Music to Inspire the Imagination
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This week we are completing our class blogs. I’ve asked my students to organize their best reading, writing, and music for publication. I’ll teach them how to create reading lists so they can keep tabs on their classmates over the X-mas break. I encourage them do something artful with their blogs, but I’ve seen their…
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What’s Love? The Jose Jose song “Amar y Querer” speaks to the meaning true love. He says many people can like you but not many can truly love you. Someone who loves you will fight for you and do anything for you. When its true love it never dies. In “The Love of My…
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In a few of my classes, we we are reading a sixties novel. Along the way we discuss Cesar Chavez, Vietnam, The Moonlanding, The Women’s Movement. Our research papers explore civil rights, political upheaval, and drug abuse, among other important social and historical trends and events. Recently, I read to them something about the tragic…
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Keep A Promise “Niña” is a song performed by the Latin pop group called La Quinta Estacion. I have chosen this song to represent The Tortilla Curtain because it talks about dreams. It reminds me how Candido promised America a better life in the United States with a house and all the comfortable…
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Hector tells me that everyone listens to this song, "El Inmigrante" in Coachella Valley. It has special meaning to hard-working immigrants who come here to pursue the American Dream. In The Tortilla Curtain, Candido and America confront one obstacle after another, but they don't take a step back. They keep struggling forward. That is what this…
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It’s research season in my English classes. This is where I encourage my students to visit their campus and local libraries, but, sadly, I rarely get the response I’m shooting for. While I talk about books, displays, literary activities, they look at their phones. I suppose I’m not going to get anywhere standing on a…
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Each week in class, we discussed the struggles of two desperate immigrant characters in the novel The Tortilla Curtain. All this time, Ana must have been hearing this song inside her head. Songwriter Gaby Moreno knows the story. She came to this country with her own dream.
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Luis recognized the pain Chuy suffered upon his return home from Vietnam in the novel Motorcycle on the Sea of Tranquility. If there was anyone who knows about alienation, it might be P-Diddy. According to Luis, his song "Coming Home," fits the novel perfectly.
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This semester, Maria submitted a research paper on the hippie culture of the sixties. She wrote about changing attitudes, clothes and music. This is probably where she ran into Eric Burdon and the Animals. She uses one of their songs to express important meaning in Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility.
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This semester Ivan was an active participant in our discussions of the sixties. His research paper analyzed the leadership skills of Cesar Chavez. Here he explains the causes and effects of the Vietnam War on an entire generation.