READ it and COMMENT: how does your work on this specific task compare to this one?
What single aspect or argument got your attention the most?
I was very overwhelmed with the first assignment that I got from this course. Mostly because I was not prepared of how emotionally and mentally challenging a literature class could be. On the first day of class, I was confused when we started exploring other people’s culture (tribe) and I had to dig deeper and ponder on what it means to belong into one. I thought I would only be learning about Italian-Americans, watch italian films and read italian books but it seems that the course is much broader than that. I was perplexed at first when I was asked to learn about Black history, Irish immigrants, Chinese workforces, and Jewish pogroms and their effect in American Society. I thought to myself, “What is the relation of all these with Italian-Americans?” I wanted to learn about the culture that my stepfather grew up in and explore further the stories that they talked about around the dinner table. When we did talk about them in class, they were not the same stories that I have heard before. I wonder if my stepfather knew and just chose to not recount it because it was that part of the history when his people felt vulnerable and oppressed or maybe he too didn’t know about it. I feel that this course is rigorous mostly because of the extent of self-reflection I had to do before writing an assignment or participating in class as opposed to just typing or speaking words out of the surface of my brain based on what I know instead of what I feel. To me, it is a little exhausting because it is not something that I often do.
