Welcome
Last time, I asked you to read the second chapter of Toni Morrison’s book, The Origin of Others. Today, we’re going to try something different. After the first part of the class, we’ll be putting into action a strategy that Morrison herself uses to explore themes of otherness: and that strategy is storytelling.
In other words, most of today’s class will be a creative writing workshop. We’ll be not just thinking about these issues, but feeling our way into them by telling, writing and sharing stories.
In this chapter Morrison tells stories of her own, and also talks about other storytellers, among them Flannery O’Connor, slave narratives and much more.
Discussion
We’ll first of all start by talking through the text to see what interested you, what questions you had, and what you think are the really important questions that Morrison raises. We’ll take maybe 20 or 30 minutes to do this, depending on how much we have to say.
Creative Writing Warm-up Exercise
For a warm-up exercise, I’m going to get you to do a bit of creative writing. I’m going to get you to start by reading Borges and I, by Jorge Luis Borges, the famous Argentinian writer: https://poets.org/poem/borges-and-i
We’ll read this out loud. In the story, Borges reflects on the experience of becoming unfamiliar to himself or a stranger to himself.
Now take your own name (whatever form of it you like), and use this as a title after the model of Borges. For example, I would write “Will and I”, or “Will Buckingham and I”, or perhaps my Chinese name, “Bai Zhongxiu and I”. You can use any form of your name you feel like using.
Story sharing
Now we’re going to pair up and share these stories.
Extended writing exercise
Now we’ve got a taste for writing, we will write a more extended piece. We will take a quote from Morrison’s essay as a writing prompt:
And isn’t that the kind of thing that we fear strangers will do? Disturb. Betray. Prove they are not like us? That is why it is so hard to know what to do with them. (pp. 34-5)
What I want you to do is to think about this quote for a few minutes. And think about a story in which two strangers meet. This can be:
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A true (nonfiction) story from your own experience.
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An entirely fictional story.
It’s up to you. In this story, one character is disturbed or unsettled by an encounter with a stranger. How do they respond? What kinds of “othering” are going to take place in this story? What events unfold? Make a few notes on who you want your two main characters to be, and where the story is going to take place. Think about the following.
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Who your main two characters will be
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Where the story takes place
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Any other important information
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What happens, or what changes?
Now we will have 20 minutes writing time.
Afterwards, we’ll have a chance to share our writing in groups! Then, if there’s time, we can discuss at the end. One question that is raised indirectly by Morrison’s text (although not directly) is this: how can storytelling either deepen or address the ethical problems around our encounters with the Other. If we have time, we’ll discuss this, also in breakout groups.
Homework
Now that you’ve had a chance to narrate encounters with otherness, for your homework this week, I want you to read chapter 5, which is called “Narrating the Other”. Again, post to the discussion board with your reflections and one question, with the usual deadline of 12am, the night before the next class.