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An attempt to rationalize history (Final project)

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     This is all based on a story. No real plot, it’s just a bit of family history. My grandma Olga went to prison when she was 18. She never talked about it, but some bits and pieces survived with brief exchanges and visits and images from my great-aunt (her sister), who told my mom while she lived with her in college, who told me, again in bits and pieces over the years, told in passing, on walks around the neighborhood with my mom, in dinner conversations with relatives, a historical footnote from my parents. Every time, there’s some new context that makes me hear it a bit differently.      I’m going to write this story a few times. Right now I’m writing from my bedroom during the age of coronavirus. I’ve been told, “you should keep a journal this is a very historic time,”. Okay look, nobody’s going to be reading my journal as historical evidence, it’s not even about coronavirus. It’s about the normal shit teenagers go through, figuring out a complex and morally unstable world th
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Genealogy as Time Travel

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The title of  Kindred illuminates an important aspect of the novel - familial relations. For Dana going back in time, she’s not only sent back to a general time period or place. It’s a very specific plantation, and not only that, it’s her family. Her existence depends on them and their having children. But not only that - the fact that they’re her family makes what she sees all the more powerful. It removes a sense of vagueness when you know something happened in your family. Like you can say, lots of people were political prisoners in the late 40s in Yugoslavia, they were ripped from their homes and endured a lot of physical and psychological torture. But knowing that during that same time my grandma was picked up from her extracurricular activity (Russian culture club) at 18 without a reason or warming and sent directly to prison, that feels very different. When you remember who they were as your grandparents, get told regularly how you look like them, have the same anxious manneris
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Sex and Death: Part 2 Electric Boogaloo

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Henry and Ethan brought up this question about sex and death in their panel presentation: just like in Ragtime, sex and violence are undoubtedly, but very depressingly, connected. In the essay they presented, the author describes the sexual language with which the war enthusiasts describe war, particularly the “post-coital satisfaction” of the process of “mopping up”. The entire concept of war as conquest is associated with an overblown masculinity, and that concept of war is sexualized. Violence and sex are linked, fetishized by men and used to exploit others. As the author says, Vonnegut essentially genders the concepts of conquest and innocence. When masculinity is overblown in this way, the world we live in is ultimately a dangerous and deeply misogynistic one as well. The way sex is described in calmer parts of the novel isn't any less troubling. For Billy, any sex with either his wife Valencia or Montana Wildhack are fundamentally about comfort. They are depicted as comforta
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Out of Context Images

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I sat down with  Mumbo Jumbo , a pen, and notebook on my desk, and the entire internet at my disposal. Every cryptic image would become a specimen for examination, a good Atonist explanation. But what we called “Reed glasses” transformed into “Reed contacts” into “Reed lasik surgery”, and now I can’t unsee much of the thesis Reed presented us with. So let’s just get two birds stoned at once; why go down a time consuming rabbit hole of research when I could simply explain that the point of the images is contained within their awkwardness. Including citations, a bibliography, newspaper excerpts, and the images, all make Mumbo Jumbo at a surface level appear something more like an academic text. This could be a conversation in and of itself of course, but images especially add to this. Usually you see them in the middle part of a non-fiction book or a history textbook, with added captions explaining what is being shown. However, Mumbo Jumbo lacks any captions and really the connection be
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"There Once Was A Country"

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“There once was a country” are the mysterious ending words to Emir Kusturica’s 1995 film Underground (10/10 would recommend watching). Even without seeing it, a quick explanation of the main trope can lead to a pretty interesting discussion of postmodern ideas about the blending of history and fiction - ideas that relate to Ragtime and its portrayals of nationalism as well. Quick(ish) plot summary: Two friends, gangsters Marco and Blacky, are partisans (like sort-of communist-y nationalists, but specifically Yugoslav nationalists) in Belgrade during WII. They, along with their extended family and friends, spend much of the war in an underground bunker, and towards the end Blacky gets injured in a battle. Marco, and their mutual love interest Natalija, lie to both him and everyone else that the war is still going on for the next 45 years, while they become citizens of the communist Yugoslavia formed after the war. Marco tells everyone that Blacky was killed in a heroic battle against t
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"Sex and Death": Evolving Power and Gender Dynamics

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“Across America sex and death were barely distinguishable,” (4). Other than their status as the two (nearly) unavoidable parts of any human life, sex and death are a jarring combination. What’s being implied as the connotation? Repression? Violence? - I think it’s both, and both ideas get explored more throughout the novel. The novel shows an ugly underside of American life, particularly in the realm of women’s lives, marriage, and sex, as well as the progression of feminism and shifting power dynamics, showing the first of inklings of sexual liberation and setting the stage for a more postmodern idea of sex. I said “(nearly) unavoidable parts of any human life” earlier, but in the setting of the novel it is truly unavoidable, practically a burden for the women. Mother’s relationship with father, Evelyn Nesbit’s sexuality and relationships, the little girl’s existence in the Lower East Side, and Emma Goldman’s spelling out of the economics of marriage are all examples of the inescapabl
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Manhattan/Urbana/Sag Harbor/Belgrade

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Two weeks. Two weeks until school is done. Two weeks until the trial of junior year is done. Two weeks until we fly over the white city turned gray by years and bombs, and land in Belgrade. Two weeks until I sit in the old, red, air-condition lacking Škoda my uncle drives and cross the bridge into the city, with the view of a sort of grandiose, socialist-era corner building. My escape into the city. Two weeks until Serbia, the only consistent place I’ve gone every summer, my own Sag Harbor. Like Benji, summer has thus become a sort of periodic experience of cultural shifting, as he navigated the weird shift from being in a white community to a black community. He has to catch up with a bunch of people he sees only once a year, and while being a part of their community he constantly feels like he has to catch up on things. And he’s always in an odd place of in between both cultures. That’s what it’s always like for me over the summer, going back to Serbia. My American-ess becomes both
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