#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. 

Quiz 11.05.-08

There are many aspects about the English language we might not think of since we use this language to communicate every day. Have you for example ever thought of that the language is discriminating to some groups? If you look closer, you can see that the language is both sexist and racist. There are more negative synonyms for the word “black” rather in the word “white”. This can be a problem because if you hear something often enough, you start to believe it. So, our language has a unique power to control our minds. Like, in Norway we have en expression that says, “Are you deaf or what?!” in a negative way. This might trick people to think that hard of hearing and Deaf people are stupid and slow.

 

But how did English turn out to be sexist? It actually makes sense: when the language English was made, woman had a totally different position in the society. Actually, woman almost belonged to men and they were only supposed to take care of their children and homes.

 

We have some theories about the Thought and Language debate. One of them is “Thought is governed by language” and this theory says that how we think is influenced by the language and refers to two different languages (English and Hopi) and says that they can’t understand each other because of the differentses. Then we have “The Weak Version” which says that language only affects the thoughts 

and the memory. Next we have “Eye Witness Testimony” that says words might affect what we think is right. Another way to explain it is to say that words can influence and mislead our thoughts.

Then “Language is governed by thought” which say the opposite. They say it is a reason that every language has some similar words and nouns and that’s because our thoughts make the language. And finally, the theory I like the most is that thought and language are interdependent. We think well with language and we need thoughts to make the language.

 

There are many ways to become a better speaker, some techniques (often called claptraps) are contrastive pair, list of three and positive evaluation of us. If you want to learn/see some speeches where claptraps are used, you

can just watch some of the president’s speeches. Another device is to “Repetition of words for effect” and this you can see in the famous speech “I have a dream” (Martin Luther King Jr.) and the new President Obamas’s speech where he repeated, “Yes, we can”. Here you can see Martin Luther King's speech (with subtitles) where he use many of the devices.

 

To sell something you have to convince your costumer that they want your products. That’s why sellers usually name their product with positive names. Those words are what we call “euphemisms”. You can often see them in TV shows where one of the characters wear something horrible and the other characters have to say something nice to not offend this person; “Your clothes are really… interesting…creative... and you don’t have to be afraid that anyone else will wear the same clothes, believe me!”. 

#11 The Circuit

I did some research on the book and found out that this was one of many short stories from a book based on the author Francisco Jimènez’s life. Here I could also read that the whole book is about this family’s fight to survive in California after have leaving Mexico illegally. The short story we had to read gives me a good impression of the book. Like, already on the first page of the short story (p. 55), Panchito tells us about the clever strawberry picker who’s from Mexico, just like him and his family. And even I already know there are many illegal people from Mexico in America, the way they searching for jobs certify that they are not legally in California. Legal persons don’t find jobs by ringing doorbells and live in peoples garage like that. And I can’t read anything about a contract either.

But the family takes good care of each other. I think the most sadly part was  that Panchito obviously is having a hard time with his education even he is working so hard to make it. And his big brother, Roberto, don’t even go to school at all. It seems like since he is the oldest one, he have to help his father during the cotton season. It must be hard watching his little brother go to school every day when he has to work with his father.  But he doesn’t complain, he does it for the family.

I was heartbroken when I realized that they was moving again when Panchito finally started to catch up they other and his nice teacher introduce him for an instrument he  falls in love with. It must be exhausting to never know what the next day brings about. Without contract, they can be fired anytime.  And without a home, you have to move every time you change job. I think shows me about how difficult it actually is to live a life like this. Many people think they are just lazy and lucky to be in California. They don’t see the disadvantages. It’s a tough life.

The two last years of high school I went to a small school for hearing impaired students outside my hometown. There I met a girl named Dona who was completely unlike me, we came from two different worlds if you can say it that way. Against the odds, we became best friends and she told me about her past as a immigrant from Serbia. She learned me so much and I got a new respect for people who have to go through something like that and I saw things in a different sight. She really changed me in many ways, and I wanted to mention her because this reminded me of her and what she’s been through. 

#10 The Hands of My Father

by Christopher Jon Heuer.

I’ll have to admit that this one was kind of difficult one, I’m not sure if I got all the words right.

This poem about a father and his son, it seems to me that the mother doesn’t exist.  At least she is not mentioned. The father is a hearing person, but has his own opinion of what he wants to hear. I get the impression that he wants to connect with the nature. He doesn’t like talking to other people; he rather wants to hear the animals moaning.

Instead of using his hands to sign to his son he uses them to work with his farm. I’m assuming they are living on a farm because he has a tractor and works with a pitchfork. It’s seems to me that the father is frustrated because he can’t fix his son’s “problem”. Maybe he gets scared of the situation and reacts with anger and keeps a distance between them.

I sense this is vulnerable for the son, who’s the narrator in this poem. He’s is talking about his deafness like it’s something negative and I would guess that is a reaction to his dads acting. It’s like he wants to say he’s sorry for being born deaf. 

Anyway, I believe his father truly loves him but just don’t know how to deal with the situation. The detail in verse four, second and third line is supporting this: “He watched me as if God had set the locusts on him”. And if they live on a farm, they might be far away from civilization and far away from places to learn signing. Maybe his way of showing love was to work really hard with the farm, so when his time has come he would leave a beautiful farm in perfect condition where he could live happy. I get this impression from the last verse where the son feel his fathers apologize through the nature. Like, “I see his fingers in the corn, reaching over the hills and fences to his son”.

#9 Rules of the Game

by Amy Tan.

In this short story, Waverly learns important lessons by her mother. One thing she learns is the art of invisible strength (p. 37);  “Wise guy, he not goes against the wind”. Waverly soon use those lessons to get what she wants. One example is on p. 46 where she tells her mother she doesn’t want to play in the local tournament where she probably will loose anyway because she know her mother will react with pushing her to the competition. “Is shame you fall down nobody push you” she says. I will say that means that is an even bigger shame to give up without trying rather than try and fail.

When Waverly plays chess, she uses her mother’s rules to win. Those rules help her to stay calm and focus. And besides those rules, she has read many books about chess and had a competent teacher when she was playing in the park. It seems to me that she loves the rules, or maybe she just loves the secrets behind the rules?  This reminds me of my dad’s favorite quote which always have tried to learn me: “knowledge is power”. Waverly uses the secrets to defeat her competitors.

Anyway, Waverly is soon becoming Chinatown Chess Champion and she is starting to feel the benefits. One of them is that she no longer has to take the dishes and she makes up excuses so she got the bedroom she shared with her brothers alone. She knows that her parents do everything if it means she will keep winning. She has becoming the Chinese family’s pride and hope in America.

Two years after she started to play chess for fun, she is a national chess champion and there’s a picture of here in the Life magazine. Her mother took Waverly out for shopping every Saturday. They didn’t buy too much and it’s obviously that the weekly routine is just a way for the mother to proudly show her daughter off.  One day, a very uncomfortable Waverly asks her mother if she could stop telling people who she is. Even her mother wants the attention Waverly doesn’t like it. Her mother reacts with anger; I think maybe she felt a little offended. The discussion ends with Waverly runs away.

When she finally is back home she is expecting scolds and yelling. But instead her parents tell her that they trust Waverly, still it is a weird atmosphere in the room. Waverly runs to her room and imagining her mother in a chess game. She are the black slits and they are taking Waverly’s white slits one by one. The two black, angry slits are her mother’s eyes. It’s clear that Waverly looses.

I think maybe Waverly’s behavior is a call for help, that she doesn’t want special treatment. She wants to be a normal kid with friends and play chess because it’s fun. She tries to be unreasonable and difficult (ex making her brothers moving to the living room and run away without coming back before late) but her mother doesn’t let the bad behavior affect her dream of having a known daughter she can tell people about. A Chinese girl who becomes a big star in America! Especially since they don’t have too much money either. So, she ignores it. And Waverly has to realize that she can’t defeat her own mother.

One last ting; one the first and the last page, Waverly’s mother says, “the strongest wind cannot be seen”. Maybe Waverly’s mother is the strongest wind.  

#8 A Gift of Laughter

The story is about the relationship between a father and his son. The father, named Allan, gets a reminder when his son reacts to a specific episode with slamming the door in anger (p. 30).  This make Allen think about when he self slammed the door when he was a young boy and he realized that he slammed the door because he was hurt. He remember how his mother and grandmother set up this “act” so he would feel better, and maybe even more important: that they listened and treated him with respect.

And then he has to admit that his son had a point. He has long days at work and are stressed about money, based on his own thoughts on page 32 where he says that ha need a shave when he comes home in the end of the day and based on the argue his son was interrupting on page 29, which was about money.

I think that everyone needs a reminder sometime. It’s human being to lose the track, especially if you think you are doing the best for your family or friends. Like Allan stresses about work and money so his family can have everything they need, then it’s easy to forget that they might rather want a husband and dad who’s there for them.

Actually, this reminds me about the relationship between my father and me. My father was a “perfect” child, he had a few friends and was happy with that. Didn’t drink or smoke and got good grades at school. And then me who started to drink and partying when I was fourteen years old. Didn’t do it great at school but okay and was hanging out with friends in the spare time.  My dad could never really accepted the fact that I care a lot more about the social part rather than he did when he was young. This has been an endless argue between us, and sometimes it still is. That’s why I’m closer to my mum, we grow up the same place and she was a party girl when she was young too. So then I could be more honest to her because I knew she had been through the same and would take that with her consideration and not just judge me.

So, the point is, since my father never really listened to me or could understand why friends and partying was such a big part of me, I stopped letting him take a part of my life. I closed him out. And that’s probably what Allan’s son would do too if Allan didn’t realize he was behaving badly. 

#7 Dancer

I think this short story is about finding your home spiritually, not physical. Dancer is about a girl who’s been pushed around different foster homes and is by the agency people defined as a sociopathic. She just have her little plastic bag with personal stuff and it make sense that she never haven’t had a home for while.

I’ve learned that the dreams are the subconsciousness way of speaking and sometimes you should take that seriously. She said once that she was dreaming about being chased by a man with a knife and nobody could hear her screaming for help (p. 22). I would say that means she feels that she totally alone and has nobody who loves and protects her (like parents should do). About screaming without anyone hearing, it it’s a sign for feeling alone. How is the girl supposed to know that she was finally in good hand in a nice family when was already been moved several times and when she was only a kid?

On page 22 her foster parent tells how she “seemed like she was all full up with anger and scaredness”. We have no idea of what she has been through before she came to their home and obviously she doesn’t want to talk about it. But the fact that she tried to kill their cat (p. 23) tells us it’s something going on in her head we either can control or understand.

We are told on page 23 that she is most believable an Assiniboine girl, but they are not sure (what makes me wonder even more about her background). Anyway, she falls in love with the powwow dance. In the beginning she is just dancing for herself and her behavior in daily life slowly changes to the better. She is not suddenly laughing all the time or anything, but she seems to be calmer and has a new confidence.

It’s pretty clear to me that she has found something in her life she can trust and love. She is suddenly more positive and motivated. No longer tries to kill their animals and she is hanging out with the other kids when they are coming home from school. Even the nightmares have stopped.

So, the point is; this is not an adventure where she became the queen of school or anything. But something maybe even more important; she finds an inner peace. She finds a place she can feel happy or “run away” too.

I believe that’s why Molly and Clarissa with many years between them are the same age when they were dancing. It’s not about how many years you have existed on this earth, it’s about reaching this place both of them have reached. To meet the “old Eagle woman”.

#6 The First Day

I have to admit it’s a while since last time I’ve analyzed a short story so to get started I did some research and read somewhere that it was about racism. My first thought was racism based on color of the skin. But when I read the story one more time, I disagree. But maybe they meant racism based on cultural status, I could support that one. 

I kind of get the feeling that the story is about the mother, what she is doing for her daughter. Every time she has been in her church, she has been looking at the school across the street and been thinking “there should my daughter go”. Maybe she’s been praying about it too.

When the day comes, she is really trying. She buys her daughter new underwear, use an hour to fix her hair and make them both to look good. But even she try her best, their address it’s not good enough for the school. They only want people from a specific area, which I guess is a richer and snobbier one. I don’t know anything about the addresses here, but she is a single mother without education and I don’t think she could afford to live in an expensive area.

Anyway, she deals with the defeat and takes her daughter to another school, which I think belongs to “their” area. A bigger school with more students, and probably with a lower standard.  Here she has to do something she really wants to avoid; ask a stranger for help because she can’t either read or write. But she does that for her daughter. And how I see it, the mother she asks feel better with herself (when she suddenly get so happy) because she obviously can more than the main person who asks her. All the papers she had with her proofs how long she has been planning this. To do everything she can so her daughter can do better than her, get the education she never got.

So, it’s time to say goodbye, and the daughter do something that has been an old game between them, but she doesn’t replies. I get the feeling that she feels that things are changed now. Her daughter is going to learn something important she still can’t. It will not be the same again. She knows that the well-dressed teacher will be her daughter’s new role model. The first line on page 11: “before I learned to be ashamed of my mother” supports my idea. So, the loud footsteps are a sign of a chapter that closes.

I think this is really sad that the daughter actually ends up being ashamed of her mother when she should be grateful that she did for her. It was not easy!

 

Actually I have analyzed more, but was told to make it short (and yes, I find it a little difficult). And, unfortunately, I actually can’t relate this to my personal experiences because in Norway we have another school system and a different culture. But that made it even more interesting for me to read this.

Introduction

 My name is Anniken Blaauw and I am a freshman here at Gallaudet. When I came here I was actually supposed to start at ELI, but after taking an english test I was told to start a bachelor right ahead. So I was not prepared to take those courses like math and english. I named my blog Heineken because that's thats my nickname some guys gave me (after the beer Heineken) and to me it symbolisms the time when I started to accept who I really was.  

I'm 20 year old and from Bærum in Norway (it's just outside the capital Oslo). Unfortunately my hometown is Norway’s answer to Beverly Hills where everyone is supposed to be perfect, which made it difficult for me when I was younger. When I started at middle school (in the age of 14) I started to hide the fact that I was hearing impaired. To make a long history short, I did it pretty difficult for myself.

All my life I have hade pretty huge ups and downs. Sometimes it feels like I have been trough more than an 80 years old person. When I was writing about my “history” I realized it was too complicated and confusing to write down if I don’t want to sit here in front of my Mac the next few days. So, the short story is that I was really alone when I was 13 and 14 years old. Slowly I have made more and more friends, and the last years have been nothing else then amazing! 

The most important thing I ever learned: self-irony. It's so important to not take things so seriously and that made my life so much easier. Actually, it changed my life dramatically. Today I have the life, the friends and everything I was dreaming of when I was younger and thought I'll never reach it. And I do believe that laugher is the best medicine. 

So, having big dreams also gives you many downs. But, if I hadn’t been stubborn, I would never come this far. I talked to my parents recently and they told me about all the times I had done things they thought I would never be able to do. Like when I decided to live in England for the summer with a friend when I was fifteen and couldn't a single word in English. But, to me, the biggest thing I ever have done is backpacking for five months around the world. I feel extremely lucky when I'm thinking of all the funny and unique memories I have. 

But sometimes, being between those two worlds (the hearing and the deaf) is both confusing and exhausting. Because my hearing loss it's getting worse and one day I'll become deaf. But today, I don't know how to sign and I'm struggling in the "hearing" world too. And in Norway it's too many people who doesn't understand the meaning of "hard of hearing" and when I was younger I often wished that I was deaf and then people would see that I had a handicap. But just because I heard one sentence some day, they think I can hear everything. 

Me and my friends when we were backpackers. The most amazing time of my life, no doubt.   

This blog will be used to do homework and to read my class mates writings and learn from them.  I think when the semester comes to an end, I will read this blog and see what I did wrong and what I did right. Then I will see how much I have learned.