Cassi's World Literature Blog!

 Hey guys! The topic I wanted to invite conversation on is the concrete image of the spider legs. I'm curious why you guys think they were found in Orvil's leg/Opal's leg. Is this a symbol? How does it connect to the other mentions of spiders throughout the book?  As I expressed in class, this is definitely a detail that I feel likely has a deeper meaning, but I can't quite grasp it yet. So, I'm excited to hear what you all think! 

 I think settler colonialism is a thread that runs indirectly through the lives of all of the characters in There There . I think there are places throughout the novel where it is clear the oppression the characters have faced, and how it impacts them today. I think some of the larger ways are more inherently evident, but one of the details I found interesting was when Tommy Orange discussed Last Names. He talked about how Native people did not originally have last names. But once the colonists came and settled and forced them to assimilated into their own culture, which involved last names. He talked about how they were often just assigned colors, which is why so many Native people have the last names Black, Brown, Green etc. And, perhaps most strikingly, why the author has the last name Orange. I think this is a direct effect of settler colonialism, and while it may seem small, I think it shows a pattern that shows up all throughout the novel in different capacities.

 Hey guys! My final project has been... going. Not particularly good or bad, but it is going! There are definitely some places where I feel a bit stuck, but also a lot of progress I have made that I am proud of! One thing I am proud of is settling on my topic. In my original blog post, I had a lot of hesitancy about what I wanted to research, and nothing I really thought of was interesting me that much. So, I decided to switch my "home text" to Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, and came up with a few ideas surrounding that. I settled on one I like, and was able to start my research from there. The research itself is going alright! I have been trying to either find or read/annotate a source every day to stay on top of things, and I am proud of myself for sticking to that schedule for the most part. I have missed some days of course, and some days my research will not really line up with my bigger picture question, but I'm trying my best for sure. I had to request some texts from interlibra...

 These microlectures were super interesting to me, and they tied a lot of things together. Of course after watching, I have a better context for There There , but I think perhaps more importantly I have gained a larger understanding of the history of Native people and their stories. While watching the microlectures, I kept thinking back to our visit of the Archives and Special Collections and what we learned about the evolution of text and stories. I thought it was really cool to see how the different stories were "written down," like the star maps and robe and Quipis. The Quipis I found particularly interesting. It was super cool to me how all of those little knots can tell a story! During the video, I wondered how historians pieced together what all the knots mean. I wondered a similar thing about the Wampum belts. How do historians know that the designs are actually stories and not just simply designs? Similarly, it made me wonder how many things that we think of as just s...