Mudbound--Multiple Perspectives/Historical Fiction

Mudbound--Multiple Perspectives/Historical Fiction

Mudbound by Hilary Jordan

AGENDA:

Morning Reflection Emani :

To This Day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltun92DfnPY

http://academyofamericanpoets.cmail20.com/t/ViewEmail/y/34E1CD9CE148F714/FF0EB04BBFA2CA21A2432AF2E34A2A5F

 http://www.ted.com/talks/jamila_lyiscott_3_ways_to_speak_english?language=en

Sign up for Morning Reflections

Go to website:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88195380

Listen to interview on NPR
Read excerpt

Interview with Hilary Jordan:

http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm/author_number/1538/Hillary-Jordan

More about Mudbound:

http://www.hillaryjordan.com/books-mudbound.php

About this book

In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm --- a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not --- charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion.

The men and women of each family relate their versions of events and we are drawn into their lives as they become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale. As Barbara Kingsolver says of Hillary Jordan, "Her characters walked straight out of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and anger and love reside, leaving my heart racing. They are with me still." 

Discussion Questions 

1. The setting of the Mississippi Delta is intrinsic to Mudbound. Discuss the ways in which the land functions as a character in the novel and how each of the other characters relates to it.

2. Mudbound is a chorus, told in six different voices. How do the changes in perspective affect your understanding of the story? Are all six voices equally sympathetic? Reliable? Pappy is the only main character who has no narrative voice. Why do you think the author chose not to let him speak?

Crtical Praise

"A supremely readable debut novel... Fluidly narrated by engaging characters . . . Mudbound is packed with drama. Pick it up, then pass it on." 

— People, Critic’s Choice, 4-star review

"A compelling family tragedy, a confluence of romantic attraction and racial hatred that eventually falls like an avalanche... The last third of the book is downright breathless... An engaging story." 

— Washington Post Book World

"In Hillary Jordan's first novel, Mudbound, the forces of change and resistance collide with terrible consequences." 

— The New York Times

"Stunning... You are truly taken there by Jordan's powerful, evocative writing and complex characters." 

— Boston Globe

Hillary Jordan reading an early chapter of Mudbound

Follow along

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=hillary+Jordan&FORM=HDRSC3#view=detail&mid=053D91D37942704B565D053D91D37942704B565D

Multiple Perspectives:

http://www.the-writers-craft.com/point-of-view-in-literature-perspectives.html 

Objective: Part 1 The author of this book wrote in a first person narrative. These first chapters introduce us to all the different the narrators, and we learn that this book will be told through their perspectives.

1) Genre Introduction: Give a short introduction about first person narrative and other POVs. Explain what it is, how it is used, and why an author might choose this form of narrative for a story like this one.

2) Personal Reaction to Text: Read the introduction with the class. How does this kind of narration make you feel? Do you like it? Do you think it will enhance the plot? Why or why not? What do all the different viewpoints do to the narrative? Why is this not through the eyes of one main character?

3) Small Group Activity: Split the class into groups and assign each group a different form of narrative -- i.e.: third person, second person, omniscient, etc. Have each group re-write this short chapter using their assigned form of narrative. Have each group present their work. Discuss which one was the most effective. Do you think the author made the right choice? Why or why not?

Historical fiction

Objective: Part 1 "Mudbound" fits into a unique genre of literature called Historical Fiction.

 1) Introduction of Genre: Introduce to the class the concept of the historical fiction style of writing. Present the pros and cons of this style of narrative and list some of the reasons why an author would choose this style to write in. Present some examples of this style from books that they have read, or will read later with the class.

2) Group Activity: Split the class into groups and assign each group a different part of these chapters. Have each group study their portion and work together to write a short response to the historical fiction style of that portion. Allow each group some time to present their prepared information.

3) Class Discussion: Read aloud with the class the part where the narrator, presents the different facts about the climate in the south at this time -- i.e.: the politics, the war, the different occupations, the crops, the weather, the relations with the north, etc. Discuss this with the class. How does this language enhance the historical fiction style of the book? How does this make this information a little more believable? Why do you think keeping this informational tone was so important to the author? What did you learn through this dialogue that helped you understand this book and setting better?

WRITING:

Print out "Why I Write" and place in envelope.  Print Goldberg 2

HOMEWORK:  For Wednesday: Read to pg. 48 in Mudbound

Welcome Back, Juniors!

AGENDA:

1. Review Course Criteria/Welcome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH3akqBwYfo 

 

Morning Reflection:  Suli Breaks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5vb5L7nOsc

 

Quickwrite: Your thoughts and post a comment

2. Read Why I Write and Write Your Own Why I Write Letter to Your Self

Why I Write: Jane Hirshfield Writes about Life's Profound Mystery

Date: October 10, 2011

Summary: Prize-winning international poet, translator, and essayist Jane Hirshfield's poetry speaks to the central issues of human existence: desire and loss, impermanence and beauty, and the many dimensions of our connection with others. She tells NWP why she writes.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

Why do I write?

I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. A thought was not there, then it is. An image, a story, an idea about what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into being. Any new metaphor is a telescope, a canoe in rapids, an MRI machine. And like that MRI machine, sometimes its looking is accompanied by an awful banging. To write can be frightening as well as magnetic. You don't know what will happen when you throw open your windows and doors.

To write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery.

Why write? You might as well ask a fish, why swim, ask an apple tree, why make apples? The eye wants to look, the ear wants to hear, the heart wants to feel more than it thought it could bear...

The writer, when she or he cannot write, is a person outside the gates of her own being. Not long ago, I stood like that for months, disbarred from myself. Then, one sentence arrived; another. And I? I was a woman in love. For that also is what writing is. Every sentence that comes for a writer when actually writing—however imperfect, however inadequate—every sentence is a love poem to this world and to our good luck at being here, alive, in it.

 https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3660

Joan Didion:
http://genius.com/Joan-didion-why-i-write-annotated

RELATED ARTICLES ON NWP.ORG

• Why I Write: A Celebration of the National Day on Writing
• Poet Laureate Kay Ryan: Poet as Teacher, Teacher as Poet
• Billy Collins: A `Reader's Poet' Reads at NWP's 2009 Annual Meeting

About the Author Jane Hirshfield is the author of seven collections of poetry, including After (shortlisted for England's T.S. Eliot Prize and named a "best book of 2006" by the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the London Financial Times), Given Sugar, Given Salt (finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award), The Lives of the Heart, and The October Palace, as well as a book of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. Her most recent book, a collection of poems entitled Come, Thief was published in August 2011. Hirshfield has taught at UC Berkeley, Duke University, Bennington College and elsewhere, and her many appearances at writers conferences and literary festivals in this country and abroad have been highly acclaimed.


4. Natalie Goldberg's "Test 2"

Independent Projects and Final Portfolio DUE FRIDAY 6/9

Another poetry prompt

The Conditional

Ada Limón, 1976

Say tomorrow doesn’t come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.

Project: Poetry Prompt An Alphabetical Letter Poem

Z   Julie Marie Wade

Citadel of our best names—angsty Zooey & chatty Zarathustra,               wee Zaccheus & mighty Zorro. (Zebediah, of course, would                            place among them.)  Experiment in endings (A-Z), as in “where the A ends up,” the crooked        path               an A could take toward some arrival’s gate (zig-zag).    Or Z-pack: superhero strength contained in capsules.  Like the 7, crossed or uncrossed, mustachioed or not,               the Z with its dashing  good looks & flaming androgyny,  its                            cursive tail & tiger purr.  That Z, its maze of contradictions, shape-shifter & fortress of finality:                N’s topsy-turvy cousin, S’s more callous sidekick, The stuff of caped-crusader skirmishes: ZAP! &  ZOOM!  Enabler of interjections (think Wowie Zowie! think Zoinks!)                Symphonic doppelgänger shadowing xylophone & disguise.  The verbage of bees, buzzing all day in a hive.  Zeta or zed, its dialectical relatives, or the numeral 3,                 Z’s bodacious brother on its mother’s side.         Ambiguous, flirtatious, & worth 10 points on the Scrabble board,                 Z turns out to be quite the catch—zany, zesty, & remarkably                            well-read. But despite its zeal, Z can also communicate quietly, eloquent as an             ideogram.                 It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring… How do we know? Just look at the rocket of Zs rising out of his mouth.

The Hours Study Guide

The Hours Lesson Plan Study guide

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByDydJ2HScSnbnRiMGQ4ZUc2b2c/view?usp=sharing

Fugitive Pieces Study Guide

Fugitive Pieces :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByDydJ2HScSnWldET181ZVduSlU/view?usp=sharing