http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/23/tea-party-tennessee-textbooks-slavery_n_1224157.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTONOMA DE MEXICO

FACULTAD DE FILOSOFIA Y LETRAS

COLEGIO DE LETRAS MODERNAS

LETRAS INGLESAS

2012-2

PROGRAMA DEL CURSO HISTORIA LITERARIA VII-2

(LITERATURA NORTEAMERICANA)

Mtra. Julia Constantino

( jconstantinor@gmail.com )

Objetivo

El objetivo de este curso es que las alumnas y alumnos adquieran una visión panorámica coherente y consistente del desarrollo de la literatura norteamericana desde el siglo XIX hasta nuestros días, a partir de la complejidad implícita en cualquier intento por definir lo que es propiamente “norteamericano” en términos sociales, políticos, culturales y literarios.

Método de trabajo

Con el fin de lograr un entendimiento más completo de la literatura norteamericana desde un enfoque temático-conceptual y de uso de recursos literarios, utilizaremos textos de distintos periodos literarios en un mismo semestre. Se requerirá que las alumnas y alumnos realicen una detallada lectura textual de las obras literarias elegidas y que la complementen con el estudio de material extraliterario. A estas lecturas, que se harán como trabajo previo a cada sesión, les seguirá su análisis y discusión en clase. Corresponderá a las alumnas y  alumnos completar el contexto biográfico e histórico-cultural donde se ubica cada obra o autor/a mediante presentaciones de los textos y autores/as, que también deberán incluir  análisis y crítica iniciales de los textos y hacer énfasis en la ubicación de la obra en un marco de periodicidad literaria.

Será indispensable presentarse en cada sesión con un breve comentario crítico que será el inicio de las discusiones -breves párrafos con ideas, reflexiones, análisis concretos resultado de la lectura de cada texto o conjunto de textos asignados para cada clase-.  En cada sesión se elegirá de manera aleatoria a varias y varios estudiantes para que presenten su texto al grupo.

Se utilizará el espacio del blog correspondiente al segundo semestre (http://litnorteamericanaffyl.wordpress.com/) para llevar a cabo las presentaciones y discusiones sobre poesía. Cada alumno o alumna deberá elegir un o una poeta incluida en la calendarización o en el programa general de poesía y enviar a tiempo al menos dos poemas y el texto para la presentación en el blog; el resto del grupo deberá comentar y discutir los poemas con base en el texto de la presentación.                Cada alumna o alumno deberá llevar una bitácora de lectura personal donde se espera que registre todo tipo de comentario, actividad y asociación que genere el proceso de lectura durante el semestre. La bitácora deberá ser entregada el día del examen final.

Evaluación.

Se necesitará la asistencia obligatoria al 80% de las clases para tener derecho a la calificación final, que será formada por el promedio total de:

1)       Presentación en clase y en blog (cuando corresponda)

2)       Ensayo de medio semestre

3)       Examen final

Aunque la bitácora y las participaciones en clase y en el blog no tendrán calificación numérica (en el caso del blog, deberán tener al menos un 80% de participaciones), serán tomadas en cuenta como factor importante en la calificación final.

Al plagio, en cualquiera de sus posibles formas, corresponderá, sin excepción alguna, la reprobación automática del curso y el informe del hecho a la Coordinación de Letras Modernas. Es necesario recordar que la Legislación Universitaria señala que en caso de intento de obtener una califación de manera ilegal, las partes responsables serán expulsadas de la UNAM durante un año, entre otras posibles sanciones.

Se sugiere el uso de papel reciclado para todo trabajo escrito que se realice.

Bibliografía y calendarización

* Marco crítico

Black Hawk, de“Life of Black Hawk”

Petalesharo, “Speech of the Spawnee Chief”

Petalesharo, “Speech of the Pawnee Loup Chief”

Elias Boudinot, de the Cherokee Phoenix

The Cherokee Memorials

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Letter to Martin Van Buren. President of the United States”

Thomas Jefferson, de “Notes on the State ofVirginia”

David Walker, de David Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles

William Lloyd Garrison,  “To the Public”

Angelina W. Grimké, de Appeal to the Christian Women of the South

Sojourner Truth, “Speech to the Women’s Rights Convention inAkron,Ohio,1851”

Martin R. Delany, de Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent

Frederick Jackson Turner, de The Significance of the Frontier in American History

Theodore Roosevelt, de American Ideals, de The Strenous Life

Helen Hunt Jackson, de A Century of Dishonor

José Martí, de Our America

Charles W. Chesnutt, “A Defamer of His Race”

Jane Addams, de Twenty Years at Hull-House

Anna Julia Cooper, de One Phase of American Literature

De The 9/11 Commission Report

John Updike, comentario de The New Yorker

Susan Sontag, “9.11.01”, “A Few Weeks After”, “One Year After”, “Against Interpretation”

Judith Butler, “Explanation and Exoneration, or What We Can Hear”

Henry James, “The Art of Fiction”

Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark,“Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature”

Alice Walker, “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens”

Tim Wise. White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son. Soft Skull Press, NY, 2008.

Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States. 1492-Present. HarperPerennial, NY, 2003. (*)

* Sesiones de clase

-Sesión 1

Discusión sobre The Great Gatsby basada en las tareas señaladas en el blog.

-Sesión 2

a) Thomas Jefferson, de The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson (from The Declaration of Independence) (Jorge Ortega Espinosa)

b) Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself y “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (Angélica Tinajero Vargas)

-Sesión 3

a) Sandra Cisneros, “Woman Hollering Creek”

b) Toni Cade Bambara, “Medley” (Viviana Muñoz Krauss)

c) Lorna Dee Cervantes (blog, Viviana Muñoz Krauss)

-Sesión 4

a) Toni Morrison, Beloved (Atenas García Gámez) *

b) Poeta para el blog

-Sesión 5

a) Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” y “The Poet”

b) Henry David Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government”

c) Walt Whitman, prefacio a Leaves of Grass y “Song of Myself” (presentación en blog)

-Sesión 6

a) Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn * (Nadia Hernández Aguilar)

b) Poeta para el blog

-Sesión 7

a) Raymond Chandler, “Red Wind” (María Inés García López)

b) Dashiell Hammett, “Fly Paper”

c) Poeta para el blog

-Sesión 8

a) J. D. Salinger,  The Catcher in the Rye *

b) Poeta para el blog

-Sesión 9

a) Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior *

b) Poeta para el blog

-Sesión 10

a) TennesseeWilliams, A Streetcar Named Desire

b) Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night

c) Poeta para el blog

-Sesión 11

a) William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying *

b) Poeta para el blog

-Sesión 12

a) Cormac McCarthy, The Road *

b) Poeta para el blog

-Sesión 13

a) Joy Kogawa, Obasan *

c) Poeta para el blog

-Sesión 14

a) Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower *

b) Poeta para el blog

-Examen final

Lista de poetas:

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) (1886-1961)

Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

EdnaSt. VincentMillay (1892-1950)

e.e. cummings (1894-1962)

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

Charles Olson (1910-1970)

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

P. K. Page (1916-)

Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-)

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

Denise Levertov (1923-)

Allen Ginsberg (1926-)

Frank O”Hara (1926-1966)

John Ashbery (1927-)

W. S. Merwin (1927-)

Anne Sexton (1928-1974)

Adrienne Rich (1929-)

Gary Snyder (1930-)

Audre Lorde (1934-1992)

Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996)

Sharon Olds (1942-)

Rita Dove (1952-)

Sonia Sanchez (1934-)

June Jordan (1936-2002)

Margaret Atwood (1939)

Nikki Giovanni (1943)

Anne Carson (1950)

Dionne Brand (1953)

Material disponible en DVD:

The Maltese Falcon. Dir. John Huston, guión de Huston basado en la novela de Dashiell Hammett.

The Big Sleep. Dir. Howard Hawks, guión de William Faulkner basado en la novela de Raymond Chandler.

To Have or Have Not. Dir. Howard Hawks, guión de William Faulkner y Jules Furthman basado en una novela  de Ernest Hemingway.

Long Day’s Journey into Night. Dir. Sidney Lumet.

A Streetcar Named Desire. Dir. Elia Kazan.

Beloved. Dir. Jonathan Demme.

Los textos se encuentran en The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vols. A y B, Ed. Nina Baym, séptima edición, W. W, Norton & Company, Nueva York, 2007, y en The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Eds. Nellie Y. McKay y Henry Louis Gates, segunda edición, W. W, Norton & Company, Nueva York, 2004. Se cuenta con un juego de fotocopias para reproducir los textos, con excepción de los textos marcados con asterisco (*) y de la obra de poetas por escoger.

- intertextualidad (en general y, de ser posible, en The Great Gatsby),

- la novela como el bildungsroman irónico de Nick Caraway,

- la construcción de un yo narrativo (voz narrativa homo o autodiegética) como parte de la (re) construcción de una noción del ser [selfhood],

-uso de espacios (desarrollaremos lo visto en la última sesión de 2012-1),

-uso de símbolos (desarrollaremos lo visto en la última sesión de 2012-1),

-análisis textual de los párrafos primero y último de la novela.

Por favor lleguen a clase preparadas y preparados para discutir los puntos anteriores.

2) Retomaremos la lista de lecturas a partir de la segunda sesión (empezaremos con Jefferson y Douglass).

http://www.youtube.com/user/beest504#p/a/u/2/Jw_aJj7zTGI<– Parte 1

http://www.youtube.com/user/beest504#p/a/u/1/jkpBuL5exRQ <– Parte 2

America is

What is America? That was the question of our course: I tried to explain with John Mellencamp’s song, which I include here, yet, I place it together with one of the most beautiful songs by Bruce Springsteen, a song about moving from one place to another, looking for an ideal, for a perfect world, though perhaps ruining it later: an idea of movility I saw in America with the pilgrims, the west-goers, the slave holders, the hippies, the sad, the abused. They are all looking for Thunder Road: when they leave this town of losers, they’ll win. I consider that something very important in order to understand America.

Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRHJiXDwrLs

John Mellencamp, Pink Houses http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbZJ05E3B20

[

John Mellencamp is an American singer of Dutch origin, who is more widely known in mainstream radio as John Cougar, because of his hit song “Hurts so Good”. Yet, only knowing him as this incarnation forbids us to see what he really is: a songwriter who sought to be a kind of Bruce Springsteen for a younger generation, in the sense that he wanted to write songs that spoke about life in America, just like Springsteen, and that his songs have sometimes been mistaken for all-American patriotic anthems, just like Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”. Whether Mellencamp deserves a comparison to Springsteen only a great music critic can tell, but, he has some great songs indeed, and the song I want to share with you is one of them.

The song’s name is “Pink Houses” and I did not choose it just because of personal reasons: I chose it because, since the beginning of the course, we have been discussing and wondering what is American. Of course, I do not think the song holds the answer to that question, but it gives us another kind of insight. We, as foreigners, are used to the idea of America being the powerful country, the “empire”. This song shows America from the inside, from the perspective of people who live in it, from the windows of pink houses. So, I think the song has a very interesting contrast between this perspective and the perspective the world has of America.

The song shows two common men, each one talking to himself and another to his wife: none of them are powerful, or even rich. It’s the voice of the working men, with no particular Whitmanian idealization. Yet, even when everything seems so down-to-earth, we are faced with the fact that one man is black and another is white, which speaks of a country of differences. The black man and his wife remember younger days that have gone away; the white man thinks he might as well be a rockstar because being the president is just a crazy dream, and that all crazy dreams just come and go. So, we are faced with a country of frustration too. However, there are no signs of that powerful country, the oppressor, the rich.

All is summed up when we reach the chorus: “Ain’t that America for you and me/Ain’t that America, something to see/Ain’t that America, home of the free/Little pink houses, for you and me.” I just feel there is something very ironic while singing this. The “something to see”, reminds me of the expression “Ain’t that something!” that refers to something peculiar or worth paying attention to. Then, the “America, home of the free” reminds me of all we have discussed about the American dream and the idea of freedom immigrants have had ever since America was, indeed, created as a country. It all ends with the simplicity of “Little pink houses, for you and me”. That contrast makes us think perhaps America is not as great as it may seem in the world. The last part of the song reinforces the idea, when it says: “And there’s winners, and there’s losers/But they ain’t no big deal…” Just like anywhere else. America is not that different. The “enemy” is also a country of friends, of brothers, of suffering, of many, many things. There are small stories in America that are worth telling, and since America is made of all those small stories in those pink houses it is hard to settle in a definition.]

The Chosen by God

This section I tried to focus on the individualism of the American people: the are the chosen, they are the ones. Bon Jovi’s song title speaks for itself. As for the Bob Dylan song, I chose it because it records the speaker’s journey for love, through revolution, new ideas, slave trading, and many things, and it made me think about the frustrations of America, that shall always permeate literature, and the idea of hard work. The last one, by Springsteen, is a song about September 11, but I chose it for this section because of its prayer-like structure.

Bon Jovi, We Weren’t Born to Follow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF3D2oiy6YA

Bruce Springsteen, Into the Fire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylt1ZqPZYOc

Bob Dylan, Tangled Up in Blue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8y3aUgDY6c

The Star Spangled Banner

For this section, about an America of the 20^th century that we beginning to have power as a nation with the wars,  I decided to focus on songs that involved a sense of American pride. Of course, the national anthem (played by Hendrix) worked, as well as “We’re an American Band”. Yet, there is also the idea of badly used power in Canadians Guess Who’s classic “American Woman” and the use of “war machines”. Paper Lace’s song I chose because it is about Al Capone.

Finally, everything comes to a contrast with Tom Petty’s depressed and lonely “American Girl”, who was “raised on promises” and wants more from this life of hers.

Guess Who, American Woman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9o8SUSy_tY

Paper Lace, The Night Chicago Died http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9o8SUSy_tY

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, American Girl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXkblbJqwn0

Grand Funk Railroad, We’re an American Band http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yOayjt2tGs

Jimi Hendrix, The Star Spangled Banner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa-q-ztyZZw

California the Myth

This section was complicated for me because a lot of songs speak about California, which only reinforces its importance. California is the west where the Europeans wanted to go, the Gold Rush, Hollywood, the hippie mecca. So, I chose a variety of songs.

The one by Scott McKenzie is practically a description of the hippie climate, while “Gramercy” is somewhat a hippie-pastoral light-hearted romantic song. Meanwhile, Led Zeppelin and Eric Burdon look at California from a English (delighted) point of view: Burdon, in his song, goes as far as to say: “The American Dream includes Indians too”. That line was what made me choose this song: the mentioning of the Native American people.

But the myth is torn apart by the other two songs: “I’m Waiting for the Man” a song about drug addiction, contradicting the experimental ideas of the hippies, that was released in 1967, just as the hippie movement was taking force, as if reminding that the utopia the flower children were looking for was just not going to happen. The next one, by punk band X, is already from the 80’s, but shows us a decadent picture of Los Angeles and the story of a girl that’s fed up with the city. It is no surprise Bret Easton Ellis uses this band as a recurrent motif in his novel about excesses and decay Less than Zero.

Eric Burdon, San Franciscan Nights http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmIy7Ch4M84
X, Los Angeles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of4XZVBVOIs

Led Zeppelin, Going to California http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcfErF3BNQs

Velvet Underground, I’m Waiting for the Man http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOmZimH00oo

Scott McKenzie, San Francisco (Flowers in Your Hair) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB2tYYYlwMc

The Dream in the Wild

In this first division, “The Dream” I focus on the generalities of the American Dream. The Neil Diamond song I chose because it speaks about traveling and the image portrayed of America is absolutely idealistic. Bon Jovi’s song I had already mentioned while speaking about Gatsby; but here, I take the fact that it speaks about a working class couple who are determined to make the dream come true… yes, like Gatsby.

As for the other songs, I chose them because they show both sides of the land they arrived…and of them, the colonizers. “Woodstock” (that can also be retaken for the Californian myth) speaks about the freedom of the soul, of “going back to a garden” that can be an Edenic idea. The Guns n’ Roses song is much more cynical, referring to the city (Los Angeles, reinforcing my idea of the fall of the west) as a jungle. The song is aggressive and it reminds us of what happened after that “garden” was civilized… it also made me think of the “jungle” of the whites Morrison mentions in Beloved.

Neil Diamond, America http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3S7mlRYL-8
Guns n’ Roses, Welcome to the Jungle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1tj2zJ2Wvg

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Woodstock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sH0uR2u7Hs

Bon Jovi, Livin on a Prayer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDK9QqIzhwk

The Beautiful South

When I started to write this section, I was thinking about everything that became a part of the concept of the South with the end of the civil war: ideas of the redneck, the whitetrash, and, mainly, what Flannery O’Connor said about the reader expecting something grotesque from the south in order to consider it realistic, very Faulknerian thing to say.

So, I start with commonplace “Sweet Home Alabama”, with all its calls to the Lord and its flaming nationalism (regionalism?). Then comes Creedence Clerwater Revival’s “Born on the Bayou”, with its references to the Cajun tradition and John Fogerty’s particular slang. Then comes The Allman Brothers’ “Ramblin’ Man” which in spite of its cheerful spirit contains stories about gambling, guns, and Greyhounds.

It all is summed up in “Copperhead Road”, the aggressive song by Steve Earle, that speaks about war and the “savagery” of the South: illegality, sheriffs.

And, just for the sake of grotesqueness, the song by Miranda Lambert, “Gunpowder and Lead” is about a wife who shoots her abusive husband. Figured O’Connor would have liked that.

Steve Earle, Copperhead Road http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvaEJzoaYZk

Allman Brothers Band, Ramblin’ Man http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wuQUF3azC4
Lynyrd Skynyrd, Sweet Home Alabama http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8rnFKo4PAE

Creedence Clearwater Revival, Born on the Bayou http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIjUY3pjN8E

Miranda Lambert, Gunpowder and Lead http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDXSTHLksDY

The Party

This section is concerned with the appearance of rock n’ roll, jazz, and music. Yet, I chose these songs because of the powerful contrast they imply. Both Elvis and Miller were white, and their songs are both cheerful and danceable, while Holiday and… I don’t know if Ken Hensley is black, but the song “Hellhound on My Trail” was written by Robert Johnson, one of blues’ most emblematic figures. And then, both songs by the black artists are harsh and tortured: the hellhound is Johnson’s bad luck, the “Strange Fruit” are two black men who were lynched and hanged. So, even at a moment of party and peace, there were still menaces: cold war, McCarthy, racism…

(I thought about the Louie Armstrong solo Morrison talks about in her essay about Afro-American presence, but couldn’t find it).

The Empire

We cannot talk about the USA without thinking about imperialism. “The reds and the whites and the abused, the crucified USA” Kings of Leon say in their song “Crawl”. This section contains various songs dedicated to point out the evils of America, in the voices of well-known, if not dissidents, people who speak about and against power: Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha. There is also a song by English band Razorlight about everything being about America (and a song by Rammstein with the same name filled with brand names I just remembered). I also include a song by Living Colour whose title, “Cult of Personality” and its references to TV say it all. Yet, a question, talking about prejudices and stereotypes: are Living Colour white people?

Rage Against the Machine, Testify http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JSBhI_0at0

Razorlight, America http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9NhncU5_CE

Kings of Leon, Crawl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHOyahv4hSE

Nam and the Fall of an Ideal

The Vietnam war was considered done of the worst decisions made by the American government, and perhaps it foreshadowed dark times for the American society. Very much like a movie soundtrack, I went for the frustrated utopia of “The Age of Aquarius”, and the dark “Eve of Destruction” and classic “The End”. Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” that, unlike the title, is a story about all the disadvantages of living in the USA, looms up as an American song that is somewhat faithless about America, and Billy Joel’s song is just a small summary of what had happened in history—with its good and bad.

Bruce Springsteen, Born in the USA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPudiBR15mk

Billy Joel, We Didn’t Start the Fire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9cci8iWv-g

The Doors, The End http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHFK1yKfiGo

Generation X

Bad parentage from Vietnam-scarred fathers and the uncertainty for what was going to happen in the last decade of a millennium brought forth Generation X. I could have chosen many songs to illustrate these generation of broken and undecided young people, but I felt a song that put together all the fury that could not be sung coherently (Nirvana), the heartbreaking stories of lost childhood (Pearl Jam) and all the cynicism and irony (Hole’s “Miss World” and Beck’s “Loser”) came together in a song from the movie Realty Bites soundtrack (a movie that was actually translated as Generación X): “I’m Nuthin’”. Ethan Hawke talks about being an “American man” with junkie parents and nothing to do, nothing to dream about. The story follows a similar pattern with The Offspring’s song, a song about kids who ruin their lives in different ways.

I decided to finish with Marilyn Manson because, whether it was only for publicity or it wasn’t, his image and performances went against many traditional American values: ripping apart Bibles in public and openly supporting violence in a violent society that was trying to hide it (until Columbine) were actions that maybe said more about America than his songs.

Ethan Hawke, I’m Nuthin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNZ19FT_OJI

Marilyn Manson, The Beautiful People http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypkv0HeUvTc

The Offspring, The Kids Aren’t Alright http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbkUqRQY14E

The Rejected

This section is a lot longer because of what it implies: the black people, taken from Africa by force, and the Native Americans, whose lands were taken away.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find too much about Native American popular musicians (except Lobo, but he sang pop ballads) so I settled on a song by English artist (ironically) Peter Gabriel, that speaks about a man driven away from his land and having to start again, while a melancholic voice tells him not to give up. I felt that song really caught the core of the Native American suffering.

Moving on to African-American artists, the song by The Chambers Brothers is, yes, a protest song; yet, I consider it important because back in the sixties, while they were recording this song, the studio was burned down, supposedly by the Klan, which gives us an idea of the racial issues and render this song more important.

I thought about using the version of “Amazing Grace” by Aretha Franklin you recommended, but I decided to leave that as your collaboration to this wide soundtrack and to include another example of the spiritual-like audience intervention in a song, as in the Muddy Waters’ blues “Mannish Boy”.

Together with it comes Koko Taylor’s song “I’m a Woman”. This song is interesting not only because it is practically the same structure as Waters’ song, just from the point of view of the opposite sex, but because Taylor’s woman is highly independent and sexualized (“I can make love to a crocodile”) so when we read Harriet Jacobs I couldn’t help but comparing them: this fearless woman against the slave who wanted pity from her readers and was a victim of sexuality. I think Taylor’s woman is more related to Sethe.

That led me to John Lee Hooker’s “The Healer” which I think blends together the two cultures: a very important bluesman singing about the shaman-like figure of a healer (which I also related to Beloved).

Continuing with Morrison, I chose Janis Joplin singing a song that was actually in my book about Negro Songs: “Down on Me”. I was reminded of Morrison’s essay about Afro-American presence: something that is considered terrible, bad, can also be considered appealing. Why do many white people sing the blues?

And, finally, U2’s tribute to one of the most important African-American figures in modern history: “Pride in the Name of Love”, for Martin Luther King Jr.

Koko Taylor, I’m Woman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFpaCyePYT8
Muddy Waters, Mannish Boy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CiPNcIzrNw
John Lee Hooker, The Healer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aFKgi5D6eU

The Chambers Brothers, Time Has Come Today http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1aMTWdQnzo

Peter Gabriel, Don’t Give Up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiCRZLr9oRw

U2, Pride in the Name of Love http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHcP4MWABGY

Janis Joplin, Down on me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSQCatgWaEE

9/11

Had to happen. This section is dedicated to 9-11 and the paranoia that followed suit. The Pink Floyd song, taken from The Wall, is just illustrative from the idea of the sky filled with smoke. Then comes a song from Canadian Ryan Adams, who sympathizes with New York. Yet, things start to go wrong when everybody’s considered an enemy, as in Green Day’s song (Green Day’s album American Idiot is considered as very representative of this age) and here come, as in the sixties, when they were an interracial band, Sly and the Family Stone, reminding us that “We have to live together!” in their song “Everyday People”. With the Irak war waiting as a consequence of paranoia, Dylan shows again and asks “How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people had died?” But the answer is still blowing in the wind…

Ryan Adams, New York New York http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmHgY_J63Ik
Bob Dylan, Blowing in the Wind http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUCRckKoq8Q
Green Day, Know Your Enemy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN0UZ1EM-Jk
Pink Floyd, Goodbye Blue Sky  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58_S5e0AVU0

Sly and the Family Stone, Everyday People http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgVOR28iG_o

1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4VlcVfgFJk&feature=related

2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqEbV29uGzA&feature=related

Sexton lee

“The Truth the Dead Know”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkCHYVgXHiQ&feature=related

“Her Kind”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDcARJqtqFs&feature=related

“Said the Poet to the Analyst” (es mejor oírlo sin verlo): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_LH98uxL4k&feature=related

“The Fury of Overshoes”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc88gjuQCR8&feature=related

“The Fury of Sunrises”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_oDBoaHQbw&feature=related

“The Fury of Sunsets”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Olbh55XpKs&feature=related

“The Starry Night”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d9yGpeAyQ8&feature=related

Peter Gabriel, “Mercy Street”: http://www.youtube.com/watch#!videos=fBytYtyIunQ&v=5Y5KELHc0Hw