The book "A Long Walk to Water" by Linda Sue Park explores the life of Salva, an 11-year-old boy living in South Sudan, after he is displaced by the Sudanese Civil War. First, in 1985, Salva and his classmates are instructed to run into the bush to escape the gunfire that was heard not far from the school. Then, he joins a group of travelers who are walking away from the war in Sudan, but they abandon him in a barn one evening while he is still asleep. After spending a few days with the barn's owner, Salva is sent away with a different group of travelers, must of whom accept him grudgingly. The group walks for a month toward Ethiopia, and eventually they arrive to the Itang refugee camp in Ethiopia.
Brennon Morehead Mrs. Dose English 9 16 May 2023 Night Hoops by Carl Deuker My book was Night Hoops by Carl Deuker about a story of a freshman basketball player who is fighting for a spot on the varsity lineup and is continuously being benched due to poor performance. Even though he does poorly at the start of the season as it goes on he earns his varsity spot and gets to play with his two other freshman classmates Trent and Luke. But at the start of the book Nick's view of Trent was very different.
“Three Little Words” by Ashley Rhodes Courter is a memoir chronicling the author’s experience growing up in the Florida foster care system. Before Rhodes Courter was introduced to foster care, she was raised until the age of three by her single-teenage mother. In Ashley's Ordinary World, she recalls feeling happy and loved by her mother. However, her mother, unbeknownst to Ashley, engaged in hazardous activities, abusing drugs and neglecting Ashley and her half-brother, Luke. After their mother was arrested, Ashley and Luke were uprooted from their home and crammed into the dysfunctional foster care system (herald).
In the short story "Kath and Mouse" by Janet McNaughton, the character Kath is most interesting because she is controlling and entitled, yet she is also hard working and careful. Firstly, Kath is directly described as a hardworking person by the author in the short story. This is demonstrated by the following quote: "She really worked at it, forty-five minutes every day. Not that anyone else knew. If anyone phoned while she was practicing, we were supposed to say she was out," (McNaughton 62).
In The Spirit Catches You and You Fall down, Anne Fadiman reflected on ways in which cultural dissonance can have detrimental consequences for those who are caught in the midst of two cultures. In this influential story, the cultural and language barriers between Lia Lee’s family and her doctors caused Lia’s life to be negatively impacted due to improper diagnosis and treatment. The Lees preferred traditional and spiritual treatment that clearly differed from the doctors’ Westernized treatment. Through a constant battle between proper treatment and the Lee parent’s compliance, this caused Lia to live in a persistent vegetative state for the majority of her life. The language barrier that the Lee’s faced at Merced hospital was discouraging,
Although often used interchangeably, disease and illness differ fundamentally in their meanings and implications. Disease is the commonly thought of concept in which a person suffers due to a physiological or psychological ailment, while illness refers to a culmination of physical, emotional and social suffering of a person. Disease is perceived as the phenomena that affects an organism, while illness affects not only the patient but also their loved ones and community. This distinction is vividly apparent in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, in which Anne Fadiman relays the approaches to a Hmong child named Lia’s epilepsy by her family and her doctors as well as the tumultuous interaction between these caregivers. It is interesting to understand how Hmong culture and a doctor’s
Three Little Words, a memoir by former foster child Ashley Rhodes-Courter, shares the long lasting effects that child abuse and neglect has on a kid. Taking place in Florida in the 90s, the book follows the journey of a girl holding on to a promise: to one day be reunited with her biological mom. In a span of ten years, Ashley Rhodes moves from foster home to foster home, losing hope in her mother’s promise. Between group homes, trailers flooded with foster kids, and a few homes where she’s the only child, Ashley grows up faster than she wants to as she faces trauma, pain, and physical abuse. Ashley was already dealing with a lot before entering foster care at the age of three.
Being taking away from her mother was a painful memory that she carries with her every single day hoping that her mother will rescue her. She battles between different caseworkers, shuffled from school to school, dealing with other foster care children, and forced to endure manipulative. In this forgettable memoir, Ashely discovers her voice and was able to succeed in life. After reading this book, I initially felt angry because Ashely was taken from her mother at a young age.
The spirit catches you and you fall down: A Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures by Anne Fadiman illuminates the dilemmas, as well as barriers, persons of various cultural backgrounds can encounter daily, specifically when residing in a foreign habitation of different practices, perspectives and beliefs. This book highlights the difficulties one family must face during a clash between Hmong family cultural beliefs and western medicine. Fadiman (1997) brings our attention to these harsh realties that one can encounter when persons are unintentionally culturally incompetent through sharing the story of the Lia Lee and her parents, Nao Kao and Foua, who look for guidance from western doctors to assist their spiritual
Family is what might have the greatest impact on someone's life and identity. In the memoir Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, she is an African American who grew up right after the Civil Rights Movement in the south. She went through a lot because of her race and her family was able to help her get through it. She also moved around a lot as a kid, which affected her a lot because she was with different family members every time she moved.
Within this community, Clarissa experiences acceptance and understanding, countering the alienation she felt in foster care. The group's collective activities and shared goals create an environment where members support each other’s growth and well-being. This network of support is instrumental in helping Clarissa transition from a state of anger and isolation to one of confidence and
The short story, “Good enough” by Rachel Vail, speaks about the main character Dori and how she starts as what the poem, “Identity” by Julio Noboa Polanco would say as a flower but transform into a weed at the end. Dori tries to impress or fit in with the popular girls by getting an Orion shirt they all wear for Dori’s birthday. However, Dori’s family is not in the best financial situation, so this makes it really hard on the parents to get this. On Dori’s birthday she opens a present to find that her mom has given her a fake, which hurts her, but she does not tell her parents, so they do not feel bad. When Dori wears it to school the next day one of the popular girls goes up to her and taunts her about it, Dori ends up crying but catches herself and remembers that even though its fake her mom had so much love behind it and did her best which makes Dori get over it and know that it's okay to not be in the popular group or be different.
On September 11, 2001, tragedy struck the city of New York. On that fateful day, two airplanes were hijacked by terrorists and flew straight into the twin towers. Each tower fell completely to the ground, taking thousands of lives with it and injuring thousands more. Not only did that day leave thousands of families without their loved ones, it also left an entire city and an entire country to deal with the aftermath of the destruction. Poet, Nancy Mercado, worries that one day people will forget that heartbreaking day.
Various minority groups have long histories of oppression, including Native Americans, and the brutality that they endured in the past has shaped their race today. In an attempt to advocate for better conditions, Native Americans are spreading awareness for a greater future. Linda Hogan is a writer of Chickasaw Native descent and often incorporates “Southeastern tribal histories and [native] spirits and culture” (Wikipedia contributors) in her work. “Tear” takes on the perspective of a Chickasaw Native, first in the past recounting hardships, then to the present to reflect on the speaker’s connection to others in her tribe. The poem also describes the environment that surrounds natives and the neglection of their lives.
"We need to begin building a process to affirm a positive sense of community and identity." The poem “girl” by Jamaica Kincaid is a poem showing how women are expected to be. The speaker is talking to a girl who is becoming a woman. She tells her things that she has to do differently in order to be respected and independent. What the speaker is telling her is kind of absurd, but it is the truth.
