The first day of class went well. I was nervous all morning. New faces. New voices. New expectations.
Would I be able to do what I had set out to do?
I started class with a story, a story that had traveled across time and space in to my 21st-century first-year composition classroom with students from across the state, the country, and the world...
My story began with a picture of the little Ganesha statuette that sits right next to the composition textbooks in my new office. But my Ganesha is not the familiar "elephant God" known in this part of the world. Neither is he the Ganesha worshipped in Hindu homes across the world. Buddhidaata. Siddhidaata. The bestower of wisdom. The master of perfection.
The image I shared is that of Ganesha the writer, the fastest writer in Hindu mythology. In the image, Ganesha sits cross-legged on the floor with a peacock feather quill in his right hand. His left finger is on his forehead as if he is thinking hard, concentrating, contemplating, waiting for some magic to happen. In front of him is an old Indian desk, the kind you could write on while sitting on the floor. He is transcribing the Mahabharata, one of the oldest primary epics in the world.
According to an old Indian story that many Indian folks tell their grand kids when the little ones are still little and still love stories told by their grannies, Ved Vyasa approached Ganesha so that the latter would write down the story of Bharata (yup, that is the ancient name of "India," the latter being a British construct). Vyasa would combine all the oral stories, legends, myths, mores, morals, local histories of kings and their kingdoms into a grand narrative of ancient India and would dictate these to Ganesha.
Ganesha had other things on his mind, but it is always hard to refuse a wise man. So he tells Vyasa that he would write down what Vyasa dictated, but the latter would have no time to think and revise his thoughts once they had been penned by Ganesha. Vyasa had a condition too: Ganesha would not write down anything till he had completely understood what was being said to him. If Ganesha did not understand something, he would have to stop to ask. He would have to question, inquire, reflect, rewrite, and revise...
A deal was finally struck and Vyasa and Ganesha journeyed together to compose the Mahabharata, one of the oldest known epics of the ancient world...
Thus ended my story, a story that had crossed many borders (time, language, culture, place). We paused to unravel it and examine it layer by layer. We talked about different notions of composition, the social and collaborative nature of knowledge-making processes and human endeavor, and what happens to stories, languages, cultures, and peoples when they cross borders and find new audiences. What is gained in these acts of border crossing? What gets lost in translation?
We also read Alfred Lubrano's "The Bricklayer's Boy," another narrative about border crossing and place-making.
We then journaled about the various "borders" (both physical and metaphoric) that each one of us have had to cross to get to our FYW class and how these border-crossings have constrained and/or enabled us. I briefly introduced the concepts of code-meshing and translanguaging as strategies for writing and we finished class by discussing the course, major assignments, and policies.
The last part felt so rushed. There were so many unfinished thoughts and questions...I can only hope that the next class period is better paced...
Would I be able to do what I had set out to do?
I started class with a story, a story that had traveled across time and space in to my 21st-century first-year composition classroom with students from across the state, the country, and the world...
My story began with a picture of the little Ganesha statuette that sits right next to the composition textbooks in my new office. But my Ganesha is not the familiar "elephant God" known in this part of the world. Neither is he the Ganesha worshipped in Hindu homes across the world. Buddhidaata. Siddhidaata. The bestower of wisdom. The master of perfection.
The image I shared is that of Ganesha the writer, the fastest writer in Hindu mythology. In the image, Ganesha sits cross-legged on the floor with a peacock feather quill in his right hand. His left finger is on his forehead as if he is thinking hard, concentrating, contemplating, waiting for some magic to happen. In front of him is an old Indian desk, the kind you could write on while sitting on the floor. He is transcribing the Mahabharata, one of the oldest primary epics in the world.
According to an old Indian story that many Indian folks tell their grand kids when the little ones are still little and still love stories told by their grannies, Ved Vyasa approached Ganesha so that the latter would write down the story of Bharata (yup, that is the ancient name of "India," the latter being a British construct). Vyasa would combine all the oral stories, legends, myths, mores, morals, local histories of kings and their kingdoms into a grand narrative of ancient India and would dictate these to Ganesha.
Ganesha had other things on his mind, but it is always hard to refuse a wise man. So he tells Vyasa that he would write down what Vyasa dictated, but the latter would have no time to think and revise his thoughts once they had been penned by Ganesha. Vyasa had a condition too: Ganesha would not write down anything till he had completely understood what was being said to him. If Ganesha did not understand something, he would have to stop to ask. He would have to question, inquire, reflect, rewrite, and revise...
A deal was finally struck and Vyasa and Ganesha journeyed together to compose the Mahabharata, one of the oldest known epics of the ancient world...
Thus ended my story, a story that had crossed many borders (time, language, culture, place). We paused to unravel it and examine it layer by layer. We talked about different notions of composition, the social and collaborative nature of knowledge-making processes and human endeavor, and what happens to stories, languages, cultures, and peoples when they cross borders and find new audiences. What is gained in these acts of border crossing? What gets lost in translation?
We also read Alfred Lubrano's "The Bricklayer's Boy," another narrative about border crossing and place-making.
We then journaled about the various "borders" (both physical and metaphoric) that each one of us have had to cross to get to our FYW class and how these border-crossings have constrained and/or enabled us. I briefly introduced the concepts of code-meshing and translanguaging as strategies for writing and we finished class by discussing the course, major assignments, and policies.
The last part felt so rushed. There were so many unfinished thoughts and questions...I can only hope that the next class period is better paced...
