Optimism One

Optimism One. “Punk Power in the First-Year Writing Classroom.“ TETYC (May 2005): 358-369.

Optimism One builds off of Seth Kahn-Egan’s “principles of ‘punk’“ (DIY, sense of anger and passion, attack on institutions of oppression, willingness to endure pain, and and the “pleasure principle“) to construct what ze believes should be happening in a first-year writing classroom. Production becomes about “content and heart“ not about an “easily consumable package“ (361). Punk lets out emotions that dominant culture often forces us to hide and control (362). Qts bell hooks and Anzaldúa. Students have minority status in university, and academic writing erases the self, while revolutionary, personal writing can exert the self.

I’m too tired at 3:15 a.m. to say much more intelligent about this essay, but I do like the incorporation of bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress, which I have checked out but haven’t yet read and really want to. Optimism One quotes hooks: “whenever we address in the classroom subjects that students are passionate about there is always the possibility of confrontation, forceful expression of ideas, or even conflict” (qtd. 363). Also quotes Anzaldúa: “Write with your tongues of fire. Don’t let the pen banish you from yourself. Don’t let the ink coagulate in your pens. Don’t let the censor snuff out the spark, nor the gags muffle your voice. Put your shit on paper” (qtd. 363, italics here).