept.

And when he watched her cry,

he learned a lesson:

while despondence is not depression,

it is a slicked-back setback

until the day that he dies.  

Complacency

Lay siege to sticky floors and

a woman’s pink pallor.  

Remember to catapult scraps to

sunken bodies,

but omit contact.

Drown-able men

are already drunk,  

so a stranger’s rib cage

is easier to ignore.

Life for some,

existence for others.

Luck?

Is everyone’s world a world of “nos”?

“You haven’t learned...”

“You can’t jump...”

How’s the little supposed to

know what the big isn't supposed to do?

Pocketmoney doesn’t pay for moonbeams,

it pays for heat and sweat and

the color yellow.

Sometimes, dirt colored vomit.

White is not a brownwebbed color.

White is not hot or sweaty or yellow.

White means “yes”.

Sometimes, peppermint.

Time

God leaves behind a rainbow film of gasoline

but not much else.

To some,

time is not a line but a squiggle,

and history is nothing more

than a forgotten scandal.

Some have been loved

since the dawn of time.

Thimbles, lit candles, and bell bottoms.

Even in black and white photographs,

one knows dark from light.

Cold

USE ME.

Brown back-freckles complement

pretty, easy-to-understand laughs, and

bluegrayblue eyes are dragonflies, not

mustardyellow.

Are beady eyes learned?

Can one choose how much to love?

She knows that love isn’t

given to dirty girls,

but she doesn’t know how to clean.

She knows that the better “she” drives

in a shark.

With teeth so sharp, they must be clean.

God

At what point does a purposeless

crucifix become sacrilege?

Discarded religion

lumps together

to form a Hole in the Universe.

When she died,

the space between her collarbones

made a home for fish-mouthed bats.

She’d have been a die-able age

if someone had been there

to witness her death.

Instead, she was almost swept up

like the floor-tile dirt.

Rahel

Rubyringed fingers hang on to dignity

like a white man’s tennis trophy.

Brown, cake-crumbed fingers hang on to

“hellos” like a white man’s

pressed knickers. Dirtied

bell-bottoms in wet-squelch

aren’t as bad as a beach-colored

girl whose Father Bear

wields flower vases as weapons.

Rahel was not a littleangel,

and that was the one thing she knew for sure

would not change.

Ponderance

If we weren’t sitting here watching the

unkissed toads,

where would we be?

Trapped in a coveted TV life?

Stuck between the cracks of the

untouchables and the “us”?

If we weren’t us,

would the leaf-backed man

with the painted nails

still be red and lifeless?

Or would he be hunting for toads with

two kids by a pond?

Twins

Anything can happen to anyone,

so it’s best to be prepared.

Write lists, if you must.

There’s no privacy as a two-egg twin.

Even the ghosts are watching.

Even a yellow wasp and a lizard’s blink.

Even a Communist and a chicken and a cow.

A lot can change in a day.

As a two-egg twin,

brittlewhite snakeskin

has to be shared

when shed.

Love

Gooseflesh, muscle,

veins in a paddyfield.

Skin to skin is a rarity

when love exists in shadow.

No trees grew alongside the love.

No birds circled it.

But love is only

defined by the lovers--

not the executioner.

Shame

Humiliation lives in the Heart of Darkness.

Despair dives and swoops and recites

a familiar mantra.

Full of women, full of fluid.

Full of children, huddled in a warm house,

sheltered from the charred wick and battlefield blood.

How much do they know?

They’ve seen how quickly

bravado can turn to menace.

Right and Wrong

She looked weak as she slept,

and all anger was summarily dismissed.

A fork and knife stuck out of

either side of her head, and

it became harder to tell

who was good and

who was bad.

The thimble-drinker

and coffin-cartwheeler

left their little

father/husband

for a whiter cup of Joe.

Would she still have been floating if

she had stayed?

Work

A rotating fan measures

its way around a circle.

Will an attempt at

prosperity for the masses

end in a blind date with history?

Ignorance had been served on a silver tray,

and he realized that hard work

did not guarantee success.

Offering

A rivers waits with open arms.

A necessary sacrifice.

In the end, water was what loved her most.

The monsoons had not come on time.

A tiny body,

an abyss.

River

“The God of Loss.”

“The God of Small Things.”

“Naked but for his nail varnish.”

Helen Deverell

English II

Ms. Hume

4/12/17

The God of Small Things Reflection

While reading The God of Small Things, I rarely noticed that Roy used the same phrase or combination of words recurringly across multiple chapters to add depth and detail to the novel’s greater themes and motifs. Before this creative project, a substantial portion of Arundhati Roy’s sensual imagery and subtle references were lost on me. It was no secret that her sentences and paragraphs were adeptly and deftly crafted, and her adjectival use and vivid color depictions stood out on the page. However, I was not quite able to piece together the connections that Roy clearly worked hard to lay out. I was often so consumed with Roy’s ornate and intriguing writing that I did not fully take note of, nor did I internalize, each character's’ respective points of view. I did not notice how often Roy described knickers as “starkly pressed”, nor did I realize how often Roy used “yellow” as an adjective to describe negative things or people, nor did I notice how Sophie Mol almost exclusively wore bell-bottoms. After deconstructing Roy’s imagery and piecing together her vibrant language, I began to see how her sentences, paragraphs, and chapters worked in congruence to contribute to overarching themes like forbidden love, anglophilia, the caste system, and two children’s juvenile understanding of what life is like as a person of color.

Rahel is merely one of the characters from The God of Small Things that I feel as though I understand more after creating my found poem. For the majority of The God of Small Things, Rahel seemed to me to be a well-meaning, if not slightly naive, young girl. However, after going back and picking apart the pieces of Roy’s writing, I realize that Rahel noticed more than I gave her credit for. Rahel describes adult situations with a childlike simplicity that I mistook for pure immaturity, but, over the years, she grasps a hold of important nuances that might have blown over the heads of other girls her age. For example, upon returning to Roy’s writing, I noticed how much emphasis Roy puts on Rahel’s infatuation with “hellos.” In my poem from chapter eight, I arrange Roy’s writing to read, “Rubyringed fingers hang on to dignity like a white man’s tennis trophy. Brown, cake-crumbed fingers hang on to “hellos” like a white man’s pressed knickers.” In the airport, Rahel notices that the way she is greeted is different from the way that Sophie Mol is greeted and different still from the way that the adults in her life are greeted. This realization contributes to her feeling of being “loved less”, and I had never before realized all the small details that Roy added to Rahel’s perspective to further her feelings of isolation and loneliness.

Although The God of Small Things is not a linear novel from a timing perspective, I read it as such. I read each page from left to right, and I did not often make the connections between the past details that Roy described and the subsequent events that ensued. In The God of Small Things, Roy took apart the pieces of her characters’s’ lives and reattached them in a jumbled fashion. The God of Small Things was a book that did not allow the reader to skim over anything, as each event is integral in understanding the novel as a whole. I took a similar approach with my found poem. In order to further understand the characters, plot line, and writing style, I took out chunks of Roy’s writing and reorganized key ideas in a way that made sense to me.