Browse Exhibits (4 total)

Book reviews: The Good, The Bad & The Mediocre

There is nothing quite like finishing a book. One has either sped through it because they absolutely loved it or crawled through it because each page was a laborious effort. Either way when someone finishes a book, they have some thoughts. They can express those thoughts in a mad rant to their friends which may go something like "I can't believe I just wasted my brain power on that!" or "My gosh, you MUST read this book, I will lend you my copy." Other times an exasperated "well I guess that was alright" will suffice.

Another way to express these post-read-thoughts is to turn to the site Good Reads. The site is a staple in the literary community. It can be thought of as a discourse community or “a group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated” (Porter 38). On Good Reads people can read and write reviews. Readers can rate the book on a scale of one to five and leave a review. Some reviews are several hundred words, others just shy of a hundred.

This exhibit is a deep dive into the minds of readers who have just finished a book. Emotions such as enthusiasm, frustration, annoyance, resentment, and deep joy can be felt while reading these reviews. The exhibit has been divided into three parts: The Good, The Bad & The Mediocre. It shows the different ways people can process literary works in drastically diverse lights.
These reviews are always personal and never boring. They are artifacts that could be easily overlooked, unless someone wants an outside opinion before buying a book. But when they are looked at objectively, these reviews garner a lot of meaning. They are a form of social participation driven by peoples’ everyday needs and interests (Lillis 77).They are a small peak into the practice of everyday writing.

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Instagram as Reflection: Janet Martinez's Poems

This exhibit displays a series of Instagram posts created by Janet Martinez. Although she has been writing handwritten poems since she was a child, she uses Instagram primarily to store, share, and save her content. Some of her work has been created and posted from her notes, others were placed into an app to create graphics with the text, and some have been pictures of other materials and texts that she's connected with. As a child, Janet was fascinated with nursery rhymes and believes it has been a foundation for her love of poetry. She loved the combination of music, rhythm, and rhyme. eventually found herself creating music and poems on her own. 

After reading through her work, I will analyze the way that everyday writing acts as a form of sense-making and reflection with her topics of identity, culture, and relationships. This exhibit also celebrates the creative freedom that comes with social media and everyday writing. 

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Constructing Our Ancestors

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A wooden "case" of sorts was found in my grandmother's home shortly after she passed away in 2014. Armed with no knowledge about the ancestor, an attempt is now made at reconstructing the life of John Briayne Arthur Hostage through the pieces of writing he left behind. 

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Poetry, My Name is Dad

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Poetry is known for its creative ingenuity, and as an engine of expression. Poems can be written for a myriad of reasons, but they hold a technical level that is more complex, in some respects, to other forms of circulated works: such as novels, short stories or essays. As a tool of everyday writing, poems can represent this definition through non-academic or work-related creation. Poetry is an abstract art that can discern the identity of the individual: the artist. Through poetry, culture and personal identity can be revealed through form and content.

This exhibit wishes to showcase the poems of a single individual: Roshan Ramhit. Roshan Ramhit was born on the island of Trinidad and Tobago. This island is located off the coast of South America in the Caribbean; the island is shaped like a boot. He grew up on the island and spent his youth there. It was only during his university years that he left Trinidad and moved to New York.

His works are written during his college years, and show off his identity to me as a father. As a man of distinct cultural background, his poems are also capable of enlightening on his childhood experiences and the culture he grew up in.

Several themes throughout his poetry are that of loneliness and homesickness. Roshan Ramhit explained, “Yeah, from home to school there was an hour of travel. So it [writing poetry] was to wait the time away. Also moving to a new environment [from Trinidad to New York], leaving my friends behind…, it was lonely. It was to take out frustration, loneliness and whatever else.”

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