Sunday, April 11, 2010

Amy Tan & Sandra Cisneros on the Creative Process

I'm currently teaching a unit on multicultural literature in my American literature classes. I've taught this unit a couple of years ago, and since then, I'm surprised by how many wonderful resources are available online.
1. Amy Tan on Creativity (TED Talks)
http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_tan_on_creativity.html
Amy Tan is one of my favorite authors and this piece delves into her background and her mother's inspiration. It was helpful to show a few minutes to my students prior to reading "Rules of the Game," "Mother Tongue," and "Fish Cheeks."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXO8a6HYttw&feature=related
Sandra Cisneros discusses her experiences in a poetry seminar in graduate school when she had writer's block. I can relate to the part of the video when she discusses how it's difficult to develop good ideas as a young writer. She was twenty-two when she wrote The House on Mango Street and she cites the typical advise that most writing instructors give, "to write what you know." However, she expands on it by explaining that she got out of her writer's block by writing not only what she knew, but what nobody else knew. I hope this video can help high school students to think deeply about their unique experiences and to develop strong creative writing pieces.

3 comments:

  1. Alena,
    Thank you for reading! Feel free to post any questions or ask me to share additional materials with you.
    -Michelle

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello, My name is Gisela Revelles and I_m an Argentinean student in her
    last year of the Teacher Training Course. I_d immensely appreciate if you
    could send some information of Hispanic women living in the US since this
    is the main topic of my thesis. As you may imagine it _s incredible hard
    to find information in this interesting topic.
    Please feel free to send any information or material.
    > Thanks a lot,

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Gisela,

    I'm unsure if I understand your request. This blog post lists a couple of authors of multicultural texts that I teach in my American literature classes. I can recommend Sandra Cisneros and Julia Alvarez's works, but I'm unsure if that will help you with the information you need. You can contact me at michellelblakely@gmail.com if I can better respond to your question.

    Best,
    Michelle

    ReplyDelete