I read the heart-warming book One For The Murphy's by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. This is a realistic fiction novel. Carley, the main character, is introduced when she is going through some rough times. Her family is falling apart and she just got released from the hospital. The previous night Carley was nearly killed when her stepfather started to abuse her.
In the poem, “Becoming and Going: An Oldsmobile Story” by Gerald Hill the speaker is traveling down a road in the Fort Qu’appelle Valley. He notices his father and his son are also driving down this road. The speaker then begins to list the two men’s characteristics. As he lists them we see that the father and the son have both similarities and differences in their personalities.
Gabrielle Roy’s, “The Move”, is a short story following an eleven year old girl on a journey to remedy her desire to travel across the Canadian Prairies. The image chosen displays a moving cart unloading boxes, while a door remains open, leaving the viewer to see a mystical land of adventure. The scene represents the protagonist’s desire to move, and her belief that moving homes will bring her to a magical place. Connecting this depiction to the rest of the story is simple because the protagonist often thinks about travelling across Canada, until she fulfills her dream and discovers that travelling doesn’t always bring you to a pleasant place. This image illustrating a moving cart dropping off boxes in front of a door leading
I read, T4 by Ann Clare Lezotte, which is about her life as a Jewish, deaf girl who lived in Germany. This was the time period when Adolf Hitler ruled their country, which means they didn’t like Jewish people. In the book, she had said, “when my mother was pregnant with me, she was exposed to Rubella, or German Measles, a common cause of hearing loss in infancy” (Lezotte, 3). I’ve never had hearing loss or anything like that but I did have failure to thrive and a sensory disorder when I was younger, which impacted my life a lot.
In her article "Out of Her Place: Anne Hutchinson and the Dislocation of Power in New World Politics" Cheryl Smith discusses how women of puritan New England were oppressed and controlled by gender roles. At a time where men were in power and women were controlled in an attempt to keep them from gaining any type of authority. Smith discusses Anne Hutchinson, a women on trial essentially for expressing her voice freely and forcefully. Hutchinson had over stepped her bounds as a women when she expressed religious beliefs different from those of the church leaders. Smith also discusses how some modern women still feel like women are not able to fully speak in public with authority and must make themselves seem small to keep from losing their sexual
Sometimes bad things happen in an instant and all you can do is hope that everything will turn out okay. In the book Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson, Philadelphia experiences a sudden outbreak of yellow fever that affects Mattie in many ways and destroys the town she once knew. Before the plague Mattie worked in her family’s coffeehouse but dreamed of owning her own business in France but because of the raging epidemic, her life and thousands of people's lives change with over 5,000 deaths and constant struggles. Even through times of the worst hardships and suffering, Mattie Cook a young girl takes all of the extreme cases of murder, sickness, and death and turns them into life lessons and maturity.
For certain people, it is easy to adjust to new locations. Meanwhile, others tend to carry the culture and unique memories from their hometowns firmly, making adaptation difficult when relocating to novel places. This kind of attachment is inclined to people who live in the city, in this case, New York City. On the essay, “Someday, Some Morning, Sometime”, writer Emma Straub writes about the love and hate relationship she holds for her home city, New York. Although she despises certain characteristics from New York City, she always comes back to it.
Chapter One In chapter one of If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland demonstrates how “everyone is talented, original, and has something important to say” (Ueland 3). Firstly, she states that everyone is talented since all humans have something to express. She proves this by saying even religious men who went out into the wilderness for silence still expressed. Even though they were silent, thoughts still originated regardless if silent or loud.
In this chapter Linda S. Sussman analyzes Hesiod’s exclusion of women’s economic role in ancient society. She argues that the issue is not the fact of women’s work, but the status and its perceived importance for society rather than its actual importance (Sussman, 1984, 82). Sussman believes that because of a major shift from a pastoral based economy to a grain raising economy it altered the economic roles of both women and men (Sussman, 1984, 83). By evaluating the works from Hesiod, Semonides, and multiple pieces of secondary scholarly sources, Linda S, Sussman illustrates Greek structures of class, gender, sexuality, and status.
Almost everyone is aware of some story behind historic colonizers in his or her country. Whether it’s the United States’ story of Columbus, or the Mexico’s story of Cortes, people are familiar with what it means to be a colonizer. However, in the short story, “Maryanne’s Clouds Today”, by Ivan Rehorek, the author takes a spin on the post colonial mindset that is known as othering. This is when the colonizer sets himself apart from the colonized people by cultural values, difference in appearance or personality as a whole. Columbus used this sense of othering by pointing out the differences between himself and the natives he encountered.
Anne Moody wrote the autobiography Coming of Age in Mississippi where it begins in 1944 highlighting the struggles of her childhood as it progresses to her adult life in 1964. Moody sought a different path than the rest of her family which led her to be apart of the civil right movement that occurred. Coming of age in Mississippi starts by introducing the narrator of the story, Essie Mae. She discusses her childhood where her father left their family for another woman, and her mother struggles providing for her family. Essie Mae had a traumatic experience in her time on the plantation to where in her adult life she was “still haunted by dreams of the time we lived on Mr.Carter’s plantation.”
Maria Boyd’s novel “Will” clearly demonstrates and showcases multiple existing values, beliefs and ideologies. One such theme which we constantly see is that of depression. Throughout the novel, this theme is challenged and developed on. One such example Will, the protagonist, and his one sided conversations with his deceased father. This constant reminiscence of his father are only present in the latter half of the book when the theme of depression is much more prevalent.
In “Good Country People,” by Flannery O’Connor, the protagonist’s internal struggle with her identity stems from both an undiagnosed mental disorder and a lack of parental guidance since her traumatic accident. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) causes 32-year-old Joy Hopewell to be a perpetual teenager, which affects her relationships as an adult. In addition, Joy’s mother's parenting style was based off of pity from the accident resulting in an absence of guidance during Joy’s formative years. As a teenager, Joy gets accustomed to receiving unsolicited pity from everyone, which burdens her later in life. Thus, by being pitied, Joy expresses discontent with her life by acting out in a rebellious state.
No number can measure a tragedy. Gone Gone Gone by Hannah Moskowitz tells of Craig and Lio dealing with their feelings for eachother during the aftermath of 9/11 . I am compelled to read Gone Gone Gone because it conveys a truthful representation of youth during traumatic events.
The novel Izzy, Willy-Nilly by Cynthia Voigt gives clear insight on the life of a girl after a tragic accident and how she perseveres through it. In the novel, the main character Izzy was in a car accident which lead to the loss of her leg. Izzy was very depressed by this, but with the help of her family and new friend Rosamunde she got through it. In Cynthia Voigt's Izzy, Willy- NIlly Izzy's life changes tremendously. Izzy deals with the change by changing her attitude and emotions, making her weaknesses strengths, her strengths stronger, and by learning about herself and the world around her.
