Response to Lu

Lu's article on the contact zone is a great accompaniment to the Bizzell article I blogged about last week. She addresses the borderlands of everyday life for students and teachers alike and offers advice about what we should be teaching regarding this issue. I liked the example she used of the handout but was a bit confused as to why she uses it repeatedly in her classroom as I feel there are much better examples out there. Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands is one in particular that I feel illustrates her point a bit better. Lu's article echoes Bakhtin's theory of multiple discourse, which she mentions at one point. I think orienting students first toward this theory and then jumping into contact zone literature would be very helpful. Some of the points I liked in Lu are as follows:

"On the other hand, if the student's decision to reproduce a code results from a process of negotiation, then she would have examined the conflict between the codes of Standard English and other discourses. And she would have deliberated not only on the social power of these colliding discourses but also on who she was, is, and aspires to be when making this decision. If the occasion arises in the future when she experiences difficulty in reproducing a particular code, as it very likely will, her reaction may be much more positive and constructive" (455).

Here she illustrates the importance of viewing pieces of literature as containing negotiations of power. If students approach literature this way, they will be more likely to take all sides and points of view into consideration, a very positive thing. Lu states, "How to voice and talk to rather than speaking for or about the voices of the 'other' within and among cultures is thus not a question which can be resolved prior to or outside of the process of negotiation" (456). This is true, and if we could work toward making the writing and literature classroom a more open place for negotiations between voices, I believe this would carry over into students' everyday lives and prejudices would be lessened.