Monday, March 22, 2010

Students and Sexism

I've been grading student reader responses to some Latin American poetry we have read in class and the degree of sexism - that the students don't even notice - is nothing short of shocking. The two poets of the early XXth century we were reading are called Alfonsina Storni and Gabriela Mistral. Got it? Alfonsina and Gabriela.

Their lyrical and feminist poetry is addressed to men. In one poem, Storni addresses "a little, little man" who has imprisoned her and wouldn't let her be free. In another poem, Mistral says that "to see him again" is all she wants because she is dreaming of "winding my hands around his bloody neck." And so on.

In their responses, the absolute majority of students refered to both poets as "he." As a result they produced things like: "In this poem, the poet talks about his lover and wants to kill him."

Apparently, it's easier for them to imagine that poets in the early 20th century Latin America wrote openly gay poetry than to realize that those poets - called Gabriela and Alfonsina, in case you have forgotten, - were women.

I have read about these tests where college students are asked to draw a human being and they end up drawing - almost exclusively - male figures. Encountering within my own class this incapacity to equate an artist and a woman in spite of the obvious evidence is truly shocking.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting. Could it be because your students were confused with the genre of the word "poetA"?

Can you believe that yesterday we read Mistral, Storni, César Vallejo, and Rubén Darío in class? I selected some of their poems and my students had to decide which poems they would like to read at a poetry event tonight. They agreed on two poems by Storni! In fact, they loved her poetry. And they don't know anything aout her life yet.

My problem was with Storni's poem "Pasión." Some of my good students loved it because it is romantic (really?) and Spanish is a romantic language. Sigh.

Ol.

Clarissa said...

The class is in English, though.

Anonymous said...

Oh.
Yich!
Ol.

Anonymous said...

Oh.
Yich!
Ol.

Clarissa said...

I'm so tired of this "Spanish is so romantic", too! :-) Where are they getting all this?

cecilia said...

Hi! i'm from Argentina and i would like to recommended two of my favorites argentine writers: Silvina Ocampo (her short stories are fantastic: in my opinion one of the best writers of latin america) and Sara Gallardo.(i don't know if her books are translate to english, her novel "Los Galgos, Los Galgos" is beautiful).
i like your blog!
bye

Clarissa said...

Gracias, cecilia! Silvina Ocampo es fenomenal, me encanta su obra. Todavia no he leido a Sara Gallardo pero gracias a tu recomendacion voy a conseguir su libro.

Siempre puedes dejar mas recomendaciones de los escritores que conoces y que te gustan.