Sexuality

Today's class started with DEAR time. Please make sure to continue bringing in your books. This really is time for you to enjoy reading whatever it is you want to read.

As for today's lesson on sexuality, as you can see, it's a very difficult topic to understand. Much like love, sadness, friendship, or any other abstract noun, it becomes very difficult to explain because there are so many different meanings. As we saw in the powerpoint, sexuality has three main definitions:

1. Sexual character or potency
2. The condition of being characterized or distinguished by sex
3. Concern with or interest in sexual activity

As for Mango Street, you were then separated into groups and each given a vignette to read and annotate and figure out the message as well as how sexuality was being shown in that particular vignette. After your group work, we came together to go over the vignettes.

Today, we only made it through two out of the five. Here's what we learned so far:

The Family of Little Feet:
--Esperanza, Rachel, and Lucy are given three pair of high heels by a man on Mango Street.
--They strut through the town, stopping and talking to multiple people.
--A bum finds them and wants to kiss Rachel for a dollar.
--Lucy hides the shoes when they get home and their mother accidentally throws the shoes out one day. The girls don't complain.
--Message: Sexuality comes at a cost. You can receive both positive and negative attention.

(Here's a video I found online of this vignette acted out. Enjoy!)

Hips:
--Esperanza, Rachel, Lucy, and Nenny are playing jump rope and talking about hips. They talk about how hips are great for all kinds of things.
--The girls sing silly songs as they jump rope, but Nenny keeps singing a different song. In the end, Esperanza is angry that Nenny doesn't get "it"--the fact that Esperanza has moved into womanhood, and Nenny is still in childhood.
--Message: Once you step into your sexuality, you can't ever go back.

Tomorrow, we will go over the remaining vignettes (Sire, The Monkey Garden, and Red Clowns) and then each group will have thirty minutes to complete their tableaus (picture story).

For homework, pick eight lines from your assigned vignette to prepare for tomorrow. Each line should be picked so that if you read all eight lines, you'll understand the entire story. Remember, this will be worth a quiz grade, so you want to spend as little time preparing, and as much time actually doing the hard work. If each group member comes in prepared tomorrow, you should be fine.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me or Mr. Hannah.

DEETS:
In-class:
--DEAR
--Sexuality PP
--Sexuality Jigsaw

HW:
--Pick 8 lines from your assigned vignette
--Study for the test on Friday!