ENG 273: Creative Writing: Heroes and Villains from Indigenous Worlds
Fall 2021 | Tuesdays & Thursdays 1:30-2:45pm | Online Synchronous
Description:
When peopling your story—or animaling or planting it (plants and animals can be protagonists too, and have been in Indigenous literature)—how do you impart characteristics? How do you put the characters into contention (externally and internally) to make them come alive and drive the story forward? And what, for that matter, is a story? What are the elements of a story and how can we deploy them to build our own crafty tales? In this course we will do close readings of literature using both critical and creative lenses. We will learn to talk about themes as well as craft elements such as protagonists, antagonists, narrators, setting, scenes, dialogue, voice, style, and so on. We will also learn to critique the writing of peers and offer constructive and supportive feedback. In so doing we will learn what it takes to establish a supportive community of writers that we can take beyond the classroom. Another aspect of this class will help us think about literature written in translation. We will attempt to write in our mother tongues and see what emotions and experiences open up if we think creatively a language other than English. Throughout, we will approach storytelling and writing with the utmost awe and fascination, as though our life depended on the listening and the telling. As the great Shehrezad of Thousand and One Nights promises her sister: “I will tell you a tale. God willing, it will save us.” The stories we will read and write this semester, I hope, shall help us keep sane in these insane times.
Required Texts
- Novel: When the Whales Leave by Yuri Rytkheu (at the UH bookstore)
- Novel: The Blue Sky by Galsan Tschinag (at the UH bookstore)
- Novella: Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (posted on Laulima)
- Short stories (pdfs posted on Laulima): from Jataka Tales, Thousand and One Nights, Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” selections from This is Paradise, Growing up Local, Waimea Summer, In Good Company, and Between the Deep Blue Sea and Me.
Student Learning Outcomes:
The course aims to teach students:
- How to draft, write, and revise a body of prose
- How to manipulate elements of fiction writing such as dialog, character building, world building, plot, etc.
- How to receive feedback and criticism, and how to incorporate it into your work
- How to give constructive criticism to peers while creating a generative and supportive community of writers
- How to analyze texts and perform a close reading of texts produced both by established scholars and peers, paying attention to the aesthetics and the politics of those texts
- How to build revision strategies
Course Assignments & Expectations
- Class discussion & participation 10%
- Four short papers on reading 40%
- Revised free-writes 10%
- Workshop 20%
- Peer review 10%
- Final portfolio 10%
- Conference not graded