Harry Potter Open Mic Performance!

This week was VERY busy for me. I had tons of homework, lots of meetings with professors and classes, and I've been going to lots of new events. That said, I had one major new experience this week (in addition to three less-major ones) and that experience was: actually performing my poetry in front of a crowd!

Now, technically I have read my poetry in front of audiences before, but this was the first time I did it at a Sarah Lawrence Open Mic. There are Open Mics at my school every other week, at the Black Squirrel (a student hangout location that serves milkshakes and stuff), and it's fun to go to them. People read poems, sing songs, do standup comedy, and all sorts of other stuff. But this week, the theme was Harry Potter, so I knew I had to do something.

In my junior year of high school, I wrote two Harry Potter themed poems, "The Lightning Struck Tower" about Dumbledore's death, and "Department of Mysteries" about a Ministry worker's depression. So I signed up to perform, printed the poems out, and rehearsed them at Thursday night dinner. Then I headed up to the Black Squirrel and hung around while the Activities Council set up the room with house flags and lights.

It started at 9. All the performers were amazing- one sang a Harry Potter song he wrote, there were a couple of really talented cover singers, and the two kids that normally do comedy did a Harry Potter trivia giveaway. And obviously, any time there's Harry Potter trivia involved, I'm going to try my best to win, so guess what I won?

A SLYTHERIN FLAG YAY. (I'm a Slytherin, by the way, despite my Ravenclaw tendencies. Pottermore sorted me there and I figure JKR knows best. Plus I am pretty ambitious.) (also I know the selfie looks a little awkward. This is because I am holding a flag.)

Anyway, I was the fifth performer. I wasn't SO nervous because like I said, I've performed poems before, but once I got up there under the lights with the microphone I did get a little nervous. But I think I did rather well and afterwards a couple of people told me they liked my poems so that's good. :)

So, all in all, this new experience was a fun one. I think I'll perform more at Open Mics. Why not? There aren't usually that many poets performing anyway.

As for the other experiences of this week: I attended a talk given by a visiting Yale professor, Dr. Elijah Anderson, called "The Cosmopolitan Canopy," after his latest publication. It was very interesting and intriguing. Basically, he put forth the idea that there are certain spaces in society, which he called "cosmopolitan canopies," where people get along and hatred is forced to take a step back to make way for kindness. But occasionally, there are rips in this canopy when people commit what he called "acute moments of disrespect" towards others because of their identities. This summary isn't really doing justice to the whole talk he gave, but you can Google Elijah Anderson to find out more about his work. He studies ethnography, and a lot of his work involves going out on the streets to interview young men, particularly young black men, about the problems inherent in living in violence-ridden areas.

The other new experience I had was watching a new movie, which was technically for class, but I enjoyed it so much I'm going to recommend it. It's called Lagaan, and it's a famous Indian movie which tells the story of a village during the Indian Raj that gets challenged to a bet: if they beat an English team in a game of cricket, they won't have to pay taxes for three years; but if they lose, they'll have to pay triple taxes. It's a very well-made movie (although very long), has great musical numbers, and makes interesting commentary about the racial tensions during the Raj through a fun-to-watch film. So, watch it.

Basically, this was a really fun, busy week. Next week's Saturday post is going to be slightly different: I will summarize my new experience of the week, but I'm going to be doing a post for the TCWT Blog Chain. More on that next week.

Thanks for reading! See you Wednesday for a regular blog post.

-Ariel

Liebster Award Tag (Extra Post)

Hello! I know what you're thinking, "a Thursday post? Gosh, I can't believe I get to read more of Ariel's amazing writing before Saturday!"
Well, I was nominated by Julia the Writer Girl, one of my best online writing friends, for a blogging thing called the Liebster Award Tag. The rules are as follows:

Rules of the tag:

1. Thank the blogger who nominated you and link back to their blog.
2. Answer 11 questions from the person who nominated you.
3. Nominate other bloggers.
4. Give those bloggers 11 questions to answer and let them know they’ve been nominated.

So, Julia made up eleven questions for me and some other bloggers to answer, and as such I will answer them. And then try to think of other blogs to nominate.

Julia's Questions:

1. Favorite fictional food?

You asked the right question for me! I love food and books and their intersection is the best thing. Of course, I can't choose just one. Butterbeer, of course, is great. I've always kind of wanted to taste lembas, too. I guess I'd have to go with the fictional food that I made up in fifth grade, because it's just so ridiculous- Esizza. Short for Esikralmino pizza, and don't ask what "Esikralmino" means because it's a long story. It's pizza, but instead of cheese, there's purple pop rocks. Why? I don't know.

2. Favorite ship? (As in, like, I-am-a-fan-of-this-bromance kind of ship. Not the Titanic.)

I have tons of ships I love, but I managed to narrow it down to just two- Ron and Hermione, and Ben and Leslie from Parks and Rec. I am currently restraining myself to roll out the list of the rest of my ships, but rest assured there are a lot.

3. What would your superhero name and power(s) be?

Superhero that I'd want to be: Peace Girl, who could speak everyone's language and read minds and hearts to spread peace and understanding throughout the world. Superhero I'd actually be: Speed Reader, who can learn just enough from skimming the assigned reading to BS her way through class.

4. You're stranded on a desert island with the book character of your choice. Who is it and why?

Percy Jackson, obviously. I always choose the sort of person who could get me off the island. Plus, Percy's been through so much crap in his life that he'd be super cheerful (albeit delightfully snarky) about the whole ordeal. And I'd love to meet Percy anyway. :)

5. If you had to defeat one fictional antagonist, who would you choose?

Umbridge. Umbridge is the worst and it would be great to defeat her. (Plus, I feel like she's never even really defeated in the books. She just keeps showing up. I feel like Harry shows up to work one day and finds out Umbridge is his boss now because no one cares about getting rid of her.)

6. What do you want to do when you grow up?/Do you know what you want to do?

What do I want to do? Be a full-time novelist and advocate for educational reform. What do I realistically aspire to do? Ha ha I have no idea.

7. If you could travel anywhere, where would you choose?

I can't choose. I have no idea. I'd have to research every place on the planet Earth thoroughly and then spend like months agonizing over picking my favorite. But if I had to choose very quickly, it'd probably be Alaska, Greenland, and Finland (can I choose three) so that I could do research for my book, which has scenes in all those places. Or, you know, Italy for pretty landscapes and art.

8. Would you rather find yourself in a cliche YA love triangle or have no romantic interest at all?

Cliche YA love triangles tend to have abusive boys, at least one death, and toxic jealousy. I'll stick with my current situation of "no romantic interest at all."

9. Do you find you write about one season or region more than others?

I love all the seasons equally, and I'm actually writing a series that has one book dedicated to each of the seasons, so no for the seasons question. As for region, I guess the United States because that's where I live.

10. Do you like to write in public or when you're alone?

It depends on my mood. Although I think I enjoy having other people around to create an atmosphere of a bustling busy background. Not sure why. I think it's because when I'm alone, my mind starts racing a thousand places, and when I'm surrounded by people, that racing part of my mind feels like the atmosphere is busy enough already, so I can instead focus on my writing.

11. If you could live in any fantasy world (ie, Hogwarts, Narnia, Middle-Earth, etc.), which would you choose and why?

Uh, Hogwarts, obviously. That's not even a question.

So, yeah. Part 2 is nominating other bloggers. The only other bloggers I know are bloggers Julia already nominated. (Thanks a lot.) So... let me think... uh... um...
I guess I'm going to break the chain of this tag by nominating no one! It had to end eventually, I suppose. This was fun anyway. :) Thanks for nominating me!

Thanks for reading this extra post, everyone! See you on Saturday.

-Ariel

Thoughts on the Term 'Politically Correct'

Last semester, I attended a talk on my campus about race relations at my school (Sarah Lawrence College). The term 'politically correct' came up, in terms of how this campus is often seen to be obsessed with political correctness and whether or not that's true or whether it's bad if it is true. The idea intrigued me and I've been thinking a lot about it ever since, so I thought I'd share some of my (relatively uninformed and uneducated) thoughts on the topic. Please feel free to chime in with your own thoughts or disagreements in the comments.

"Political correctness," as defined by whatever dictionary Google uses, is "the avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes, of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against." So that seems like a rather noble goal, besides the "taken to extremes" part. It's generally a nice thing to try not to exclude or insult groups of people.

But of course, "politically correct" is rarely ever used as a compliment. Nobody says, "Wow, you're so politically correct! Good job!" So obviously, something about the effort not to marginalize groups of people is something negative. Or at least is seen as negative. This is where the "taken to extremes" part of the definition comes in. The attempt not to marginalize a group of people might go too far in the other direction and overly glorify them. Glorification of a group of people is harmful, since it turns real humans into something to be put on a pedestal. Some are also concerned that glorifying minorities might come at the cost of the rights of majority groups, as in the cases of "reverse racism" and "heterophobia" and stuff like that. Personally, I think that it would take quite a huge effort to counteract the privilege that white and straight people and other majority groups have in America, but fine, I guess that's a concern.  

Another problem often seen with political correctness is censorship, or rewriting of the truth. I remember this video I saw a while ago, called "Top 10 Ways Liberalism Makes America Worse". Don't watch the whole thing (unless you want to, I guess), it's 40 minutes long, but at 32:31, Dennis Praeger (the speaker) starts talking about a California law requiring a page in each textbook detailing the contributions of LGBT people to American history. He explains, "I don't resent the LGBT part, I resent the tampering with history... Show me a cross dresser we missed in American history." He later says, "There is one purpose in a history textbook, to tell the truth!" I agree with him there; no one should be lying in history textbooks. He suggests that since there are really no LGBT people who influenced American history, textbook writers would be forced to make stuff up, which would of course be against the whole purpose of a history textbook. 

However, there are important LGBT people in American history. The 19th-century poet Walt Whitman, who radically changed American writing, was most likely bisexual, and that influenced his work. Why wasn't that in my APUSH textbook, if the purpose of textbooks is to tell the truth? James Buchanan, the "Bachelor President," was rumored to be gay. Shouldn't that be in textbooks then? What cross dressers did we miss in American history? There's all the women who dressed as men to fight in the Revolutionary and Civil wars. (Admittedly, they may not have actually been transgender, but still, they were influential.) And who knows how many more I don't know about because of oppression at the time or purposeful erasure of their existence from the textbooks?

So maybe there's a point behind movements for "political correctness", for an attempt to include marginalized groups instead of continuing to marginalize them. The fact is, LGBT people and people of color and other such groups are often ignored, underrepresented, and insulted. The way to counteract that isn't to require a page in each textbook about them, of course, or to fill diversity quotas, but to encourage genuine respect for other people. And (which is more difficult) to actually examine the problems with our society. To acknowledge the fact that maybe there are some missing pieces in what we think is the truth.

When political correctness becomes censorship, it's harmful. When it erases the truth in favor of an agenda, it's harmful. But often, what is seen as censorship of the truth is actually just criticism of the fact that the truth is already being censored, and we need to start opening our eyes to the truth. For example, at the National Book Award this year, Daniel Handler made some racist jokes about the winner of the award, Jacqueline Woodson, who is black. The Internet backlash was huge, saying that his comments were not only inappropriate but that they normalized racist ideas. Some might say that this is an example of politically correct censorship- if one of the Internet commenters had had a copy of Handler's speech before he made it, they surely would have told him to remove the racist jokes. But is this really censorship, or is it criticism? The critics of Handler's comments have a point- what he was saying was racist, and it was harmful. He had the right to free speech, to be sure, he had the right to say those remarks. But isn't it better for him to have the chance to learn why they were racist, to further his own education and to ensure that in the future, he says things that contribute to social progress rather than continue to build up social problems? If you say that his critics should remain silent on the grounds that their political correctness interferes with his freedom of speech, you are being the censoring one. You are the one censoring education, and progress, and the right to criticize.

(Side note: Handler did learn from this mistake, apologized, and ended up donating to We Need Diverse Books, presumably with the realization that diversity in literature is still pretty backwards. If you're interested in reading more about this incident, Jacqueline Woodson herself wrote a great article about it.)

One last thing before I wrap up this incoherent rant: oftentimes, "politically correct" criticism comes from a place of discomfort with things that are known to be on some sort of unofficial list of "offensive stuff." In my ninth-grade English lit class, when we read To Kill a Mockingbird, a lot of students said that they were offended by parts of the book (I don't remember which because it's been four years). Which is, you know, weird, because it's a progressive book, and the only students who took offense were white students. From what I can tell, the fact that it discussed race at all was kind of uncomfortable to them. They had grown up learning that talking about race is "offensive." Similarly, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is often banned for its use of the n-word, despite the fact that it was used to underline and call out racism in the nineteenth century. This is where "political correctness" stops being open-minded criticism and starts being an attempt to, well, adhere correctly to a set of politics. That set of politics can be anything: don't talk about race 'cause it's uncomfortable, don't say bad things about America, don't criticize any religions, etc. But the point of educated criticism is to break out of such politics, not to be "correct" to them. The point of criticism is to look with an open mind towards society and its problems, not to stick to any set of rules.

This is just a collection of my thoughts, and not a very organized or thorough collection at that. But I hope it made you think about some new ideas. Again, please write any of your own ideas in the comments, especially if you disagree with me- obviously, I am in favor of hearing criticism. :)

Thanks for reading, and see you Saturday when I write about my new experience of the week.

-Ariel

Bat Mitzvah (Bonus: Poetry Experience)

I was pretty worried, this week, that I wouldn't have any exciting new experiences to write about. I had a snow-day-in-increments on Monday, and then your average week of doing homework and going to classes, before going home for the weekend. I tried to look for stuff to do on my campus, but I couldn't find anything good to do in my free time.

But then I remembered that my third cousin was having her Bat Mitzvah this weekend, and since I technically made the choice to go and wasn't forced to go, it's technically a voluntary new experience. So I'm counting it.

Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, for those of you who've never been to one, are not the most exciting thing in the world, but they are generally pretty fun. I don't know my third cousin that well (the last time I saw her, she was nine) but she looked radiantly happy and everyone said great things about her. So I'm glad she had a good time at her party.

The event consisted of first her parents making speeches, then her giving a speech about chesed (kindness). After that everyone went down to a ballroom where they played music quite loudly and there was food. My sister and I, being the obnoxious teenagers we are, got tons of food and sat at a table and made stupid jokes to each other. The rest of the guests danced and did fun stuff.

Obviously, I've been to Bar and Bat Mitzvahs before, including my own, so you might think it's not really a new experience. But this one was more religious than the ones I've been to. It didn't show in terms of religious traditions, but in little cultural things- there was a women's section in the chapel, everyone dressed very modestly, the person in charge of pumping up the crowd was not the usual annoying jerk who clearly knows nothing about Judaism, etc. And surprisingly, the food was really good. Usually, kosher catered food is terrible, but this looked like something out of a Pinterest party planning board.

Anyway, so it was pretty fun, and afterwards my parents drove me back to college (since the party was close to my school anyway) and so now I'm in my dorm room, writing this and trying to get it done before it's technically not Saturday anymore.

I did actually have another new experience this week, but it wasn't so much an experience as it was sort of an accomplishment. As I may have mentioned (probably not though), I'm taking a year-long poetry class, and I've written and polished a good collection of poems. My school is pretty well known for its writing program, so one of the events that we host is the Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival, known as the biggest student-run poetry festival in New York State. We're going to have a bunch of famous poets reading at it, but undergraduate and graduate students at the college are encouraged to submit their own poetry for a chance to read as well. So I decided, why not? It's not like I have anything to lose by submitting. I chose three of my best poems and put together a document, wrote a brief cover letter, and submitted it online. There's probably tons of people submitting, and it's judged by poetry student alumni, so there's a very small chance of me actually making it in. But you know, it's fun to imagine that tiny chance coming true.

Next week I promise a more exciting experience- I actually have one planned and it should be good. I'll see you on Wednesday with another regular post.

-Ariel

Social Justice + Harry Potter

First of all, I apologize for the lateness of this post. I'm really lazy, is the reason why. (Plus I spent a good while "preparing" to write this post by singing along to AVPS songs.)

Second: Social Justice + Harry Potter? What do those two have to do with each other? (What a ridiculous question; Harry Potter has to do with everything.) As a matter of fact, major pop culture sensations like Harry Potter are a great place to start discussions about important subjects. Especially Harry Potter, since it's already full of metaphors and undertones about resistance against oppression.

Let's start with the obvious: the whole blood-status metaphor. The Malfoys, the Blacks, and other pureblood supremacist families, under Voldemort, comprise the main villains of the series. The fact that they're such big villains and that they gain control so easily makes it seem like the pureblood supremacist attitude is a common one in wizarding culture. But in fact, there are many signs throughout the books that the totally rigid pureblood families are dying out- Sirius talks about this in the fifth book. The "Purebloods Are the Only True Wizards" attitude belongs mainly to fringe groups. The average wizard, if asked, would probably be like, "Oh no! I'm not a pureblood supremacist. In fact, I have plenty of Muggle-born friends." Sound familiar? It's the same sort of response you'll get if you ask the average person if they're a racist, because the truth is, white supremacy and blatant racism are attitudes that (thankfully) only belong to fringe groups today.

Yet despite this fact, Voldemort and the Death Eaters don't have too difficult of a time taking over the Ministry. In fact, Lucius Malfoy- a known Death Eater, who claimed to have been Imperiused, but it was pretty obvious he was lying- is best buds with the Minister of Magic until book six. If they're such a fringe group, how is this possible?

The same reasons racism and other forms of discrimination are still so rampant in modern Muggle culture, despite the fact that their extreme forms are not so common anymore. First of all, the use of violence and terror by the Death Eaters (or KKK, or racist police officers, or perpetrators of hate crimes). Second of all, the influence of money- the Malfoys were a rich family, and that was a big reason of why the Ministry tolerated their hate crimes. Same in the Muggle world, obviously. And third of all (and I'd say this is the most important): extreme pureblood supremacy may have been uncommon, but little hints of anti-Muggle sentiment infiltrated every bit of wizarding culture. Even people like Hagrid were likely to make remarks like "and there's nothing a great Muggle like you can do about it." (I know it was aimed at Vernon, who deserved an insult, but he was attacking Vernon's Muggle status, not the fact that he was a horrible human being- showing that Hagrid thought being a Muggle made you inferior.) There are tons of people who say stuff like this and promote ideas like this throughout the series (Stan Shunpike's "Muggles, they don't see nothing," or Slughorn's "she was good for a Muggle-born!" and Dumbledore mentioning that he was probably the only one to actually read the Muggle news). No wonder Hermione was such a badass protester. She had to hear snide remarks about her upbringing from everyone, even so-called allies. Yeah, all those wizards denied being pureblood supremacists, but when push came to shove, a lot of them probably "could see where the Muggle-born Registration thing was coming from. I mean, can we really trust Muggle-borns?"

Voldemort was a pretty obvious metaphor for Hitler, what with his own half-blood status, in comparison to Hitler's partially-Jewish heritage. So the whole wizarding war can be seen as a comparison to World War II- the corrupt government easily being taken over, the restructuring of the educational curriculum, the genocide. But we don't just have to take these glorious books as a lesson about atrocities of the past. Take a look at our present, here in America, and you'll see a lot of similarities between the two worlds. And the lessons Harry Potter taught us- accept people, just because someone is different doesn't mean they are bad, love can conquer everything, resist corruption in schools and in the government- should be applied in the Muggle world as well.

Anyway. I made a list of like a hundred different social justice analyses I could make about Harry Potter, so expect to see more of these posts in the future. I hope you enjoyed this post. Please tell me if I got a little too, um, Harry-Potter-obsessive-y, and it got confusing.

Also: if you thought this sort of analysis was cool and you want to see more of it without having to wait around for me to post it, check out this blogger and this guy. They're really cool and they inspired some of the ideas in this post.

Thanks for reading! See you on Saturday, when I tell you about my new experience of the week!

-Ariel