The Gay Metropolis Response 1

This book is a history of gay life in America starting in the forties and going through the nineties (the book was written in 1997). When I decided to choose this book, I had every intention of reading the entire thing, but since it is the end of the semester and I am stressing out, I decided to cut back and focus on a smaller chunk of history. I was still concerned that it may be confusing to start in the middle since I did not know if the author was going to examine events in earlier decades that would become relevant later but, starting with the seventies, I was relieved to find that I was not completely lost. An interesting aspect of this book is that it does not just focus on the major events, but examines how those events impacted individuals' lives. The chapter begins with Stonewall- "an urban riot sparked by drag queens"- and its impact on the gay community including, but not limited to, the creation of many gay organizations such as the Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activists Alliance, and National Gay Task Force. From there, the novel looks at the individual people that were a part of or affected by these movements, including Phil Donahue, Philip Johnson, Ethan Geto, and Philip Gefter. I think that this makes the history so much more interesting. It is not just facts being thrown at you, it is people with their own opinions and feelings as they were living through this time; it is like reading about the Holocaust versus reading Anne Frank's diary. It makes it so much more real. That being said, this style of telling the history makes it confusing to read at times. I found myself having to look back to remember who is who because there are just so many names being thrown at you all at once (including an alarmingly large name of men named Philip). I think that this novel shows the darker side of something that the media often portrays as something so sunny and wonderful. Thinking about the beginning of the gay rights movement in the 70s and 80s, I think that it is easy to picture the bright and colorful gay rights parades we see today. And while they did have pride parades, there was also a massive underground gay community, full of shady bars, unfettered access to drugs, and orgies in dirty, dark back rooms. One account told of a doctor well-known in the local gay community as someone who would treat gay men for the STDs they would inevitably have as a result of these backroom exploits (keep in mind, this was before the AIDS crisis). As someone living after the rise of AIDS, it was just so shocking to read the details of these underground spaces. Although I haven't finished it yet, I can already say that I do not think I will ever have this in my classroom- it gets too explicit at times. However, if I have a student who is a senior in high school and that I think is mature enough, I would suggest it to them. I will definitely be reading the entire thing when I have the time to.                           

Almost Perfect Response 2

Well, I finally finished Almost Perfect and it is so good. I would highly recommend it, particularly if you are looking for a novel that shows the difficulties that transgender people and their loved ones face in our society. Logan was a fascinating character, despite the fact that I occasionally wished I could reach through the pages and strangle him for being an idiot. Throughout the last half of the novel, he faces this complex struggle between what he knows is right and how he wants to be perceived by those around him. He knows that he should simply accept Sage for who she is without question and he absolutely wants to do that but struggles with the fear of how her transgenderism would reflect on him if others were to find out, a weakness (a description which he himself used) which he struggles and fails repeatedly to overcome. Logan aside, we have an array of characters surrounding Sage who are in various degrees of understanding. There is Sage's sister who fully accepts and loves Sage, doing her best, despite being the younger of the two, to protect her (although she admits to Logan that she feels guilty, feeling that her support may be in part out of selfishness because while her parents' disappointment is directed at Sage, she is the golden child). Sage's mother does her best to be supportive or, at the very least, accepts that Sage is a woman, although it is clear that there is some degree of shame still lingering. Sage's father, on the other hand, has not the slightest idea of what acceptance means. He refers to Sage using "he/him/his" pronouns, always calling her his son. When Sage decided to begin living as a woman, he put strict restrictions on her, having her homeschooled and never allowing her to leave the house (it is implied that this was a decision made by both parents, but after reading the entire novel, I suspect that most of these decisions were his alone and his wife was simply too afraid to speak against him). When Sage turned 18, she demanded to spend her senior year at a high school and, knowing that he could not stop her in that respect, Sage's father moved his entire family across the state so that no one they knew would know that Sage was living as a woman. At one point, he admits to Logan that he once told Sage that he would rather she be dead than living as a woman. All that being said, he loves Sage or at least loves the son she once was. He may be cruel and his actions were undoubtedly wrong, but their roots lie in the simple fact that he just wanted his son back, a fact which makes it slightly (but only slightly) more difficult to hate him. And Sage herself is a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, both sure and unsure of herself at the same time. No spoilers allowed here because the book is worth reading to find out, but Sage suffers through some difficult times which cause her to question all that she is. As far as my single story goes, I think that this novel shows the difficulties that people of the LGBTQ+ community and their loved ones may face that are often overlooked. It is not usually so simple as accepting or not accepting, something that I think is best exemplified in Logan. He wants to be accepting but lives in a society which is so often not accepting and it is difficult to ask someone to just forget what the world, and his own loved ones think, to be as accepting as he needs to be for Sage. He fears losing his friends and family and although, in his case at least, that is an irrational fear, it is not one that should be dismissed. How much should we ask someone to give up to be there for someone who may already have lost everything? It is a difficult question. Should we expect someone to lose their own friends, possibly forever, to be a friend to someone who no longer has any friends? Should we expect someone to be shunned by their own family to take the place of a family for someone whose family has already forgotten their existence? I'd like to say that we should all be selfless enough to do that, but that is not the case. I'd like to say that we shouldn't have to worry about that because we should all learn to be accepting, but I doubt that will ever happen. I'm not sure there will ever be an answer, but I do think that we can all do our parts and be as accepting as we can.

Last Seen Leaving Response 2

After my last post, I read the rest of the book in a night. I'm not gonna spoil anything, but it got better. And there were not one, but two twists that caught me by surprise. So, I would highly recommend this book. It does see a mostly happy ending for Flynn- I won't talk about what happened to January so I don't spoil it, but I will say that his parents and friends accept him for being gay and he even has a boyfriend. I think that this book does an excellent job at showing how being part of the LGBTQ+ community is only a part of someone's life. And, because of this, I think that this novel does go against my single story. Yes, Flynn's family and friends were accepting, but his coming out was largely overshadowed by his missing ex-girlfriend and, after coming out, his time was mostly spent trying to figure out what happened to January. And, considering that he was a potential suspect, I think that it would have been absurd for him to be less concerned with that. I would love to teach this book, but I don't think that I ever would because it touches on a lot of sensitive topics, including rape, murder, and suicide. I would, however, keep the book in my classroom library for students to read if they chose to because I think that it is definitely worth reading.

Tech Demo Reflection

After doing my demo on the Pocket app, I think that it went fairly well. I focused only on the app because I think that that is more likely to be used by students, including myself. I was also considering what access students may have to technology. A growing number of schools give their students tablets- my own school gives the students iPads. In some cases, this tablet may be the only access to technology that a student has- they may not have a phone or computer at home. This means that that student would have to use the app, rather than the website for it. Pocket is not a tool that is really interactive, which I think made it more difficult to teach, but it is still a useful app that I think teachers should know about. The ability to find and save articles can be helpful when doing research. The app is fairly intuitive and I don't think that anybody struggled to learn how to use it, so I guess I would say that my lesson was successful in that respect. I do not think that I would have done anything differently- I walked away from teaching the lesson feeling like I had introduced the class to a new tool that they may find themselves teaching to their own classes one day.

Last Seen Leaving Response 1

The first thing that I noticed about this book is that, like Almost Perfect, it is told from the perspective of a teenage boy. Flynn is a couple years younger than Logan but I can still see similarities in the ways that they react to the events happening around them and the issues that they have to deal with. But while Logan has someone in his life who is part of the LGBTQ+ community, Flynn himself is gay, although not openly. And on top of the stress that this causes him, his girlfriend January is missing. Seemingly nobody has any idea what happened, although the suspicion is that she simply ran away; her mother had recently married a mega-rich senator and she had moved into a mansion far from her friends, been put into a new, private school which she hated, and her mother was no longer the loving woman that she once was. Now Flynn faces a dilemma- the last time he saw January, she was upset because he did not want to have sex with her; and, rather than openly admit that he did not want to because he is gay, he became defensive and, as he sees it, probably made her feel as if it were her fault. He won't tell the police or anybody else the details of this encounter, or about how their relationship was deteriorating as she grew distant and he grew more aware of his lack of sexual feelings toward her, because he does not want anyone to know that he is gay. I am a little less than halfway through the book and a good portion of it has been his internal battle- guilt that he may not have been the best boyfriend and made her more miserable than she already was, that he is not honest about what happened the last night he saw her, and overwhelming fear of people knowing his secret. I am really enjoying this book so far, but I think it is sad that Flynn's fear of being found out is greater than his fear that his girlfriend could be dead somewhere. I think that says a lot about the state of our society that I don't think this situation is entirely unrealistic either; young people like Flynn are put in a position where they would risk the death of someone close to them rather than face the consequences of coming out as gay. The novel has been pretty bleak so far, but I am really hoping that it might end on a relatively good note.

Poetry Video

I thought this project allowed for a lot of creativity, but I personally also found it to be difficult and, at times, frustrating. I quickly discovered that my first ideas for the video were going to require much more time than I had, mostly as a result of the fact that I, to my knowledge, have never made a video like this before. So I decided that where I had cut down on the complexity of the images themselves, I would make up for with editing the simple images I had chosen- changing the temperature of the images, making them warmer or colder, changing the brightness so that they are lighter or darker, all depending on how they were being described in the text. My next decision was to put the text in the video, using different fonts based on what subject that line of the poem specifically focused on- a more flowing, gentle style when the poem focused on love and rose briar; a simple but, at least in my eyes, more solid font for when it focused on friendship and holly; and a plain font for when it made general statements that did not seem to focus on either. I had a difficult time finding music that I could use, but in the end, I chose something gentle and relaxing, which I think goes well with the tone of the poem. The last choice I made for how the video should come together was whether or not to also have a reading of the poem. The only reading of the poem that I could find online was not available for me to use, so I tried recording the poem myself- and I hated it. I thought that, perhaps because it was my own voice, it took away from the power of the poem; so I decided to simply have the text. As far as using this for a tool in the classroom, I think that having students consider how they would make a poem (or any other piece of literature for that matter) into a video is an interesting way to see how each student interprets a poem differently, but actually making the video might be too complicated. Honestly, I am not all that happy with my finished project, and that is because it does not compare to the original ideas I had, which were beyond my skill level to create. So I think that making the video could be a hindrance to students that are not well-versed in the process of video making. They may have bold, brilliant ideas, but lack the skills and/or tools to bring those ideas to life. If I were to use this as a required project, which I do not foresee, I would only require the draft of their ideas. Maybe a storyboard, with quickly drawn sketches of what images they would choose and a couple sentences of explanation under each, which would allow all students to envision a video that is as complicated as they would like. But I would offer extra credit to those students who would like to make the video (if I recall correctly, one of my high school teachers did this). I do think that, in the classroom, I would offer this as an option for a final project after reading a book. Students could, if they chose to, make a video which shows what they believe to be the most important scenes in that novel. But this would also give other options to students who, like me, would much prefer a project that does not involve making a video. Overall I feel that technology does have a place in the classroom, but I still believe that traditional methods have their place as well. Making a video is fun and creative, but only for certain students; other students would enjoy a written project or even making a poster. I definitely believe that students should have options open to them.

Almost Perfect Response 1

The first thing that I noticed about this book was the style of the narration. The story is told in first person from the perspective of a senior in high school, Logan; with sarcastic one-liners and brutally honest descriptions, it follows his stream of consciousness. As someone who grew up in a small town, his snarky observations about his hometown had me smiling at the truth of it. When the new girl Sage shows up, she is different from anyone else in the town and stands out in stark contrast, catching Logan's attention. After a handful of failed attempts at kissing her and vague references of a not-so-nice homelife on her part, they decide on being friends. This lasts until she calls for help and he shows up at her house, where the ensuing altercation ends with a brief kiss, after which Sage finally tells him her secret: biologically, she is male. Logan proceeds to explode, nearly punching her before literally running away, at which point his stream of thought becomes nearly painful to read. Some memorable quotes:

"I had never been so disgusted"

"I'd kissed a boy. French-kissed a boy! That made me a fag, didn't it?"

"Now my mental image of her naked body filled me with horror. Big, hairy balls. An eight-inch cock. Flat, hairy chest and hairy back. And I had kissed her."

While graphic and, at least for me, horrifying, it is unfortunately realistic. Many guys would respond like this. And, when I think of the boys I went to my small-town high school with and how they would respond, I am almost surprised that he did not hit her or do worse. His anger continues for weeks, his inner dialogue consisting of nothing but hateful thoughts toward Sage, wondering if anyone else had guessed she was "really a boy" and if they would call him a fag for liking her, even thinking that he would hurt her if she "ever told the world what she really was." After meeting her in the cemetery to talk, when she asks him not to tell anyone, he calls her an ass pirate and a fag. I am about halfway through the novel now and, after a couple of months of avoiding Sage at all costs, Logan is finally beginning to regret how he acted and is considering calling her to hang out. So far, I have absolutely loved this book and although it is difficult to read at times, I appreciate the fact that it is realistic. Rather than villainizing those who would react like to this to finding out someone is transgender, it shows the situation from their perspective. While Logan's reasons are selfish and aimed at preserving his reputation, they are valid to him and it is important to acknowledge this fact. But then, he also should be educated on the importance of accepting others for who they are. I expect that Logan will, after some time, learn to accept Sage.