Miss Bryant

The long, anticipated album of the year, Ctrl, by SZA, is now available. Being the anticipated album of the year, of course, I am talking about myself. However, we must note before this album, SZA has been vulnerable in the past, with allusions to POP culture (without abstractions) on her current and previous albums. A lot of great feminists come to mind while listening to this album, ahem, Rebecca Walker, Patricia H. Collins,  J. Elena Featherstone, Signitha Fordham, and this list goes on.

Even though this album makes me think about feminists and womanists, but other artists also came to my mind. But I will save that for the paper I am conducting and will submit to PCA/ACA. Fingers crossed. The album and record cover and booklet is well designed! I love the multimodality. It is definitely important to pay attention to the things she has written. I am honestly excited about this even though I am in a hard dark place.

In all, cheers to those of us who are unapologetically vulnerable. In other words, “Go Gina!”

If you any suggestions on women artist(s) I should look into and/or include (If you’d like to tell me why, please feel free) in this scholar paper, please let me know, but here’s a list of women I have already included:

Jessie Reyez

Lana Del Rey

Lauryn Hill

Salt N’ Pepa

SZA (who the paper is mainly about)

I must say this was the best way to get my students to learn how to compose a strong thesis statement for their opening paragraphs. The students had to compose 140 characters only (with an exception if students used both To Kill a Mockingbird and Requiem for the American Dream in the same statement). This included taking out filler words/writing. I got better written papers turned in. Of course, you would have to have certain teaching methods and techniques to go on with this lesson, but this was definitely my favorite writing exercises. (Click on the images to make them bigger).