In English 105, we read the novel Motorcycle on the Sea of Tranquility about a young Latino soldier coming home from the Vietnam War. The narrator of the story is the soldier's younger sister, Yoli. Before Chuy left for Vietnam, we read how Chuy taught his sister the values of being independent and free. From these lessons, they developed a special bond. That's why in the first chapter, Yoli is so devastated to see what has happened to her brother. Patricia Santana paints a picture of a young girl´s innocence that she will never get back. You see, Chuy's voice is distant. The gleam in his eye is violent. The picture is dark and brooding. Chuy’s soul has gone up in smoke like the exhaust out of a tailpipe. The family is frightned and confused. Yoli's brother isn't the same and will never be again.
The story is very real. I know this, because I once invited Patricia Santana to visit my classroom and speak with my students. She grew up in San Diego in the sixties. She was Yoli. Her brother was Chuy. When he came home from Vietnam she could barely recognize him. Several times during her talk with our students, tears flowed down her cheeks. I'm not sure anyone could define or explain PTSD back then, but she knew first-hand what it was.
In Motorcyle on the Sea of Tranquility, we don't know what exactly happend to Chuy in Vietnam, but I can assume that the experience will haunt both brother and sister for the rest of their lives. In this day and age, many of my students will know someone who is serving or will serve in the military. This book isn't for everyone. More than a few teachers and administrators have warned me to stay away from Motorcycle. I hope if my students learn anything, it is that reading should become a life-long experience. They don't have to like or understand their reading the first time around, but they may recognize people they know the characters that appear in these books, the wars, and the pain and suffering that come with them, are not going to stop anytime soon. Books like these remind us what it means to be empathetic and compassionate.
This semester in English 1A, we read William Inge's famous stageplay Bus Stop, the story Hollywood Icon Marilyn Monroe later brought to the big screen. Of course, Marilyn had to create her own production company to choose her own films and roles. Did you know Marilyn inspired feminist Gloria Steinem to begin a Women’s Movement in the sixties. I have Gloria’s book Marilyn/Norma Jeane on my shelves here in Mexicali. Reading it gave me a good idea. Beyond analyzing the play, my students explored the advancement of Women’s Rights over the last sixty years. We also wrote about the LIFE and DEATH of Marilyn Monroe.
In Bus Stop, Cherie, the main character, is a young woman with a dream. She's lived most of her life in rural Arkansas. She's been abused and passed around by men, but now she has not time for that. She's on her way to L.A. She wants to be a singer. “ I'm a chanteuse. I call m'self Cherie,” she tells anyone who will listen. I doubt she spoke more than a few words of French, but here she uses two in one sentence. It’s clear, Cherie has lived a hard life. By referring to herself as a “chanteuse,” she feels a sense of sophistication. She's not a barroom singer. She's serious. Inside her purse she carries a map wherever she goes. With a red marker, she's traced a straight line on it from Arkansas to California. Her route only goes one way.
In the year prior to filming Bus Stop, Marilyn left Hollywood to spend a year training with the world's leading experts in stage and screen at the Actors Studio in New York. This is where she studied Method acting. Her goal was to take her acting to the next level. Method actors dig down deep inside of themselves for a memory or an experience that will help them recreate the true emotions of their character they are playing. In Cherie, Marilyn had to recognize certain characteristics from her own troubled life. Here Marilyn used her Method training to bring out both the vulnerability and toughness in her role. How did she do? Film critic Susan Doll wrote this: Marilyn didn't just act the role of Cherie-on-screen, she became Cherie....
Do you see my sixties theme? In English 002 I assigned the controversial play M. Butterfly. Set during the Vietnam War era, it’s a love story between a Western man and an Eastern woman. The year is 1961, and President Kennedy is sending troops overseas to check the Chinese National influence in the region. I try to present a historical perspective, but most of the class seems focused upon Race and racism. Sex and sexism. We closely follow the relationships in the story to write about injustice, discrimination, harm, dominance, suffering and misery. Many of my students think the “male lead” Rene in the play is a real cabrón. He’s like a predator, they say. He feels a power in the dynamic of his relationship with Song. The play’s author David Hwang explores the stereotypes that underlie and distort relations between Eastern and Western culture, and between men and women.All Rene wanted in his dreary life was to LOVE and be LOVED: "You see," he says, "I have known, and been loved by the Perfect Woman..." What's wrong with that?
The play is based on a strange but true story of a French diplomat who carried on a twenty-year affair with a Chinese actor and opera singer, not realizing that his partner was in fact a man masquerading as a woman. The diplomat apparently became aware of the deception only in 1986, when he was charged by the French government with treason it transpired that his companion had been an agent for the Chinese government, and had passed on sensitive political information that he had acquired from the diplomat. Weaving into the play many parallels with, and ultimately ironic reversals of, Puccini's opera, Madama Butterfly, the play’s author David Hwang explores the stereotypes that underlie and distort relations between Eastern and Western culture, and between men and women.