‘Waste Land’ uses art to help people see reality and be empowered to make a change. Artist Vik Muniz uses recycled materials to create striking portraits of the workers who sort trash by hand at the Rio Grande Jenerio’s Jardim Gramacho. The landfill was the largest in the world, it closed after the documentary was filmed. From the sprawling hills and mountains of garbage, the workers collect plastics and other materials to sell to recyclers. It’s a stinky, fifthly and dangerous job. However, many of the pickers say that they are proud of their work. They keep recyclable material out of the waterways. Many of the laborers are Brazilians who have fallen on hard times, being a picker is often their only alternative to prostitution or trafficking
“Waste Land” and “Emmanuel’s Gift”, After watching these films, I have been thinking about the happiness to be found by work that is honest and valuable. I also thought about how hard some people are prepared to work, and how inspiring it is to see the individuals in these films find ideas to demonstrate the power of art and media to bring curiosity and cultural awareness in the poorest, most underprivileged people. “Waste Land” follows an artist Vik Muniz as he works on his art project in Brazil and the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho in Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs catadors or garbage pickers as they pick recyclable materials from the garbage. And upon meeting the characters at the landfill, Vik decides to turn the project into collaboration with the catadors. In the end, this collaboration reveals both dignity and despair in the lives of the catadors. “Emmanuel’s Gift”, is about Emmanuel Ofosu, a man born in Ghana with a deformed right leg, he bikes around the country to help raise awareness and build relationships in a culture that ridicules those with disabilities.
The fourth Chapter of Estella Blackburn’s non fiction novel Broken lives “A Fathers Influence”, exposes readers to Eric Edgar Cooke and John Button’s time of adolescence. The chapter juxtaposes the two main characters too provide the reader with character analyses so later they may make judgment on the verdict. The chapter includes accounts of the crimes and punishments that Cooke contended with from 1948 to 1958. Cooke’s psychiatric assessment that he received during one of his first convictions and his life after conviction, marring Sally Lavin. It also exposes John Button’s crime of truancy, and his move from the UK to Australia.
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, is one of the most famous historical fiction books ever written. This 352 paged book has inspired many teens to acknowledge the Genocide of Baltic people. Ruta Sepetys was inspired to write a fiction book instead of a non-fiction book based on the stories she heard from survivors of the genocide during a visit to her relatives in Lithuania. She interviewed dozens of people during her stay. Between Shades of Gray was her first novel that she had written. This book was interpreted well enough by the readers to become a New York Times Bestseller.
reacts to the crosser. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker’s first impression of the swamp
Ruta Sepetys is the author for Between the Shades of Gray, a novel that captures the truth of Siberian camps and the annexation of the Balkans by Stalin. Ruta Sepetys got the idea to write this fictional story when she visited her family in Lithuania and got the chance to discover more about her heritage. She got very fascinated about her family’s struggle to keep memories of her grandparents because of the annexation of Lithuania to the USSR. This conflict urged her to find out more about the feelings and people’s memoirs during this period in World War II so, she started interviewing the survivors from the Siberian gulags and gathered information to write her novel. The book was also inspired by her father, Jonas Sepetys, who escape the Stalin furry with his family when he was a little boy. This fictional account is part of a historical event filled with several true stories intertwined to create this wonderful story filled with love, hope, pain and tears. Ruta said, “I took two research trips to Lithuania while writing the novel. I interviewed family members, survivors of the deportations, survivors of the gulags, psychologists, historians and government officials. The experience was life-altering. I spent time in one of the train cars that was used for the deportations. I also agreed to take part in an extreme simulation experiment and was locked in a former Soviet prison. Let’s just say the experience left me certain that I never would have survived the deportations.” In an interview with conducted by rutasepetys.com. She started writing Between the Shades of Gray in 2005 after several visits to Lithuania. Sepetys said in a blog that she wrote titled “My Family’s Story” that her main goal while writing this book was “On...
The fundamental characteristic of magical realism is its duality, which enables the reader to experience both the character’s past and the present. In the novel, Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson uses this literary device to address the the trauma and mistreatment of the Haisla community in Canada by unveiling the intimate memories of the protagonist, Lisamarie, and the resulting consequences of this oppression. Monkey Beach illustrates how abuse in the past leads to another form of self-medication in the future - a neverending, vicious cycle for the members of the Haisla community. Many characters in Monkey Beach are scarred from childhood sexual abuse and family neglect, and resort to drug and alcohol abuse as a coping mechanism. These appalling memories are an account of the impact of colonization on the Haisla territory which continues to haunt the Aboriginal community throughout generations.
David W. Blight's book Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory and the American Civil War, is an intriguing look back into the Civil War era which is very heavily studied but misunderstood according to Blight. Blight focuses on how memory shapes history Blight feels, while the Civil War accomplished it goal of abolishing slavery, it fell short of its ultimate potential to pave the way for equality. Blight attempts to prove that the Civil War does little to bring equality to blacks. This book is a composite of twelve essays which are spilt into three parts. The Preludes describe blacks during the era before the Civil War and their struggle to over come slavery and describes the causes, course and consequences of the war. Problems in Civil War memory describes black history and deals with how during and after the war Americans seemed to forget the true meaning of the war which was race. And the postludes describes some for the leaders of black society and how they are attempting to keep the memory and the real meaning of the Civil War alive and explains the purpose of studying historical memory.
In the poem pride, Dahlia Ravikovitch uses many poetic devices. She uses an analogy for the poem as a whole, and a few metaphors inside it, such as, “the rock has an open wound.” Ravikovitch also uses personification multiple times, for example: “Years pass over them as they wait.” and, “the seaweed whips around, the sea bursts forth and rolls back--” Ravikovitch also uses inclusive language such as when she says: “I’m telling you,” and “I told you.” She uses these phrases to make the reader feel apart of the poem, and to draw the reader in. She also uses repetition, for example, repetition of the word years.
Each person brings a special quality and gift to life that creates an individualistic style to the world that we live in. The poem Perfection Wasted was written by John Updike in the year 1990; this poem accentuates the flair that can never be replaced when a loved one dies. One way to better understand a poem is to paraphrase it into your own words. Paraphrase of Perfection Wasted:
The first encounter with Helga Crane, Nella Larsen’s protagonist in the novel Quicksand, introduces the heroine unwinding after a day of work in a dimly lit room. She is alone. And while no one else is present in the room, Helga is accompanied by her own thoughts, feelings, and her worrisome perceptions of the world around her. Throughout the novel, it becomes clear that most of Helga’s concerns revolve around two issues- race and sex. Even though there are many human character antagonists that play a significant role in the novel and in the story of Helga Crane, such as her friends, coworkers, relatives, and ultimately even her own children, her race and her sexuality become Helga’s biggest challenges. These two taxing antagonists appear throughout the novel in many subtle forms. It becomes obvious that racial confusion and sexual repression are a substantial source of Helga’s apprehensions and eventually lead to her tragic demise.
Throughout a lifetime, one can run through many different personalities that transform constantly due to experience and growing maturity, whether he or she becomes the quiet, brooding type, or tries out being the wild, party maniac. Richard Yates examines acting and role-playing—recurring themes throughout the ages—in his fictional novel Revolutionary Road. Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple living miserably in suburbia, experience relationship difficulties as their desire to escape grows. Despite their search for something different, the couple’s lack of communication causes their planned move to Europe to fall through. Frank and April Wheeler play roles not only in their individual searches for identity, but also in their search for a healthy couple identity; however, the more the Wheelers hide behind their desired roles, the more they lose sense of their true selves as individuals and as a pair.
Sidewalk is a book written by Mitchell Duneier, an American sociology professor at Princeton University, in 1999; where the book has gained a lot of favorable reviews, leading its winning the Los Angeles Times Book prize and C. Wright Mills Award. Similarly, the book had become a classic in urban studies, especially due to the interesting methodology, which was used by Duneier while he was conducting his research. The book is based on observations, participant observation and interviews, which gave the author the ability to live and interact with the book and magazine vendors on daily bases. Although, this gave him an insight into the life of the sidewalk, many methodological issues have concerned scholars and students of sociology since the day this book was published. Duneier had admitted during the book that he couldn’t be completely subjective while conducting his research and writing his book due to his involvement and personal relationship with people who work and live at the sidewalk, which raise the question, whether the research is still relevant if the researcher is only giving us an objective outcome?
1. What is the central idea discussed in the book (what is this book about)?
Imagine being a child during war where your lose your family and are forced to leave the country. In the novel, The Other Side of the Sky by Farah Ahmedi, a young girl faces many challenges. She changes from a shy girl to a confident young woman. She loses her leg in a mine explosion, she then flees to America, and then she has to adjust to American life. Through these painful obstacles, Farah learns to not be afraid of starting over.
Later on, they took pictures of the people who works there. He took pictures of a woman called Isis, who works at the landfill. They are imitating an artwork from another artist, but they are doing it at the landfill with the background of the garbage and the pickers. He took pictures of women called Irma and Magna. They took a picture of a girl called Salem and her children; then the image was reflected on the floor to make a large-scale artwork and they filled the spot with recyclable garbage to make the artwork. They did the same thing with the pictures of Zumbi, Tiao, Isis, Irma, and Magna. The pickers helped with the artwork because it is made of recyclable garbage. The artwork can be more appreciated above the land. Vik took pictures of each artwork to sell them and give the money to the pickers. Vik and Tiao went to London to sell them and the artwork of Tiao was sold for 20,000 dollars. Each person that helped with the artwork wanted a new life, some of them didn’t want to come back to the landfill, some were still working there but they were proud of it. After that, Vik opened a gallery that can be found the pictures of the artwork. His solo show at MAM in Rio de Janeiro was second only to Picasso in attendance records; it was here that Vik first exhibited his “Pictures of Garbage Series” in Brazil.