Response Post: How Rokhsor Sees It

Okay so I was looking through posts and I saw this one. It really caught my attention. Rokhsor posted this and said,

And hell yes, I lose respect for people who disrespect me. But they have to be people who matter, if it someone I barely talked to, then I will laugh at them because they are pathetic and need help. But if it is a friend, then hell yes I will lose all respect and if I could, I would get them arrested and make them know that they are retarded and I hate them but then again, that is just me. I do not want to change your point of view.

Okay my response to this quote is that I don't feel the same way about this. i feel that if they are a friend of mine then i will never lose respect towards them, no matter what they did. I feel that if they are my friends then they should be the ones always by me even if they lose my trust, they would have to do a lot to lose my respect. I respect everyone, even if we aren't friends and you do something that I do not appreciate. I guess it depends on what type of person you are because I am the type of person who it takes a lot to get mad, I am playful and I laugh a lot. I love everyone to an extent. I am not trying to diss anybody but I feel  that what  Rokhsor said is not cool at all. I feel that this is what a drama queen would do. Like I understand where she is coming from but I do not feel that it is really that serious that you have to call the cops on someone. Especially if they are your friend. I would think it would be vise versa. I would think that she would do that to someone that she does not know, not someone who she knows and built a friendship with. Like I said before, I guess it depends on the type of person you are.

Warriors Don't Cry Part 3

In today's discussion me and my group discussed if we thought if it was the right thing for Melba to go to Central High school to integrate it. We also asked if she should be grateful that she went and integrated the school. Gina's answer to this question was that she thinks she should not be grateful about it. Peter said the same thing, that he believes that she should not be grateful about going to the school because of the experience she had, and because of the things she went through everyday. Although I see where they are coming from, I have to disagree with them. I feel that she should be grateful about going to Central, even though she was harassed and bothered throughout her high school experience. She was one of the great, brave leaders who made it possible for me to go to school with other races besides my own, and to get the same opportunities as them.

Another thing that we talked about was how the word "nigga" went from being an insult, thrown at blacks from whites, to being a way to greet people or just another word thrown around unconsciously. I feel that people don't really understand it, I see black people walk up to one another saying, "Wassup nigga." I don't think they know how long our people fought and how much they fought just to not be called that, and here we go seeing blacks calling each other that like it aint' nothing. Same thing goes with the bus, I am actually guilty for this one. Our people fought to be able to sit on the front of the bus. Rosa Parks went to jail just to sit in the front of the bus. Now if you look in the back of, there is a majority of black people. Do we not care about what our people fought for, or is it that we are to ignorant to see it.

Another thing we talked about was how she ended up marrying a white man, when in her high school years, she never pictured herself marrying a white man.  That is what the white people feared, and that was one of the reasons the whites didn't want the blacks integrating the schools because they felt that they would be grandparents of mixed babies. While Melba was in high school and she heard that they parents thought they would marry their kids, she said she would never do that she only wanted to get her education and leave. But in the future she ended  up marrying a white man. I feel that she should have married Link, which is the guy who saved her throughout her junior year at Central. I feel that if any white men, it should have been him, and plus he liked her but she was afraid they would get hurt because of the racial differences.

I love this book, and I like to know what my people went through. I always like to learn more about my history.

Response post: ShiYun

While going through Google Reader I came upon this quote from Shiyun that said,   

"Does our image really matter that much in our lives?"

With this quote, I feel that this is a very good question to ask with the society we live in today. To answer the question I will say that certain people feel their image is the most important thing in the world. Because people read magazines and books and watch movies, they see the body image that they think everyone should have. But what they fail to realize is that their body is perfect the way it is, but all they want is the perfect model body, that perfect skin, that long hair. I know for a fact that people's image is what drives them crazy, they get stressed out because they don't look like a model in the magazine, or because they don't have the body that a celebrity has.

IN the songs that we hear today, all they say is that they ant a girl with a big butt, and if they don't have a big butt then they are nobody's. I know that women and even girls get surgery to have big butts, or they wear pants thinking they will make them look like they have a butt, or they will wear the new underwear that have butt pads to make a person but look bigger. Another thing that drives people crazy to look good is they go on these diets that they think will help them, when in actuality they hurt them and even damage them for life. They become anorexic or because they feel they will get fat they will always throw up their food and become a bulimic. They have to have the perfect body, and they think people are lieing to them when they tell them they have the perfect body. Everyone around them sees they have a perfect body shape but they are so cought up in themselves that they can't see their beauty.

Warriors Don't Cry POst 2

We are now at the second paperclip. The book is getting very good. I am really into it now, I am really enjoying the fact that I get to know a little about what went on with some of my ancestors back in the days, and even some of my great aunts. IN this part along with a little of the first part, Malbe the main character is going through hell at this school and she starts to question her decison to go the Central to integrate it. On Thursday in our lit circle discussion groups we discussed a level three question. Gina asked a question about where the line is  drawn for a police officer between when he is a civilian just like any other person, and when he is on duty.

This question was a very deep question because in our story some of the police officers were throwing down their badges while standing to protect the Little Rock nine from getting killed. My response ton Gina's question was that I felt a police officer is always on duty, even when they are at home sleeping, they are on duty. We connected it to the Oscar grant case. About where the line is drawn for Meserly of when he can kill a person and call it doing his job, and when he kills a person and he is not on duty. and when he is a trained officer doing his job that he was told to do. I feel that if an officer throws down his badge then he is no longer on the line of office but if he stands up0 there like a man and follows the orders he is given, then he is more than a man and he has the right to kill to protect.

In the book because one of the girls got expelled things at the school got worse. One of the white men was a selfish man, he was willing to throw one of the black students to the mob in order to save his life and the lives of the other black kids. Luckily A man was there who had a complete different opiniopn as them and saved their lives. IN this book blacks are not treated as equals clearly and they are hated and they are wanted dean by many people. But will thewy survive the school year and get to summer break? I think they will, but I will soon find out.

Phrases That Will Make a Cao Girl Go Insane: Response

  While reading through my peers blogs I came upon a very interesting one that I can greatly connect to. I was reading Tiffany's posts and I saw this one that really grabbed my attention

." Oh My God." Why does it have to be God? Can't it be "Oh my goodness" or "Oh my gosh?" Tons of people use this phrase with respect and some people use it like it's a dust.

IN this post Tiffany is saying that this is one of the phrases that she hates people to say. She says it drives her insane. I can agree with her, it drives me insane as well but for a different reason and on a different level as hers. I am a Christian girl who reads the bible, and in the bible it says not to use God's name in vain. So since I was a little girl I was brought up not to say God's name in vain. When I hear people say it, to be honest it makes me feel weird because I was taught to not say that word.

When I am with my bestest friends who I grew up with they all know not to say God around her, and if anyone is around her and says "God" she will let them know that they are not allowed to say that around her. When I get with my friends I say OMGOSH! or even OMGOODNESS! If I am texting someone or putting a post on facebook I say OMGOSH! and OMGOODNESS! as well. I sometimes wonder why people don't say "Oh my gosh" but my mother doesn't even like me to say "Oh my Gosh" because she says the word "gosh" is to close to "God"

So agreeing with Tiffany people should really say gosh and goodness instead of God.

Warrior Don't Cry Blog Part One

I have chosen to read the book, Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals. Before I got this book, I did not know what this book was about. I later found out, after receiving the book that it was a bout a girl and her eight friends going through a period in time where segregation existed and they were the first black children to integrate schools. They were later called the Little Rock Nine. I really like reading this book, I am always eager to learn what my people went through to get the privileges I have now.

In class, in my book group some of the things that we discussed were, about Grandma India; the way they depend on the lord in everything they do. I asked a question about if the anyone in the group thinks that if Grandma India was in Africa would she believe in God (be a Christian), or if she would believe in Allah (be a Muslim). The response that I got back was that they think she would be Muslim because the white people are the ones who introduced Christianity to them. Regina said that if the whites would not have captured and enslaved the Africans then they would not have converted them to Christianity and they would depend on Allah instead of God. She also said that the reason so many blacks in present days are Christain are because the whites converted our people to Christians and that is what our people have been doing ever since slavery.

We also discussed how different Melba's(the main character) life was now that she was integrating the white school. We said that she just wanted to be a normal kid. She felt as if she was doing the correct thing. The Little Rock Nine all had parents who pushed them, all of their parents were considered in the high class of the black community. Melba's mother is a school teacher, and unlike today teachers were of high class back in those times. Me and Gina said that the black people who did not agree with the integration of the school felt as if them being segregated from the whites was as high as they could go. They felt as if because this life that they were living was so much better then slavery this is as far as they could ever go. But the people who believed this was good knew that it could only get better and the kids integrating the schools was a great step forward in being equal to the whites.

I am really enjoying reading this book. To be honest I have read ahead then I should have but I just had to know what would happen next. I do not real a lot of true stories but this one in particular is very interesting and I love it. I can't wait to read more.

"How The Garcia Giorls Lost Their Accents" Book Review

In English class we just finished reading the book, "How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez. In this book she uses a very unique writing style to tell this story. She has chosen very unique character with the same background and history, who all grew up to be different in all kinds of ways. Alvarez has chosen to write her book in reverse chronological order, this adds a little confusion but it is very unique. The characters stories really fit the style of writing, because they are all tied together in this book, the book is good. The main characters of the story are the four Garcia girls: Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofia; their parents: Carlos and Laura. Her unique characters and her unique style choice are both the foundation that make this a good book.

Alvarez has chosen a very creative way of telling the four girls stories. She first starts the book off when the girls were adults and have returned to their home in the Dominican Republic. This writing style is very creative, when the reader starts to read the book, it tells us how the girls ended up as grown women. In the second part it tells little stories of their lives of when the girls were teenagers and in their early twenties.In the second section of the book, she informs the readers of events that shaped the lives of the girls and in some ways affected how the girls grew up yo became who they were. In the last section of the book, behind the third paper clip, she tells the reader of how the girls were raised, what events occurred while they were younger. Before the reader even knows how the girls grew up, like it would be in a regular book, we read about how they end up and adults.

In the beginning of the book there is a quote that describes how old the four girls are, it also tells the reader how the mother felt about the girls. 

“The mother still calls the four girls even though the youngest is twenty-six and the oldest will be thirty-one next month” (Alvarez 40).

 This gives the reader a little understanding of how old the girls were in the first section of the book. This also lets the reader know that the mother still felt as if her daughters were little and she still feels as if they are still her little girls, just like any mother. All mothers find that if they have been calling their kids something since they were young they will continue calling them that, like some people say now, "Old habits die hard"

There was a main character in the book named Yolanda, she was the penultimate girl born into the family. Like her sisters she has experienced things both pleasant and unpleasant. In the last section of the book Yolanda, or as she was called by others Yoyo, was a little girl when she received a drum from her mamita. She played the drum all the time and she loved the drum, her mom did not like it as much and she was soon sent to go outside and play it. She ran into kittens in the back shed while playing outside one day and took the kitten that she liked the most. The mother of the kitten was not pleased with this and she heard her baby calling for her but Yolanda stuffed the kitten into her drum and beat on the top of the drum so the mother would not hear her baby calling for her. That night she went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night and

"Sitting on the foot of my bed, poking her face in so that the gauzy net was molded to her features like an awful death mask, was the black mother cat."

This happened night after night until they moved away to the States. I believe this is a symbol of how a mother protects her babies. Just like Yolanda's mother protected her and her sisters until they were old enough to protect themselves, the mother cat set fear into Yoyo because she had  harmed to one of her babies. The cat is a direct symbol of the mother protecting her babies and providing for them most of their life until they are old enough to fend for their own needs. Yolanda grows up to be a good woman.

As you find out in the beginning of the book, Yolanda grows up to be a wonderful  lady, but she has, like the title says, lost her accent along with her three sisters. They moved away to the Stated when they were little girls and while in the states they became accustomed to how the Americans lived and what they do. When she got back to the Dominican Republic she was not as fluent with her Spanish as she was when she was a little girl.  While in America Yolanda along with her sisters were exposed to things that she was never told of.  She was introduced to a lifestyle that she was not used to living in and people that she could not connect with.

"Alvarez's family was highly influenced by American attitudes and goods. Alvarez and her sisters attended an American school.Although she was thrilled to be back in America, she would soon face homesickness and the feeling of not fitting in. She missed her cousins, her family's large home, and the respect her family had in the Dominican Republic."

Any reader can see that this book was based on the life she lived in America while she was an  immigrant in America. I feel that overall this was a very good book. The reverse chronological order added a little confusion to the book but that along with the diverse and unique characters were the basis of this story. Without that style and these characters with their marvelous stories, this book would
  not have been as creative as it is.