Literary Critiquing

My literature class this week was rather interesting, but certainly not from the content of what we were studying. Ms. P divided us into the dreaded groups of five again. This time we had to discuss our assigned questions from different perspectives: biographical, psychological, feminine, historical, etc. The teacher had made us read a section in our books about all these different methods of critiquing–then we had to do it. Our group was assigned the biographical perspective. We got into our group huddle at the back of the room very tentatively and sat there and stared at each other blankly. I said, "I suggest we re-read the section on biographical critiquing," to which they all agreed. In my group we had a brunette, a Vietnamese girl, a Mennonite, a Bosnian guy, and another guy. The Vietnamese girl and the Bosnian guy had language issues, and the other guy had nothing much to say about anything, so that left Kris and the Brunette to talk.

The first thing the brunette did was to tromp up to the teacher and ask for some clarification on how we were supposed to be doing this. We really were clueless. So Brunette would call out the questions, we would look at each other in blankness, toss some ideas around, come to a general "aha!" answer, and then I would translate the answer into something worthy and write it down.

We went to break shortly thereafter, and during the break, the Vietnamese girl (Vee) and I sat and got into a general discussion regarding her country. One of the stories we were supposed to be dissecting was about a little Chinese girl whose mother pressured into being successful. So I asked Vee if her own family was like that... She said it was very typical of Asian parents to try to live out their own dreams through their children. She said if it was up to her, she wouldn’t be in college right now. She would wait a couple years and then go to college. But her father will hear nothing of it. So she’s going to school to be an architect. I asked her a little bit more about her family. They’ve been over here about ten years. Her father was a lieutenant in the South Vietnam army during the Vietnam war. He was against communism. Well, when the U.S. withdrew their forces, the northern communist Vietnam army invaded and took over the country. Vietnam is a completely communist country today. She said what they did was took anyone who had been in the South Vietnam Army and sent them to concentration camps. They would try to convert them over to communism by brainwashing. Anyone who converted over was allowed to leave, but the rebellious ones are left in the concentration camps to starve and perform hard manual labor. Her own father had spent six years in the prison. He chose to pretend to convert to the communist way of thinking; then when he was let go, he took his family and fled the country. He now works as a painter, sort’ve like a janitor/repairman, so he’s been same as "demoted." I think it’s kind’ve hard on him. Vee said he takes great pride in his former status of lieutenant in the South Vietnam Army. Her mother has died since they’ve been over in the States, so now it’s just Vee, her father, and her younger sister. I just thought this was all very interesting.

We muddled through our "biographical presentation" of "Eveline" and "Two Kinds," and we all agreed this was the hardest assignment given to us yet. Critiquing literature really isn't my love language.