Wednesday, August 09, 2006

out with the old

I successfully quit my shitty job, and this afternoon I interviewed for a teaching position at this independant teaching studio in a suburb. The interview went well, I think; the director and I have similar views about accessibility to music and about creative, flexible approaches to teaching. The thing that might do me in is that I haven't had a lot of experience, and particularly not a lot of experience teaching young students or total beginners. But I still felt really positive about it, and I should find out tomorrow whether or not I got it.
I've read a lot of good books lately. After "Sixpence House" I read Zadie Smith's "White Teeth", then re-read the chapter on cyber-relations and textual subjectivity from Juana Maria Rodriguez's "Queer Latinidad", which still just rocks. Oh, and also I read "Persepolis", Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel account of her childhood living through Iran's Islamic Revolution. Wow. It was so powerful, it almost brought me to tears on the bus and did make me cry later that day in my room. Anna is currently reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran" which I as far as I remember is about the same time period, but told from an adult perspective and through the lens of classic english-language novels. I remember reading that book and just not getting the historical aspect of it; I only vaguely understood what she was talking about, and it lessened the power of the book. I want to read it again now. "Persepolis" really made me think about the graphic novel format, and how it has the potential to clearly and viscerally make things understandable that are maybe harder to get in a purely textual format. It has the potential to be such a concrete and interesting genre, and I hadn't seen that as much before as I did yesterday.

1 comment:

lauren said...

I really admire your ability to read through books so quickly, and to understand, them to (I'm still trying to combine the two talents, but it's difficult)!