Pirandello

Pirandello was born in Girgenti, Sicily in 1867, to a wealthy father. He got his start, at age seventeen, when he published his first short story in the newspaper (Jewinski). He was a teacher, critic, and fiction writer. He began his writing career as a poet, in 1889, when he published the poem "Joyful Pain" (Jewinski). Not until later in his life did he become a playwright. His work showed that he seemed to have a very dark and negative perception of life and of human nature. This dark perception of his view of life was thought to have come from the hardships he had faced in his own life. Some of the problems Pirandello had experienced in his life were issues with his wife's health, World War I, and his father's financial dilemma. In an effort to rehabilitate his wife, she was placed in an institution for decades because of her severe mental health issues with paranoia. He struggled during the time of World War I because of the fact that his two sons were enlisted in the army during this time. In 1903, when Pirandello was thirty-six, his wealthy father went bankrupt from his support of Pirandello's "elegant literary style of life" (Hornby). These personal difficulties not only sculpted his view of life, but also aided him in making himself a well-known author. His wife's mental health problems inspired his play "Right You Are (If You Think So)", which was the story of two women, one of which was mentally ill (Hornby).

The Scoop on Tricia Rose...

Tricia Rose is quite the advocate of hip hop culture and of the African-American race as a whole. Her literature seems to be mainly focused on one of the two topics, or even both of the topics combined. She has written three books, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, Microphone Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture, and Longing To Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy. Along with these books, she has also written numerous articles that have appeared in black culture magazines. Her credibility is well-developed due to her extensive experience with writing about the African-American race and culture.


To find this information about Tricia Rose I searched the internet for her background information. I first typed, in the search engine, books by Tricia Rose. I wanted to know what other books or different types of literature that she had published besides the one book of hers that I am familiar with. When the results showed up, I went through all the books that were listed as being written by Tricia Rose and read the brief description of them. By reading the description of her other books, I was able to see a pattern in her writing style and the types of things she
wrote about. Next, I just typed her name into the search engine. I wanted to see what kind of other information would show up about her, regarding other things she had done in her life. Among the results from this search was her biographical information. This included the degrees she had obtained and a brief history of her works of literature and how she got her start.

An advantage of looking in the places that I searched is that it was convenient and it didn't take much time for the results to appear. A disadvantage was that the results that I found were not written by Tricia Rose herself, so there is no way to tell what information I found is actually true.

Black Noise

Black Noise is a book that was written by a woman who had grown up in the era where hip hop was just emerging. The author, Tricia Rose, has written several articles on black culture, rap music, and contemporary pop culture. Her credibilty comes from her extensive research that she has conducted about the culture and the music. The fact that she has observed the culture firsthand from when it first began to develop to modern day hip hop, also adds to her credibility. Her fascination for hip hop is what drove her to follow it so in depth and for so long. She became an expert on the culture, despite the people that doubted that hip hop would be around for so long and wouldn't just be a passing phase.

In her book, she analyzes hip hop music and the artists that create the music. The different ideas that the artists use to create their music, are pointed out in the book. She talks about the contradictions that rappers make against their beliefs and also the things that the strongly stand for. I think this book may be interesting because she points out the beauty and creativity that rap music displays. I am a part of the hip hop culture myself, and it is nice to have someone speak positively about the culture. Most of the time, literature written about hip hop culture is negative and suggests that it is not real music. Rose, however, digs deeper into the culture and takes into consideration the many elements that hip hop is comprised of. Another reason I may be interested in reading more of the book, is that she summarizes the things that the rappers talk about in their songs. She listens to the words behind the beat, which is something I don't do often, and finds the meaning of those words. Her analyses seem effective in describing the hip hop culture.

French Hip Hop Culture

Being in America, where the hip hop culture originated, I never thought about other countries having their own version of hip hop culture. Watching the different rap videos from artists from a variety of cultures introduced me to a broader aspect of the widespread culture. There are Indian rappers, French rappers, English rappers, Spanish rappers, and even Israeli rappers. Each culture has its own set of topics that they choose to rap about. The rappers here in America predominantly rap about having money and material things. Other popular topics for them to rap about are sex, drugs, and cars.

In French culture, it is popular to rap about the hardship of the rapper's lives. The rappers in french culture are mostly people that are immigrants. A lot of the rappers are of African descent. Being that most of the rappers immigrated to France they experience a lot of problems with getting jobs and making a good living. They frequently live in poverty and live in the poor area of Paris. The group Bouchees Doubles is an example of a French hp hop group. This group consists of a black man and a guy who looks like he is hispanic. They have a single which is entitled Lis nos coeurs, which translates to read our hearts. Their group name, Bouchees Doubles, translates to Bite Doubles. Neither the name of the song or the name of the group seems to have a negative or violent connotation. This implies that their culture, or at least this one group in particular, raps about the hardships that they have personally faced. Judging by the title of the song, read our hearts, it seems that the song is about how they have been hurt in their lives. It implies that they have a sadness that they want to share with the world and is trying to relate to those who have had led similar lives to them.

Peer Review

The peer review session worked fairly well for me this class. Last semester I found it to be ineffective and somewhat of a waste of time. However, this time I used the things that I learned from peer review last semester to help me revise my group's papers better. I used my knowledge of what works and what doesn't work in a paper to help me give good feedback on the papers I revised. I also found the feedback that I gave, helpful to use in my own paper. Switching positions from the writer to the audience gave me an idea of the things I should add to my paper in order to make it better.

However, I did feel that the time given to us to make corrections and also discuss them was insufficient. I felt myself rushing to get through the first paper I read in order to read the next one and give feedback on it also. I believe that I gave good feedback on the first paper I read but I didn't have much time to make many comments on the second paper. I feel that the paper that we filled out to help guide us in the revision process took up too much time and is not as vital as actually discussing the paper verbally. There were too many questions to answer on the paper and I spent my time trying to answer every single one of them and I ran out of time to discuss the papers as much as I had wanted to. In the future I would rather just make commments on the actual draft and maybe use a few of those questions on the worksheet as a guide to more specific feedback. But I feel that rushing to try to get all those questions answered is less effective. Overall, the peer review was helpful to me and I should see a difference in the quality of my paper now.