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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (2012) - Coggle…
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
(2012)
What do we read for in novels? In YA novels?
voice and tone - how does the author craft a "teenage" experience (and is it authentic))
how it aligns us with YA positionality
choice to include dialogue (that feels real / has verrisimilitude)
it's so hard to capture "youth" talk. And for Saenz's novel, there's not a lot of emotional coaching ("he said angrily, etc)
narrative choices: 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person
accessibility and ease - what engagements are created when crafting YA Lit. Ease of language, ease in it's historical
the chapter length shapes pacing and temporalities. It's about easing us into the narrative and not roadblocking with heavy, dense prose
this also gives insight into "the social" and the world around us
allusions and intertextualities - the crafting of an archive of references to other texts (songs, art, literature, poetry)
How the book is packaged
showing award-winning to increase sales
awards giving it "credibility" it's not a rando book, this is marking itself as "real" literature
what is the thing in the book that made it good?
on-going cry-counter: 9
How is the book packaged
award winning and queer canon
the back blurb is...reifying a binary and a dualism informed by colorism and tropes of incarcerated men of color...
foregrounds agency and young adulthood: "To all the boys who've had to learn to play by different rules" the dedication to alternative boyhoods
the metaphor of the tee shirt and inheriting his father's shirt; the materiality of emerging adulthood
"fifteen-year olds don't count as people" pokes fun at feeling of not having agency and not making choices; it's about not making choices about his life, his words (can't ccurse); it's also indicative of parental authority in the home; the legal conditions of personhood
"Mascoto" (15)
being the recipient of the gaze, not
Where do we see moments of Ari trying to learn, unpack, or understand gendered bodies, lives, roles?
"becoming a man before my eyes" a transitional and liminal era: "man" signals childhood and adulthood pressing; we're signaling a specific Hispanic/Latino moment around quincienera; it's a gendered liminal space (uh oh, is this novel haunted by boyhood as a protected class); you're becoming THE man, your father
becoming gendered is scary, and what if I grow up to be "guy" in this gross way; Ari being repulsed by heterosexuality built on violence, domination, and hierarchy
what if queerness here models a way of seeing the social/the sexual outside of hierarchy and systems of super/subordination
the violence might still be here and contentious, but it's just not directed towards women/girls: "I didn't know you liked to fight" (53); Ari is looking for not exactly positive form of self-expression, but we can situate this. "Why is Dante not mean" (18)
Dante
Are we Mexican? on-going feelings of imposture syndrome. How does this narrate a particular type of "Borderlands" hybridity and liminality and identifications