Thursday, February 24, 2011
Difficulty
Apparently I am having a huge difficulty with our text in that I find it more often than not hard to understand. For some strange reason, this novel is difficult for me to comprehend. I am beginning to believe that it is because of the slang term "Spanglish" - or the authors use of sprinkling some Spanish within the novel here and there. Being that I am a single language speaker, sometimes while reading our novel and words come up that I don't understand for the simple reason that they are in another language, I stumble in reading and loose that concentration and focus on the story.
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I agree that this novel can be difficult to read at times due to the Spanglish spoken in it. I am also a single language speaker and I also get distracted when I read some of the words that I do not understand. I also think that it is hard to pick up what the author is saying because he talks to many different characters throughout the novel. When he uses the Spanglish I especially get thrown off.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the author using "Spanglish" makes the novel more confusing. Most of time it's only used when Sonny is talking to the twins, and most of what they talk about is just bullshit boy talk. I believe including the use of Spanish in the novel isn't intended to confuse you. Dagoberto usually follows the use of a Spanish word, with its English translation. Maybe the author uses "Spanglish" to try and bring the reading closer to the characters. By using spanglish you are being absorbed into their culture, and should provide you with a further understanding or allow you to relate to the characters more. It's sort of just a comic relief, so is the French Sonny uses, your not missing out on any crucial information by not speaking Spanish or French.
ReplyDeleteMy apologies, I didn't neccisarily mean to portray the image that the sole reason of the difficulties I am finding within this novel are solely based on Gilb's usage of "Spanglish" - I fully intended to come back to this post and finish explaining myself and the difficulties I am having with it. I was at work and on a limitted time schedule as to how much homework I could get done within the time I had to work with. So faced with a time restraint, I figured I could come back later to finish it. When one thing lead to another, I never got back around to edditing it.
ReplyDeleteBut, I wanted to go ahead and set the record straight that not only is it the Spanglish that occasionally throws me for a loop when I'm reading "The Flowers", but also, it is also the way that Sonny speaks throughout the novel that I find dificult to comprehend, to be completely honest. Also, I have to agree with you, Kevin, that it appears that the author uses Spanglish to try and bring the author closer to the characters. But, one example of the difficulty in comprehension I am experiencing is found on page 120 - "I was already in the bedroom I slept in on the bed I slept on." Whenever I run accross a sentence in which I find difficult to comprehend, I stumble and get stuck, rereading that sentence over and over again; which unltimately makes me loose that flow of reading fluidly through the novel.
What a great discussion here students! I agree that this is not an 'easy' novel to read. I also agree that Gilb is giving us insight into Sonny's position as a Mexican-American who has, in many ways, been cut off from his native culture, but in other ways he is hanging on to his ethnicity, his cultural roots, through language. There is a sense of sadness around the loss of Sonny's grandmother and Tios and because of this his connection to language is very important. But there is another equally important aspect for those of us who do not straddle two cultures like Sonny does. When we read this book part of our experience of reading puts us at the disadvantage linguistically. When we can't comprehend the words, we are forced to look for contextual clues and guess at the meaning. This is the process for so many people who live on the border between two cultures and two languages. Gilb is kind to us, as Kevin points out, he give us lots of clues. If we were really struggling with language this attempt at understanding the meaning of the text would be MUCH harder. In this way, we are forced to experience this novel in a way that imitates the protagonist's experience with life.
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