Another unsuccessful attempt to persuade my creative nonfiction students that Trumpist erasure of language, & "Patriotic Education," is directly relevant to our work. I don't blame students! I blame myself, obv. Also lit world that favors a shallow & aesthetically conservative progressivism. - ThreadSky

jeffsharlet.bsky.social • 19 days ago

Another unsuccessful attempt to persuade my creative nonfiction students that Trumpist erasure of language, & "Patriotic Education," is directly relevant to our work. I don't blame students! I blame myself, obv. Also lit world that favors a shallow & aesthetically conservative progressivism.

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upine.bsky.social•19 days ago

Wow. They don't think the lies and the erasures of truths will affect them? Good fiction is about the dilemmas real ppl face in dealing with reality. If reality is hidden from you, you can't write good fiction. Do they not see that?

alyssaharad.bsky.social•19 days ago

Now I’m writing a syllabus in my head…

gentlystream.bsky.social•19 days ago

Homework?

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/best-anti-fascist-films/persepolis-2007/

jeffsharlet.bsky.social•19 days ago

I’m excited about that list, but it’s not the way. Because this is a creative nonfiction class, not a course in anti-fascist art. The art may be explicitly anti-fascist if it’s also great art. But they’re here to explore literary methods.

jeffsharlet.bsky.social•19 days ago

But a lot of movies for me to watch here

gentlystream.bsky.social•19 days ago

Having read synopses, there were a lot of different entries to the topic. Just a thought :)

coyotetrail.bsky.social•19 days ago

WISH to talk! Felt inadequate in teaching Fall undergrads non-white “enviro” genealogies & surfacing Anglo-canon (CNF, too!) ever-lurking narrative harms (eg 11/25’s DionneBrand w/DavidNaimon!🔥) (V. modestly, have book coming.) In class, too, pointed to T’s moves as continuation…w/differences? Idk

lastpaige111.bsky.social•19 days ago

I blame the students’ parents. They shirked their responsibility to teach their kids to think critically.

jeffsharlet.bsky.social•19 days ago

Nah. They worked within the system they have. The students are extremely bright. But they’ve been taught that IRL and creativity are at odds, not least by lit world which largely remains in 19th c w/ regard to fiction/nonfiction.

jeffsharlet.bsky.social•19 days ago

The answer, I should add, isn't a syllabus. I teach creative nonfiction. We read, yes, but the readings aren't "about" politics, & students must write as their imaginations draw them. It's a matter of integrating the moment into a workshop space. Haven't yet figured out how to do it well.

mullinshere.bsky.social•19 days ago

Then you teach them what censorship is by "censoring" their writings; and when they protest, you point out that this is exactly what is happening, now. You start where they are.

akdonj.bsky.social•19 days ago

Students today must be very different from when you were in college.

jeffsharlet.bsky.social•19 days ago

I mean, this is always true.

pippaelayne.bsky.social•19 days ago

After they write it, you could check it for the long list of words not allowed in research grants now, including "women"

pokerforgirls.bsky.social•19 days ago

Jeff, hi, I commend your tremendous commitment. Doctorow taught me about the world at NYU in my MFA work. An astonishing teacher. If I understand, I do blame your students if they don't understand erasures. It's appalling especially for those aspiring to the writerly class. @shteyngart.bsky.social

jeffsharlet.bsky.social•19 days ago

I don't know that they don't understand. I do know that very, very few have heard of any of this until I bring it up. 2 1/2 weeks in. That's not the fault of individual students; that's an academic culture that deems such info irrelevant, boring, or insufficiently "intellectual"/"creative."

pokerforgirls.bsky.social•19 days ago

Thanks for your reply, I deeply appreciate the tremendous limitations of academic cultures going back decades.

jenka.bsky.social•19 days ago

Are any of your students from authoritarian regimes?

jeffsharlet.bsky.social•19 days ago

You mean besides here, now? Yes. One definitely doesn’t put the weight of explaining on them.

jenka.bsky.social•19 days ago

Well, I'm from the USSR, so the one here is just a baby one. Hasn't even been carried to term fully yet. I just meant like, if any of them had experience with how long-term exposure warps the mind thru language.

jeffsharlet.bsky.social•19 days ago

Yeah. But students raised in such societies often are in no position to explain them. Even if they are, with fam back home, it’s risky.

jenka.bsky.social•19 days ago

True. I was listening to a Syrian woman, a writer i think actually, in the diaspora talk about how Syrians are strangers to themselves. What they could think to articulate to one another has been so circumscribed. It's like people who have to learn to speak again.

riggsveda.bsky.social•19 days ago

For me Literary Hub is a nice corrective to your last point. And New York Review of Books is a real delight. Not sure if you care those, but they are a steady bright spot for me.

jeffsharlet.bsky.social•19 days ago

Sometimes? NYRB more so? But both also perpetuate the problem, I think,

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