All the Feels Concept Map
Michael Ren
Professor Dora Zhang
Dec. 16, 2019
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye - Morrison's novel places great focus on the shame felt and internalized by Pecola as well as the subsequent melancholia experienced by Claudia and others. There are many both externalized and internalized aspects to the emotions experienced by the characters, placing this in the middle of the spectrum.
Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Diaz's novel details the (brief and wondrous!) life of Oscar Wao in the context of Dominican relations and culture within the United States. For this reason, the text is placed on the left side of the map, which focuses more on internalized conflict. The main characters of the novel, including Oscar, Lola, and Yunior all face their own internal conflicts in consideration of how they deal with their Dominican sides while living in the states.
Anna Deveare Smith, Twilight: Los Angeles - Smith provides her recreation of the events surrounding the 1992 Los Angeles Race Riots. The form of storytelling, in which Smith poses as every character in the documentary, make this a deeply personal and introspective look into the events. However, the anger surrounding the actions many of the characters make also present clear connections to Srinivasan's framework for anger.
Audre Lorde, Poetry is not a Luxury - Lorde argues for the use of poetry towards social change in her poem. Especially for underrepresented groups, poetry presents itself as a vital tool, a medium to explore ideas otherwise ignored in other forms of expression. Yunior, in writing Oscar Wao has a similar motive in mind, claiming it as a form of zafa to his fuku.
Gloria Anzaldua, How to Tame a Wild Tongue - Diaz's seamless interweaving of Spanish and English in his novel leads us to question the impacts of speaking such language in America. This is only a part of a much more general problem that the characters in Diaz's novel try to answer: how and to what extent should they change their identity in the US? Anzaldua argues that in fact, no change should be needed. No matter the location, people should not have to give up their sense of self and the most crucial parts of their identity - such as language.
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts - Kingston weaves Chinese folktales and cultural stories into her life in her autobiography, drawing parallels between them and showing the difficulty Asian American immigrants had in adapting to American culture. The melancholia felt for the homeland is a significant aspect of the novel, as each of the characters (particularly the sisters Moon Orchid and Brave Orchid) attempt to deal with it in their own ways.
Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Hamid's novel represents a more externalized struggle between American and Pakistani culture for Changez, placing it on the right side of this map. One of the main focuses of this novel can be found in the way Changez harnesses his emotions - anger, fear, determination to produce tangible chance, and that's represented in the affective politics of those emotions.
Jordan Peele, Get Out - Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) finds himself in a nightmarish situation when he goes to meet the family of his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams). Get Out's story accentuates the difficulty that differeint American ethnicities and cultures in general can have in understanding in each other. The stereotypes that arise promote passive racism which can lead to active racism.
bell hooks, Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination - Hooks argues that our society is often fearful of facing issues of racism. At some point, we may speak of coexistence and the lack of racism so much that we begin to believe it, even though our actions have not actually changed in accordance to what should be done. Get Out plays with these ideas and produces a role reversal in that the black man now fears the white man, instead of the other way around, as white families have been taught to act.
Sara Ahmed, The Affective Politics of Fear - Ahmed notes some crucial characteristics of fear: that it inherently defines a distance between the object who is fearful and the object two be feared, and that it causes a shrinkage into oneself (an adherence to principles, or fundamentals). For Changez, the latter is precisely what happens as he realizes his Pakistani roots in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. At the same time, America as a whole exhibits the same behavior - the 9/11 attacks raise fears which cause the country as a whole to return to an earlier, less inclusive time in its history where people like Changez wouldn't be accepted.
Deborah Gould, Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP's Fight Against AIDS
ACT UP's emotional work, while mainly based off of anger, also stem from a position of fear in that death is inherently a fearful thing to be avoided. Gould argues here that the reason ACT UP was so successful was that they were able to take this fear and grief and transform it into something more productive - anger.
James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son - Baldwin notes his childhood life in relation to his father after his death. His anger against the institutionalized system of racism in America is similar to what Changez feels in the events following 9/11. For both of them, the cracks in their respective societies are present throughout their lives, but it is the watershed events which bring them to full fruition.
Amia Srinivasan, The Aptness of Anger - Srinivasan details the emotional impact that anger can have in her essay, in particular noting it as the difference between one who views the world as is and one who wants to change it.
Jose Esteban Munoz, Cruising Utopia and Ernest Bloch, Can Hope Be Dissaponted?
Munoz and Bloch emphasize the difference between identity and identification: the former is a personal matter, but the latter is a process. Identification is an explorative process which is affected by both internal and external issues. Kingston's autobiography and Yunior's narration of Oscar Wao can all be seen as part of this process of identification in a foreign American culture.
Martha Nussbaum, Beyond Anger - Nussbaum argues for the counterproductiveness of anger except in the presence of social standing. This view can be applied to Changez's anger following 9/11, as well as Baldwin's anger in his encounter with the waitress in the deep south.
Silvia Tomkins, Shame and its Sisters - One of the affects in Tomkins typology of facial expressions is shame-humiliation. Tomkins sees shame as dangers because it is internal and self imposed. She also associates them with shyness and guilt because each of these emotions can easily lead to another in that family. In The Bluest Eye, Pecola and Cholly's respective shames define them as people. The title of the book itself also pays homage to the blue eyes of the white people shaming the blacks in the novel.
Sigmund Freud, Mourning and Melancholia - Freud notes that mourning and melancholia is regularly the result of the impact of the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some abstraction which has taken the place of one. Oftentimes, it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what is being mourned or what has been lost because it is difficult to attach an object of identification to it. Kingston's mourning in this novel spans her cultural roots, her childhood, and her aunt moon orchid.
David Eng and Shinhee Han, A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia - Eng and Han argue for the effect of melancholia on whole countries and cultural groups as a whole. For Kingston herself in The Woman Warrior, her experience has already been shaped by the events that occurred before her time, such as the Chinese Exclusion Acts. The same principles can be applied to the Wao family's melancholia in the US in Oscar Wao and Changez's allegiance to his homeland in Reluctant Fundamentalist.
Gran Fury, selected works - Gran Fury's works were directly inspired and even helped form ACT UP's image to the general public. Their artwork resonated not just with those with HIV/AIDS, but incited everyone to follow their cause based off something much more general - the grief that comes with the death of a loved one.