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I took the poem “Snapping Beans” by Lisa Parker and personalized it. I took her original meaning about feeling homesick, and turned it into a poem about feeling the exact opposite of being homesick: joyfulness about being in a new environment that is more inclusive and open-minded towards LGBTQ+ people. My response poem draws heavily from my personal experience as a gay person raised in a small conservative town in the South by a religious family. While it might seem like at first that I resent my family members back home, I chose to include the line about the “slow-simmering guilt of leaving everyone I love behind despite finally being happy” to show that I still value and love them the people that I spent my formative years with. While I …show more content…
completely disagree with the religious views that they hold, and raised me on, I respect their right to hold them. It took me a long time after I came out to view them in the same way as I did before. And while I might not be able to view them entirely the same, as I have gotten older I have begun to resent them less.
As I got older, and once my stink as a “social justice warrior” (which only extended to a certain point, and never at my family members houses) ended, I began to view them as everyone else: flawed humans. We’re all flawed human, and I am no exception, and some people just need time to learn and accept other people who are different from them. Harvey Milk once said that “Every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends if indeed they are your friends. You must tell the people you work with. You must tell the people in the stores you shop in. Once they realize that we are indeed their children, that we are indeed …show more content…
everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and all. And once you do, you will feel so much better.” And while it’s definitely not safe for every LGBTQ+ person to come out, I knew that while it would be hard for me to, I would be relatively safe to do so (with most of my family members). My version differs from the original because I write about not being homesick, unlike the author of the original.
The narrator talks about how her new life at, assumedly, college and how it is different from the raising that she had. She talks about “[crying] into the familiar heartsick panels of the quilt she made me, wishing myself home on the evening star.” In my poem, I also talk about how my life in college is different than what my family back home might expect from me, but I, however, do not view this with sadness like Parker’s character does. What was originally just a poem about being homesick, is now one with social commentary. The purpose of my poem, however, is not the same as the small-town-gay-boy-moves-far-away-and-never-sees-his-family-again story, but a story that I feel is more realistic. For many LGBTQ+ people, financial dependence on our parents/family requires us to remain civil with queerphobic family members, regardless of any hard feelings we might have towards
them. Another line that I chose to keep was the line about speaking in an accent. Growing up in Tennessee, and later Kentucky, I, and many of my family members, have accents. When I got older I tried to hide my accent because I did not want to be associated with “hicks.” But once I got to college I finally stopped policing myself when it came to my accent. And while it is not as noticeably thick as it used to be, I still have moments where people comment on how Southern it is sometimes. While the narrator of the original poem views her accent as something that she is embarrassed about, it was something I wanted to talk about embracing now that I’ve moved away from home.
Catalase is a common enzyme that is produced in all living organisms. All living organisms are made up of cells and within the cells, enzymes function to increase the rate of chemical reactions. Enzymes function to create the same reactions using a lower amount of energy. The reactions of catalase play an important role to life, for example, it breaks down hydrogen peroxide into oxygen and water. Our group developed an experiment to test the rate of reaction of catalase in whole carrots and pinto beans with various concentrations of hydrogen peroxide. Almost all enzymes are proteins and proteins are made up of amino acids. The areas within an enzyme speed up the chemical reactions which are known as the active sites, and are also where the
“Twinkle, twinkle little star. How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high. Like a diamond in the sky.” In “Snapping Beans,” by Lisa Parker, there are numerous symbols, but the most significant and sentimental one is the evening star. Lisa exploits the evening star to demonstrate how the same thing can still emerge worlds apart, yet at the same time tie people together.
The speaker’s rocky encounter with her ex-lover is captured through personification, diction, and tone. Overall, the poem recaps the inner conflicts that the speak endures while speaking to her ex-lover. She ponders through stages of the past and present. Memories of how they were together and the present and how she feels about him. Never once did she broadcast her emotions towards him, demonstrating the strong facade on the outside, but the crumbling structure on the inside.
In Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Bean Trees, Taylor Greer tries to escape turning out like everyone else in Pittman County; she has dreams of becoming something besides a teenage bride or a high school drop out. The Bean Trees, a perfect representation of an authentic Bildungsroman portrays someone who undergoes a life altering change, which will in turn send them on their way to becoming a full fledged adult. Karl Morgenstern coined the word bildungsroman, which means novel of formation in German. Loss can be used as one way to open protagonist’s eyes to the world beyond their hometown. In a Bildungsroman, the general goal can be maturity, and the protagonist achieves adulthood slowly and painfully. The protagonist eventually accepts the
In this poem, there is a young woman and her loving mother discussing their heritage through their matrilineal side. The poem itself begins with what she will inherit from each family member starting with her mother. After discussing what she will inherit from each of her family members, the final lines of the poem reflect back to her mother in which she gave her advice on constantly moving and never having a home to call hers. For example, the woman describes how her father will give her “his brown eyes” (Line 7) and how her mother advised her to eat raw deer (Line 40). Perhaps the reader is suggesting that she is the only survivor of a tragedy and it is her heritage that keeps her going to keep safe. In the first two lines of the poem, she explains how the young woman will be taking the lines of her mother’s (Lines 1-2). This demonstrates further that she is physically worried about her features and emotionally worried about taking on the lineage of her heritage. Later, she remembered the years of when her mother baked the most wonderful food and did not want to forget the “smell of baking bread [that warmed] fined hairs in my nostrils” (Lines 3-4). Perhaps the young woman implies that she is restrained through her heritage to effectively move forward and become who she would like to be. When reading this poem, Native American heritage is an apparent theme through the lifestyle examples, the fact lineage is passed through woman, and problems Native Americans had faced while trying to be conquested by Americans. Overall, this poem portrays a confined, young woman trying to overcome her current obstacles in life by accepting her heritage and pursuing through her
There were many sacrificial elements that existed in The Bean Trees. Sacrifices that the characters in the novel made for the benefit of others or themselves. These sacrifices played a role almost as significant as some of the characters in the book. Some prime examples of these sacrifices are Mattie’s will to offer sanction to illegal immigrants, the fact that Taylor sacrificed the whole success of her excursion by taking along an unwanted, abused Native-American infant, and Estevan and Esperanza’s decision to leave behind their daughter for the lives of seventeen other teacher union members.
If I were asked who the most precious people in my life are, I would undoubtedly answer: my family. They were the people whom I could lean on to matter what happens. Nonetheless, after overhearing my mother demanded a divorce, I could not love her as much as how I loved her once because she had crushed my belief on how perfect life was when I had a family. I felt as if she did not love me anymore. Poets like Philip Levine and Robert Hayden understand this feeling and depict it in their poems “What Work Is” and “Those Winter Sundays.” These poems convey how it feels like to not feel love from the family that should have loved us more than anything in the world. Yet, they also convey the reconciliation that these family members finally reach because the speakers can eventually see love, the fundamental component of every family in the world, which is always presence, indeed. Just like I finally comprehended the reason behind my mother’s decision was to protect me from living in poverty after my father lost his job.
The author clearly shows how his childhood effected his adulthood, making in a living example of what he is writing about allowing the audience to more easily trust what he is writing about. Instead of using factually evidence from other dysfunctional family incidences, the author decides to make it more personal, by using his own life and comparing family ideas of the past to the present.
How would you feel if you had family problems? In 1987, Sandra Cisneros released a novel called My Wicked, Wicked Ways. In the book, she has a poem also named “My Wicked, Wicked Ways.” The poem about the narrator looking at an old picture. The narrator then has flashbacks about his family. The narrator mentions what the father did, and how the mother reacted to the father’s actions. During the flashback, it is revealed that the father is cheating on his wife. The mother, gets mad at the father, but the father doesn’t stop. The mother ends up getting used to the father’s infidelity, and just lets it happen for the next few years. At the end of the flashback, the narrator speaks in a disappointed, but smug, tone about how he was the baby being held by the mother in the picture. After drawing out the connotations and the shifts of the poem, I can say the theme of this poem is “In society,
The Bean Trees is a novel which shows Taylor’s maturation; it is a bildungsroman story. Taylor is a developing or dynamic character. Her moral qualities and outlook undergo a permanent change. When the novel begins, Taylor is an independent-minded young woman embarking on an adventure to a new world. She has no cares or worries. She is confident in her abilities, and is determined to make it through life on her own. As she discovers new things and meets new people, Taylor is exposed to the realities of the world. She learns about the plight of abandoned children and of illegal immigrants. She learns how to give help and how to depend upon the help of others. As she interacts with others, those people are likewise affected by Taylor. The other developing characters are Lou Ann Ruiz, Turtle, and Esperanza. Together they learn the importance of interdependence and find their confidence.
Write a composition based on the novel you have studied discussing the basis for and impact of individual choices. What idea does the author develop regarding choices?
The poem also focuses on what life was like in the sixties. It tells of black freedom marches in the South how they effected one family. It told of how our peace officers reacted to marches with clubs, hoses, guns, and jail. They were fierce and wild and a black child would be no match for them. The mother refused to let her child march in the wild streets of Birmingham and sent her to the safest place that no harm would become of her daughter.
... overall themes, and the use of flashbacks. Both of the boys in these two poems reminisce on a past experience that they remember with their fathers. With both poems possessing strong sentimental tones, readers are shown how much of an impact a father can have on a child’s life. Clearly the two main characters experience very different past relationships with their fathers, but in the end they both come to realize the importance of having a father figure in their lives and how their experiences have impacted their futures.
The author uses imagery, contrasting diction, tones, and symbols in the poem to show two very different sides of the parent-child relationship. The poem’s theme is that even though parents and teenagers may have their disagreements, there is still an underlying love that binds the family together and helps them bridge their gap that is between them.
She defines her idea of what is right in a relationship by describing how hard and painful it is for her to stray from that ideal in this instance. As the poem evolves, one can begin to see the author having a conflict with values, while simultaneously expressing which values are hers and which are unnatural to her. She accomplishes this accounting of values by personalizing her position in a somewhat unsettling way throughout the poem.