Blog Post #8: Day Eleven

 Day 11

"Don't let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It's your 


place in the world; it's your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you 


want to live." - Dr. Mae Jemison



Yesterday was Day 11 of my Hawken Project and the first day of returning back to school.

After greeting friends that I hadn't seen for over a month and finding a quiet, unoccupied

room, I got back to work! Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to check out two more 

documentaries (Planet Rock: The Story of Hip-Hop and the Crack Generation and Crack: 

Cocaine, Corruption, and Conspiracy), which focused on the effects of the War on Drugs 

on the Black community, how the government failed to recognize the growing threat of

cocaine being imported into the US through Nicaragua and focused their attention instead

on the increase of crack-cocaine use in lower-income Black communities, and how crack 

addicts and dealers were demonized by the media and received YEARS of jail time rather

than rehabilitation services to help overcome addiction. Both of the documentaries were 

very powerful and gave humanity to the people affected negatively by the War on Drugs, 

which was really a war against Black and Brown people of lower-income households. In 

addition to this, I consulted with two teachers from Hawken and a professor from UCLA

about recommendations for two of the five courses that I'm creating that will focus on the 

Arts. Some of the recommended materials included films and documentaries like Porgy and 

Bess (1959), Quincy (2018), and Hitsville: The Making of Motown, along with book 

recommendations like The Meaning of Soul by Emily Lordi, Living with Music by Ralph 

Ellison, and Check the Technique by Brian Coleman. In addition to the film/ documentary

and book suggestions, I worked with one of the Hawken teachers to create a special playlist

for one of the courses! I have to add a couple more songs to the playlist, but overall

its very holistic and contains a lot of good music selections from artists like Marvin Gaye,

James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Lenny Kravitz, Run DMC, and Janet Jackson (to name a few).

On Wednesday, I started to review some of the book recommendations and looked at a 

couple of samples of the books, narrowing down and selecting the books that would best 

represent the themes present in the course. In addition to this, I started jotting down notes

of important topics, terms, and people that each course needs to cover during its duration. 

Jotting down these topics, terms, and people has helped me to narrow down materials and 

also guide the movement and flow of the course!



Quincy (2018)


The Meaning of Soul by Emily Lordi



Aretha Franklin (aka "The Queen of Soul") (1942-2018)





                                                        

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