1) Do we have a canon for Malaysian literary works? Let's say we do, who do you think are in it? Consider the fact that their works are well-known and most importantly included as part of the school syllabus- (both in BM and English)
English Literature
a) The Dead Crow (poem) Form 1
1986 : Datuk A. Samad Said
b) Si Tenggang’s Homecoming (poem) Form 4)
1991 : Prof. Dr. Muhammad Haji Salleh
c) Jungle of Hope (novel) Form 5
1981 : Kamaluddin Muhamad (Keris Mas)
Malay literature
a) Gelungnya Terpokah (short story) for SPM level
1982 : Dato' Shahnon Ahmad
b) Anak Global (poem) for SPM level
1991 : Prof. Dr. Muhammad Haji Salleh
2) The poems by Erica Jong raises some feminist issues. What are they?
"On The First Night"," Diving into the Wreck", "Fruits and Vegetables" and "Half-Lives".
The feminist issues raised by Erica Jong in her poems are sex, gender equality for women, women’s rights and interests, gender bias, gender difference, oppression of women, one’s quest for freedom and purpose.
3) Do you think they are suitable to teach at the secondary school level? Explain.
I think that they are not suitable to be taught at the secondary school level because her poems are concerning sexuality directly. It might mislead the young. Besides, she is an American woman whose culture is different from us. She expresses her thought and views through her works for some issues, for example sex widely. But in eastern culture, some issues are forbidden. Therefore, her poems are not suitable to be taught at the secondary school level.
4) Is Hillary Tham's poem more suitable?
Hilary Tham is a local writer from Malaysia. Her poems often deal with common female issues and the language uses in her poems are more moderate. Therefore, her poems are more suitable for our eastern culture and they can be taught at the secondary school level.
5) The short tale from the Native American group is about a girl who is unsatisfied with her life. How is this a universal experience? Can it teach our students anything?
This universal experience can be found at every where. Everyone is unsatisfied with their life. Once they get a small house, they plan to get a bigger house. But when they success to get a bigger house, they want a palace! Some of them are greedy and ungrateful to what they have. For example, my pupils always lost their Tupperware drinking bottle and never intend to get them back from teachers who found them. They seem like they belong those thing as free.
There also some people do not satisfy with their marriage life. They are unthankful to their spouse and end up having extra marital affairs with many excuses.
So, we can use the story to teach our students to appreciate the simple thing that they are given which is better than having nothing. Besides, we also can teach them not to judge someone from his or her appearance.
6) From your findings about his background, tell me about the dilemma he conveys through the poem CROSS.
This poem explores the emotions and troubles of a young man born into a world of confusion. Confused by his heritage but arrogant in his pride. He is growing up in the whirl of a white society, and cannot decide whether he is white or black. Hughes, using a black mother and white father, makes it easy for the reader to understand and almost foresee where this poem is going. It is evident that there is an inner sense of not belonging. He fells remorse for all the curses and bad wishes he said to his parents, now that they have died. This all part of a bigger problem. Now that his parents are both deceased, he has no one turn to. He can’t seem to figure out whether he is going to die in riches, or rags. This is the great dilemma Hughes presents to the reader, leaving them in query to this unanswerable question. He cannot seem to find any truth in himself whatsoever. Huggins had this to say of the poem, “This child is and forever will be lost in his own identity. Hughes uses this boys struggle symbolically, not to show the pressures of a crossed child, but rather to show how we as a society stereotype the races”. The white father dying in a fine house, whereas the mother dies in a shack, depicts the common view of the white race as being a more upscale and richer society, and the black culture oppressed in poverty and forever bound to the slums of the world. These questions and emotion are what made the Harlem Renaissance such an important movement for black America.
(http://www.freeessays123.com/termpaper20235/langstonhughescross.html)
7) I find "Dinner Guest: Me" laden with irony and sarcasm. Briefly state if you feel the same.
Langston Hughes is a black man invited to a dinner engagement at which well-heeled hosts discussed the Negro problem. A black person in a fancy restaurant was a big deal back in those days. They have to wait for service in the restaurant. Hughes concludes his poem with the statement that it is not so bad to be treated so well even if he is just treated as a personification of “The Negro Problem.”
8) The experience in the poem Harlem is one that is true for many people. Do you agree?
The experience in the poem is true for many people. In the year of the poem’s publication, 1951, frustration characterized the mood of American blacks. The Civil War in the previous century had liberated them from slavery, and federal laws had granted them the right to vote, the right to own property, and so on. However, continuing bias against blacks, as well as laws passed since the Civil War, relegated them to second-class citizenship. Consequently, blacks had to attend poorly equipped segregated schools and settle for menial jobs as porters, ditch-diggers, servants, shoeshine boys, and so on. In many states, blacks could not use the same public facilities as whites, including restrooms, restaurants, theaters, and parks. Access to other facilities, such as buses, required them to take a back seat, literally, to whites. By the mid-Twentieth Century, their frustration with inferior status became a powder keg, and the fuse was burning. Hughes well understood what the future held, as he indicates in the last line of the poem.
(http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides4/harlem.html)
9) Langston Hughes fights for the voice of his people. What is the movement called?
The movement is called the Harlem Renaissance. The African Americans used art to prove their humanity and demand for equality. The Harlem Renaissance led to more opportunities for blacks to be published by mainstream houses. Many authors began to publish novels, magazines and newspapers during this time. The new fiction attracted a great amount of attention from the nation at large. Some authors who became nationally known were Jean Toomer, Jessie Fauset, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Eric D. Walrond and Langston Hughes.
In 1916-17, Hubert Harrison founded the militant "New Negro Movement", which is also known as Harlem Renaissance. In 1917, he established the first organization (The Liberty League) and the first newspaper (The Voice) of the "New Negro Movement" and this movement energized Harlem and beyond with its race-conscious and class-conscious demands for political equality, an end to segregation and lynching as well as calls for armed self-defense when appropriate. Therefore, Harrison is called the "father of Harlem Radicalism."
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