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I’m probably not the first person one would expect to complain about liberal bias in the classroom and I’m not that sure that’s what I’m planning to do here. Don’t believe me? Then by all means accept my invite to join a protest of Rudi Giuliani as the commence speaker at the University of Southern Mississippi May 15graduation in Hattiesburg.
What I do want to discus here in Scorczewski’s tone deafness to the politics of what she’s teaching. It strikes me that for all her talk of empowering the students and overthrowing the dominant culture (ok maybe not overthrowing, but you get my drift— AH! CLICHÉ! CLICHÉ! RUN FOR THE HILLLS) she stills seems on some level wedded to the receptacle model of education. I’ve got the good ideas and you students—when you’re smart enough to see what’s up—will get them. And I don’t just mean the language of the academy here. It’s political beliefs. Now, that said she does speak to this on p233. (She regained a bit of ethos for me here after she lost it utterly by referring to Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” as an essay. It’s not an essay. It’s an excerpt from the NOVEL Lucy.) “”My relief revealed my entrenchment in another ideology, an institutional ideology so prevalent I perceived it as common sense.”

While not about cliché per se: I remember in an early class you suggested that we look for where the writing breaks down in student papers. This is what they’re trying to say. I’m still doing this and the jury still feels out. My own instinct in teaching creative writing is to tell students to look for where the language soars. This is their best material. This is what they want to try to develop.