Hello everyone, I can’t believe how fast time has gone by and that this is actually my last blog post! With 11 readings and 13 blog posts, I have finished this course with much gain and insight!

From the beginning of the term, when I set myself a goal of finishing 11 books, I doubted it, thinking, would I be able to finish them? As I mentioned in my introduction, it has been a long time since I have been in the habit of reading, and I set an expectation for this class to start treating reading as a habit and start liking it.

In this course, I did, and I experienced some improvement in my understanding of literature after reading so many of them. At first, I thought it was because I was getting more practice with reading; however, I believe it was also the professor’s lectures that helped me a lot. I really find watching the lectures helpful after reading a novel because the analysis and quotes in the lecture often clarify some themes and concepts that I did not realize and understand.

With the lectures and the discussions with my classmates, I gradually understood the novels from a different perspective and acknowledged the importance of context before commenting on a novel. For example, in The Book of Chameleons, I would not understand the quote “some scars will not fade” until I learned about the context of Angola.

At the same time, I liked the structure of the course. This feeling of autonomy makes us value every blog post more when we choose what we are going to read by ourselves. For me, this blog website is precious, as it records my gradual growth after every novel. Moreover, I feel grateful that the class did not use quality to judge my grade for blog posts. As an international student, I am not good at writing, and I am afraid that I can’t write my own opinion clearly. However, in this class, I don’t have to fear my thoughts being too complex, thus giving up on expressing certain ideas. I can freely quote the novel and write my true internal insights!

After this class, I learned that romance studies are not just solely about romance, which I originally expected about the themes of “Love,” “France,” and “Italy.” However, I realized that it also includes many social, cultural, philosophical, and historical aspects. Writing reflects the values, experiences, and literary movements of a certain era, and being able to learn about them is definitely important. The historical context of colonization, societal inequalities, and surrealism is something I didn’t know at all, but now, I have gained much more understanding, and it aids my future reading. Specifically, I find the novel The Black Shark Alley very meaningful, and in class, we discussed how “body” occured mutiple times, with different symbols.

Out of all the books, my favorite book is The Shrouded Women because the plot is reflective and memorable of women’s status and situation of that era. My question for everyone is, what is your favorite novel and why?