The Ask
In my American Lit II Class, I was tasked with making a final with substantial references to at least two of the texts. I could make a piece of alternative media rather than a formal paper.
Ideation
I decided to make a zine using the novels Ceremony, On the Road, and Saint Monkey through an overarching theme of cyclicality. Blending digital and handmade work through the use of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, I used the themes from these novels and how they connected to me to create this work.
The Novels
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Tayo, a World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation. He is deeply scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese and further wounded by the rejection he encounters from his people. Only by immersing himself in the Indian past can he begin to regain the peace that was taken from him.
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On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the N. American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" & "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge & experience. Kerouac's love of America, compassion for humanity & sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance. This classic novel of freedom & longing defined what it meant to be "Beat" & has inspired every generation since its initial publication.
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Jacinda Townsend’s remarkable first novel is a coming-of-age story made at once gripping and poignant by the wild energy of the Jazz Era and the stark realities of segregation. Marrying musical prose with lyric vernacular, Saint Monkey delivers a stirring portrait of American storytelling and marks the appearance of an auspicious new voice in literary fiction.
