Our ebook has arrived!

Writing about Literature in the Digital Age is a free eBook by students at Brigham Young University who are pushing boundaries of traditional literary study to explore the benefits of digital tools in academic writing. This collaborative effort is a case study of how electronic text formats and blogging can be effectively used to explore literary works, develop one’s thinking publicly, and research socially. Students used literary works to read the emerging digital environment while simultaneously using new media to connect them with authentic issues and audiences beyond the classroom. As literacy and literature continue their rapid evolution, accounts like these from early explorers give teachers and students of literature fresh reference points for the literary-digital future.

During the webinar, we invite you to hear the authors discuss their work and the making of their eBook. You will be able to download your free copy of Writing About Literature in the Digital Age during or following the webinar launch on June 15th, 2011.

Contributors: Alymarie Rutter, Amy Whitaker, Annie Ostler, Ariel Letts, Ashley Lewis, Ashley Nelson, Ben Wagner, Bri Zabriskie, Carlie Wallentine, Derrick Clements, James Matthews, Matt Harrison, Nyssa Silvester, Rachael Schiel, Sam McGrath, Taylor Gilbert, and Gideon Burton.

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What it was like to be on "the design team"

Being on the design team was A LOT of work. I already had a base knowledge of working with the InDesign program, but I know that my team mate, Sam McGrath, spent a lot of time getting familiar with the program before we even started. InDesign was the program we used to compile the entire ebook, and I know that it's a great design program when you are completely familiar with it, but when you aren't, you confront of little quirks that sometimes turn into big frustrations.

Another program that was very helpful in our work was dropbox, which allowed us to compile all of the individual work that we were doing. I had never used it before, so I'm glad that I have come away with this familiarization of this online service.

To compile our book, we had to create a uniform style within InDesign to format all of the chapters. We had to create each chapter as a different file, because we didn't know the order of the chapters yet--this was kind of annoying considering we had to import paragraph and character styles for every new file. We also had to create our hyperlinks and what we hoped would have been an interactive table of contents. Unfortunately, this didn't happen because nothing we did would work the way we wanted to and we just didn't have enough time.

The hardest part about this process was that things that looked great on InDesign would for some reason look completely off in the epub format. This caused A LOT of grief. This is where a better knowledge and familiarization of InDesign would have been helpful. But I know that Sam shared a lot of tutorial videos that we would follow, and still not get the results we needed.

The moral of this story is that two weeks is not enough time at all to write, edit, compile, format, and publish a publication. It really taught us patience and skills in how to work effectively and skills on how not to throw the computer out the window after countless times of it not doing what we want.

I have to say that this experience wouldn't have been the same if I hadn't have had the chance to work with Sam and Ben Wagner. They were great to work with. They put in so much time into this project and they helped me learn so much.

I'm glad that I have come away with these skills now of working with InDesign and becoming more familiar with epub formatting. With the way things are going, it will definitely come in handy for the future. It also is rewarding to see your finished product. It also makes you feel giddy in a way to think that you have published something somewhere!

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What I have learned this term

The course outline we had for this class was to become more familiar with and appreciate the changing modes to reading literature and writing about it. This expected outcome was hard for me to see at first, because I was so used to the cookie cutter English major expectations. Starting a blog for a class to turn contribute our writing ideas was so new to me, and I enjoyed that aspect of the class.

As far as writing styles go, this class was surprising and sometimes confusing about what kind of writing styles were expected for this class. I was so used to an academic writing style, so being more free to bring in my personal voice and opinions was liberating. But then my professor told us that a lot of our blog posts were not academically-based enough. I loved putting together my chapter for our class ebook, which was to be personal and not restricted to any writing style. And then the requirement was given that we had to compose our chapter in a specific structure with a pull quote, sub-headings, and a "tweethis," which essentially made every person's chapter very uniform. So these kind of things confused me about the learning outcomes for this class.

I have come away from this class with a much greater appreciation for all the modes of online learning that there are. And I have come away with a greater perspective on the changing technology and how we can use it most effectively to help us in our acquisition of knowledge. I have especially enjoyed being involved with my classmates and getting to see their ideas and research along the way: it definitely gave me many new ideas to approaching research.

I plan on still trying to actively put out daily content on the web because I have learned more about the importance of a positive and active online presence. And I really hope that my classmates will do the same, because this has been a great class of students, with a lot of cool ideas and cool things to share.

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The digital age kind of depresses me

I've been thinking about this for the last few weeks as we have been discussing literature and writing in the digital age, and today we talked about it more in my Print Publishing class today and it made me kind of sad.

Remember the movie "You've Got Mail"? I love that movie. And as I watched it a few weeks ago, it made me sad to see the irony of it. Tom Hanks puts Meg Ryan's adorable neighborhood bookstore out of business with his book superstore a la Borders, but they still find love in the end. If they were to make a sequel to the movie it would now involve Hanks's huge bookstore declaring bankruptcy because of the "big bad" Amazon and the eReader revolution (and hopefully they still love each other).

I love the new technologies of today. Call me a traitor to the good old fashioned bookstore, but I love Amazon, I own a Kindle, and I love the modern resources there are to writing about literature like blogs and on-line forums. But I just wish that it were possible for me to still enjoy these things without Borders or Barnes and Noble to have to close stores or declare bankruptcy.

We talked about the future of print publishing today in my class, and it gave me a little hope for publishing. My favorite point of my Professor: novels still have a chance in print publishing because when you go to the beach and want your cheap reads to enjoy, are you going to take your fancy ipad and get sand all over it? I don't think so! What about giving books as gifts? Will people rather get a book electronically? That's an interesting thing to think about as well.

So I guess that we will just have to wait and see. In the meantime, I plan on going to Borders this week to purchase my beach read novels this week for my honeymoon (!!), and maybe buy another kindle book to read on the airplane over there. So it's win win, I guess.

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My chapter, bio, photo, and "Tweethis" statement

Here's my bio photo:

My chapter can be found here.

My tweetable statement: Modern writers are connecting with readers through modern means of communication: essentially creating a living, working, and involved relationship.

character count: 148. it's good?

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Mastering the Art of Class Project Combining

As a graduating senior, I have learned how valuable it is to connect your classes to create content for your class projects and assignments. I'm not talking about using the exact same paper for two different classes. Not exactly. What I'm talking about is using different aspects of your research or learnings in one class and using them in your other class projects.

This term, I was especially successful at doing this and it has really helped me connect my classes and get the most out of all of them.

So, for eng 295, we had to choose a personal work of literature. I am also enrolled in eng 495 right now which is all about Toni Morrison. That's why I chose Song of Solomon as my novel (luckily, I really like Toni Morrison, so it's been a win win).

Because of the different types of research I have been doing for this class, like using non-conventional secondary sources like blogs and on-line forums, I plan on writing my final paper for 495 about Morrison's readers coming together and connecting through these different modes. This will also include a more in-depth analysis of Morrison's literature, but I am excited to do this critical analysis using these new, non-conventional sources. I'm excited because I really think it will make my paper unique.

And last but not least, I am also enrolled in my capstone class for my editing minor, which involves the final project being a completed published book containing my edited manuscripts, cover design, page designs, etc. The idea is to keep this physical copy of the book and show it to employers as part of my portfolio. I plan on doing this, but what I am really excited about doing is taking my book and converting it into an ebook format, like I am doing right now for our class ebook. I think that this will be even better to show employers or refer them to look at, rather than having them quickly flip through my physical copy. That's what I hope for, anyway!

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Possible Chapter Images

Morrison discussing Song of Solomon on Oprah:

Image from Academy of Achievement: http://www.achievement.org/achievers/win0/large/win0-023.jpg

The "in-your-face" painting of Morrison:

Image url: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l3hpcfcAM41qc53v4o1_500.jpg

Or, the interactive, public speaker Morrison:

Image url: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Toni_Morrison_2008-2.jpg/240px-Toni_Morrison_2008-2.jpg

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Final Draft

Bringing the Author to Life in the Digital Age

How involved does a writer get in his or her reader’s lives? How involved do the readers get in the writer’s life? If we had thought about this question 100 years ago, or even 50, we would probably say that there is very little involvement between the two. Literary theorist Roland Barthes certainly thinks so. In fact, Barthes’ theories about an author who is essentially “dead”—meaning that the novel and its creator have nothing to do with each other—may seem logical in a non-technological world. But in today’s modern society and digital culture, we see a drastic change in the author/reader relationship. Modern writers are connecting with readers through modern means of communication: essentially creating a living, working, and involved relationship.

Roland Barthes expressed that "‘to give a text an Author’ and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it ‘is to impose a limit on that text’" (Death of the Author, par. 4). I can see that he has a point, but modern writers, an example being Toni Morrison, are showing that this is not the case. On the contrary, they are showing that the author should be there for their readers in order to expound on themes and issues that may be hard to understand, and ultimately help the reader personally connect to the work of literature.

The Interactive Author

Toni Morrison was already a Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner when her novel Song of Solomon was chosen as a selection in Oprah’s Book Club, the national book club of the daytime talk show host, Oprah Winfrey. Morrison had already established her artistic value as a postmodern author when she became a part of one of the most dramatic examples of postmodernism’s union of canonicity and commercialism. With Morrison’s involvement in Oprah’s Book Club, we see not only an integration of Morrison’s academic audience and her popular audience, but also an integration of her black audience and her white audience. Just as she defies literary norms in the plot and character development of her novels, she also defies the tradition of the ways an author must behave—particularly African American women writers.

What we see in Morrison is a new kind of relationship between the author and reader. Morrison may be criticized for becoming involved in a daytime book club to promote her novels because up until then, writers usually took on the role of being secluded from the readers, or as Barthes coined, being “dead” and leaving the text to speak for itself. Morrison sought to make a different move from this expectation. She makes a particular effort to connect with both high and popular cultures. She has remarked that “I would like my work to do two things: be as demanding and sophisticated as I want it to be, and at the same time be accessible in a sort of emotional way to lots of people, like jazz” (Young pg. 187). She did this with her novel Song of Solomon both on and off of her television appearances on Oprah.

I think of a powerful scene in Song of Solomon, where the protagonist Milkman’s aunt, Pilate, a powerful and wonderful character, is about to die. Typical to a Morrison novel, Milkman says goodbye to Pilate through a song: “’Sing,’ she said. ‘Sing a little somethin for me.’ Milkman knew no songs…but he couldn’t ignore the urgency in her voice. Speaking the words without the least bit of a tune, he sang for the lady. ‘Sugargirl don’t leave me here/ Cotton balls to choke me/ Sugargirl don’t leave me here/ Buckra’s arms to yoke me’” (Morrison pg. 336).

The Reader’s Response

Morrison talks about her interaction as an author with her reader regarding this emotional scene in the novel: “A woman once got very angry with me because Pilate died. I told her that first, it was of no value to have Guitar kill someone nobody cared anything about. If that had been the case it would not show us how violent violence is. Some character that we care about had to be killed to demonstrate that” (An Interview pg. 420). Morrison tries to show us this in the scene following Pilate’s death: “Now he [Milkman] knew why he loved her so. Without ever leaving the ground, she could fly. ‘There must be another one like you,’ he whispered to her. ‘There’s got to be at least one more woman like you’”(Morrison pg. 336).

What helps readers connect with the issues surrounding sorrow and death is her application of these themes from her real life. One such reader is Trudy Hamilton, a photographer and blogger. In a post about one of Morrison’s appearances on the Oprah show and her comments about death, Hamilton remarks, “the fact that Toni is so emotionally evolved to fully acknowledge sadness truly moves me. Here's the thing...nothing she said in [her] statement is "negative." The fact that she acknowledged what the pain feels like and realizes that this narrative is a part of her life story and in no way devalues her life or even her ability to do her work moved me to tears” (Hamilton par. 4).

What Morrison does, and what Trudy Hamilton is doing is using the digital media to reach a greater understanding and emotional connection to the literature and the author/reader relationship. Morrison is just one example of an author where readers all over the world are actively participating in blogs, forums, and other social media where they can discuss important plots or themes of her literature. We also see a growing popularity for authors to create blogs themselves and involve their readers in the writing process. One such writer wrote about this author/reader relationship on her blog: “thanks to technology, suddenly you can read your favorite author’s blog and leave comments on it or send her messages on Twitter and get replies. It’s amazing.” But there is something else that this author considers:

and yet it’s still such a unique relationship. One of my author friends once told me how inadequate she feels at book signings because readers already feel like they know her through her books and it’s almost like they want something intangible — some taste of what they found in the book and want to rediscover by meeting her. It’s sort of crazy and sort of awkward and sort of understandable, all at the same time (Mantyla par. 6)

The Digital Age Relationship

One web site acknowledged that this changing relationship is a job in and of itself, not like the author/relationship from years before. Pat Ferrara wrote: “An author’s website and blog have become full-time projects in and of themselves. While they may not be as entertaining as their next series installment, they put the time and effort to connect with you during the wait, take advantage of it” (Ferrara par. 5). While there are pros and cons to such an involved relationship between the author and the reader, I feel like the pros win out. Just as Ferrara points out, the modes that we have now in the digital age to connect with the author, and ultimately the work that they create, is a unique opportunity for us as readers.

It’s so exciting that an author is no longer “dead” to us as the readers. I think I can speak for many when I say that I love the background on the artist in helping me connect to a work of art. Forums, blogs, and on-line discussions all help readers connect on a new level to a piece of writing. For me as a researcher and web browser, I love being able to access a blog like Trudy Hamilton’s, where I can get other readers perspective and insight about an author or a work of literature. Whether it’s a Pulitzer Prize winner like Toni Morrison, or a beginning writer, the life of the author and his or her active contributions to a work of literature is what is perhaps to be most celebrated in this digital age.

Works Cited

“An Interview with Toni Morrison.” Toni Morrison and Nellie McKay Contemporary Literature. Vol. 24, No. 4 (Winter, 1983), pp. 413-429 Published by: University of Wisconsin Press. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1208128

Ferrara, Pat. “Book Buzz: The Author Reader Relationship.” 7 July 2008. Web source: Mania. http://www.mania.com/book-buzz-authorreader-relationship_article_58890.html

Hamilton, Trudy. “What Nobel Prize Winner Toni Morrison Reminded Me About Photography.” 14 May 2011. Web source: Tru Shots Photgraphy Blog: http://blog.trushots.com/2011/05/what-nobel-prize-winning-author-toni.html

Mantyla, Nikki. “The Author Reader Relationship.” 14 April 2010. Web source: All About the Words Blog. http://nikkimantyla.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/the-author–reader-relationship/

Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. First Vintage International Edition, New York. 2004

“The Death of the Author.” 6 May 2011. Web source: Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Author

Young, John. “Toni Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, and Postmodern Popular Audiences.”African American Review Vol. 35, No. 2 (Summer, 2001), pp. 181-204. Published by: Indiana State University Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2903252

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On my way to a final draft. Thoughts?

How involved does a writer get in his or her reader’s lives? How involved do the readers get in the writer’s life? If we had thought about this question 100 years ago, or even 50, we would probably say that there is very little involvement between the two. Literary theorist Roland Barthes certainly thinks so as well. In fact, Barthes’ theories about an author who is essentially “dead”—meaning that the novel and its creator have nothing to do with each other—may seem logical in a non-technological world. But in today’s modern society and digital culture, we see a drastic change in the author/reader relationship. Modern writers are connecting with readers through modern means of communication: essentially creating a living, working, and involved relationship.

Roland Barthes expressed that "to give a text an Author" and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it "is to impose a limit on that text." He has a point, but modern writers like Toni Morrison are showing that this is not the case. On the contrary, the author should be there for the reader to expound on themes and issues that may be hard to understand, and ultimately help the reader personally connect to the work of literature.

Toni Morrison was already a Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner when her novel Song of Solomon was chosen as a selection in Oprah’s Book Club, the national book club of the daytime talk show host, Oprah Winfrey. She had already established her artistic value as a postmodern author when she became apart of one of the most dramatic examples of postmodernism’s union of canonicity and commercialism. With Morrison’s involvement in Oprah’s Book Club, we see not only an integration of Morrison’s academic audience and her popular audience, but also an integration of her black audience and her white audience. Just as she defies literary norms in the plot and character development of her novels, she also defies the tradition of the ways an author must behave—particularly African American women writers.

What we see in Morrison is a new kind of relationship between the author and reader. Morrison may be criticized for becoming involved in a daytime book club to promote her novels because up until then, writers usually took on the role of being secluded from the readers, or as Barthes coined, being “dead” and leaving the text to speak for itself. Once again, Morrison sought to make a different move from this expectation. She makes a particular effort to connect with both high and popular cultures. She has remarked that “I would like my work to do two things: be as demanding and sophisticated as I want it to be, and at the same time be accessible in a sort of emotional way to lots of people, like jazz” (Young pg. 187). She did this with her novel Song of Solomon both on and off of her television appearances on Oprah.

Morrison herself in an interview describes this interaction between author and reader where she spoke about a critical scene in the novel: “A woman once got very angry with me because Pilate died. I told her that first, it was of no value to have Guitar kill someone nobody cared anything about. If that had been the case it would not show us how violent violence is. Some character that we care about had to be killed to demonstrate that” (Contemporary Literature pg. 420). What helps readers connect with the issues surrounding sorrow and death is her application of these themes from her real life. One such reader is Trudy Hamilton, a photographer and blogger. In a post about one of Morrison’s appearances and comments about death on the Oprah Show, Hamilton remarks, “the fact that Toni is so emotionally evolved to fully acknowledge sadness truly moves me. Here's the thing...nothing she said in [her] statement is "negative." The fact that she acknowledged what the pain feels like and realizes that this narrative is a part of her life story and in no way devalues her life or even her ability to do her work moved me to tears” (TruShots Photography Blog).

What Morrison does, and what Trudy Hamilton is doing is using the digital media to reach a greater understanding and emotional connection to the literature and the author/reader relationship. Morrison is just one example of an author where readers all over the world are actively participating in blogs, forums, and other social media where they can discuss important plots or themes of her literature. We also see a growing popularity for authors to create blogs themselves and involve their readers in the writing process. One such writer wrote about this author/reader relationship on her blog: “thanks to technology, suddenly you can read your favorite author’s blog and leave comments on it or send her messages on Twitter and get replies. It’s amazing.” But there is something else that this author considers:

and yet it’s still such a unique relationship. One of my author friends once told me how inadequate she feels at book signings because readers already feel like they know her through her books and it’s almost like they want something intangible — some taste of what they found in the book and want to rediscover by meeting her. It’s sort of crazy and sort of awkward and sort of understandable, all at the same time (All About the Words Blog)

One web-site acknowledged that this changing relationship is a job in and of itself, not like the author/relationship from years before. Pat Ferrara wrote: “An author’s website and blog have become full-time projects in and of themselves. While they may not be as entertaining as their next series installment, they put the time and effort to connect with you during the wait, take advantage of it” (Mania Blog). While there are pros and cons to such an involved relationship between the author and the reader, I feel like the pros win out. Just as Ferrara points out, the modes that we have now in the digital age to connect with the author, and ultimately the work that they create, is a unique opportunity for us.

It’s exciting that an author is no longer “dead” to us as the readers. Forums, blogs, on-line discussions all help readers connect on a new level to a piece of writing. Whether it’s a Pulitzer Prize winner like Toni Morrison, or a beginning writer, the life of the author and his or her active contributions to a work of literature is what is perhaps to be most celebrated in this digital age.

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Working title: Bringing the Author to Life in the Digital Age

Excuse the choppiness: this outline is a draft of how I want my chapter to develop, point by point.

Intro: literary theories of Roland Barthes who "killed the author"--meaning that all that is important is the text and no supplemental information about the author or from the author is necessary. Through developing technology and social media, this is not the case any more. Authors are using digital means to connect with their readers. The author/reader relationship is completely changing in the digital age.

Toni Morrison began reaching out to her readers through technology in the mid 1990s--mostly through television (the Oprah show). Her book Song of Solomon was one of the book selections for Oprah's Book Club. She made appearances on the show and led discussions to help readers find the deeper themes and meanings in the book.

Use research, like what she said on her tv appearances, quotes from interviews that analyzed aspects of Song of Solomon--material that helps the reader analyze the novel and apply for themselves, which is what Morrison wants.
Also use blogs, forums, and twitter posts to show reader responses to Morrison's public involvement with her readers.

In part Morrison's writings and interviews are to accomplish what her female black predecessors like Zora Neale Hurston could not do: be completely free to publish and say what she wants. But what Morrison started to do is what hundreds of authors are doing now in the digital age through modern technology and social media.

Use my research (seen on my Diigo bookmarks) of blogs about modern author/reader relationships, and presentations about authors connecting to readers even before publishing.

There are pros and cons, but ultimately in this digital age, it's new and exciting how no longer is the author dead to the reader: they can become an integral part in the readers love and understanding of the literature.

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Using InDesign to create an Ebook

Ok, so I played around with InDesign to see how to create an ebook format. It was actually pretty easy. Rather than exporting the document to be a pdf file which most people usually do, all you do is export it as an epub format. I assume then, that that's how we can upload it to the place of our choice, but that's still what I'm not sure about.

So for our ebook, I think that what would be easiest would be to compile all of our chapters into a word document or google document. We can then place that text into the InDesign document and design it there, which should be way easier. Then, like Nyssa said, we can designate the chapter breaks in InDesign before we export it as an epub format.

Should be pretty easy, I hope!

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The Tower of eBabel

I have realized as I have researched ebooks the last couple of days, that I really don't know that much about ebooks! I mean, I own a Kindle, but like I said earlier, all I do to get books on that is click a button.

So, to find out more about the different types of ebooks, I went to the ultimate source: wikipedia. What would I do without it? It was helpful to me to read about the different formats, especially in considering which format I feel would be best for our class project in creating an ebook.

Here is a page that was helpful to me. And after learning more about creating an ebook, I think that for our class, the html route would be best, considering that we are really trying to reach a lot of people. Html format allows people to access it from any web browser which is nice, considering not everyone has a kindle, or a nook, or an ipad, etc.

But then I found this helpful site about ebook conversions to different formats, much like how there are programs that convert different music formats. So, even if we go with another route, there is a way for someone to convert our ebook into another format.

The other thing I found in my internet research is the element of all the different ebook publishers. This site is an example. So that's another thing that I hope we will discuss today in class: which route we will take in creating our own ebook.

I still am a little bit hazy about all this ebook business, so I look forward to learning more today and seeing what my class mates found.

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How much editing is done with political speeches?

I don't have a vendetta against President Barack Obama. But I just have to say that I want to know if his speech writers have editors. I want to explore more in depth the process that is involved in writing a public speech. Who is the primary writer? Who then edits it?

This weekend was a first for me. I got to go to Arlington National Cemetery for Memorial Day and listen to the president of the United States and sit about 30 yards away from him. (And as a side note, I got to see Michelle Obama in person too, and she really is as elegant as she seems)

President Obama's speech was great. Perfect for Memorial Day. But, he made a big mistake which would earn a top spot on my blooper log for Professor Dant's editing class. He made reference to a fallen soldier who graduated from the "U.S.S. Naval Academy." Ummm, I didn't realize that the Naval Academy was a ship. It was odd. And as good as his speech was, I just can't get over it. Didn't he realize as he said it that it sounded so bizarre?

As an editing minor, this is definitely something that I hope to learn more about. I think it would be very interesting to find out more about the people behind the scenes who help political figures look good for the public. And even more, who gets the blame for errors in a speech? Should we blame Obama for not knowing the proper name of the nation's service academy or should we excuse it blame whoever put it into the teleprompter? I'll let you know what I find out.

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Using JSTOR to find black reader responses to Toni Morrison

I wanted to use JSTOR to find what has been written academically about the current popular readers’ response, particularly in the African American community.

JSTOR is a great web source in finding articles from all kinds of publications. The one I found was from the African American Review.

I used the search tool, but opened it up to search in all articles. I searched for “black readings on Toni Morrison” and I actually found quite a few intriguing articles.

Toni Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, and Postmodern Popular Audiences

John Young

African American Review

Vol. 35, No. 2 (Summer, 2001), pp. 181-204

Published by: Indiana State University

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2903252

I learned a lot from this articles about the modern audiences of Toni Morrison, particularly those belonging to Oprah’s Book Club. It was an interesting insight into changing protocol of author involvement with readers through things like television and technology.

Toni Morrison was a Nobel and Pulitzer prize winner when she first appeared as a featured author on Oprah’s Book Club. The article discusses what the book club did in promoting Morrison and also discusses questions about the “Oprah effect” on Morrison’s books: did it increase or decrease their value? How has it changed the way that Morrison is viewed in academia? The article also gives a history of previous black writers and compares the limitations they faced that Morrison is striving to overcome in the postmodern world.

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Exploring Project Muse to find themes in Toni Morrison’s novels

I explored Project Muse to see what kind of articles I could find that discuss the themes in Morrison’s literature, particularly themes that would demonstrate her role as an author today.

Project Muse is an on-line resource that helps you find biographies, interviews, and scholarly articles about specific works or specific authors.

I was new to using Project Muse, so I went to their basic search and searched “Toni AND Morrison”—I only narrowed it by designating that she was a female author. I found a lot of great articles, and one in particularly that is a comparative piece discussing a common theme in three of her books, one being the book I am focusing on for this project.

A Blessing and a Burden: The Relation to the Past in Sula, Song of Solomon and Beloved

Deborah Guth

MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 39, Number 3&4, Fall/Winter 1993, pp. 575-596 (Article)

This article was interesting to me because I liked seeing the discussion about the importance of the past in Song of Solomon, because I feel like it connects to Morrison’s mission as a female African American writer.

The article discusses some of the many issues that inhabit Toni Morrison's fiction: one of them being the multifaceted and often problematic relationship of the present to the past. Whether she explores a love-affair or a girlhood friendship, generational rupture or the meaning of freedom—whether she uses the model of communal story-telling to shape her work, reactivates a traditional myth or explores the dynamics of memory—the impact of the past remains a central issue, wending its way through theme and form. For Morrison, the questions: "Who am I?" and "Where are we going?" are inseparable from "Where do we come from?", and the two sides—the search for self-definition and an understanding of what the past is about—interact constantly throughout her work

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Connecting my novel of choice with someone else’s through the Literature Resource Center

I chose to search for helpful things relating to To Kill A Mockingbird, because it deals with similar racial issues like Song of Solomon does. One takes place in the south, and the other in the north, but they still explore key issues about racism in the mid twentieth century.

I decided to explore using the Literature Resource Center, an on-line source for biographical historical information about novels and authors.

Rather than searching for both Harper Lee and Toni Morrison in the same search, I chose to just search for entries about Harper Lee. I found one article in particular that brought up a historical moment that plays a big part in Song of Solomon as well: the murder of teenager Emmett Till.

Prolepsis and Anachronism: Emmett Till and the Historicity of To Kill a Mockingbird
Author(s):
Patrick Chura
Source:
The Southern Literary Journal. 32.2 (Spring 2000): p1. From Literature Resource Center.

I learned a lot from the article about the historical context for both novels. It gave me a better idea of the impact of racism nation-wide, not just in the south. The murder of Emmett Till is discussed in a significant part of Song of Solomon, and this article discusses how it is greatly reflected in To Kill a Mockingbird. It helped me connect the two texts.

Although To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in the 1930s, there are elements of history that can be seen being reflected in the plot of To Kill a Mockingbird. One event is the 1953 murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi. The article shows the similarities in the case and the trial of Tom Robinson in the novel. It gives a historical background to race in the south, and how these events influenced Harper Lee in her writing of To Kill a Mockingbird.

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My Morrison Research

The cool thing about studying an author that is still living and writing is that you can find some really cool insights into their literature because they are still living to talk about it.

Toni Morrison is known for challenging all literary themes and motifs that readers may be expecting. She always is forcing us to rethink things and realize that things are not always as they seem. Something she has done that defies the traditional role of a "serious author" is being involved in communication media. In this case, I'm talking about her many appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

I found a really cool article that I posted on the Diigo group that talks about the criticism that Morrison got from academia that she would go on a daytime talk show and lead book discussions. How insulting for a Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner to do that. But as I have thought about, I have realized that Morrison was essentially foreseeing the changing modes of communication for writing about and discussing literature. Morrison first appeared on Oprah in 1996, and look at how much our modes of communication have changed.

While I think that Morrison was kind of trying to cause a stir in the literature world, which she likes to do a lot, it's clear now to see how wise she was to do it. Now we have even more ways of discussing literature like blogs, on-line forums, social networking, etc. Toni Morrison was beginning to explore that through the world of television. Makes me like her more.

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My connection status

I figured out how to link GoodReads to my facebook, but oddly enough only when I add books to my "to-read" list. I wish more people would get on the GoodReads bandwagon (or just the reading bandwagon for that matter!) because it's such a cool social tool that connects people through books. I forgot how my GoodReads was linked to facebook, so imagine my surprise when I was all of a sudden getting comments on my facebook page from people who were offering their praise for a book that I just added to my list.

I finally set up an account on StumbleUpon and I would have done it earlier! What a cool way to find things on-line relating to your interests. Now most of my bookmarks on Diigo are ones that I found through StumbleUpon.

I'm really trying to keep up on reading everybody's blog, but I'm starting to feel an information overload. Thank goodness for GoogleReader, which was another tool that I never had used until recently. GoogleReader and GoogleDocs are basically amazing for individual and collaborative work. I use them both everyday now.

Basically I know that this post isn't really going in a productive direction, but I just wanted to talk about it! If you have any other cool suggestion to things I should do on the internet (good stuff, obviously), I'm all ears.

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All That Jazz

Jazz by Toni Morrison

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jazz is the story of a couple living in Harlem during the Jazz Age, and by the "Jazz Age" I don't mean F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz Age--it is anything but that. Joe and Violet's relationship is virtually falling apart, due to some adultery and murder, which makes for a juicy start to the story. Morrison then takes us on a journey back a few generations, where we see that Joe and Violet's stormy relationship is the cause of generations worth of disfunction. It's a fascinating study of "the sins of the fathers" affecting their generations of posterity. What makes the novel so memorable is its style and narrative: the voice of jazz. The narrative is musical, sporadic, and improvisational, capturing the feel of the roots of Jazz that began in the heart of Harlem. Even though the narrative jumps back and forth through the years, it's still an easy book to follow, and overall a great book.

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More than just a book in Oprah's Book Club

I'm not going to lie. The only reason I had heard of Toni Morrison in years past was because of Oprah Winfrey. Toni Morrison is an African American writer who usually confronts social issues in her novels about Black culture and its fight to find definition among white popular culture that seems to be everywhere. So naturally, Oprah LOVES Toni Morrison, and has featured her novels in her book club, and even starred in the film adaptation of Morrison's novel Beloved.

With that being said, with the Morrison novels that I had read prior to reading Song of Solomon, the book I chose as my personal book choice, I hadn't really been able to connect with Morrison's characters and her themes in her novels. I am a white girl from Utah. I could appreciate what Morrison was doing, but there was still something missing for me.

I found myself finally connecting all those pieces as to what Morrison is trying to do when I read Song of Solomon. The novel's focus is identity. Finding out who you really are, where you came from, who you came from, and understanding your past in order to help your present and future. Who doesn't relate to that? While Morrison is dealing more with the complexities of identifying yourself and your history as an African American, which in the early 20th century was more difficult to do, all readers can relate to that feeling of trying to discover yourself and realize what kind of person you really are.

It was a fascinating book, and it left me with a greater desire to understand better where I came from. This isn't anything new to me. I have grown up all my life learning about the great importance of genealogical efforts. I know it's important, and Toni Morrison helped me realize it again. That's what good books are meant to do for you.

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Playing around with GoodReads

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the classic Toni Morrison style, Song of Solomon manages to questions conventions of family and society, and you love the book and hate it at the same time. I love the character of Milkman--he is definitely a relatable protagonist. I loved the Afromystical elements of the novel: it really gives you a deeper view into African American culture and gave me a completely different view into African American literature. My favorite Morrison so far.

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The Pros and Cons of Kindling

I got my Kindle as a Christmas gift from my mom who thought it would be helpful in buying schoolbooks (which luckily for her, I am an English major--my school books are all novels which is possible with a Kindle. If I needed textbooks, then I would be out of luck---that's a con of a Kindle). But other than that, I have noticed some good things and bad things about using a Kindle in a school setting.

I discovered immediately the fact that with a Kindle, public domain books are free. Before I even purchased a Kindle edition of a book, I already had at least twenty novels on my Kindle without costing me anything. Last semester for American Lit, I didn't need to buy an anthology because all the poems, short stories, essays, etc., I found on-line for free. Score! That's a pro.

Also, when you get bored in class (not that this ever happens), your Kindle can sit inconspicuously on your desk and all you have to do is subtly push the button to turn the page as you read a book, rather than the obvious paper book with its loud page turns. Pro.

When you want to buy a book for a Kindle, all you need to do is click the "buy" button and it is wirelessly downloaded to the Kindle. It's so easy: even easier than putting music on your ipod, which involves connecting it to a computer. If you need a book quickly (like I did last semester for a paper I had to write) it's so nice: no tracking it down at a bookstore, no lines, etc. Pro.

I soon realized though when I was using a book on the Kindle to write a paper, that skimming around and finding page numbers was a pain in the butt. I play around with it and try to figure it out, but I still haven't figured out how to find an actual page number, not the Kindle location number (if any fellow Kindle users know how to do this, please impart your wisdom). Con.

And, this may be just me, but I have a really hard time reading non-fiction on my Kindle. Like, I'm reading The Case for Books on my Kindle right now, and it is REALLY slow moving. I feel like I have read a ton, but on my Kindle it says I'm only 6% along. It's grueling. Con.

Overall, having a Kindle for school is really nice. It's small and not heavy, unlike all those books I normally lug around, and I never had to step foot in the bookstore to get my books. I'm still figuring it all out, but I'm glad I have it.

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The thing about having an on-line presence is...

We all know them: friends on facebook, blogger, etc. who feel the need to give us every detail of their lives, whether it's interesting or not. I remember a "friend" on facebook announcing to the internet that he was finally getting around to washing his sheets. Now THAT, is too much information. Because of these kinds of incidents, it has really made me hesitant to have an "active on-line presence" and put content on-line everyday. I don't want people to get sick of me and I don't want people to feel like all I do is sit on the internet all day (even if I actually do--that's what happens when you work in an office).

So when we were given the expectation of creating on-line content five days a week, it was a very daunting task for me. Up to this point, I rarely, if ever, update my facebook status. I had the same profile picture for 2 years. I started a personal blog 10 months ago, but I would rarely post more than twice a week. I got in this funk of feeling that if I put too much, no one will read it and they will grow weary of my "on-line presence."

I'm starting to realize through the help of my writing class that it's not about the frequency that makes for memorable content, it's the thought and quality that goes behind it. If you approach the content you are putting out there for all of the world to see with even a little thought about who will read it, what kind of things you like to see on-line, etc., you will see that your on-line presence is not a beast of burden for other people: it will be a pleasure. It goes back to Dr. Burton's crede that "a blog is NOT a monologue." If people gave this more thought, the internet world of social networking would be a far greater place.

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Just like Robert Gu

The novel Rainbows End connects to readers because we are all finding ourselves in the same situation as Robert Gu, a man who doesn't want to face the technologically changing times.

I really felt that feeling just a year ago when I cam back from serving a mission in a country that was also "technologically behind". When I came home, it seemed like everyone had "smart" phones--even my mom had a Blackberry and could text which she couldn't do at all when I had left-- and for me who was used to just using a basic cell phone, with no texting and no checking my email multiple times I day, I refused to buy a fancy phone because I felt it was completely unnecessary. Sadly, just like Robert Gu realizing that "wearing" would really help him interact with the world around him, I bought a new smart phone just a couple weeks ago after months of sometimes missing important emails about class, work, etc. because I was away from a computer. It's sad, but true.

The scene that I haven't stopped thinking about these last few days (probably because I am also reading The Case For Books) is the library scene and how it affects Robert. It upset me too, and even before Robert referenced the sci-fi novel (one that I have serious issues with and hold it against all science fiction--but that's another story) Farenheit 451. I read that book in the 8th grade, and I think I hated it because of the ideas it was suggesting. And yet, now, after seeing what has become of technology, novels like Rainbows End and Farenheit 451 make more sense. I see what these writers are putting out there. It's kind of weird and kind of scary to think about.

I feel bad for Robert Gu because he is seen as a fool for wishing to keep his few remaining novels which are precious to him. A lot of us are still like him and we're not to that ultimate point yet where tangible books will be a thing of the past. But it's happening. I have a Kindle, and right now I only use it for school because I still enjoy reading tangible books. But I hate to say it: I don't know how long this will last.

Overall, the Robert Gu storyline in the novel is what I really connected with in this book. I'm not a sci-fi lover, so all the other technical mumbo jumbo was interesting, but still, not really my cup of tea. But I appreciate the Gu family plot line that Vernor Vinge created because as I have been reading it and discussing it in class, it has helped me see what one of the purposes of science fiction is: to show us what our society could become like based on the current trends.

It's fascinating and scary all at the same time.

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Consuming Fudge

I've been thinking about class discussions on what it means to "consume" literature. After the topic came up about how many times it takes to re-read a novel in order to really consume it, I thought about which books on my reading resume that I have read multiple times.

I have read those meaty "classics" such as East of Eden, Anna Karenina, and Pride and Prejudice two times--maybe two and a half times. But really, I can only think of one book that I have read more than three times:

Judy Blume's Superfudge.

I read this book so many times in a five or six year period. To this day, I don't know why I loved this book so much, but I did...and I still do. Ironically, when I was talking about this with my friend Sarah last night, she told me that she also had a book that she read over and over again when she was young, and it was a Judy Blume book as well.

So why was I more than willing and satisfied to read Superfudge over and over again when I was younger, and now I rarely go back and read a book twice?

A blog post I read a few days ago talked about The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, a novel for adolescents, which for this writer of the blog, had been the first "chapter" book with a real plot development, characterization, etc. that he really connected with, in that he realized that reading is fun--that reading is interactive. And most importantly, that reading is satisfying.

Maybe Superfudge was the first book for me that had this effect. I found a book that was enjoyable and never got old for me. I developed the attitude as a kid that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Why should I try to find other books when Superfudge still made me happy every time I read it?

That attitude eventually changed over the years into a mind set that I seem to have now of "so many books, so little time!" I love reading, and with how many great books there are on the planet, I simply don't have time to read a book a second, or heaven forbid, a third time.

The challenge then in "consuming" literature is to find the happy medium between my childhood attitude and my adult one. I'm still trying to figure it out. And these discussions that we continue to have is helping me evaluate my reading strategies and consumption.

Maybe reading Superfudge again will help illuminate my mind. What a great book.

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Exposing My Inner Feminist

This post is not a post about politics.

But I feel the need to evaluate President Obama's speech he made last night, from an editor's point of view.

Obama's speech was well-written and powerfully delivered. I felt the power, and I felt proud to be an American. But there was something that just rubbed me the wrong way, and that was his use of sexist language in using only the word "men" in expressing gratitude to those who accomplished this mission. It bugged me, even though maybe he was referring to the the group of Navy SEALs who carried out the mission and whether they were indeed all men. I thought he would be referring to the mission as whole, which had been being planned since August and surely involved some women in the intelligence process.

In studying sexist language in my many editing classes, it has had the effect on me that makes me think that feminists are just too sensitive. Like, we can't even use the word "businessman" because of its masculine preference? Seriously?

But in this context, if I were active military right now as a woman, it really would have irked me that Obama failed to include "women" in his speech. And now I understand why editors must be sticklers about things like sexist language. I really wish I could talk to Obama's speech editors/writers and ask if this wording was intentional.

And like I said, this post is not political. But somebody else thought this through in his public statement--that person being President George W. Bush:

"President Obama called to inform me that American forces killed Osama bin Laden...I congratulated him and the men and women of our military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to this mission."

Good job, President Bush. And good job to you too, President Obama. Just think about that for next time.

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The first book I read that I didn't need a teacher to tell me "the big picture"

"But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed--because "Thou mayest."

The first time I read John Steinbeck's East of Eden was when I was a junior in high school. I read it over the summer, and it took me quite a while, and when I finished it, I just felt so accomplished. Accomplished because it was well over 700 pages, and accomplished because the ending had illuminated my mind, and it felt fantastic.

I love this novel for many reasons. One of them is Steinbeck's thorough and vivid character development (a reason why it took me so long to read it). This was the first novel I had read that really had me get to know these characters so well that I understood their thoughts, and I understood their actions. I knew their histories, and I knew what drove them. It was a completely different kind of reading experience for me, and it changed me as a reader.

You didn't have to be an academic scholar to appreciate or recognize the symbolism in East of Eden. The Adam/Eve, Cain/Abel allegory was adapted by Steinbeck to modern times to the modern family ("modern" being the early 20th century). And he does it so vividly and colorfully that you become absolutely engulfed in the story.

When I read a book that I immediately love, all I want to do to share my passion about it is to give a church talk about it--something, anything to share with people what makes the book so relatable to us. I still hope to do this about East of Eden...maybe someday! For now, I can just share with you here on my humble blog about what this novel reminds us of--because all novels refresh us somehow on some truth that we already know. East of Eden explores the glory of the freedom of choice. It illuminates a section of the Bible for us, which, as a King James version reader myself, I always appreciate a reading of a Greek or Hebrew translation to remind me that we can sometimes understand the Bible better by doing so.

Here's the most popular example from the novel: "Don’t you see? . . . The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open.”

I still have yet to research this word "timshel" and if it really is an authentic claim, but either way: I love this book.

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