Task 4

"So for a time I had a partner-my husband and I, soldiers together just as when we were little soldiers playing in the village. We rode side by side into battle. When I became pregnant, during the last 4 months, I wore my armor altered so that I looked like a powerful big man," (Kingston, 39).Kingston, Maxine Hongston. "White Tigers." "The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts." New York: Knopf, 1976. 34. Print.

So Mu Lan here was at war, disguised as a man, and suddenly got married and pregnant. My original thoughts on this was that it didn't seem like good parenting to get pregnant in the middle of a war, because it seems like the baby would die.

The content in this part of the story is odd because, as I said before, a pregnant woman is fighting in a war. First of all, at the time women were supposed to be wives, but here she was fighting anyway. But the story explains that. She was fighting because she had been trained from a young girl, and fought in place of her father. But then I wondered why she was fighting if she was pregnant? Also, I thought about if she is supposed to be disguising as a man to fight in the army, then why did she get a husband?

In the balad, Mu Lan never gets a husband or gets pregnant. In the balad she tells her family that she does not have any man in her heart. Also, it's just unexpected that an army member would get pregnant, because of the dangerous conditions. But in this version she does. At the same time as going out and kicking everybody's ass, Mu Lan is fulfilling the traditional roles of a woman. She is a warrior, but she also is pursuing what she wants to do, even though these womanly characteristics clash with the ones people connect with masculinity.

I can't tell why Kingston wrote this for sure, but it might relate to her childhood. Her mother told her she would be just a wife. But at the same time, her mother taught her the original story of Mu Lan. So to me this fan fiction seems like a balance between those two things. She roughly follows the story of this swords woman, but also goes back to the values her mother taught her. And the swords woman in the story doesn't feel embarrassed of her feminine traits even though she doesn't make them public knowledge. So it seems that Kingston made this fan-fiction, and then put her own morals into it. Maybe that is a writing style.

The Warrior Woman notes

Sherman Alexie Skeleton

Cale Houghton

Introduction:

In my experience, how Native Americans live is not widely known by people who have not been in reservations. Sure, some people have probably read a newspaper or magazine article about reservations. But all most people know about Native American’s is that they are poor, and the reservations have drug and alcohol problems. That is if they know anything at all. Some people don’t know anything about Native Americans besides that they used to wear headdresses and live in longhouses. Because people already have these misconceptions and negative stereotypes about Native Americans, you would think that a Native American author would want to give an accurate representation of Native Americans, while dissuading stereotypes.

In contrast to this though, Sherman Alexie’s story “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore”, is a Native American author giving the story of basketball players on a reservation. His story describes Native Americans as lazy, drunk, and poor. The reason this is troubling is I would expect an author to have pride in their culture, and try to represent their people well. But Alexie actually makes Native Americans seem worse than people already view them, instead of better. So, if people are impressionable on their opinion on Native Americans, but Sherman Alexie, a Native American, reinforces negative stereotypes of Native Americans, then why does he not represent his own race in a positive way?

I think that the reason Alexie doesn’t try to dissuade stereotypes is because his story is not meant for people on the reservation, it’s meant for the kids on the reservation. I think that his reason for wanting this book to be read by kids is that he thinks the kids feel invincible because they expect others to fix issues in  their life, but there is no one to solve their problems. And this dependency on no one causes the Native American children to continue the sequence of not making it out of the reservation.

Body Paragraphs:

This story is not meant for people outside of the rez.

• He makes serious things non-serious.
• This is why he doesn’t care about creating stereotypes. He knows that Native Americans won’t create stereotypes of their own people as they have been living around them their whole lives.

This story is aimed at the kids on the reservation.

• It’s all about Basketball. This is obviously going to resonate with kids more than adults.
• It’s the kids who seem to be the only one with importance in their society. They are the rez heroes, they are the ones that can fail / succeed.

He is trying to teach the kids that if they feel invincible, and expect other people to carry them to success, that no one is going to solve their problems. And this is how the cycle of every reservation hero failing happens.

• Obviously, he gives them these very personal looks at how Victor and Julius failed.
• I think more importantly is the symbolic meaning of how the story starts the same way it ends.

• This is why he portrays Adrian and Victor as so lazy. He isn’t trying to make stereotypes, he is trying to show that people like this are who they rely on.
• This is why he adds the traffic signal to the story. It is an example of what happens to the problems. There is no “they” to fix your problems, and the others on the rez won’t do it either.

Conclusion:

So, the reason Alexie is not worried about stereotypes is because this was not meant to be for people who would form stereotypes, it is for kids in the reservation. What Alexie is trying to teach kids is that the feel untouchable because they think that they are just kids, and that other people will solve their problems. There is nobody to solve their problems though, and this is why generation after generation of kids fail at getting out of the reservation.

Exploratory Draft for Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie Exploratory Draft

Cale Houghton

My idea is that Alexie is trying to send a message to the kids on the rez of how much pressure is on them, because the kids always have this feeling of invincibility.

The reason I think that this story is aimed at people in the rez is that he doesn’t try to sugar coat anything they do. I think that if this story was aimed at people outside the rez he wouldn’t want to enforce or create stereotypes, but if he is telling it to his own people he would be trying to send a message.

I think that this is based at the kids because:

• He always mentions the kids as the ones failing. The adults are the ones who have already failed, according to Victor. It’s not like adults are the rez heroes. They’re all kids. The adults don’t seem to have a chance once they have failed as a kid.
• He gives his own experiences as a kid, of how he felt invincible and then crashed. He is trying to give his own experiences about childhood, and how suddenly he lost it all at once. He is stressing how important childhood is in this, and trying to give them a sense of urgency.
• The story is about Basketball. I think this is a major reason why this story is so geared towards kids. Sports were probably a lot more of a focus than academics to kids, because thats just how kids are wired. Adults though are more concerned with academics. But this story isn’t about how people on the rez fail academically. It is about how they fail in basketball.

The reason I think this is a warning for the kids instead of just a story for the kids is all it shows is failure. It shows how every rez hero makes the same mistake, and how they all feel invincible before hand. If it was just a story for the kids, it would show people from the rez succeeding, and probably have some kind of moral from which the kids could learn from. But there is no happy ending in this story. It ends with Julian drunk and hopeless, and the Victor and Adrian staring at Lucy and placing all their hopes on her. But we know, nothing really seems to have changed on the rez. They are going through the same old cycle that they always go through. It’s kind of funny because the last scene when they see lucy go by is a lot like the first scene when they see Julius go by. Victor and Adrian are sitting on the porch, drinking from cups, and they notice the next hero go by, brown from the sun and surrounded by friends. I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but to me it seems like it symbolizes the cycle the reservation goes through, with the last scene looping around to the first scene.

Formula / Text Explorations for Sherman Alexie

3/9 Text Explorations / Formula

Cale Houghton

Period 5 Literature of the Americas

Formula:

Status Quo - Many people who have never been on reservations know very little about Native Americans. All they know is that Native Americans are mostly poor and have alcohol problems. So a Native American author would want to get rid of these negative stereotypes.

Trouble - The characters in Sherman Alexie’s story fit that stereotype exactly. They are lazy, poor and former alcoholics.

Question: If people already have bad preconceptions of Native Americans, but Native American authors just enforce those stereotypes, what do they want to gain from going along with the what people already think?

Claim: I don’t think “people” who will judge that Native Americans based off of a book are meant to be the audience. I think that Alexie writes this story for people on the rez. He wants to show kids on the rez that they have to step up in order for the rez to have hope.

Bold = Unpack

Text Explorations:

“But I used to be quite the ball player. Maybe not as good as some, certainly not as good as Julius, but I still felt that ache1 in my bones, that need to be better than everyone else. It’s that need to be the best, the feeling of immortality2, that drives a ball player. And when it disappears3, for whatever reason4, that ballplayer is never the same person, on or off the court,” (Alexie, 46).

1. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ache as, ache: a continuous or prolonged dull pain. So Victor feels this continuous pain, to play basketball. This is troubling because he never did  play basketball since the last game. So if it pains him to not go and play basketball, why doesn’t he just do it?

2. Immortality: The condition of being celebrated through all time; enduring fame or remembrance. So he felt like he would never be forgotten when he was a kid, before the championship. This is ironic, because everyone before him was forgotten. Everybody to ever try has failed, but he doesn’t even pay attention to them, and he ends up making the same mistakes. Maybe this connects to the message he is trying to send to kids on the rez. He is saying to learn from others mistakes.
3. How this feeling of immortality disappears is kind of similar what to I said above. Everybody else to ever try to get out of the rez eventually lost it all of a sudden, because they go “bad”. But the word disappears makes it sound like all of a sudden they couldn’t play basketball.
4. I think its interesting how he says “whatever reasons”. Because it seems like all the Native Americans don’t make it because of how they think they are immortal. But at the same time, he and his team lost it at a random time. They were just in the locker room, and suddenly they all started freaking out. He missed every shot.

“‘Shit, they1 better fix it. Might cause an accident.’

We both looked at each other, looked at the traffic signal, knew that about only one car an hour passed by, and laughed our asses off2. Laughed so hard that when we tried to rearrange ourselves, Adrian ended up with my ass and I ended up with his. That looked so funny that we laughed them off again and it took us most of an hour to get them back on again3,” (Alexie, 48).

1. I think it’s very interesting that Adrian uses the word “they”. As I have learned in Latin, “they” is 3rd person, so it involves someone outside the conversation. So Adrian is saying that neither him or Victor will ever fix the signal. That’s funny, because they are the ones who complain about boredom. But they don’t fix their problems. Victor and Adrian leave their problems to “they”. But who is “they”? No one really, because no one will ever fix the stop light. So in a way I think that Alexie is saying that no one will fix your problems, if you don’t fix them yourselves.
2. I think that this is how Alexie makes the serious into a joke. I think that this is a further example of how this is aimed at people on the rez. He tries to make how they will never fix the light a joke, even though it just goes to show that they have no one taking responsibility. He obviously would not want an outsider to think that rez problems were a joke, but he might want to amuse someone in the rez.
3. Now it is almost as if he is toying with the reader, and he does this a lot within the text. Another time he does this is pretending he has 4 arms. Why does he do this? It disorients the reader a lot. It doesn’t seem like he cares about the reader at this point, he just wants to write. Or maybe it just seems like that to me, because I am not the target of the story.

“By the fourth quarter, Julius sat at the end of the bench, hanging his head1, and the crowd filed out, all talking about which of the younger players looked good2. We talked about some kid named Lucy in the third grade who already had a nice move or two3,” (Alexie, 51).

1. This part is kind of similar to what happened to Victor. Julius just cracked all of a sudden. It took the span of a day, and after this he just gets drunk around the rez. Both of them snap in a matter of minutes. I know that before this, they both thought that they were invincible, making stupid mistakes. But at the time that they snapped, they weren’t necessarily making a dumb mistake. Maybe the reason they snapped all of a sudden was because they came to realize that they were turning out the same way everybody did. Victor lost it when he was looking at pictures of people all dying in horrible accidents. Maybe he connected all the people dying over and over again to the rez heroes not making it again and again.
2. It amazes me how quick they moved on. Julius had been the coolest kid on the rez, but in an instant, they had moved on. They are as quick at moving on to another hero as Julius is to become mortal. It shows how the older people in the rez have seen it so many times that they know what is going to happen, even if the kids think they are invincible.
3. It seems like they are putting a lot of pressure on the reservation heroes that they choose. Lucy is only in third grade, but everybody is counting on her. It seems like they do that for all the other rez heroes as well. Everybody in the town counts on them to succeed. It’s also kind of continuing the loop of the reservation. As soon as one hero is done, they move on to the next one, whom they have been observing from a far. They don’t expect anybody to make it outside the rez.

Sherman Alexie Proposal

3/5 Proposal

Cale Houghton

The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore

I am interested in writing about Sherman Alexie’s story because many people who have never been to a reservation do not know much about Native American culture, and what has happened to them. All they know is that they live on reservations, most live in poverty, and there are rampant drug and alcohol problems. So you would think that Sherman Alexie would try to give positive insights into the life of Native Americans, and how their culture has evolved. But, the Native Americans in his story are lazy, drunk, and hopeless. So if he is making an impression on many people, but he represents his own people as hopeless, why why would he want to portray them using the exact bad stereotypes people already have? One way to consider this is that he was not intending this story for people outside of the reservation. He means this as a message to the Native Americans on the res of what others see them as. So in a way I think he is using this as a wake up call to show his people the patterns they keep taking.

Text Exploration for: The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore

Text Exploration for: The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore

Possible Leads:
-Pointless.
-Unique narrative style.
-Humanizes.

Text Exploration:
"I think everybody on that team, lost the feeling of immortality1. We went out and lost the championship by 20 points. I missed every shot I took. I missed everything2.
"So" I asked Adrian. "You think Julian will make it all the way3?"
"Maybe, maybe4."" (Alexie, 47).

1. Immortality is defined in the Merriam Webster dictionary as "the quality or state of someone or something that will never die or be forgotten." I was kind of wondering why they had felt so immortal before. For literally the entire history of the reservation, people in their shoes had been trying the same things as them, and every single person who had tried it was eventually defeated. No one, as Victor says, made it off of the res. Maybe though, the story was narrated by Victor for a reason. He was the one who believed in himself, when it was his turn to try and be the reservation hero, and he is always the one who believes in the newcomers.

2. When Victor states "I missed everything," it seemed kind of odd to me that he would put it this way. He shows no emotion at all in this sentence, even though it was the biggest failure of his life. I am wondering why it seems that he doesn't care about his own experience, and that all he thinks about is the next person to make it all the way?

3. The fact that he is asking about Julian right after talking about his own failure is interesting. He obviously connects the two. Also, I notice that it puts a lot of pressure on the reservation hero to succeed. Everybody in the town focuses on them winning. They are the very top of the heap, and if they can't make it, no one can. And yet there is no one for the kid to rely on, no role model that they have. They are destined to fail almost, because they have no precedent on how to succeed. And of course, everybody in the town was counting on that one person. So when they fail, the next reservation hero already sees how he is going to turn out. It's a cycle that all of them know about (none of their heroes are succeeding), but none of them know how to fix. Maybe this relates to how they all drink alcohol. Victor is one of the only ones who doesn't accept that this will keep happening forever, as he stops drinking alcohol and is still looking for the next hero.

4.Adrian's Response "Maybe, maybe" makes it seem as though he doesn't think he will. If he had any confidence he would have said yes, to cheer up his friend. It just shows how for them they think everything has been predestined. They have seen the same repeating story so many times that they no longer have much hope. The only sign of hope I see throughout the story is from Victor, in Lucy. Again, it seems like it is just him who believes that they can get out of the tradition of having no one ever get off the res.

*Sorry that I didn't use OED I couldn't find how to access it.