My personal choice memoir was The World is Moving Around Me by Dany Laferrière, it was a memoir about the Haiti earthquake. Throughout the memoir Laferrière conveys not only his emotions, but his peers. His choice of words and phrases made this novel not only about the Haiti earthquake, but the country of Haiti and its people. His fixed descriptions show this event didn’t only move him physically, but mentally. Lastly, Laferrières connection to the people out side of Haiti, specifically the United States is key to show the world wide impact. I found that the moments Laferrière stated facts about Haiti and not the Haiti earthquake, I was drawn in more. In the novel the first thing Laferrière tells the reader about is the essence of Haiti after the earthquake. Although different I believe this is the perfect way to draw the reader in. Like Laferrière wrote “You don’t get to know a culture by watching TV documentaries.”(Laferrière 58). So to ensure this held its reliability as well as vulnerability he limited the fact stating that the news did. Therefore talking about Haiti and its people,
Laferrières writing caused you to feel multiple feeling due to his metaphors and key choice of words. Some excerpts that show this are “The enemy isn’t time, but all those things we’ve accumulated with the passage of time”(Laferrière 20), “A game of musical chairs the entire city was playing. There was a lot more people than chairs when the music started”(Laferrière 38), and “the pain I read in his eyes is so private I realize I’m intruding”(Laferrière 61). The first one could have been left to something so basic and plain, but instead Laferrières writing style turns it in poetry. The second excerpt seems to lightens the mood, with an almost childlike view of the situation. The last one allows you to live the moment, to feel the
Personal Response-I thought the book I am a Seal Team Six Warrior by Howard Wasdin was very good and intense. The book was about a Seal Team Six Warrior named Howard Wasdin. It told how courageous Howard Wasdin had to be to survive being a Navy Seal.
War. Author Michael Shaara does an excellent job of showing the bravery and valor of
The story “The Old Man Isn’t There Anymore” by Kellie Schmitt is about a lady who lives in China that tries to make friends with the people in her apartment. She does this by sending sympathy flowers to the family of the old man that passed away. She then later attends the funeral of the old man. In the end Schmitt creates a funny twist. Schmitt created an intriguing story about a person’s experience in China.
The book I enjoyed most in the past year is A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. The story switches back and forth between the diary of Nao, a suicidal teenage girl who is determined to record the life story of her great-grandmother Jiko, and Ruth, a women who lives on a remote Pacific island and discovered Nao’s diary washed up on the shore, as a result of the 2011 tsunami in Japan. After reading a few pages of the diary, Ruth is mesmerized by it and decided to find out about Nao’s life. The book covered numerous themes, including Zen Buddhism, natural disaster, Kamikaze pilots, suicide, bullying, quantum mechanics, and time. But something that intrigued me the most is the personal growth of Nao.
Words can have a profound, meaningful impact that may alter, shift, and even end lives. In “Create Dangerously”, Edwidge Danticat reveals how words crafted her reality and identity as a woman who lived through a dictatorship. “Create Dangerously” is a nonfiction essay and memoir that focuses on the impact of literature not only in dire times, but in everyday life. Through the use of detail, allusions, and vivid recounting of the past in her writing, Danticat reveals importance and valor of creating art in times where art is a death sentence, and how this belief shaped her identity.
Hurricane Katrina a catastrophe that changed lives of many peoples, people were left without food and water for days. That storm itself did a great damage lead to the massive flooding,
The story “The Fourth of July” by Audre Lorde demonstrates that she comes across a realization that she had to speak up for her rights and independence when she visited the capital city of the United States, Washington, D.C. Lorde explains how she was frustrated with the situation that occurred in Washington, D.C., which shows that she had learned the reality of the society. She writes about many things that she came across during the trip to Washington D.C. in the summer vacation. In the essay, the meanings of independence for Lorde are to fight for it and to speak up for the rights that they deserve. Lorde and her family visit many places in the capital city where they were told to leave the place because black people were not allowed there.
Many believe that the interrelations between the “I” and the “not- I”, the self and the other is the essential relationship in order to understand fantasy literature. As Rosemary Jackson stipulated in her text Fantasy: the Literature of Subversion the limitations of realist novels comes from their “rational, ‘mono- logical’ world” (172) were “otherness cannot be known or represented except was foreign, irrational” (172). She goes on to suggest that since the other cannot be accepted it is “either rejected altogether… or written out as romance or as fable” (172). The concept of the “I” and the “not- I” within fantasy literature is what has allowed this growing form of writing to explore the deep, shadowy and sometimes vicious depths of the human psyche we attempt to hide, while elaborating upon the art of the fantasy novel in modern literature. Dan Simmons Song of Kali heavily relies on the interrelationship between the “I” and the “not- I” in order to broaden the readers journey into the fantastic world they have created. Literary works such as Song of Kali that utilize these ideas of the self and the otherness call upon the traditional and seemingly logical base of the Western culture and society in order keep themselves grounded in “the self.” Through these literary techniques Simmons novel seeks to question the authenticity of what we call modernity as well as the inexplicable and untouchable worlds of the taboo and magical. These realms are called into questions in order to understand how they relate to the loss or finding of the “I” and the “not- I.” Through the exploration of these ideas and themes, it is evident that the relationship between the “self” and the otherness is essential in providing fantasy literature with thei...
After thorough analysis and interpretation, we determined that the poem ‘Let Everything Happen To You’, by Natalie Eilbert, revolves around a central theme regarding decisions and their effects. Though Eilbert’s poem never explicitly reveals a decision or effect that the main character goes through, we noticed some elements in the text that hint towards a decision that the narrator regrets. In the beginning of the poem, the narrator paints a pleasant, nostalgic picture, reflecting upon a childhood memory. However, the story shifts to a darker tone as fear, aching, and pain enter the character’s emotions in later lines. Despite the narrator’s claims that these feelings do not matter, when she foregoes details about what happened, we saw through
‘’The woman thing’’ by Audre Lorde reflects more on her life as a woman, this poem relates to the writers work and also has the theme of feminism attached it. The writers role in this poem is to help the women in discovering their womanhood just as the title say’s ‘’the woman thing.’’ The poem is free verse and doesn’t have a rhyme to it and has twenty-five lines.
Homesick I’ll be Home for Christmas is a huge Christmas hit by Meghan Trainor about complications in a person’s life impeding them from being home during the holidays but he/she promises their family or lover that they will be home for Christmas. The sensational hit by Meghan Trainor brings warm and loving memories of Christmas and what it's all about through different literary devices such as dialogue, imagery, and repetition. Throughout the song, Meghan Trainor used dialogue in order to create a mood of conversation. As for the first example (Trainor 1:2) “He said winter love is spreading everywhere”.
Patti Smith 's, Just Kids, embarks on her journey towards freedom and breaking away from any of her family tradition that she felt she may have had to follow as a child. It was the fifties, and at that time, the role of women was nothing short of performing female tasks. Smith recounts the moments in her childhood where she would feel resentment towards her mother, as she watched her perform female, motherly tasks, and noted her well-endowed female body (Smith 5). To Patti Smith, it all seemed against her nature. The heavy scent of perfume, the red slashes of lipstick, revolted her. She wanted to be different, to create her own self-image. Ironically enough, it was through her androgynous image, that Patti Smith was able to capture the attention
Two of the novels I have chosen to write about is ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho and ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’ by Jean-Dominique Bauby. The reason I have chosen these books is because they are my top two favorites out of the four novels we have read and they are the most intriguing to me. What makes The Alchemist stand out is because it has a very inspirational lesson or moral in the end. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly however, triggers the more emotional side and yet again is very inspirational considering the idea that Mr. Bauby wrote a book communicating with only blinking his left eyelid.
For my book I chose to read The Body by Stephen King. This novel is about four young boys taking a journey to find a body somewhere in the woods that is at the county line. This story is about more than just four boys going on an adventure its about them becoming closer to each other and learning real life lessons along the way. The four boys are all going into their first year of middle school so this is a time in their life when they learn things that will help them in life.
“Talking to Grief,” by Denise Levertov approaches the topic of grief by using a homeless dog as the primary symbol in which we see the dog make the transition from acceptance to becoming a permanent household member. The theme of the poem is the welcoming and acceptance of grief and viewing it as a friend rather than an enemy. The narrator gets the point across that grief is a misunderstood companion and sometimes needs to be present for the sake of healing.