Blue Roses

Today I read a book for SAC that I was technically supposed to read a week or so ago, called Paper Tango by Julie Taylor. It was...I don't know. Maybe I just don't get it. Maybe I'm not deep enough or sophisticated enough, or maybe it's just because I'm not Argentinian. Whatever it is, I really didn't get the book. It's all about the tango, and I just don't see how a dance can have that much meaning that people get together and talk about its meaning. It could also be that the lyrics completely lose themselves in translation - what they are affected by just seems ridiculous to me. My teacher was talking about how this is like a love story for taylor's son, and it's how Taylor was able to get over a childhood rape and abuse from her father by learning how to dance. First of all, Taylor mentions her son maybe twice. She goes out dancing for 12 hours some days, and goes to dances at 2 in the morning - where's her son then? How does he feel that this dance is seemingly more important to her than he is? Second, the tango is a complex dance. It's supposedly about love, but the lyrics are about how women are out to destory men, and the dance is completely male dominated. How does that help someone reclaim her body, by becoming completely submissive? I don't get that. I don't get a lot of the stuff from this class. Maybe that's part of my problem. The teacher just doesn't explain anything! She just says, "this is how it is." But it doesn't make sense, and she doesn't explain. The TA does, somewhat, but she has such a short period of time to work with (less than an hour a week). I can't depend on her to explain things, and so therefore I wander around this class completely confused.