Frederick Douglass Reflection

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My learnings this week is about letting myself play every now and then, how uncomfortable Hyde makes me, and that “failing” is more than a failure.

On Tuesday I was able to help and participate twice in the workshop Devon Damonte planned for us. After the Monday before and the morning of left me feeling incredibly stressed this initially filled me with worry about how my peers would behave and how smoothly things were running. After meeting Devon and setting up I realized that he has a very kind and calming demeanor which seemed to rub off on everyone throughout the day as he talked about 16mm film and projectors. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the moment of pure joy that ran through me when he flipped on the “excitor” and the noises we’d …show more content…

While discussing whether or not Hyde’s comparison of Hermes to Frederick Douglass was one that was appropriate I felt like we were mostly making excuses for the author. After changing my thought process from how I understood it to mean he thought Frederick Douglass was a trickster to realizing that parts of Frederick Douglass’ points of view and actions were ‘trickster’-y (Michelle). This did help me understand the text better, but after doing something similar with his quick story about the Winnebago “transvestite” trickster marrying and trying to make a connection as to why he needed to bring it in as well as trying to explain his word choice and then why he described it as “weird” made me just feel like we were trying to make excuses for a published author and ignoring the fact that he is a white male who is ignorant to the more appropriate terminology and progressive points (221). On top of all of that I feel as though he is completely ignores some tricksters and refuses to go into depth about their stories, for instance a notable trickster in West African folklore is Tortoise who is married but not domesticated (as Hyde claims what happens when a trickster is married) because he marries a woman who is a