Things Fall Apart

I was enrolled in two classes this past semester: Literary Criticism and 20th Century British, colonial literature. Both classes included a study of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Chinua Achebe had a lot to say about this book and the author (here). Aside from being an especially readable book and well crafted opposition to the traditional explorer narrative of the Western into Foreign lands, it introduced an interesting aspect for that will influence my future literary studies: "Check out the other side." I also wrote a paper on Michel Foucault's The Discourse on Language which contested that any continuing conversation ("discourse") considers the opposition or mirror of the positive (ex. Conrad wrote about a European guy going to Africa, and the text only describes the natives as shapes whereas Achebe ascribes definite human characteristics such as religion, religious customs, and identity to the "native" African's.)

All this to say, check out the opposite.

I also stumbled across this. Intriguing initiative to educate prison inmates.

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