Author: Sophia Torres

Dead Pigs and Cai Guo-Qiang’s “The Ninth Wave”

Cai Guo-Qiang’s “The Ninth Wave” (2014) includes animals made of styrofoam and wool on a deteriorating boat (Artnet News).

 

Cai Guo-Qiang is a contemporary artist whose piece, The Ninth Wave, was partly inspired by the 16,000 dead infected pigs that floated down Huangpu River in 2013—the river featured in the image above (Artnet News). This piece is commentary on China’s political climate, but also climate change in a time when the public’s rising concerns about the country’s water supply went censored or was suppressed (Guardian).

The animals in this piece can go extinct, but their experience can be applied to a human one, too. It is just as much about the animals as it is about us. The boat has religious undertones as well—it can relate to Noah’s ark, death and destruction as a guarantee compared to the survival of a select few. Climate change is something everyone should be concerned about, but I think this image is not limited to just that and cannot be—there are certain political, economic, and social factors that intersect with it. Soon there will be nothing we can do about it; no one or thing survives.

Davidson, Nicola. “Rivers of Blood: The Dead Pigs Rotting in China’s Water Supply.” The Guardian, 29 Mar. 2013, www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/29/dead-pigs-china-water-supply. 

Gaskin, Sam. “Cai Guo-Qiang’s the Ninth Wave up the River.” Artnet News, 12 Aug. 2015, news.artnet.com/art-world/cai-guo-qiang-sends-ark-of-undead-animals-up-huangpu-river-what-63763. (Includes the image above).

“Crumbs from the Table of Joy” is Layered

Crumbs from the Table of Joy followed Ernestine and the Crump family’s move from the south to a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn as they dealt with the loss of their mother. Ernestine’s father blindly places his faith in a false prophet, marries a German woman, and initially lets the city and his grief consume him. His character can be compared to Jurgis (and other characters we’ve read)—he had this expectation he would make more money when, in reality, life is/remained an obstacle.

The beginning of the play felt like set-up until the Crump sisters’ aunt arrived. She moved in with them and passionately expressed her undying support for the movement in Harlem. She provides us with commentary on what it means to be Black especially after Ernie’s father’s marriage, but she also struggles with an alcohol addiction.

The play is layered and connects to our course on a deeper level—not only did it tackle the issues writers we’ve read so far have (e.g., Du Bois), but Ernestine enrolls in City College and becomes an advocate. She was a student like us at the time. We were in the audience learning of another CUNY student who fought for social change as we study what that looked like at the time. It also weaves our CUNY archive readings into the conclusion of the play, while it details the very real and disheartening conclusion to the rest of the cast’s stories.

This is the Playbill, ticket, and Keen Company insert we were given [see image on the right].

Welcome to the Week: Joy Harjo, Gwendolyn Brooks, and “The Indian Problem”

Gwendolyn Brooks’ poetry is concerned with the Black experience in America. In “We Real Cool,” she steps into the perspective of seven pool players who seem to have dropped out of school.

Brooks: “We / Strike straight.” (l. 5-6).

Harjo: “We / were surfacing the edge of our ancestors’ fights, and ready to strike. / It was difficult to lose days in the Indian bar if you were straight” (l. 2-4).

Listen to her recite the poem here (20:13).

1. How does Harjo’s collective “We” compare to Brooks’ use of “We”? What do you think it tells us about a connection between the Native and Black experience?

Joy Harjo’s “American Sunrise” extends through time, speaking for Native Americans then and now. The poem tells us these issues still exist, they did not disappear, and confronts the U.S:

“We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves / . . . forty years later and we still want justice. We are still America. We / know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die / soon” (l. 1, 15-7).

2. Do you think the American government will ever take full accountability for its displacement of Native Americans? The U.S. apologized in 2009 with no calls for reparations. The apology was also hidden within a defense bill, offered by Obama on behalf of the American people rather than by our government.

NPR: U.S. Apology to Native Americans: Unnecessary or not Enough? 

If interested, the Indian Law Resource Center offers more details about the apology here.

In the Smithsonian’s documentary “The Indian Problem,” the Manifest Destiny believed Americans were destined to stretch ‘their’ frontier across North America. It thought it was God’s will and said Native Americans were barriers to civilization and progress—a problem (4:44—6:00). As more immigrants settled on Indian land, treaties were broken, and Natives were forced to choose between their sovereignty or their land (6:58—7:03).

Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa Lakota: “We are poor . . . but we are free. No white man controls our footsteps” (8:43—48).

Harjo: “Sin / was invented by the Christians, as was the Devil, we sang. We / were the heathens, but needed to be saved from them — thin / chance” (l. 8-11).

3. What do you think about religion’s role and how it was used to illustrate Native Americans? What distinctions can be made between “heathens” and “saviors” given those depictions and compared to Harjo’s lines above? What was your initial response to the Smithsonian’s documentary?

Collaborative Writing Matters

Omar, Ahmed, Aissata, Sophia T.

Collaborative or collective writing is created when people are silenced, ignored, or intentionally left at a disadvantage. Shared goals and a variety of perspectives contribute to changing that.

CCNY students demanded five things that would help Black and Puerto Rican students on campus. It instead resulted in violence. The protest flyer expands on this, with Black and Latino students reaching for another beaten by a policeman during their protest—police who took over CCNY because the college administration could not handle it.

In Patricia Gilbert’s poem “Saturday Night,” the word supper connotes the last supper. That imagery signifies a communal gathering where everyone comes together despite their struggles. It is a reflection of what collaborative writing can do, especially when students’ work makes a political statement and tries to write change within institutions that do not want it.

Karen Tei Yamashita and John Okada’s “No-No Boy”

The Atlantic: John Okada’s No-No Boy Is a Test of American Character

Karen Tei Yamashita most recently introduced John Okada’s “No-No Boy.” She is a professor of literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her piece reflects on the war’s aftermath, a duality of American identity, and the novel’s relationship to immigration today. She even talks about the 74 years it took for the Supreme Court to overturn its justification of Japanese internment—this while they supported the Muslim travel ban (the contradictions!).

“No-No Boy” is not limited to the time it was published, and being American includes more than its national connotations. Historically, exclusion finds a way to return, and does with Jim Crow laws right after WWII, and Trump’s ban and immigration policies (among more events). Yamashita believes this novel is a reminder “cruel history” should not repeat, and is about all the questions that relate to “what we are made of,” both as our own person and in the societies we live. I think it’s also useful to compare her introduction to Lawson Fusao Inada’s—he said reading this book will help us “see, and be, with greater strength and clarity. And in this way does the world begin to change” (Okada, vi).

Reading this in class lets us track how Ichiro’s thoughts repeat in others and apply parts of his experience to our own no matter our cultural, ethnic or national backgrounds. There’s an internal war Ichiro goes through that reveals how much the world has not changed. Once we understand it, then we can find a way to make it change and this theme can apply to our other readings. I think “No-No Boy” encourages people to think of how Ichiro reflects themselves, and speaks to all moments in time.

Yamashita, Karen Tei. “John Okada’s ‘No-No Boy’ Is a Test of American Character.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 21 May 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/05/karen-tei-yamashita-john-okadas-no-no-boy/588466/. 

The Soul Perseveres and Evolves in Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” (1955)

“rejected yet confessing out / the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head” (Ginsberg, I).

Society expects the narrator to conform to the expectations it creates. The narrator is judged for who he is; he is deemed other by a majority that wants to tell him how to think. The rejection he feels is a response to that prescription, but he instead “confesses” his thoughts. The soul is incapable of social conformity unless that conformity is expected of the “rhythm of [his] thought.”

Our thoughts belong to our identity—they are “naked” in the sense they can be the raw, uncensored ideas our minds try to make sense of, and we cannot necessarily deny. In Part I of the poem, it seems the soul is the only thing that can stay true to itself (but still evolve) despite those constructions.

“Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness” (Ginsberg, II).

The speaker and Moloch are connected. If Moloch is capitalism’s soul, the narrator’s soul is only a singular stream forcefully linked to Moloch’s consciousness. In other words, the narrator’s soul is restricted because of Moloch, but also becomes a part of it. His soul is expected to adhere to Moloch’s direction, but if we consider Part I of the poem, the soul will persevere because it is free of social conformity.

Moloch is also a representation of a loss of innocence and can potentially relate to the line “who entered my soul early.” Moloch is inescapable for the narrator, but he maintains his own spiritual identity.

“fifty more shocks will never return your soul to / its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the / void” (Ginsberg, III).

The soul is finally separated from its physical body in Part III—in this case, Solomon cannot be resuscitated. His soul wanders into a void symbolic of emptiness but also clarity. Solomon cannot escape judgement, but his soul can and did in his supposed death. The soul can constantly evolve and explore regardless of the social isolation it feels. That isolation is a void in itself, but it could be a space to reflect as Solomon may do in his void.

Ginsberg, Allen. “Howl by Allen Ginsberg.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, 1955, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl.

The Sea’s Image in DuBois’ “The Souls of Black Folk”

“Then, as the storm burst round him, he rose slowly to his feet and turned his closed eyes toward the Sea. And the world whistled in his ears” (DuBois, Chapter XIII).

The sea is a representation of freedom in DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk. It cannot be bound by chains or shackles and moves as it pleases. This imagery can be interpreted as both a spiritual and physical uprising; it discards the Veil and unifies the double consciousness.

In the passage above, the sea can also represent the unknown. With “closed eyes,” John’s sight is controlled by people who tell him who he is and what he can be. Those in power condemn him based on his complexion, and only on what their eyes perceive of him. The shift from slavery to citizenship maintains that ocular demarcation and attempts to confine John when it cannot. John sees no change in the world, but he’s entitled to the same freedom the sea possesses. He represents more than just his experience—he is the sea that cannot be silenced, blinded, or disregarded.

The image of waves crashing as the “storm bursts round him” and the “whistling” he hears calls for an uprising against his oppressors. DuBois explains the Sorrow Songs are songs slaves sung when “weary,” but a breath of hope always seeps through (Chapter XIV). The whistling can be a reference to that. Ultimately, this supposed “shift” is not a positive one. Slavery was not eradicated, it just evolved with Jim Crow laws. The freedom illustrated with this image is a human right that must be fought for.

An Immigrant Bildungsroman: Responses to Sinclair’s “The Jungle”

“There were those who made the tins for the canned-meat; and their hands, too, were a maze of cuts, and each cut represented a chance for blood-poisoning . . . their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats . . . sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard” (Sinclair, Chapter 9).

Orm Øverland argues The Jungle is “an immigrant bildungsroman with a radical twist” despite its flaws and says this “naturalist” novel was written as a journalistic piece that allowed Sinclair to talk about his own experiences with meatpacking while understanding the society they live needs to change (Øverland, 4, 21). It’s not necessarily about the story, the novel is about everything else.

Upon publication, critics claimed the novel was exaggerated, but Sinclair stood by his depiction of Chicago’s meatpacking district with his editors’ support (Øverland, 3). Øverland said conservatives thought the novel was full of harmful lies, whereas liberals believed in its truth (Øverland, 3). For historians Louise Carroll Wade and James R. Barrett, Wade argued immigrants were “not passive victims of exploitation” and agrees with Barrett’s claim the novel failed to include how immigrants “built stable communities in the midst of this jungle through their secular and religious ethnic organizations and through trade unions” (Øverland, 2).

The Jungle is controversial and working conditions in the meatpacking district needed to be exposed. It’s not just about our consumption but the abuse of laborers. People are taken advantage of, exposed to dangerous chemicals every day, cut up as they work, infected by the meat they handle (e.g., “blood poisoning”), “f[a]ll into vats,” disintegrate and are ultimately eaten by the public. There is no care for laborers and consumers; so long as those in power profit, the public’s health is of little importance. It’s a blatant disregard of human life for monetary gain. Unfortunately, laborers need to hustle to get by in the society they live, and this relates back to Sinclair’s call for change regardless of the historical and literary context, and the critiques it received once published.

Øverland, Orm. “‘The Jungle’: From Lithuanian Peasant to American Socialist.” American Literary Realism, vol. 37, no. 1, 2004, pp. 1–23. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27747149.

Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle, Standard eBooks, 2 Feb. 2023, https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/upton-sinclair/the-jungle.  

The Jungle: A Musical

Florence Pugh as Ona (Credit: JA/Everett Collection [Photo via Newscom])
Barry Keoghan as Jurgis (Credit: Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP/Shutterstock)

I would cast Florence Pugh as Ona, and Barry Keoghan as Jurgis. I believe they’re both talented actors whose interpretations of their characters could have as much of an emotional effect on their audience as Sinclair’s novel.

Ona is described as small, “blue-eyed and fair,” and Jurgis even feels “she [is not the] sort of woman” who should have to work (Sinclair, Ch. 1 & 3). In comparison, the narrator describes Jurgis as someone with “mighty shoulders,” “giant hands,” and “beetling” brows, but also says he “was like a boy” that bosses liked to get a hold of (Sinclair, Ch. 1 & 2). He was also called impatient and restless (Sinclair, Ch. 2).

These descriptions set Ona and Jurgis’ appearances against each other. Ona is the ideal woman physically, and the same goes for Jurgis as the ideal man (based on social conventions)—sort of like a match between the masculine and feminine. Pugh and Keoghan are about the same size; in other words, Pugh is not the “small” little woman Ona is described, and Keoghan is not this huge muscular man Jurgis is supposed to be. Their image is based on the narrator’s perception of them, but Ona and Jurgis are both normal children getting married in this film.

The film could be a musical adaptation, with a similar vibe to Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I expect the musical will feature large dance numbers, especially in the rain. It’d be extravagant, but the story would not change. We would also witness how disgusting Chicago’s meatpacking district is while Jurgis works there, and see how the couple struggles.