Day 7
Mon. Apr. 10
Observations on Sheng Keyi
Introduction to form
Intro to character essay and “Proverbs of Hell”
Homework
➤ Write a “postcard from the past”
Write a “literary postcard” (a paragraph about 5-6 sentences long) about a place you know well, using a “once / now” structure like we saw in the Sheng Keyi pieces. Come to next class ready to read it out loud. Please also upload it to our SharePoint folder.
➤ Read the instructions for Essay 3
Read the instructions and start thinking about who you might like to write about for this essay.
If you’re interesting in completing this assignment as journalism (a character profile), please message me now and tell me. If you want to do a journalistic character profile but don’t know who you want to write about or how to find someone to write about, we can talk about it, and perhaps I can help you.
➤ Read “Uncle Pat is the Law”
Make sure to check out my annotations in the electronic version of the article! (VPN required if off campus in China.) If you hit the New York Times paywall, you can log in using my account information, which I’ll send out over WeChat. If this still doesn’t work, you’ll find the annotations as a pdf in our SharePoint folder.
Please come to class ready to share one sentence that you feel really captures the character of either Uncle Pat or the town of Jean Lafitte. (In other words, a sentence that answers the question: What kind of person is this? or, What kind of place is this?)
➤ Read “The Proverbs of Hell,” pick one and imagine a character
Read over this list of proverbs. (You don’t need to “understand” all of them—in fact, many of them can’t really be “understood.”)
Pick one you like or find intriguing. Ask yourself: What kind of person would believe this? (Consider whether the same aphorism might have several different possible meanings.)
Try to imagine what kind of person would believe the truth being expressed in this proverb. Actually imagine them: What might this person look like? What might they wear? What job might they do? Where might they live? What might they like to eat? etc. Be ready to share the proverb you chose and the describe the type of person you imagine believing in it.
➤ (If you have time) start reading “Mazie” or “The Man Who Eats”
For next Monday’s class I’ll be asking you to choose one of two longer essays about characters — “Mazie” by Joseph Mitchell and “The Man Who Eats” by Yiyun Li — and read in full whichever one you like most. If you have extra time you might want to get started on that, since the essays are on the longer side.
