#18 Reflection

My thoughts about blogging is that it makes the homework a lot easier. First of all, you don’t have to stress about when or where you can print out the papers. Secondly, you can write the blog wherever you are as long as you have access to a network. That means you can still do your homework even you’re in Europe on family vacation.

Another thing with those blogs is that you can add links and videos from etc www.youtube.com. It’s nice to could add a link to show the teacher where she/he found the information instead for the teacher has to check all the websites (which by the way often are long and difficult to retype) and so the student doesn’t just copy and paste the information.

One disadvantage must be that some people don’t like everyone to read her/his blog posts. Maybe some people are ashamed of their writing level. But on the other hand, many people don’t like to have presentations either but they still have to do it. 

#16 Recitatif

This short story is about two girls who met and despite the differences, they become good friends. They find comfort in each other and the things they have in common is stronger then what separates them.

We know one of them is black and one of them is white because they “looked like salt and pepper” (p. 204). But they narrator(Twyla) never let’s us know who’s white and who’s black. Maybe that is something the author wanted. But the author gives mixed signals. Like when Roberta came to the cafeteria where Twyla worked and she was talking about Jimi Hendrix, a black famous singer and Twyla didn’t know who he was. But, on the other side, Twyla’s name sound more exotic. So, who smells weird? And is it the black mothers or the white ones who doesn’t want a mixed school for their kids?

It’s annoying, but I couldn’t find the answer. But still, they both were at St. Bonny’s forthe same reason: their mother couldn’t take care of them. And they both made Maggie to the scapegoat for their mother’s actions. They saw the older girls kick Maggie down and they knew she couldn’t scream, but they still didn’t help her. Was this a way to punish their real mother? You know, they were only eight and this was maybe the only way they could handle if it. To feel some control or just so they would feel better with themselves. Their mothers didn’t want them and the older girls was chasing them, I think it’s a normal reaction to want to see someone who has more problems then yourselves. It’s like the bullies who make others life miserable because that make themselves to feel better, at least for å while.

The title means "The title alludes to a style of musical declamation that hovers between song and ordinary speech; it is used for dialogic and narrative interludes during operas and oratories" (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recitatif). So, the title refers to the dream and reality? How the two girls hovers between the truth and their imagening?

Whoa, I can’t wait to see the discussion of this book and maybe get some answers.

#15 Little Saigon/ Zelzah: A Tale From Long Ago

I’ve tried to fin out what a Saigon means, but I couldn’t find it. In my head, without any reasons, I thought it was an exotic word for ”fighter”. Then I searched for the name to be sure I knew where they’re from and find out that they where from 

Vietnam (http://www.behindthename.com/bb/arcview.php?id=26810&board=gen) and obviously Saigon is a River I Vietnams biggest city: Ho Chi Minh City (http://en.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_City). It also says that Ho Chi Minh City is formerly was named Saigon and that might be the reason to why the place they lived in California was named “A Little Saigon” (p. 174).

Anyway, the siblings and their mother are running away from the crime in Saigon and since they say “Saigon” and not “Ho Chi Minh City” it must be some time ago. Ngoc is also mentioning “the new police & the old police, the murders of our neighbors” (168). It’s sounds like a war, the Vietnam War? 

When they are escaping their own country, a man says it’s only room for the two girls at the first bout and their mother has to go to next boat. The man is grinning so it’s definitely on purpose. To give her little sister, Mai Chi, water and food on the long, hard trip she “gives” herself to the Captain. People on the boat is so exhausted that they don’t care. This part was hard to read, I just can’t believe how cruel people can be sometimes.

Finally people from an Australian boat rescued them, but they never find their mum. The move to their mom’s cousin’s family in The Little Saigon in California. But their mother’s cousin was ashamed of the two girls of many reasons. One because she thought Ngoc had killed Jack Pirate. I’m not sure when this happened, but it must be after he got caught by the sailors because she saw he was taken away alive with his arms locked behind him. Another reason was that I think Ngoc became pregnant. It’s difficult to read that part or may I say; hard to interpret. But it seems like Ngoc is not trying to hide it either. And before, even it was of one’s own free will or not, it was a shame to be pregnant in young age and maybe even outside a marriage. But most of all, the shame was pointed at Mai Chi who started to look like his father.

 Her father was a black American who was a soldier in Vietnam. He was a nice and kind man, but what they did was a shame for the Vietnam people back then. And it seems like Mai Chi get’s punished for what her parents did by narrow-minded relatives.

One day, their aunt who moved to French for a long time ago, came with both bad and good news. The bad was that their mother was dead, but the good one was that their aunt (a person their mum loved very much, unlike their mother’s cousin) wanted to take them back to French. Finally they are at a place where they are safe and loved.

 

The short story “Zelzah: A Tale From Long Ago” is about a question that is still important today: what is happiness?  The action takes place about many, many years ago in Poland and this Jewish family with five girls struggles to get enough money. For poor families like this one, it’s important that the daughters get married so their men can take care of them. It’s harder to find husbands to girls with poor parents so for some of the girls a marriage is the way to happiness. We follow the second oldest daughter, Zelzah to America where she is marying a relative in Vermont, America. But before they got married, her cousin fells in love with another girl and marries her instead.

Zelzah goes to New York and gets an education and becomes a teacher. Her little sister Shulamith comes over to live with her but after a while she finds her a husband and moves away. Zelzah is still single and her sister says she still can get married.  But does she need one? Is she happy now? She was laughing when her cousin reject her offer to be his wife and mother to his child after the real mom and wife died in childbirth. And now she teaches third grade kids who gives her happiness, she decides what she wants to do all by herself. She got her independence, but is she missing something bigger like a marriage?

And who can tell what a happy life is like?

My father has one opinion of what happiness is, my friends have another. I think it’s important to sit down sometimes and really think about what is happiness for you? It’s easy to get influenced by the environment, like many people think money is important if you want to be happy today. But do you?

#14 Beautiful & Cruel/ Trip in a Summer Dress

Beautiful & Cruel is about this girl who says she is not beautiful. Minerva’s sister is having a baby and Nenny (a friend I guess) says “she won’t wait her whole life for a husband”. In the beginning I thought it was a short story from back in the old days because Nenny gives the impression that to get away from home they had to have a baby or marry a man. But then the narrator, the girl, mentions the women she has seen with red lipsticks in the movies.

But I think those girls are still pretty young, they seem to be pretty naïve about how it works. But the narrator is aware about how she looks and she think as a grown up in the end of the short story, so would guess thirteen. 

The interesting thing with this girl is that opposed to most other girls; she doesn’t want to fall in love. She compares the marriage with being tied with chains and says that all of the other girls get tame so the boys will like them and maybe marry them. This girl wants to swim against the stream.

You know, how does this girl know she is ugly? People must have told her or let her understand this somehow. She has probably been hurt many times and seen how people like Nenny with pretty eyes gets boys easily. So, what is she supposed to do? Everyone would do what he or she can do to take his or her pain away. This is how the narrator does it, she doesn’t want to let anyone hurt her again. “Her power is her own. She will not give it away”. To me the power is her love and trust. And her self- respect. If she gives it to someone, she risks that they will give back destroyed. And then she has to suffer even more. She will go her own way, don’t care about what others mean. That way she will not ever feel inferior anyone ever again.

Personally, I’m an expert on this. I’ve been doing this for years, always stops whatever-it-is before it gets too serious. Except once, but we had a big fight about this and I had to break up with him because I just couldn’t trust his words even I really wanted too.  Or even more important, I couldn’t feel what I felt or loose my independency. Sometimes I’m really jealous at my friends who give away their heart and are totally in love. Some of them get the heart back and it’s no longer complete. So they cry and listens to sad love-songs and after a little while they fall in love again with the same blue eyes and gives away their heart again and they still believes. But it's always some who fall in love faster than others. With both benefits and disadvantages.

 

A Trip in a Summer Dress is about a young lady who also is running away. She has a baby, Matthew, but she gave him away to her mother. She did it so her son would have a better life with a mum and dad and not being a result as a one night stand his teenager mum had. But it’s hard, she loves him deeply and I think the love a mother has for her child is one of the strongest feeling ever. She tries to get him back and asks why she can’t, but her mother says, “Count the I’s an

d you will know” (p.124). What her mother meant was that she was too immature to be a mum. I liked the answer, but I don’t like the influence she has on her daughter. It seems like it’s more her decision than her daughter’s.

On the way to her new husband, the narrator thinks about her son and finally decides that her son deserves to know the truth. She calls her mum from the bus station but her mother wouldn’t listen. She only talks about the summer dress the narrator is wearing, that it’s too cold to be wearing a summer dress this late on the year. I feel that her mum is saying “It’s too late to tell anyone about Matthew being your son, it too late to take him away from us”. Therefore the title. The wind blows from North (her mother?) and are sharp as scissors and she’s freezing her arms where the sleeves ought to be.

First time I read the short story I thought she was not going back on the bus to Eureka Springs. In my head the last sentence meant that she had to do something about mum always being right and go home and take Matthew back. But, when I read it the second time, there is nothing that tells me what she is going to do. Of course I hope she get’s her Matthew and treat him like what he is; her son. But life isn’t always fair, we all know that.

#13 DAWN

In the beginning we see that the narrator, a thirteen years old boy named Ramsey and his mother are placed at the bus station. Ramsey is worried about who is going to sit next to him on the bus and his mother is obviously stressed too. Besides buying a lot of unhealthy snack and soda despite she’s really strict about stuff like that, she gives her son a bear hug before he goes on the bus even “They weren’t a hugging kind of family” (p. 94). Later we discover it’s because she knows something he doesn’t.

Unfortunately for skeptical Ramsey its only one free seat left in the bus and the girl who sits besides have a look he’s not familiar with. It’s kind of funny how he thinks about her black clothes, her nine earrings and black Doc Martens as if it makes her a bad person. But it turns out that she is kind, funny and she even cares strongly about the environment. It all starts with the switched tapes and Ramsey discovers that Dawn listens to noises you can hear in the woods. First he can’t hear anything at all, but then Dawn says “Ya just ‘av ta listen mate. Closely, like” (p. 98) and he starts to hear things. And I have to say this, I’ve been living in England for a couple of week and been there many times and visited English friends (besides we learn British English on school) and that’s a pretty extreme accent she got there sometimes. My experience of British accent is that they speak very clear and almost a little snobby. But I haven’t been in North England so it could be from there.

Anyway, Dawn treats him as an equal and keeps amaze Ramsey about the traveling and her personality. They have a special connection and becomes friends despise the differentness’s between them like the age and life-experiences.  But eventually they reached North Bay and had to say good bay. After a couple of days there with he’s grandma, only his dad is coming from home this time. They are having a separation.

Ramsey is feeling like a fool because no one told him and one night he is running away to take a bus to Dawn in Vancouver, he’s convinced that she will solve his problems. It’s on the bus terminal he sees the tape with the noises from the woods and a personal note from Dawn in his backpack. He listens to the tape one more time and finally he understands the tape, he listens. The tape it’s about life, to be able to look around you and enjoy living like Dawn did. To listen how everything actually fits together if you “let” them and take time to listen carefully. That’s why Ramsey could hear the music without the earphones.

And the title Dawn for the short story? Dawn is of course a new beginning for Ramsey. She learns him to see things differently just before he needed it most.

#12 Bad Influence

The narrator, Rita, doesn’t want to go to her grandparents in Puerto Rica for three months but the other option (Catholic girl’s retreat) was even worse. For an almost fifteen years old girl from New Jersey this is of course the end of the world.

In the beginning Rita experiences some culture shock and gets overwhelmed by   her grandparent’s totally different lifestyle  and believes. The narrative gives the impression that she looks down on them and their way to handle things like diseases and personal problems. But, as a young teenager from a big city I can understand why. If any of my grandparents would still be alive today and they told me that a cup of tea would cure my “asthma” or that my soul is in pain and they can contact the guides who can tell him what need to be done, I probably would think they had lost their mind. 

In the beginning she tries to avoid them and think it’s unfair she can’t be with Johnny, “The worst part is that I didn’t deserve it. My mother interrogated me about what had happened between me and that boy, as she called him. Nothing. I admit that I was thinking about it.” (p. 72).  She is young and naïve and of course she can’t see how she already influenced by this boy. She thinks she’s a grown up and knows what she is doing despise what everyone else around her are saying.

Slowly Rita starts to take down her walls and open her mind for new and different things. She sees how beautiful the beach really is and how a rich woman hires her “silly” grandfather to solve her problems in home. And she gets a new friend, the rich lady’s daughter who talks English and are used to money and luxury. But even this girl believe it was Rita’s grandfathers abilities which helped her mother to kick out the bad influence; her boyfriend. And she shows a lot of respect for Rita’s grandparents and we can see it changes the narrator’s point of view too. When they throw Rita a big party for her birthday, she finally sees them at lovely, funny and respected people in the society (and not as just silly people).

Luckily, Rita got the bad influence away and got some new (good) influences instead. She changed in a positive way through those three months. 

#15 On the Rainy River and The Setting Sun and the Rolling World

So, this short story is true? The author wrote his own name “Tom O’Brien, a secret hero” (p. 135). So, the narrative is he looking back on his past.

Some parts of this text were difficult to me as a foreigner to understand. Those parts about war, but at least I understand he was drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. And he doesn’t even support this war. He feels it so unfair because he is a smart kid, ready for Harvard and everything. But most of all, he feels it’s unfair because he doesn’t want to fight someone else’s war. I understand him, who wants to risk their lives for something they don’t believe in? It made me think of the demonstrations the students have held on Gallaudet where many have been arrested. You know, it was fine by them because they were fighting for something they believed in.  But what if they had to get arrested for something they didn’t support, like if they had to organize a demonstration against a president who supported the deaf people’s rights? I bet that most of them would feel it was bloody unfair and a personally failure.  “The problem, though, was that a draft board did not let you choose the war” (p. 139).

He feels that he’s standing between these two choices, attend the war or drive to Canada and hide. After a while thinking, he drives towards Canada but he doesn’t cross the river between Minnesota and Canada. This tells me even he wants to go and hide, he’s still not sure. Something is holding him back and he finds an old fishing resort.   He was only supposed stay there for one or two days, but he doesn’t make up his mind until six days later.

The owner of this place, Elroy Berdahl, has somehow a big part in Tim’s final decision. There are only the two of them who stays on this resort, so they eat together and Tim help Elroy with work and stuff on the resort. Tim describes the owner as a wise and smart man who understands what Tim is going through and describes how he doesn’t push him. Still, he knows that Tim is considering running to Canada and without saying anything he finds a reason to give him some money to his escape and takes him on a fish trip in his boat to let him swim over if he wants to. And it is in the boat Tom has to make his settlement. He is so close, but everything that is running through his head is his family, future wife, the shame etc. So he decides to go home and attend the war. You can say that even if he really wanted to do what he thought was right, he couldn’t do it to his family and to himself who had to live with this decision hole his life.  His “American pride” didn’t allow him to escape.

 Now I released that the two short stories was supposed to be in the same blog post, so this will be considerable shorter.  The Setting Sun and the Rolling World is written by Charles Mungoshi and tells about another similar situation. A young boy who wants to leave his country by his heart, the different is that Nhamo actually does it.  He doesn’t care about his father or anyone else, he feels he’s not leaving behind him anything important. He says, “The land is overworked and gives nothing now, father. And the family is almost broken up” (p. 160).  His father, old Musoni, tries desperately to keep him safe by convince him to don’t go, but Nhamo is stubborn and precocious and says he knows what he is about to do. Old Musoni can not force him to stay, so in the end he gives up and lets Nhamo go. He lets his son break his bonds to the family and his home. Tim O'Brien couldn't handle the shame and what other people would say about him if he left, Nhamo is braver (almost like he doesn't care) and gives up everything he knows to reach the freedom he is searching for.