Mckaylee‘s blog post is not only well written, but I found it incredibly thought provoking. My attention was especially drawn by Spahr’s statement about how we all feel safe in our beds, without thinking what is actually happening just outside our doors. This statement was underlined by Mckaylee through the use of the lines “We wake up in the night with just each others, and admit that even while we believe that we want to believe that we all live in one bed of the earth’s atmosphere, our bed is just our bed and no one else’s and we can’t figure out how to stop it from being that way” (Spahr, 30). This explains how naive people can be, because we have the tendency of ignoring the connection that is present among us all, and how our lives depend on each other. This state of dependence, I believe, can be linked also to Judith Butler and to her argument of what life is it worth sparing. That being said, this connection underlines how important it is to understand that each decision that we make has consequences.

Benedetta Franzini.

Spahr, Juliana. This Connection of Everyone with Lungs: Poems. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Print.

This blog was extremely interesting to read! I loved how Naima introduced the poem “The falling Man”, through explaining what we have been discussing in class. Most importantly, though, I found her own and personal explanation about this poem really thought provoking. I agree with her argument of the speaker freezing the moment of the man falling, through the use of her words. The way in which Wislava describes this moment makes the reader perceive it as slow, delicate and calm. This representation is absolutely different from how people remember and feel about this event, and I believe this is one of the reasons why it has been so successful. Also by not adding  “a last line”, it helps the reader picturing the moment not as a tragic event as it is unfolding, but focusing more on the calmness of the action.

Hello everyone,

I hope you all had a good weekend and are now ready for this new week!

In the  lecture last week, we had an amazing discussion about Judith Butler’s article. We focused on  her argument that our lives are precarious, therefore we depend on other people’s actions in order for us to stay alive. We then entered into the argument of, who’s life is worth saving and whose is not?  This, specifically, made me think of the death penalty and if it should be considered just, since is still legal in some countries.

Micheal‘s blog touches on really good points about Butler’s article. His argument is that we are who we are because of the people that surround us, therefore we should be able to understand each other and not fight one another. He also brings up the song about the Pan Am games that Dr. Luger made us listen to during her lecture. This song talked about humanity being united as one entity, however some fellow classmates made us all notice how this song included sections where violence was considered part of being “united” but against something.

On the other hand, AJ‘s blog touched on another section of Butler’s article, the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay and the poems that they wrote. I agree with his argument on how these poems made him look at the prisoners with a more human perspective. Many times our judgement of prisoners depends on what side they stand for. Therefore, if they are considered the enemy, we then have the tendency not to look at them as people just like us.

Another blog post that caught my attention was Andrea‘s. She connected our class discussion about the study conducted by Saal on Foer’s noel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. She compares two very important traumatic events, the 9/11 attack and the Holocaust. What I found really interesting about her argument is that Foer’s novel impacted her memory of this traumatic event and the feelings related to it. Through the use of feelings she was able to connect 9/11 and the Holocaust to the Syrian refugees and how peoples’ opinions have such a strong impact on how we perceive these refugees.

It was amazing reading all of your blogs; everyone had good arguments and very interesting  perspectives on viewing the material covered in class. Please keep up with this amazing work, and I will see you next time.

Benedetta Franzini.

Hello,

I really enjoyed reading Ramon‘s blog, first of all because it has a really good title that caught my eye, but mostly because of its content. I found it interesting his comparison of the views of trauma by the two different perspectives that come from children, as narrators. He also adds a very important childlike point of view: Anne Frank’s. I believe that bringing such a famous story into consideration and comparing her unique perspective on trauma with Oskar’s, Naomi’s and Marji’s, gives a whole new way of thinking about traumatic events. I agree with Ramon’s argument about how Anne Frank’s does a really good job in summarizing her trauma, that it may be considered not as “unspeakable” as it is in the other novels.

This being said, I have a question that came to my mind while  reading your blog; what do you think the novel gains by having children as narrators of trauma?

Benedetta Franzini.

First of all I would like to say that I really enjoyed reading Fiona‘s blog post about the comparison of art works and positions of Marjane Satrapi and Joe Sacco regarding the stories that are telling.

I agree with Fiona’s argument about the comparison  of the drawings done by Satrapi and Sacco, which show the difference in perspectives. By being an outsider, as Joe Sacco is in his graphic novel, it is relative easier to draw in a more realistically and with more details since he does not have strong connections and feelings towards those people. Meanwhile for Satrapi, who is considered  an eye witness, it is almost impossible represent in as accurate details as Sacco did, people that knew really well because they lived in the same city as hers.

To her argument I would add another difference in the two novels that I found very interesting and that I discovered during one of our discussions in our Astu 100 class. While reading Satrapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis, it seems that we are with Marji, and more specifically, we are looking at the events from Marji’s eyes. Which is completely different from the way in which Sacco makes us feel part of the story. In his graphic novel, Safe Area Gorazde, he uses his presence to mirror the events that are explained to him from the people that he interviews in order for us to understand what is happening.

Hi everyone!

It was a real pleasure to read this week’s blogs, they were all mind blowing and very eye opening. I’ve read a lot of blogs that were about Safe Area Gorazde, where Joe Sacco represented himself as a mirror because of the use of his glasses to reflect the horrific story of Gorazde. I read about the story of Obasan and how it was related to the question of how much do we really know about the place where we come from? There were also other really interesting blogs about the group project which focused on the ways of remembering and/or forgetting.

I want to start by citing Mariana’s blog because I loved how she portrays the author of Safe Area Gorazde as a mirror that reflects the horrific and daily events in Gorazde, in order for us to see and feel what he felt when the people from Gorazde were telling him what happened. I also agree with her argument of “not leaving space to the imagination”, by Joe Sacco, by drawing such detailed expressions on people’s faces and detailed environments. Andrea wrote about Safe Area Gorazde as well, however she focused on the role played by Joe Sacco as a connection between the people of Gorazde and freedom, which is symbolised by the United Sates. She also argues that even if Joe Sacco is a journalist, he detaches himself from the others who where coming in Gorazde with the intention of only taking good shoots of the place and of the people but without relating to them and without treating them as human beings. I personally agree with Andrea’s statement of feeling quite disturbed by the frame on page 131 which is picturing a journalist throwing candies at the children just to capture avidity over the cadies.

I have found A.J..’s blog so fascinating in the way he talks about Safe Area Gorazde and its influence on his decision of maybe majoring in journalism. I also found intriguing the fact that A.J. compares the different views that people had of Joe Sacco. For instance he focuses on the negative reaction of F., one of the people that Sacco talked to, when he learned that Joe Sacco was a journalist. This enhances the fact that being a journalist is not easy and you have to deal with many contrasting emotions.

While reading the different blogs my eye was caught by Olivia‘s blog title “Scent and Memory”. Really smartly she connected the group project about memory, to the effect that scent has on individuals and how it brings them back to the event when they smelled that specific scent. I was very interested by this argument because is something that happens to me very often but I have always gave it for granted.

Another blog that impressed me was Devon‘s because of her argument about the book Obasan and how the description of such familiar places during the end of the Second World War, made her realize how little we actually know about the places where we come from. Just like Devon I am too always learning something new, not solely about this country but also about British Columbia and this process of learning is giving me the right to participate almost as a citizen in this new place that I am now calling home.

To conclude I would like to thank you all for the great blogs, they were all mind blowing and very insightful. You all covered extremely interesting areas, especially the ones about Safe Area Gorazde, Obasan and scent and memory. Have a great Sunday night and I will see you all on Tuesday!

Benedetta Franzini.

I have found Ramon’s blog post very interesting because it can be hard to talk about religion since there are so many of them and it can  get controversial as well. However I do agree with Ramon when he said that many people spend most of their lives in praying and following rules given to them by their religion, in order to go to a better place after their life on earth. This constant practice could be seen as an obstacle for these people to not live their lives in the “fullest”, as Ramon argued, because they are so concentrated and focused on trying to reach a goal that is considered by many very uncertain. On the other hand, however, I would argue that some people live fully their lives exactly by following those “rules of living” given to them by their religion. Some could also argue that for the specific reason why life is so short, these people feel the need to maybe go to less developed countries and help the people there, or stay in their hometown and give help through their religious groups or associations.

In conclusion, I really liked how Ramon touches different religions and how he brings in to the conversation the argument of the existence of cults as well, in order to further define and present his position on religion and its effects on people.