INTRO TO LITERATURE AGENDA: WEDNESDAY JAN 30
1)Extra Credit Q
2)About the Oral Presentation [class6-oralpresentation.doc,
class6-oral book-chosen sheet-with approval.doc ]
3)About the TRACKER SHEET: extra credit opportunity and part
of take home exam class13-Lit_tracking_sheet-v2.doc
4)Give out Symbolism Handout (read for MONDAY)
5) 5 ways of revealing Characterization (pt 1 of handout) below
6)Discuss Danny
7) ‘A’ for AUTHOR in ERATTTTIC /Danny Santiago Bio
8)FOR MONDAY: READ Shirley Jackson’s Lottery and Symbolism
handout
1)QUESTIONS:
1)Chato drops out of school to become a writer
of _____________________
2)In Freytag’s triangle, #2
Inciting Incident is ______________________________
5)Characterization is the way writers develop
characters and reveal those characters’ traits, beliefs, and psychology to
readers
Characterization revealed thru:
A) Actions
B) reactions
to situations or other characters
C) Dialogue/internal
monologue
D) physical
appearance, gestures, and expressions
E) showing/revealing
motivation: the reasons behind his or her behavior
A-E are either revealed directly in the
story (3rd person narrator reveals their past, thoughts, experiences
and judgments, analysis)
or 1st person where character tells reader about
themselves and other characters (reliable or unreliable narrator).
***Individuals, groups, even sometimes setting can
be a main or minor character in a story***
6)Discuss Danny
Like/ Don’t like vs
“Birthday”?
Summarize:
Main Conflict? Conflicts in the family and
in the community?
POV: accurate narrator? First person? Vs Narrator and style in
Birthday?
Characters: Most
memorable thing in story
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What do you find interesting about Chato? And uninteresting? Chosen for Author’s agenda? Stereotypes?
Characterization?
A)By Actions:
Chato saw a girl drawing hearts
Chato questioned Crusader about her act
Chato and Crusader lost balance.
Crusader invited Chato to write together.
Chato almost accepted Crusader’s invitation. Why not?
Chato grabbed the lipstick from Crusader.
Throws lipstick in the sewer
Looks at pretty girl (18); Looks at Cadillac Man
B) reactions
to situations or other characters
Boredom, gang, tagging on his house, breakfast scene, treatment of
family (“Doesn’t mean that much to me to mean that much to you” Neil Young)
C) Dialogue/internal
monologue
things hit me like that sudden /I can feel everything she’s
got / Chato thought of getting a job.
“Dogs leave their name all over the place… lampposts” (Boys’
Club/Calderon)
D) physical
appearance, gestures, and expressions
(How old is Chato?)
E) showing/revealing
motivation: the reasons behind his or her behavior
dreams of being famous all over town.
WALK THRU TRACKER SHEET FOR
‘SOMEBODY’
Places where Chato writes his name? Significance?
Scene with Crusader Rabbit drawing hearts and confrontation
and invitation.
“Without a gang, you’re nobody.” Vs family vs
boy’s club
“I cruised on up Broadway getting rich”. (if name is on it,
you own it)
“He goes into that voice with the church music in it”
Chato’s father had a couple of dreams and aspirations for Chato. What do you think they express about the aspirations
of Mexican Americans?
how would it be different if told by Chato
as an adult?
7)DOES
THE AUTHOR MATTER/ INFLUENCE A BOOK’s LASTING
LITERARY VALUE?
Danny Santiago bio:
several short stories and a novel called Famous All over Town
"In 1984 the
1970 when his first short story, "The
Somebody," was published in Redbook (February).
In 1983 when his novel, Famous All Over Town,
was published by Simon and Schuster,
DOES THE
AUTHOR MATTER? New
Subsequent
to the award it was revealed, with some embarrassment, that the newly
discovered Chicano writer was not Chicano at all: Hostility and debate, when
John Gregory Dunne revealed “The Secret of Danny Santiago” in the New York
Review of Books (16 August 1984).
'Danny
Santiago was white and born in 1911. Was really 73 year-old Daniel James, author of several
previously published books, and better known as a playwright and screenwriter;
and a former Communist Party member who had been blacklisted by
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educated in Classics at Yale; from a rich
family that made fortune
manufacturing and distributing fine china. A measure of
their wealth was the splendid mansion built for
them on a cliff in
Charles Greene.17 Carmel then as now was
home to the very rich, but, much to
their displeasure, it also attracted a number
of left-wing intellectuals, including
Langston Hughes, Ella Winter, and Charlie
Chaplin.18 Chaplin stayed with the
James’s and became familiar with Daniel,
who was by then an active member of Communist party
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experience doing massive volunteer social work in
Mexican-American districts and slums of
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narrated by the
fourteen-year-old Chicano boy he felt closer to '
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Many Thought Famous All Over Town alone
should have been the issue, and not its author's identity, the awards committee
confessed that they might have had second thoughts about giving the novel their
prize, had they known its author was 'Anglo' and not 'Chicano.')"
The Simon & Schuster
editor who bought Santiago's book stated that the author had
hidden his identity and masqueraded as a Chicano (using Chicano slang in
his letters to the editor) and, even after his identity had been exposed,
expressed his intention to continue writing as Danny Santiago. He died before he completed another book.
Died in 1988 before writing any other
Novels as Danny Santiago
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How could James have managed to dupe the
publishers and the critics?
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Escape from Blacklist same as escape from
Racism?
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Angry Reaction by many Chicano writers and
lit crits: reverse racism?
OTHER EXAMPLE OF AUTHOR FRAUD: Education of Little Tree, ASA CARTER,
man writing as native american
who turned out to be a white supremacist
http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v6n1/nonfiction/browder_l/part1.htm
http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v6n1/nonfiction/browder_l/part3.htm
Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities
Laura Browder
Passing for another
economic or ethnic group that is currently a hot topic
END