<font color=skyblue> Has anybody had to read this novel for their American Literature class or because you wanted to read all of Operah's crappy books?

I have to read it in Amer. Lit. Let me to you...American Lit. sucks! Our people are the dumbest, raunchiest, most vulgar writers there are! This crazy woman won prizes for her crappy work, and I am here to say it was not because of her ability to write, but maybe moreso because of the ethnic portrayal and the value of the text in a historical sense...and because the author is a black woman, and white men try to prove that they are no longer rascist nor anti-fems. by giving black women awards for mediocre writing.

I much prefer British Literature, but have to suffer in this class with the horrible writing that Americans claim to be able to do. Yuck.

Lemme tell you why this is so poor without even mentioning the context of the book. Realism, Nationalism, and Post Nationalism. These are ways that writers wrote about historical stuff. Instead of fantasy and romance, they tend to say that all the characters are bad humans that always do wrong things, and that the world is ugly.

When I read, I read for enjoyment...not for a history lesson on how bad black people were treated nor how ugly the World Wars were. That type of reading is labor-laden.

I hate this class that I am in, and the books we're required to read. I want to enjoy a reading, not waste my eyes on vulgar crap. Have any of you read this dirty little book? There are no protaganists, you are supposed to hate everybody, you are supposed to smell the stench of the day, and you are supposed to understand all the subtle hints that they drop you...that the little boy's death really meant that the girls that killed him were coming of age, and that Sula poking a stick into the ground meant that she was exploring her sexual awareness as she is now 12 years old...and we have to know all these meanings and guess them the way that the teacher wants us to know them, in order to pass the class. Our own interpretation is not good enough,,,it has to be what the instructor feels is right.


Somebody shoot me.</font>

[img]graemlins/laugh3.gif[/img] Yep, I had American Lit. last year, and Sula was one of those required for our summer reading. I found it disturbing to say the least, but I'll refrain as to why.

But I wouldn't say that all American literature can be classified as such. I had to read Cold Mountain, and thought it was an exceptional read. It's set during the Civil War, and focuses on a deserter's struggle home.

[ 08-26-2003, 11:37 PM: Message edited by: Nanobyte ]

I never enjoyed classes where the right answer was the one the instructor was thinking of :(

I remember my university spanish classes well. The instructor didn't like me for three reasons:

1. I was a French speaker first, Spanish second
2. I was good friends with the French professor
3. I approach languages from a concept perspective, not a rote perspective.

By that last, I mean that I use languages to express a concept, not to memorize a dictionary of terms. So if I have to translate "drill press" into French, for example, I may say "the machine that puts holes in the metal" if I can't think of "drill press" (perceuse) in French. Yeah, it's longer winded, but it gets the point across.

In one Spanish exam, I was supposed to translate "the attractive girl". I could not think of the word for attractive, so I guessed: "la chica attractiva". That's correct (although not common usage; "hermosa" is more common), but since I spelled it wrong ("attractiva" has one "t" in Spanish), I was marked fully wrong on the question. Apparently, had I spelled it correctly, she would have given me credit.

[img]graemlins/madhell.gif[/img] Still gets my dander up when I think of it.