Rockstar

September 13, 2008

What a great week. I’m loving the two classes i’m teaching: Advanced Composition and Creative Nonfiction (a workshop). In the comp class I focus on Media; we talk about politics, pop culture, movies/TV/music. This week we watched the documentary “The Bronze Screen: 100 Years of the Latino Image in Hollywood” and discussed stereotypes in media. If you haven’t seen the film, check your Blockbuster Video for it. It has dozens of classic film clips and interviews with Latin actors like Rita Moreno, John Leguizamo, Edward James Olmos and Elizabeth Pena, as well as others who worked behind the camera.

In Creative Nonfiction we discussed the section on Entertainment from the Reader I put together. The class’ first workshop submissions are due this week. They are to write a short piece (2-5 pages) that has something to do with Entertainment. It could be a movie/music/book/theater review, a personal memoir about some aspect of entertainment (first movie they ever remember seeing, favorite concert, a book that has always inspired them), a restaurant review (dining is entertainment, right?), etc. etc. I gave a few suggestions and ideas but really let them go on their own. I can’t wait to read the submissions.

Next week we are Reading and discussing Travel and Place essays, including Edmond Wilson’s piece on The Hotel Del Coronado, written in 1932, “The Jumping Off Point,” and my friend Manuel Munoz’ essay from OutTraveler, “Wish You Were Here,” as well as one of my favorite pieces from New York Times Magazine, William Eggleston’s photo essay “The Lot” (about the vacant, forgotten Paramount Studios sound stages).

Clockwise from upper left: A view from just inside the gated archway; Outside one of the studio’s active sound stages.; The famous water tower still looms above the empire.; The props department houses furniture first used in the 20′s and 30′s (photo and text courtesy of NYTimes Magazine).

This week I was also a guest speaker in my fellow Creative Writing instructor Sydney Brown’s Intro to Creative Writing class. Sydney is my savior, my confidant, and the biggest champion of me and my work. If I get a full-time job at the college it will be because of her! She gave her class a Nonfiction piece of mine published a couple of years ago in Versal (a beautiful lit journal based in the Netherlands), and she even based an assignment/prompt on my piece. Here’s the assignment (click it to read it):

and here’s the essay of mine, called “Bothered, Bewildered.”<-click the title to read the pdf.

The class was awesome–lively, talkative–it was buzzing from the moment I walked into the room until it ended. And Sydney is such a smart, funny, thoughtful instructor. She’s so honest with her class, and has such a great energy. She doesn’t hold back. The class was discussing sex in Nonfiction and she really tells it like it is. It made me think about how I edit myself sometimes when teaching because i’m afraid of offending or shocking students. But Sydney puts it all out there. And the class really responds to it– she’s engaging and encouraging and talks to the students at their level.

While watching her I wrote in my moleskin: She has fun with her class. FUN. Teaching should be fun, shouldn’t it? It shouldn’t stress us out (at least the act of teaching). It (teaching creative writing) should emphasize and reflect how we as writers/instructors feel about writing.

Another thing about the class– Sydney really pushed me to talk about the sex/sexuality in the essay of mine. And to discuss how it is based on real life. Of course the names have been changed in the essay (though I did have an instructor named Senor Franklin). But it did really happen. I explained that to me, the story is, yes, subtly sexual, and about experimenting, but it’s also about longing for connection, for touch and for closeness to someone. The two boys in the piece (one is me) “would swim unsupervised for hours, even days” in the backyard pool. What informed the piece, but doesn’t end up in it, is that the two boys come from somewhat broken homes, from shattered lives. So later, when “we zipped our sleeping bags together. A satin and down time-traveling machine,” it’s not just about sex, but about escape to another place. A better place.

Anyway, the class was really receptive and had some excellent questions for me. I felt like a rockstar.