Lil Wayne's music teaches teacher to relate to students

ODavid Ramsey writes in the current issue of Oxford American about how the rapper Lil Wayne helped him survive his first year teaching in New Orleans in the article, "I Will Forever Remain Faithful".

We get the typical white guy comes into the inner-city malaise, such as trying to relate to his students, working to keep them in school, and understanding their world of negligence, violence and illiteracy.

But Ramsey not only gets the dialect right, but he infuses the language and the culture, without the least bit awkwardness.

Ramsey tells about the student who always got in trouble for leaving class to go to the bathroom without permission until the day he revealed his colostomy bag as a result of a gang-shooting.

There's one section that just quotes Wayne the rapper: "Wayne on making it: 'When your rich, then asparagus is yummy.'"

The most powerful writing in Ramsey's piece is how he mixes the innocence of these kids with the very adult situations they face daily.

When he went to visit a student he was trying to keep from dropping out of school, who was the biggest drug dealer in his neighborhood, but also Ramsey best student. Ramsey gave him a New Yorker article about Lil Wayne, to which Michael responded, "Actually, that was good. You teach me to right like that?"

The real power of the writing is that Ramsey gets at this complex topic without cliche's or over-wrought sentiment.

Turning a Pebble into a Pearl

See my other blog for this posting that appeared here originally about dealing with chronic pain.

iwantmylifebacknow.blogspot.com/

VP Debate, viewer responses

Thursday night’s vice-presidential debate certainly deviated from the traditional attack dog format the voting public is used to witnessing. Some of this role reversal can be attributed to the self-proclaimed bulldog with lipstick, Republican VP candidate, Governor Sarah Palin.

Palin played up her strengths by using her training as a broadcast journalist to look into the camera and therefore beyond the moderator and Washington University audience into the living rooms of the American people. It balanced her weakness of not being able to elaborate on foreign policy or answer a question directly or spout out voting records like Senator Joe Biden and like most running mates do in VP debates.

The Overby Center hosted the viewing and a panel discussion to follow, moderated by political science chairman, Richard Forgette.

Student reactions included those who thought Palin lived up to the SNL parodied image not answering any questions, but making the opportunity to turn it around to the only thing she was prepped on, energy policy. It was either that or the same old rhetoric: “I’m the Governor of Alaska”, “Raegan was the Messiah” (wink, wink), “I’m a hockey mom”, “I can kill large animals with my bare hands reminiscent of Greek dramatist, Euripides', "The Bacchae.”

Dr. Samir Husni, chair of the journalism department, asked whether or not we thought Biden’s tearing up will work against him, making him seem weak or too emotional to be a good leader. Husni brought to the student’s attention that 1968 vice-presidential candidate Edward S. Muskie and his drop in approval ratings after tearing up. To me, that was an interesting turn on the gender stereotypes. Palin is more aggressive, Biden is more emotional and that’s far more acceptable to the public than in years past. The fact that a man can be passionate as Biden now and not be thought of as an ineffective leader is encouraging in a presidential race that has been characterized by racsist, sexist and elitist claims.

Forgette made the point that anyone who says they are undecided at this point is either lying or uninformed of the candidates’ policy proposals. No disrespect, but I have read both candidates posted policies on their websites. I have read their policy books, personal memoirs, and have tried my best to sort through the media’s spin.

To me, my views in this election can best be summed up this way. As I said in last week’s editorial, I like Obama for many reasons. I even like some of his policy ideas, but I’m not sure how I feel about his economic proposals, growing the economy from the ground up. For me, as for many voters, that’s the issue that takes precedence this year.

Brock Clarke fan for life

Brock Clarke may very well have become one of my favorite fiction writers. I tried to be disciplined and not buy any new books lately because I need to buckle down with my dollars, but I had to splurge on “An Arsonist’s Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England”.

His reading was magnificent, which usually hooks me on buying the book even when I go with the intentions of not spending any money.

He reminded me of a poet giving a reading rather than most fiction writers. But upon reading the words for myself, I realize the lyrical quality is there, it wasn’t all just in his delivery. But all in all, I enjoyed it. Comparable to a Rick Bragg reading. That’s the best compliment I can give.

I only compare his reading to Bragg’s though because it was just so damn pleasurable to be in the audience. I don’t think there was a person there he left dissatisfied. I know of few writers who could say the same. I actually looked forward to writing this homework assignment because It'd fee; like I’m revisiting the memory of Wednesday.

When I left, I took my son for a treat for being so well-behaved during the reading. I sat right down and devoured Clarke’s book while Jefferson indulged in a scoop of chocolate chip. Then, when I got home, I forsook all my other homework and crawled into bed with my treat and read myself to sleep.

Sadly enough, I couldn’t do the same tonite. Well, I might sneak in another chapter if I finish studying for my tests, but I couldn’t blow everything off and spend two hours with his novel. Unfortunately. But like I said, I can write about Wednesday and get my best reading buddies also on the Brock Clarke fan wagon, which enables me to keep gushing.

But I will always be energized by writers like Clarke who encourage you, with his superior work, to better yourself at your chosen craft.

What Makes "Good Writing"

There is currently some kind of battle in my brain to sort through the concrete and abstract ideas of good writing. Does minding your p’s and q’s, such as interrupting three lines of dialogue with details or exposition, make a story “good”. Or is a story with a well-conceived plot with good character development that is limping along structurally, needing the help of a good editor, the better writing?

Jack Pendarvis recently said that you can’t have one without the other. He said that you won’t have a well-written story that’s boring. I can understand what he means to some extent. But, maybe I don’t have the verbiage right when I am trying to describe my dilemma, because, as much as I respect the opinion of writers who actually make a living at this craft, I cannot fully accept this concept yet.

In journalism, I can write a great hard news story that is structurally sound. But it isn’t until I learned how to “sniff out a good story idea” that I became a better non-fiction writer.

I have heard some writers say, “A good story writes itself”. So, which should come first for new writers: learning to come up with fresh ideas, a new way of looking at the same old story, or should they concentrate more on learning structural elements?

Of course, I think it takes both to advance you forward as a good writer. I am certainly trying to learn to incorporate the rules as I go or else I will never reach that next plateau in my work. But, I don’t think I would have made it this far to start with if I wasn’t interested in good storytelling. Dr. Husni constantly emphasizes that as long as you are a good storyteller, you will always be able to work as a journalist. This is encouraging to me because I devote more time to that part of being a writer, both fiction and non-fiction, than I do on networking, learning proper grammar or writing rules, and, in the case of journalism, the techie stuff like learning html code for the internet, editing video, etc.

I said all that to say this, when I was at Broken English last Wednesday, I heard Chris Kammerud, a graduate student in the MFA program at Ole Miss, read one of his short stories, "Some Things about Love, Magic and Hair”.

It was definitely what I would call “good writing”, but it left me unsatisfied at the end. So, I thought analyzing his work might help me solidify my ideas on what constitutes as “good”. Essentially, it was a boy meets girl story. Boy meets Allison working in the porn section of a movie rental shop. They date, he dies, and comes back to life, climbs out of the grave to reclaim his girl. Although, she loved him, she says she can’t be with him. “If only you hadn’t died,” she told him.

So, as far as the plot goes, I don’t really understand the story. It was wonderfully entertaining with clear, crisp sentences; a great example of writing for the ear.

Kammerud’s story was full of good descriptive sentences and surprising turn of phrases like comparing her hair to the Jersey shore: "brown and wavy and full of broken bits of glass, the occasional condom or lost child."

But, like I said, I didn’t really understand where the story was going. Maybe Allison rejected her love because he had abandoned her. That’s believable because she and her mother were abandoned by her father immediately after conception. Her mother told her that he turned into a bluebird and flew out the window, and when boyfriend asked her if she believed that, she said it was as believable as anything else. Okay, so I get the connection of his abandonment of her and her father’s abandonment. But after he comes back to her and she rejects him, I got a bit lost in the story. Maybe I quit paying attention, or maybe his writing at that point didn’t hold my ear as strongly as it did prior to that plot point. Either way, it was here that I wanted the two concepts of “good writing” that I was struggling with to come together: the idea of good storytelling and well-crafted words. I would have to read it with my own eyes to make a better assessment but as it stood, it had an anti-climatic ending. Well-crafted words,of which I'm jealous, but somehow an unsatisfactory story.