[For this year’s post-Valentine’s non-favorites series, I wanted to continue exploding some foundational American myths. Leading up to one of my favorite crowd-sourced posts of the year, a collective airing of grievances—please add more non-favorites in comments!]
Other
grievances:
Joanne
Baranofsky writes “I never had the
opportunity to study Greek myths as much as I wanted in school so I started
listening to the podcast “Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby!”
Now that I know more, I gotta say that Artemis can suck it. She is the goddess
of chastity but she punished Medusa for being a victim of sexual assault in her
temple and I’m not about it. Some other stories have been sketchy about her,
too, and I expect more from my role models.”
My colleague Kisha
Tracy shares, “I tell my students sometimes that, if I believed in
censorship, which I clearly do not, I would get rid of Catcher in the Rye.”
Melanie Mazzarini pulls
both these threads together, writing, “Me and my future Holden Caulfield tattoo
just gonna drop this
meme right here and dip. But first—to contribute—Medusa did nothing wrong.”
My colleague Elise Takehana adds, “I could count on one hand the number
of non-anglophone author we read. What’s wrong with reading translated texts?
I’d also say it’s a true disservice to assign Dante’s Inferno without some pretty deep lessons on Italian political
history alongside it. Language and context!”
My colleague DeMisty Bellinger highlights “Charles
Dickens. I want him to be a side note, a footnote, an also-ran. Or—or!—I want
him to meet a good editor in the past who wouldn’t be afraid to cut, cut, cut.”
Susanna Ashton writes, “My head nearly explodes when I see or
read references to the imaginary presence of willing Black Confederates in the Civil
War. Also, the well intentioned nonsense about 19th century quilts supposedly
showing secret routes on the Underground Railroad drives me nuts.”
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other non-favorites you’d share?
No comments:
Post a Comment