Deconstructing America Analysis

First I want to say welcome to New York, the city of my birth. You are going to experience NYC like never before. I also want to say welcome to LaGuardia, a school that has done nothing, but give me a great college experience. Like most students, many of us has had to take English 101 and I will tell you firsthand how valuable this class is. You won’t learn about how to be a good writer, but how to become a great one. In this class I’ve transformed my writing from novice to expert and I am very proud to say that. Most importantly above all you will learn about yourself in ways that you never thought. That’s through the writings and projects we’ve done on others identity. The writings that shape our own identity were through blogs we’d have

That has been my weakness coming into this class, but through practice and repetition, it has transformed my writings into being great pieces. I would also recommend, working on your public speaking skills as this class bread and butter is discussions, the part I like most. I would definitely tell you not to be afraid to speak during the classroom discussions. The assignment I would say challenged me the most is an essay we had to do on Pat Buchanan’s short essay “Deconstructing America”. The assignment was to deconstruct his essay ‘no pun intended’ and figure out whether it was effective or not and why. This was very challenging because I am very opinionated person so I had to approach this essay, from a neutral perspective and not sound harsh. It took me two revisions to finally get it

One way I examined identity is a project we had to do through the Story Corps App, an app that helps interview people. Through that I decided to interview my friends Mom, a lady who has been a mother like figure to me since I was about 12. I decided to interview her because I never knew her on a deep level. So I always wondered why this lady is so nice to me. Why does she remind me of my biological mom? I knew I had to interview her to find out and the perfect opportunity came, when we had to interview someone. I discovered what shaped her identity was her upbringing and her influences. A lot of which has to do with her mother who raised her and taught her to respect and be nice to everyone no matter the person and no matter what that person had done to you. Finding that out taught me your identity is shaped a lot on how you were raised. Another medium we used was a book called “Identity” containing many short essays and stories. In the beginning of the semester we has to read a short essay in the book titled “How to be Black” by Baratunde Thurston. He talks about his upbringing and the huge role his mom played in his life and how much it shaped his identity. She instilled in him his African roots always educating him on the Motherland of Africa, even giving him “a very African name”. Reading this story resonated with me being that my family