The Bluest Eye Overview

The Bluest Eye was easy one of the best books that i have ever had the privilege of reading, you take your self back in time and take a look at a society that is completely different than what most Americans know today. I say most because I’m sure that there are few people in America that still know what it its like to have to put coal on to keep there house warm at night. From the out right racism towards most of the characters to the need for public acceptance, these characters seem to touch your heart with every chapter. The American ideal comes into play many times in this book by referencing popular American culture , you have Pecola’s obsession with Shirley temple or Pauline Breedlove’s need to be beautiful like the white celebrity culture or as she puts it, a light skinned black person…. (sound familiar ???) Yes your right we as a society are not far off from what I just described. American culture has been feed the same line of bull from the beginning, Skinny, blond, blue eyes, fit/”in shape”

( i am in shape, round is a shape),

perfect house with the white picket fence…. yada yada yada WHO CARES!!!!!! It was something that was all over the book from start to finish and it makes one sad that people care so much about what is popular or considered beautiful.

You have to wonder, how much of the life experiences made these people who they turned out to be? You know, Nature Vs. Nurture, that sort of thing.

Now the women were dealing with there own issues but I’m talking about specifically Cholly Breedlove,  in all aspects seems to be a normal human until he did what he did, and then your entire view of him changes. Could it be that he was brought up in a world of racism and sex that caused him to do something so terrible? Or was it that he was simply just a terrible person from birth.?

From the struggles of school to the fight to get a good nights sleep, you feel for these characters, you feel like you want to reach through the pages and give them a helping hand. The Bluest Eye is such a fine example of Social constructionism that you sit back after reading it with our eyes wide open.

The Great Rebellion

Marx and Lipsitz are saying things that mirror ones general feelings form a generational gap that look a lot like father and son. When we look at what they are arguing about you can’t help but to look at the similarities as well. At the heard of American studies we are taught to question everything and at the time of Marx you simply had a lot less people questioning the very basis that this country is founded on. George Lipstiz goes on record and says  that Marx “takes his own generation’s most generative paradigm as a universal truth.”

To this I would say that he was not the only one to do this in his generation. For that matter there is not just a few amount of people in every generation that take what they know as a universal truth.

Exhibit A- (yes Oprah i will go by 100 copies of whatever you tell me)

Just like anyone who has their generation put under a microscope is going to lash out and it is not always going to be the best of outcomes. Lipsitz points out how marks does this by saying ” He confuses criticism of the nation-state with contempt for the nation and his culture.”

Marx is of the BD mind set, by saying this I’m not saying it is a bad thing to be affirmative or Nationalistic, I’m simply saying that you can not be a critical thinker if your not ok judging everything, and that includes the way that you view it. Lipstiz is simply pointing that out and his views could be considered dark and morbid but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a love for a country that he judges with an open eye, No in-fact I would argue that he is  a true patriot because he wants to have everything out in the open rather than simply going by the Myth/symbol idology.

Freedom of thought- USE IT!

How convenient it is that the teachings of how our Nation seem to include and exclude what they feel is necessary to bring the people of a country together. E Pluribus Unum meaning  “out of many,one”, I mention this to say that Takaki is reaching out to a large number of people in the readings. He shows that the way we tend to look at things may not be the right way and we teachings that have been passed down from generation to generation may not be the correct ones.

As he says ““American” has been defined as “White””. Why? English settlers were not the first to be here, and even Donald trump forgets Anglo Saxon people were not even the second, that goes to the Mexican nation. So… How did we come to see this country as “white” as Takaki puts it, given the fact that there were so many races that came to this nation all at once.

I feel that Takaki really goes out of his way to make sure this not just about one or two forgotten races, but rather this country is made of a cornucopia of people.

America is a proverbial melting pot of races and yet we all are separate Like oil in water. When you go to college you can’t help but notice the nice little groups that people put themselves in. Black, White, Indian, Asian etc.. People tend to stay close to what they know and Takaki proposes that the Scholarship thinking of this country is too narrow to allow multicultural knowledge and this is what is causing this phenomenon. People fear that they do no know and the education of the people of this great nation simply doesn’t tell you what we need to know, and this is especially true past the 1950’s.  Why is this? Why is Oklahoma (not the only state but a good example) one of the few states that actually talk about Native American History?

We as a people need to open our minds and our hearts to the idea of “One Nation”. Stop thinking so narrowly and see our fellow-men and women of the country as equals!

American Dream (Week 2)

During the readings of Wise and Ward, you can’t help but notice some comparisons when we are talking about The American Dream. This is something that everyone wants to believe in and come to trust as a true fact, not because all of the information lines up with the facts but because this is something they want so they will rationalize it to be true in there own minds.

In the essay by ward called “The Meaning of Lindbergh’s Flight” you see just how delusional strait forward people will look at something if they want to believe that it is true. There are parts of the essay that show different Critical approaches that are talked about in American Studies. The myth is simply the act of him making the flight first, little did anyone in America know of care to know at the time, multiple other people had accomplished the feat already.

Wise talkes about multiple acts that “represent the movement for American Studies during the twentieth century”. The Paradigm act was one of these that he mentions, I relate this to the essay written by ward because wise refers to a paradigm as “a consistent pattern of beliefs held by a person, group, or a culture”. The way that the public instantly made Lindbergh an American Hero and at the same time fulfilling the American myth captures the essence of what thiswas suppose to mean.

Why all the publicity for one man? Did this flight help the people of America?

To tie this all together, Wise talks about Thomas Kuhn and his views of Paradigms show that he believes “they are not only patters of belief but also as characteristic acts of which function to dramatize those beliefs. This is something that American does very well and is not always the best thing for the people of our country.

Intro to Matthew Pfeifer

Im a Junior at Oklahoma state and I am an AMST major. I have a 7mo old daughter that keeps me busy when I am not at class and work. I am excited to this upcoming semester and cant wait to meet you all. GO POKES