Spring 2008 Advance Course Information

This information effective for spring 2008. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

Literature/Creative Writing

[ LTCR-170 ]

170 Methods and Materials: “Writing in the Borderlands: Mixed Spaces, Hybrid Cultures, Blurred Genres”

Please note: This syllabus (except "Required Texts") is from spring 2006, and is subject to change.

Instructor: Rob Wilson
Office: Humanities  631
Hours: Mondays 4-6:30 p.m. and by arrangement
Phone: 9-2401 (office)
E-mail: rwilson@ucsc.edu

Course Description

Exploring and writing in relation to a specific set of creative-writing methods and materials, this LTCR170 course is called "Writing in the Borderlands: Mixed Spaces, Hybrid Cultures, Blurred Genres.” It will focus on the writings of mixed forms and prose, drama, memoir, and poetry tactics in works like Gloria Anzaldua's "Borderlands/La Frontera,” Frantz Fanon’s “Black Skins, White Masks,” Bob Dylan's movie "Masked and Anonymous" and some of his lyrics, Sam Shepard's one-act play True Dylan, Jack Kerouac's Some of the Dharma, a posthumous interview with Marilyn Monroe in Kate Braverman's Frantic Transmissions, Carolyn LeilaniLau's "Ono Ono Girl's Hula," Justin Chin's "Mongrel," and Michael Ondaatje's memoir Running in the Family and docu-movie on an animal-influence language-poet, Sons of Captain Poetry.

These "borderlands" works grow out of using the mixed languages, mixed cultures, and mixed-genre situations and reflect the hybrid and cross-coded pulls of postcolonial politics: mongrel places like the Tex Mex Border (Anzaldua), the class mixtures and fantasies of Los Angeles (Kate Braverman), on-the-road mongrelized spirituality (Jack Kerouac) in Some of the Dharma, Chinese/ Hawaiian/ American (Lau), and diasporic ethnicity and gay transgendering in San Francisco (Chin) and more. We will draw on a rich archive of materials, poetic and critical, gathered from Hawai'i, California, Mexico, and the West Indies as put together in a course reader that is required reading for the methods and materials of the course.

Students will have to write something specific and relevant to the readings each week that will form part of our “workshop” discussion of student writings in the Wednesday class meetings.  Out of these required 6-7 weekly writings, each student will work towards compiling his or her own “borderlands portfolio” (15-20 pages of writing) that can contain poems, essays, prose descriptions, polemics, and autobiographical passages collated into an imaginative vision of place, culture, language, and self.  As an alternative final project, the student can work on a separate work (say, a screenplay or set of poems or a memoir) to deal with some "borderland" issues and tactics, even if not exclusively so.  Weekly writings will be due on most Mondays; final project will be due by Monday, June 12.

bor·der (bôr´der) —n.  1. A margin, rim, or edge.  2. A design or a decorative strip around the edge or rim of something, as a fabric.  3. A strip of ground in which ornamental plants or shrubbery is planted.  4. The line or frontier area separating political divisions or geographic regions; boundary.
 —tr. v.-dered., -der·ing., -ders.   1. To put a border on.  2. To lie along or adjacent to the border of. —Phrasal verb:  border on (or upon).  1. To adjoin.  2. To be almost like; approach in character: an act that borders on heroism. [ME bordure < OFr. bordëure < border, to border < bort, border, of Germanic orig.]  bor´der·er n.

SYNONYMS:  BORDER, MARGIN, EDGE, VERGE, BRINK, BROW, RIM, BRIM.
All these words refer to the line or narrow area that marks the outmost bound of a surface. Border refers either to the boundary (limiting line) of a surface or, more often, to the area that immediately adjoins the boundary. Margin is an area, adjacent to the boundary, that is more or less precisely definable as to width and often distinguishable in other respects from the rest of the surface. Edge may refer specifically to the precise bounding line formed by the continuous convergence of two surfaces of a solid. Verge is an extreme terminating line or edge; figuratively it indicates extreme closeness to, or the imminence of, a thing or condition. Brink denotes the edge of a steep incline or slope; figuratively it indicates the imminence of an extreme condition, such as disaster or war. Brow is the upper edge of a steep incline. Rim denotes the edge of a surface that is circular or curved, such as a wheel or cymbal. Brim applies to the upper edge or inner side of the rim of a vessel or container, such as a cup.

mar·gin  (mär´jín) —n.  1. An edge and the area immediately adjacent to it; border.  2. The blank space bordering the written or printed area on a page.  3. A limit of a state or process: the margin of reality.  4. An amount allowed beyond what is needed: a margin of safety.  5. A measure, quantity, or degree of difference: a margin of 500 votes.  6. Econ. a. The minimum return that an enterprise may earn and still pay for itself. b. The difference between the cost and the selling price of securities or commodities. c. The difference between the market value of collateral and the face value of a loan.  7. An amount in money, or represented by securities, deposited by a customer with his broker as a provision against loss on transactions made on account.  8.  BOTANY The border of a leaf.  9.  BIOLOGY The boundary area of an insect's wing.

 —tr. v.-gined., -gin·ing., -gins.   1. To provide with a margin.  2. To be a margin to; border.  3. To inscribe or enter in the margin of a page.  4.  a. To add margin to: margin up a brokerage account. b. To deposit margin for: margin a transaction. c. To buy or hold (securities) by depositing or adding to a margin. [ME < Lat. margo.]

Required Texts

Our required “Borderlands Workshop Reader” will contain an assortment of xeroxed materials and examples relating to the various writing assignments; these reading materials are required and essential to the course. This Course Reader will be available only at Literary Guillotine Bookstore located at 204 Locust Street in downtown Santa Cruz (phone:  457-1195)

Required texts for Spring, 2008 (in addition to the Course Reader) include
Roxanne Power Hamilton, ed., Viz. Inter-Arts, A Trans-Genre Anthology  (2007).

Contents of the “Borderlands” Course Reader

1)  Gloria Anzaldua, selections of prose and poetry from Borderlands/La Frontera (San Francisco:  Aunt Lute Books, 1987).

2) Kate Braverman, "The Collective Voice of Los Angeles Speaks:  Marilyn Monroe" and "Escaping Los Angeles:  Uncle Irving's Advice," chapters from Frantic Transmissions to and From Los Angeles:  An Accidental Memoir (Saint Paul, Minnesota:  Graywolf Press, 2006).

3) Karen Tei Yamashita, "The Santa Cruz of Tofu" autobiographical essay from the web-journal Cafe Creole (1998).

4) Rob Wilson, "The Worlding World of the White Surfer Dude/Duke Kahanamoku:  Some Transpacific Karaoke," from special issue of Chain on public art (2004).

5) Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” essay from Profession 97 (1997):  33-40.

6) Kathy Dee Banggo, selections of poetry from 4-evaz, Anna (Honolulu: Tinfish Network, 1997).

7) Various Asia/Pacific poems from Premonitions, ed. Walter K. Lew  (New York:  Kaya Production, 1995).

8) Various poetry from Hawaiian “local” poets (Joseph Puna Balaz, Puanani Burgess, Eric Chock et al) and  Hawaiian poetry from Ho’omanoa (Tamara Wong Morrison, Joseph Balaz et al).

9) Rob Wilson, "Postmodern X:  Honolulu Traces," essay-poem (2000).

10), Bob Dylan, "Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)," "Blind Willy McTell" (poems), and selection from screenplay to the movie Masked and Anonymous (2003).

11) Sam Shepard, one-act play True Dylan (1987).

12)  Carolyn Lei-LaniLau, “Keonilani” (poem) and selections from her mixed-genre autobiography, Ono Ono Girl’s Hula (Madison:  University of Wisconsin Press, 1997).

13) Justin Chin, selections from Mongrel:  Essays, Diatribes, and Pranks (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

14) Frantz Fanon, selections from his work of autobiography and cultural theory, Black Skin, White Masks (New York:  Grove Weidenfeld, 1967).

15) Michael Ondaatje, “Travels in Ceylon” (memoir/poems)  from Running in the Family (New York: Penguin Books, 1984).

16) Pico Iyer, final chapter to A Global Soul:  Jet Lag, Shopping Malls and the Search for Home (2000) and "The Necessity of Travel" (2002).

Assignments

Assignment Number One: 
“Writing In the Borderlands”-- Getting Started

(Due to be handed out on Monday, April 10:  one-three pages of prose/poetry: 
please bring enough copies for others to read and respond to and use during our Wednesday “workshop” sessions on April 12)

Pick one:

1) After pondering Gloria Anzaldua’s Preface portraying her own “borderlands” experience crossing and embodying the “Texas-US Southwest/Mexican border,” write at least three paragraphs of prose in which you express your own “borderlands” experience in a kind of mini-Preface to a book you would like to write.  What kind of title might such a book have?  What kind of stories would it tell?  What genres or forms of writing would it use?  (You can play off some of her own language or paragraph openings to get started, if you want.)

2) After reading over and absorbing Gloria Anzaldua’s poem, “To live in the Borderlands means you,” write one to two pages of prose or poetry in which you use the phrase “To live in the borderlands” as a recurring phrase or refrain to structure the work (or at least to get it started). If you can do so, try to use some of the mixed languages and cultures that you know to express this “borderlands” experience of your own.

3) Go to some contemporary “contact zone” you know well (for example, a mall, a coffee house, a gym, cyberspace chat rooms, a radio or TV talk show, a class room, your family dinner table), and put down in writing some of the mixed, clashing, and switching languages you hear there.  It need not be a completely accurate transcription; you can use what you hear to extend and amplify the play of languages you encounter there.

4) Following the example and writing tactics of Kate Braverman in her work called "The Collective Voice of Los Angeles Speaks:  Marilyn Monroe" (see Course Reader), write a posthumous interview with some character from the past who interests you, either historical or personal, in which you get this person to confide in you and explore some important, funny, or vivid incidents.   Or, following the example and writing tactics of Kate Braverman in "Escaping Los Angeles:  Uncle Irving's Advice," write in the voice of a character, personal or historical, giving you some advice on your life. 

Assignment Number Two: 
“Writing In the Borderlands”--
Renamings, Contact Zones, Switching Codes

(due on Monday, April 17:  one-three pages of prose/poetry: 
please bring enough copies for others to read and respond to and use during our Wednesday “workshop” sessions on April 19)

Pick one:

1) After pondering Gloria Anzaldua’s “borderlands” writings [see Course Reader] in which she renames the US Southwest  into its indigenous name, “Aztlan” (see “The Homeland, Aztlan” chapter) and explores the historical, mythic, and personal implications of this name/metaphor, give some person, place, or object you know a different, old, or new name and explore the implications of that name. Some examples would be using a Hawaiian or Japanese name instead of the imposed Anglo-American name; exploring a nickname; giving some object the name it has in a foreign or pidgin language and playing with the implications of that; making up a word (neologisms which “make or use new words or create new meanings for words”) and so on.

2) After reading Mary Louise Pratt’s example of how an Andean named Poma writes a letter back to King Philip III of Spain in which he offers a “Chronicle” (history) and view of good government from the Indian point of view, write a parody or multi-lingual deformation (it could be in a letter form) of some official document, text, or letter in which you “write back” to the elevated and proper-speaking sender and give him/her some counter-information.

3) As in Gloria Anzaldua’s story (p. 8) of how her mother and her family lost their land “‘Drought hit South Texas,’ my mother tells me. La tierra se puso bien seca...’” give some vivid anecdote of another person in which you use some of their language, or mixed languages, or the voice keeps shifting, to present their story.

4) Read Karen Tei Yamashita's playful essay work "The Santa Cruz of Tofu" [see Course Reader] and write your own portrayal of Santa Cruz as a multicultural "borderlands."  Write your own version of the Santa Cruz multicultural "borderlands" in any form or genre you want to.

5) Rob Wilson’s “Postmodern X:  Honolulu Traces” [see Course Reader] uses a loose, collage-like style of writing and juxtaposed paragraphs to capture a contemporary sense of culture in Hawai’i as impacted upon by the “borderless” flow of postmodern commodity culture.  Use something like this loose method of juxtaposition and paragraph-like stanzas to capture and portray your own contemporary sense of local culture in Hawai’i (or some other “border” space you know well).  (You can play off some of the specific language, lines, or images from this work to get started, if you want.)

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