Posting Assignment #7 (due Sunday 11/8, 11:59 P.M.)

Season of Migration to the North is, in many ways, a counterstory. A counterstory is a story that actively and intentionally seeks to oppose and undermine another story. Most obviously, Season of Migration to the North is a counterstory to the countless heroic, Hegelian tales of white Europeans (subjects) traveling to "exotic" places and "conquering" the dark-skinned people (objects) they find there. (Think Tarzan, "cowboys and Indians," and Heart of Darkness, for starters. Snow Crash might also be in this category; we'll talk about that next week.) You could also argue that the book is a counterstory on many other levels, too.

It is also, as you may have noticed, a highly poetic book, full of rich and textured language. By looking at a very small piece of it, you'll find you can learn a whole lot.

So: in your posting this week, pick a passage -- not more than a sentence or two long -- that you think is a counterstory in itself. (In other words, that sentence or two, all by itself, tells a compelling story that opposes and undermines another story.) Then unpack it. What story is it telling? What other story is it opposing? How does it function to oppose that other story -- what makes it work? What makes it effective, or ineffective, at doing what it's trying to do?

Close reading will be essential here. Look at the words Salih uses, and in which order he uses them. Think about his use of metaphors, archetypes, empathy, alienation/estrangement, and any other relevant concepts from class. I also would ask that you not choose passages from the first 10 pages of the book. There is some very worthwhile stuff in there, but without the context of the rest of the book, those first pages are very easy to misinterpret.