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Th 9/1 Anzia
Yezierska, Bread Givers
__________________________________________
T 9/6 Yezierska, Bread
Givers ___Brennen________________________________________
Th 9/8 Yezierska, Bread Givers ____Muhammad__________________________________
T 9/13 The Jazz Singer (film, 1927) ____Elliott____________________________________
Th 9/15
Settlement House photos _____Viviane__________________________________
Jacob Riis, “How
the Other Half Lives” essay and photos, and Lewis Hine photos __
_____Mackenzie, Jensine________________________________________________
T 9/20
Immigration and Caricature images ____Amira_____________________________
Th 9/22 Claude McKay,
selected poem ____Kevin___________________________
T 9/27 William Ripley,
“Race Progress and Immigration”______Dominick_____________
Randolph Bourne,
“Trans-National America” ___Cat______________________
Th 10/13 John
Okada, No-No Boy ___Michael K____________________________________
F 10/14 Okada, No-No Boy _________Christian__________________________________
T 10/18 Okada, No-No
Boy _______William__________________________________
Th 10/20 Colm
Toibin, Brooklyn_____Natalie, Viviane___________________________
T 10/25 Toibin, Brooklyn
________Kimberly_______________________________________
Th 10/27 Toibin, Brooklyn __________Karina, Melissa_______________________________
T 11/1 Lone Star (film, 1996) _______Rachel,
Andrew__________________________
Th 11/3 Nuyorican
& Latino poetry ___Xavier, Nicholas___________________________
Th 11/10 Jamaica
Kincaid, Lucy ______Laura______________________________
T 11/15 Kincaid, Lucy
_____________________________________________________
Th 11/17 Dinaw
Mengestu, The Beautiful Things ____Komal,
Dominick___________________
T 11/22 Mengestu, The
Beautiful Things ________Jattna_________________________
Th 12/1 Mengestu, The
Beautiful Things ___Serena____________________________
T 12/6 Ocean
Vuong poems _________Michael T_______________________________
Th 12/8 Philip
Metres poem; Suheir Hammad, “First Writing Since”; Mohja Kahf, “The Chicken
Queen” ___________________________________________________________
In what ways does the Smolinsky family accept/reject social conformity?
ReplyDeleteHow does the Russian culture/heritage of the family effect the Smolinsky sisters views of America?
How does the father's religious values shape his hyper masculine views toward women?
1) The Smolinsky family, for the most part, accept social conformity. The father tries to marry off the daughters because those are the norms of society at that time, women, as is often repeated, only exist because/due to men. And the women obey their father's and society's wishes, and are married off to their respective husbands, living a life of servitude.
ReplyDelete2) The Smolinsky sisters lived a better life back in Russia according to their lifestyle depictions. They had nice homes and lots of food on the table. Their Utopian views of America is what drove them out of Russia, in search of an even more lavish life here. However, they were disappointed when they found out America wasn't all they cracked it up to be. They basically live from pay check to pay check, always worrying about how they'll survive another day, the father always looking to marry off one of the sisters, basically just using his offspring to profit off them.
3) The father constantly repeats this phrase from the Torah, essentially saying that women only exist because of and due to men, to take care of men while men are the "bread givers" of the family. This perspective of his causes him to mistreat his whole family essentially because they're all women. In his eyes, women are lower than men and depend on men to fend for the whole family, he would never see them as equals, but rather as the former depending on the latter.