Ben

Authors' Notes for Paper 1

The way I chose my topic was simple, I looked through the poems that were handed out on the first day of class and as I sifted through them one in particular caught my eye. I dont remember the author of the poem or the exact wording but the poem itself spoke to me. Therefore I decided to center my paper around it. Then we read the article by bell hooks this supplemented my understanding of how race and white folks interact with each other through language. This again became my focus as to what i was going to be writing about. I gained a whole lot of new insights as to how things pertaining to my topic are perceived through the eyes of my peers. I noticed that many people are hesitant to point the finger and say, "you know what, its white people that had us in bondage, it was people of european decent that projected this idea that eurocentrism and made it the norm during the eighteenth century" This by the way is factual, I'm not pulling it out of my [blank]. I find this sort of thing kind of odd, I mean from my perspective its as if people dont want to be accused of being racist or reverse racist by simply overlooking certain phrases or uses of terminology that might infer race. I also found that gallery walks are effective only if there are a few posters taped to the walls. The overall effectiveness of the workshop is questionable being that only a few students got any help at all from those that walked around and contributed their own insights and ideas. As far as my paper goes, I feel personally it has changed significantly. I'll be the first to admit that my first draft was complete garbage and I apologize to you Dr. Schettler for having to read that steaming pile. While I read it today, during the group discussion, I read my work and was actually embarrassed that I had turned it in in the first place. I had lots of errors, paragraphs that hadn't been adjusted properly, it was unorganized, I really didn't have any textual evidence at all to back up what I had written. But now, I incorporated the text by hooks and it happens to strengthen the positions I was backing in my first draft. Secondly, it isn't going to read like it did at first, with all the repetition. It actually flows along but not in the chronological order in which we read the books because first I talk about hooks and then go into the story of "Damballah" but I dont think this affects the overall thesis of the paper.