...Villa’s A Footnote to Youth 9 THE MAKING OF JOSE GARCIA VILLA’S FOOTNOTE TO YOUTH Jonathan Chua Ateneo de Manila University jchua@ateneo.edu This article recounts the story behind the publication of Villa’s stories and his book Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others (1933) in the United States. First, the conditions of the American literary marketplace are briefly described. Second, documents pertaining to the realization in print of Villa’s stories and his book are analyzed as sites of negotiations between colonial subject (Villa) and the colonial master (his American editors and publishers). Finally, an account of how Villa was made to circulate in the Philippines after the publication of his stories and his book in the United States is given. From these discussions the article hopes to show that Villa’s self-fashioning by publication was both subject to and critical of the colonial condition, alternately reinforcing it and challenging it. Abstract Philippine literature in English, book history, postcolonialism, exotic, author Keywords Jonathan Chua teaches at the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of the Ateneo de Manila University. He is the editor of The Critical Villa: Essays in Literary Criticism by Jose Garcia Villa (2002). His edition of the collected short stories of Jose Garcia Villa is forthcoming from the Ateneo de Manila University Press. About the Author Kritika Kultura 21/22 (2013/2014): –039 © Ateneo de Manila University ...
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...Grace Ogot (May 15, 1930 – March 18, 2015) was a Kenyan author, nurse, journalist, politician and diplomat. Together with Charity Waciuma she is the first Anglophone female Kenyan writer to be published. Biography Ogot was born Grace Emily Akinyi to a Christian family on 15 May 1930 in Asembo, in the district of Nyanza, Kenya – a village highly populated by the predominately Christian Luo ethnic group. Her father, Joseph Nyanduga, was one of the first men in the village of Asembo to obtain a Western education. He converted early on to the Anglican Church, and taught at the Church Missionary Society’s Ng'iya Girls’ School. From her father, Ogot learned the stories of the Old Testament and it was from her grandmother that Ogot learned the traditional folk tales of the area from which she would later draw inspiration. Ogot attended the Ng'iya Girls' School and Butere High School throughout her youth. From 1949 to 1953, Grace Ogot trained as a nurse at the Nursing Training Hospital in Uganda. She later worked in London, England, at the St. Thomas Hospital for Mothers and Babies. She returned to the African nursing profession in 1958, working at the Maseno Hospital, run by the Church Missionary Society in Kisumu County in Kenya. Following this, Ogot worked at Makerere University College in Student Health Services. In addition to her experience in healthcare, Ogot gained experience in multiple different areas, working for the BBC Overseas Service as a script-writer and announcer...
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...habits and values and becomes himself an agent of European modernization. In short M. Obi tries to be “more British” than the British (which the supervisor criticizes as a “misguided zeal” and) which results in a tribal war situation and Obi’s failure as headmaster. Summary Michael Obi is appointed to headmaster of Ndume Central School, an “unprogressive” school which he wants to modernize according to British standards. He and his wife want to turn the school compound into “a place of beauty” so they grow flowerbeds as is typical of English school compounds. One day an old woman from the village tramples straight through the hedges and flowerbeds they grow. Michael Obi finds out that a path crossing the compound connects the village shrine with the place of burial. However he dismisses this as primitive superstition and closes the path. When the village priest asks for the path to be re-opened, Obi doesn’t cooperate. Two days later a young woman dies in childbed and the next day one of the school buildings is pulled down and the hedges and flowerbeds are devastated by people from the tribe who believe the closure of the path was the reason for the woman’s death. The very same day a white supervisor arrives to inspect the school and fins it in ruins. In his report he writes about a “tribal war” situation. So Obi failed as headmaster by trying to be too British” Setting - the story takes place in Eastern Nigeria in the 1950s, when...
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... 1977-82; Institute of Jamaica Publications, managing editor, 1982-89; Jamaica Journal, editor, 1982-89; freelance teacher, writer, lecturer, 1989-; University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados, visiting lecturer/writer-in-residence, 1990; Caribbean Writers Summer Institute, University of Miami, Florida, director of fiction workshop, 1994, 1995; St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY, Dana Visiting Professor of creative writing, 1994-95; University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, writer-in-residence, 1998-99. Life's Work Jamaican-born journalist, poet, and short story writer Olive Senior is one of Caribbean literature's leading feminist voices. Her works, though written in English, remain heavily influenced by the region's patois, and draw heavily upon its oral storytelling traditions. In both her verse and fiction, Senior critiques the political and cultural ties that continue to bind Jamaica to its British colonial past. Her protagonists often find themselves divided between the resulting two worlds of assimilation and preservation, and she gives their speech and inner dialogues a corresponding tone. "In Jamaica, much as in England, diction has traditionally signified place of birth, level...
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...When reading short stories, the authors need to draw you in quick to make their story successful. Reading stories that fail do this lack something, but what is it? Personally I feel that two characteristics that make stories successful are; the writers ability to make us envision the setting and to go beyond the five senses and use body language. First of all if you do not envision the setting then how do you really get in to the story? It would be like watching television with no picture. Furthermore if you can connect and make the characters unforgettable then you will have a successful short story. The setting I feel Is one if not the biggest part of the making a short story successful. If you cannot make the reader feel that they are in the story then you have little chance to be successful. Charlotte Perkins dose this in her story Yellow Walls. She gives a description of the house, “ A Colonial mansion a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house and a reach the height of romance felicity.” She also gets on to describe the landscaping, “ there are hedges and walls and gates that lock and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people. Characters make up every story, as a writer you need to try and make the reader connect with the characters and make them become unforgettable. James Baldwin uses this in Sonny’s Blues while describing a couple characters. He starts with Sonny’s friend, “He was sort of shaking, his head and his eyes looked strange, as...
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...Brackley and the Bed Brackley and the Bed READING Reading literature 1 All five short story features are represented in the short story “Brackley and the Bed” to a larger or smaller extent: Short time span: About two-thirds of the short story takes place during one single day in Brackley’s life. The remainder covers some subsequent weeks. Few characters: There are only two characters in the short story: Brackley and Teena. One central incident: The central incident is Teena’s arrival in London. Conflict: The intrusion of Teena into Brackley’s seemingly uncomplicated life in London. Turning point/surprise: The main turning point is at the end when Teena reveals that her aunt is coming over to stay with them. 2 2a The short story is set in post-war London before 1962. There is a reference to the Colonial Office in London which handled matters related to the British colonies. Trinidad and Tobago was a British colony until 1962. 2b Brackley is the protagonist of the short story. He is a young Tobagonian who has come to London in search of work. Being a Caribbean he realizes that it is difficult to find decent work and accommodation in a white society such as London. He seems to have resigned to his fate, which has often been so typical of many immigrants from the colonies. When encountering such challenges, it is easy to become passive, lazy and apathetic. He also understands that the English do not care and that he has to rely on himself. In this...
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...mysterious ways of human behaviour and development is the focus in the short story “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell from 1936 that is set in British Burma during the colonial time. The story is centred on a British police officer and an elephant at large, and through a modest gallery of characters we are consumed by a view on humanity in revolt.” Ex. 2, indledning med udgangspunkt i en almen erfaring: “Most people have an everyday routine. In most cases this is comfortable and gives you a feeling of structure and makes it easier to cope with life. However, there is a fine line between a well-planned and secure everyday life and a life of boredom and predictability that mechanically takes its course and distances you from life. This is exactly what the story “Stolpestad” by William Lychack from 2008 is about. It is about how the narrator’s day-to-day routine is so predictable that his life has become a condition of numbness.” Ex. 3, indledning med udgangspunkt i et citat fra teksten ““[…] This is your life, Stolpestad.” (p. 2, l. 5). That is it, deal with it. A clearly negative second person narrator takes the reader through the life of the policeman Stolpestad; a non-motivated and truly stagnated husband and father from a small town in America. Stolpestad’s life is just passing by, and he is letting it. William Lychack takes us through the inner monologue of Stolpestad’s mind in the short story of the same name, written in 2008, describing Stolpestad’s battle of facing...
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...feats of derring-do and the primitive? We look at a young reader’s Victorian adventure novel, the long-enduring The Coral Island, and the later short stories of Rudyard Kipling (the ‘Bard’ of Empire), and examine the (contradictory?) lure of the primitive, even as British modernity is taken for granted. Second, the module will proceed to examine some major Chinese and Japanese writers and intellectuals (and an Indian poet and critics, the Nobel Prize-winning Rabindranath Tagore) and see how northeast Asian culture was broadly affected by their sense of Western modern superiority in technology, political organisation and literary (and other forms of creative) culture. Both China and Japan, the major countries in East-Southeast Asia, were never colonised, but they were intimidated by the presence of the Great Western Powers (and their colonies) in the region. Japan after the Meiji Restoration (1868) became the first modern Asian nation-state, and their attempts at intensive (and disruptive) modernisation of their culture had a profound impact on the whole region – and this desire to be modern also meant that Japan itself became a colonising state, following the British, French and German states. This module attempts, therefore, a comparative examination of the ambiguities and contradictions in the process of becoming modern both in the colonial centre (Great Britain) and in northeast Asia, and an understanding of the new forms of literature that resulted in that...
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...Victor’s Last Wish The short story chosen for the writing of this paper is “Victor’s Last Wish”. “Victor’s Last Wish” is a realistic fiction by Kris Jitab who describes in depth the pain and hardship endured by the main character, Vickramadas Gopal who was an Indian immigrant to Malaysia. Vickramadas was known as Victor throughout the short story. He made great efforts to transform himself to be like whites who he thought were the best. “Anything and everything related to the whites was beautiful to Vickramadas.” The author has painted a vivid picture of sufferings and challenges of Victor in his course to attain a new identity - an Englishman. But, his efforts did not help him to be recognised by the white men as a part of them. He was rejected by Miss Cunningham and insulted by Miss da Gama because his skin was dark in colour. He also thought that his failure to be promoted to Junior Accountant was due to his dark skin. Thus, Victor was so desperate to have his skin colour changed. He was very disappointed for not getting what he had striven so hard to achieve. As a result, he lost his hope and direction in his life. Consequently, he indulged in heavy smoking, drinking, gambling. At last, he became a thief to steal in order to pay his debt. In one stealing, he was caught red-handed together with his accomplices. He tried to escape but unfortunately, in his escape, he fell into a tank of formic acid where his skin was turned white all over by the acid. His wish to change his...
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...Open Window - Analysis "The Open Window" is Saki's most popular short story. It was first collected in Beasts and SuperBeasts in 1914. Saki's wit is at the height of its power in this story of a spontaneous practical joke played upon a visiting stranger. The [pic]practical joke recurs In many of Saki's stories, but "The Open Window" is perhaps his most successful and best known example of the type. Saki dramatizes here the conflict between reality and imagination, demonstrating how difficult it can be to distinguish between them. Not only does the unfortunate Mr. Nuttel fall victim to the story's joke, but so does the reader. The reader is at first inclined to laugh at Nuttel for being so gullible. However, the reader, too, has been taken in by Saki's story and must come to the realization that he or she is also inclined to believe a well-told and interesting tale. Style “The Open Window” is the story of a deception, perpetrated on an unsuspecting, and constitutionally nervous man, by a young lady whose motivations for lying remain unclear. Structure The most remarkable of Saki’s devices in “The Open Window” is his construction of the story’s narrative. The structure of the story is actually that of a story-within-a-story. The larger “frame” narrative is that of Mr. Nuttel’s arrival at Mrs. Sappleton’s house for the purpose of introducing himself to her. Within this narrative frame is the second story, that told by Mrs. Sappleton’s niece. Symbolism The most important...
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...The text under analysis is an extract from “Fueille d’album”, which is written by Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry. She was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Her stories often focus on moments of disruption and frequently open rather abruptly. Among her best-known stories are "The Garden Party", "The Daughters of the Late Colonel" and "The Fly". “Feuille d'Album” is a 1917 short story. It was first published in the New Age on 20 September 1917 under the title of An Album Leaf. A revised version later appeared in Bliss and Other Stories. The personage’s characterization is managed with great depth of insight. Main character of the story is a young painter whose appearance evokes mixed feelings. While describing him Mrs. Mansfield uses direct and indirect methods of characterization. From the extract it’s quite hard to judge whether he is static or dynamic. But we can easily say that he is a stock character, because he is very recognizable. The author wants to show an image of “painter” which will be familiar to readers. She tries to endow her hero with such characteristics as inscrutability, strangeness and uncommonness. The language of the writer is very rich and full of various kinds of stylistic devices. They help the reader to picture the main character. For example, the epithet “impossible” and the antithesis “With absolutely nothing to say for himself...
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...has a very effective meaning in Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper short story. Symbolism is defined as “the practice of representing things by symbols, or investing things with a symbolic meaning or character” (Dictionary.com). Firstly, the wallpaper symbolizes a variety of the narrator’s senses. Throughout the story, her senses change and the wallpaper also changes. The wallpaper shows how someone who suffers from a mental illness has different perspectives on their emotional surroundings and self-perception. Next, the house the narrator is kept in and the ugliness in the patterns of the wallpaper help represent the outlook of a woman’s repression. All in all, the wallpaper symbolizes the events in which the narrator finds herself trapped...
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...Mainiero, Linda. American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide From Colonial Times To The Present. New York: Fredrick Ungar Publish Co., 1979. After Kate Chopin graduated from Scared Heart Convent, she married Oscar Chopin, a native of Louisiana. In 1870 she moved to New Orleans with her husband and had 5 children. Her first poem “If it might be” was published in 1899. “At Fault” her first novel was established in 1890. Toth, Emily . Unveiling Kate Chopin. Jackson, Miss: University Press of Mississippi, 1999. When Kate Chopin began publishing fiction in national magazines, she was doing something no other women in St. Louis had ever done. Kate was surrounded by the voices of women – from her mammy to her mother and grandmother, to the Sacred Heart nuns, to her best friend Kitty Garesche....
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...Every story has two kinds of setting: the spatial and the temporal. Both are equally important to a reader’s understanding of a piece of literature. The physical location of characters can change the mood and the atmosphere of a story. The year in which the story is taking place can change the choices characters are able to make and the way society views the character’s actions. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner the time period and physical location confines characters and affects the outcome of the story. Gilman and Faulkner limit their characters in temporal and spatial setting to show the limitations of women in the physical, mental, and social aspects of life. First, Gilman...
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...Actions Speak Loudly Chekhov and Conrad are masters of symbolism, but each author uses the literary tool differently within their stories. For Chekhov, simple gestures and subtle images meticulously placed throughout the text help to reveal psychological aspects of a character. Conrad, on the other hand, tends to employ symbolism rather visibly and allegorically, allowing the reader to directly establish a link between objects, actions, and themes. To compare Chekhov and Conrad’s writing styles, an example of symbolism in one of each author’s stories will be used: Gurov eating of the watermelon in Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Little Dog” and the lamp in Kurtz’s death scene in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”. Using these examples, it becomes clear how Chekhov uses symbols to develop a character’s persona to more effectively have that character illustrate the story’s theme while Conrad uses symbols to directly develop the story’s theme. The watermelon scene in Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Little Dog” contains symbolism associated with the gestures and actions of the story’s male protagonist Gurov. Chekhov has the scene begin with Anna – the female protagonist – and Gurov entering Anna’s apartment for the first time. Immediately after entering, Anna begins to express her fear that Gurov will not respect her should she cheat on her husband and become romantically involved with Gurov. The details of Anna’s face also help to set the serious and gloomy tone for the scene as she is...
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