Blogs, take two.

STRAUSS-KAHN’S NAKED CHALLENGE

by Amy Davidson

            I had many layers of reaction to Amy Davidson’s blog Strauss-Kahn’s Naked Challenge. I first noticed that, overall, I enjoyed this blog because of the author’s use of snark. There’s a sarcastic tone throughout: “Women are so confusing”, “Quite aside from the customs at parties in which the guests are never seen dressed, this challenge doesn’t actually strike one as all that challenging”. (After Word told me that “snark” is not a real word I looked up the definition and found this: An imaginary animal [used to refer to someone or something that is difficult to track down]. I found this funny because when I sat down to write this blog I asked myself, how does one prove the tone of snark?) Besides the presence of snark I was drawn to this blog because it addresses what I consider an important topic: negative attitudes toward women. I read it and, like any article that exposes male chauvinism, I was happy that this kind of dialogue is taking place. However, there is something else that happens when I read an article that focuses on a topic that I find important: I get critical. For instance, when I read, “The charges were eventually dropped, because of worries about her credibility” I yelled in my head “Don’t take it for granted that people know of the long history of defense lawyers breaking down women’s reputations in rape trials!!”. Had I not participated in a course that focused on how our legal system effects women I doubt I would understand the complexity of this “tradition”. One of the topics of that course was the scrutiny under which women are placed in rape trials and why their reputation would even matter. I would’ve liked Davidson to say a little more on this since it is such a huge issue, and the reason many rape victims do not come forward. This lack of depth makes me remember the medium Davidson is using, and I wonder if maybe one function of a blog is a concise way to start a conversation. Perhaps, had Davidson gone any more in-depth, her editors would’ve chosen this to be an article. Maybe a blog that is attached to an identity such as The New Yorker is really only meant to function like a modern day op-ed? But, then, why call the blog “Close Read”? So, as you can see, I’m left with mixed feelings on this blog.

On Baby Blue Ivy Carter and the Alleged Ugliness of Blackness

by Akiba Solomon

I enjoyed the concise nature of On Baby Blue Ivy Carter and the Alleged Ugliness of Blackness by Akiba Solomon. It wasn’t the same type of concise as Amy Davidson’s blog, which I would liken to briefness. In Solomon’s blog I liken her conciseness to very deliberate choices of information to share because of the short form she’s writing in. Within 8 very short paragraphs Solomon took a very specific event (the birth of Jay-Z and Beyonce’s child), share’s comments found on the internet and her insights into them, and references a book that leads her to her message of living your life despite others judgments. 

WRITING MEMOIR? USE THE ALGORITHM AND ACT LIKE GALILEO IN WALMART

by Marion Roach Smith

Reading WRITING MEMOIR? USE THE ALGORITHM AND ACT LIKE GALILEO IN WALMART by Marion Roach Smith made me think of our abstraction ladder exercise in class. What they have in common is the break down of a broad topic in order to create interest or understanding. In our abstraction ladder exercise we were made to take a broad statement and filter it through examples and observations that would support our argument. Smith writes that the process of writing a memoir involves a similar filtration. Using her algorithm “this is an (x) and the illustration is (y)” will help you “reduce the essence of the tale to a single totemic emotion”, which will shift your story into the “new position of importance”. In other words, people will care about your story.

            I also found it interesting that Smith takes a big idea like picking only important details out of your experience to tell your story (“You must speed-shop your overstocked whiz-bang subconscious, snagging only those items tagged by the subject you’ve chosen”), and filters it through the metaphor of Galileo shopping in Wal-Mart to get her readers to understand.