Jessica Burke

Recent Activity

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  Jessica commented on the petition | 6 months ago

  Tell Walmart to Stop Rape and Torture of Young Women in its Factories

  I had no idea & will never shop at these locations again. Target & Macys were our primary shopping sources-- not anymore unless this abuse stops immediately & those committing these crimes are brought to justice.

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  Jessica signed the petition | 6 months ago

  Tell Walmart to Stop Rape and Torture of Young Women in its Factories
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  Jessica commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Reading Despite Teaching (Or, "How the Hulk Led Me to Hamlet")

  Thank you Clay for your article; I may use it in my class this year (developmental college writing & college composition 1). I often have students who are so shell-shocked from High School that reading to them in English is the same as taking a foreign language.

  
  

  My own reading was similar to your experience actually. I vividly recall being behind in my reading level & dreading "free reading" as my teacher called it, which consisted of us marching up to a great, glossy box filled with readers & single color-coded sheets for the lower-level students. You got graded and accelerated according to some mytical rule that was beyond me, but I know when I was supposed to be at purple (I think my grade level) I was still stuck on yellow & my teacher advertised it to no end. I still hate that color today.

  
  

  I taught myself to read using Tolkien. My mother, a virulent non-reader herself, took my brothers & I to the local library. I was about 5 & still not reading. I selected a record (of my own choosing) with a vast red-gold dragon on the cover. I listened to that for what seemed like years, without knowing who read the tales on the record, before it was stolen from the local library. My mother was too I don't know what to read the title on the album. I could have been reading Tropic of Cancer for all she knew. My aunt knew it was Tolkien (himself) reading "Riddles in the Dark" and selections from The Lord of the Rings. She gave my father the 1960s Ballantine editions with the hideous psychadelic covers. I had nightmares for a week & made him hide the books in the back of the linen closet. He didn't tell me the books contained the stories that had been stolen from me.

  
  

  Somewhere after that experience, my mother taught me to read by literally locking me in her bedroom (with her) one summer (I might have been almost 7) and we tackled several books all in succession, fairy tales mostly. I then graduated onto Ruth Chew & John Bellairs. I was reading whole novels at home while at school I was stuck on that damned yellow reading card thing. By the time I was 13 I read The Lord of the Rings in its entirety. In High School, I read Shakespeare in class, was told I was an idiot (in basic terms) because being dyslexic I shifted the letters around in Caesar (which I may well be doing now), and, determined to prove them all wrong, I devoured everything Shakespeare ever wrote.

  
  

  My lesson learned? I hated school until I was in college & even then I had to prove myself time & again because my tastes leaned more towards Tolkien & Stoker & LeGuin & King than what was taught, although I devoured my Iliad and Milton as well. 

  
  

  I only came to Gaimen recently after hearing him the year before last at NYC's ComicCon. He read from The Graveyard Book and I was hooked. He had always been on my to read list ever since I read a Sandman that dealt with the "real" story behing A Midsummer Night's Dream. I've read everything he wrote & am trying to see if I could fit one of his short story collections into my intro to college writing class this fall. It's not a literature course, but I have to teach them something I enjoy reading or I'll be doing exactly what my other teachers did to me. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears. Thank you all for your thoughts.