thirty-nine memories (24)

Memory #24: The Best Literature Class Ever

It was all about context. I'm the one in the orange jacket, looking professorial. This is the first class meeting of the course--Multicultural Literature for students in the Ecuador semester abroad program. We're sitting in an open courtyard of our hotel in the mountain town of Otavalo, Ecuador.

What did we do? Simple. We read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings," a story you should read right now if you never have, and maybe even if you have. Click here for the story: http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/garciamarquezoldman.html

After we read the story, someone said, "Tomorrow, when we get to Borbon and then when we go up river into the jungle to Zapallo Grande, WE will be the 'very old man with enormous wings.'"

I liked that.

Other people said many insightful things. I said, "Sometimes stories signify; sometimes they are also self-reflexive. This is a story about the way we interpret stories. This story itself is 'a very old man with enormous wings,' and this story has dropped into our little western village, and here we sit trying to make sense of what to do with it in the only way we know how."

The next morning we went out into the marketplace in Otavalo and bought alpaca wool sweaters and blankets. Later we drove to Borbon.

I love my job.