Advanced Essay #2, The Power Of Words

Jacobo Pastor

Mr. Block

Advanced Essay 2

December 10th, 2017


Introduction: My goal for this essay was to showcase the power of words and effective communication, as they are the keys to success. I am proud of how every piece in my essay connects to my analysis. I feel like an area of improvement would be trying to get the message across using fewer sentences.

The Power Of Words


Following the whispers of the visitors, I entered a room filled with all sorts of emotions. Everywhere I looked, I saw the representations of feelings expressed by the many strokes of paint.  Those vivid landscapes filled my nostrils, making them able to inhale history and the interesting stories those canvases were able to display. Although I wasn’t capable of understanding the meaning of the paintings, I sensed that some of those pieces were able to transmit better stories than others. I realized that I was feeling more attracted to the art pieces with a better narrative. I realized that artist use their talents with more or less success as we all do when we articulate our ideas and express ourselves.

As I approached the Civil War years part of the exhibit, my mind went back 70 years, to a time I did not witness, but a time that I learned about from the many stories my grandmother used to tell me. Unlike the art, I was able to understand better and relate to those stories. I remember that she explained to me how the Museum used to be a hospital and a refuge from the bombing during the Spanish Civil War.  My fingers tingled, uneasy with the idea that I was standing in a place where thousands of people lost their lives over the course of three long years of war and terror. My ears could hear the alarm sirens and the people running to the basement to save their lives. Somehow the old words of my grandmother were making me see what art couldn’t. I saw my mom and sister walking nearby, looking at the art as if they were reading a poem, understanding every single stroke and detail. I wasn’t surprised when I saw my mom lost in her thoughts, as if the weight of past were on her shoulders. I held her arm, and with my sister, we continued talking about the art and life of the southern genius who was exiled in France never to come back.

Lost in the conversation, we made it to the heart of the exhibit, The Guernica by Pablo Picasso. Although I was surprised by its massive size and monochromatic palette, the enormous black, white and grey masterpiece about our war, about any war, did not capture my imagination. I knew the painting was important, but still, I couldn’t get interested in it. I felt frustrated with the idea of not understanding art as other people could. I could see all the details of the artwork but I wasn’t able to express myself. I saw the big bull which Picasso often used in his art to represent Spain. I saw the mother crying, a universal symbol of horror and desolation. I saw a lamp, a vivid portrayal of one of the many bombs. The masterpiece was there, in front of me, and I did not like it. But, how could I say that?

“Jacobo, what do you think? Isn’t it formidable?” My mother stated with teary eyes.

In that moment I made a connection with my art analogy. Just as an artist chooses very carefully their way to make an impact on their audience, I made sure to choose the correct words to impress my mom. I answered,  “Mom, I have an ambivalent feeling.”

I have noticed that my mother loved my expression. She looked at me with an enthusiastic interest.

“And…?” My mother asked.

“It is powerful but also so devastating.” I continued, using both my hands to express how big my devastation was.

My mother looked at me with love and approval. I escaped from her reach, making myself busy looking at other details of the painting. I remembered that in that moment, I realized how important my choice of words can be when trying to look smart and profound. I have never forgotten that lesson.

That day I learned that unless you make stories interesting or fascinating, they are just ideas, or thoughts. The storytelling is what matters. Many people believe that there are many shapes and forms of literacy, in my opinion, the literacy I understand best is the verbal communication between two individuals. Literacy has an important role in society, and although it is an injustice for many, the ability to be articulate determines your socio-economic status. Mireille Guiliano agrees with this idea, “Intelligence, knowledge or experience are important and might get you a job, but strong communication skills are what will get you promoted.” People communicate in many situations, such as in interviews or relationships, and only those who understand that words matter in our society, will have an advantage.

I’ve come to realize that I can not underestimate literacy, and the ability to communicate what I think and feel.  Therefore I must be aware of the power of words and effective communication, as they are the keys to my future success.  


Works cited: “Bio.” Mireille Guiliano » Women, Work & the Art of Savoir Faire Q&A, 25 Oct. 2013, mireilleguiliano.com/content/iwomen-work-art-savoir-fairei-qa.







Advanced Essay #2 Politics

Introduction:
The goal of my essay was to point out the fact that those with less money are destined to talk a different way that is not accepted by the working world. If you talk a way that is considered improper it is harder to get a job and survive in America

Advanced Essay:

Speech in society is judged by the populace. The type of speech that is acceptable depends on the culture of the country or area. For example what is acceptable speech at home would not be considered acceptable speech in the working world. In today's American culture the extent to which a person can effectively speak English contributes heavily to whether they lead a successful life. There is also a definite correlation between economic status and the way someone speaks, when a person who is of low economic status has a habit of speaking in a way that is improper it leads to them not being able to succeed in the future. Specific victims of speech harming a person's chances are immigrants, and inner city African Americans.According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics the African American unemployment rate is 3% higher than the national average I blame this on our “African American vernacular” and how its not acceptable in America's Culture


In one story I read, it talked about the black vernacular or the language that African Americans use to talk to each other. He justifies their use of the English language, while I think this is a good thing it limits African Americans. If society only accepts one way to speak it's necessary for economic survival to conform to that.


It was first grade and I was sitting in my least favorite class, speech therapy. Around me were two of my friends, which wasn’t a coincidence, and the teacher of my first grade class

“One, Two, Three,” I said over and over again

The worst part about speech therapy is that they never tell you what you’re saying or doing wrong, they just tell you to repeat the words you mess up until you get it right. While in the class I was constantly wondering why I was there, I myself couldn’t find anything wrong with my speech. Looking back now I realize that I picked up a lot of language while talking to my friends and hearing my Dad speak to me, my Dad didn’t have a specific incorrect way of speaking but he always switched from the way he talked at work and around co-workers compared to when he was home.

“No, you have to pronounce the R correctly,” my teacher said

I finally knew something I was doing wrong from the perspective of my teacher. But from my eyes I was speaking the right way, I was speaking the way my dad spoke when he spoke at home. But I now know that in society the way I knew was right wasn't.


In Mother Tongue Tan provides insight into how her mothers language affected her life “I think my mother's English almost had an effect on limiting my possibilities,”(Tan, 3). While I do not think the way my parents speak will affect my future in life, I know it will and does for other people and their parents. African Americans, Asians, Hispanics and anybody else who has an origin that is not from an English speaking country can fall victim to people associating speech with intelligence. Speech in America is a way to put down those already at a disadvantage, James Baldwin said perfectly that “Language is also a political instrument,” (Baldwin, 1). Employers choose not to hire people who don't talk within the cultural standard. Some employers choose not to hire these people without thinking of the reason they talk with their altered English. While there are many reasons people and cultures have a specific way of speaking, an example I can think of in America is slavery. During and after slavery African Americans were not allowed to be taught English at all, it was to prevent them from escaping their imprisonment and backstabbing their slave owners. After slavery, African Americans were segregated into poorer schools, this lasted until 1964 which was only about 50 years ago. In today's culture the effect of slavery can still be seen. African Americans have a higher than average poverty and unemployment rate and one of the causes for this is the fact that they were never accepted into the culture of America, instead they chose to make their own.


Something said by Baldwin many years ago still holds true“If you are not a participant in the culture of power being told the rules of that culture makes acquiring power easier.” (Baldwin, 1) There are exceptions to what I’ve said above and that pertains to people who have forgotten their culture or choose to hide when in sight of those who do not accept it. My Dad is an example of this, like everybody does, he code switches between using the language his culture taught him and using the language cultural capital taught him this allowed him to see success in America. But is the fact that he had to code switch to succeed in America really a bad thing?


Baldwin, James. "If Black English Isn't A Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?." Nytimes.com. N. p., 1979. Web.  July. 1979.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-english.html


Tran, Amy, “Mother Tongue.”

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Cvq7ioloJpZGNkYTM0ZjUtNDczZC00NWE2LWEyMTQtMjgzZDRhYTAzNTBi/view


“Bureau of Labor Statistics Data.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000006.


Advanced Essay #2 Chinlish

Introduction
Overall my goal of this essay is to show that a lot of people don't speak a perfect language but instead speak it in their own way. A way that makes them most comfortable. I am proud to be able to rewrite my whole essay and turn it into something special. And I feel like I can improve on the analytical part of the essay.

Advanced Essay

Generally, everyone learned their first word from their family. As I grew up learning English and Chinese, I remembered those days when I would run into people where I have a hard time speaking to in Chinese because of how I grew up learning it. One day, my mother was speaking to me about my Chinese. About how I only knew so little of it, and it was true.

Feeling helpless, my mother said jokingly, “You’re so useless, you can’t even speak Chinese that properly and if I were to ever take you to China you would be so lost.”

I never attended  Chinese school like the other kids did. So I didn’t expect myself to speak the “Chinese” like they do. Technically I did go to Chinese school for a year, but stopped, and it was terrible, I learned absolutely nothing. It’s like when you were in preschool and all you do is draw and run around and have fun. My parents would’ve taken me to Chinese school if they had the time to, and they didn’t, which is why I could only learn so much from my parents. When I started to learn English, I started to mix my Chinese with my English, so the words in Chinese I didn’t know would be substituted in English. I guess I can call it Chinlish. This was generally a family thing, I did it to most of my family and my siblings does too, except for the ones that didn’t understand English at all.

The way I speak with my families and close one are a lot different than how I would talk to another person in chinese. In Mother Tongue, Amy Tan points out how the way she speaks English and what that English they used has become: “It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language I grew up with” (Tan, 1). In the way I speak Chinese to my family is typically another way of how I speak to my family. Just like in Mother Tongue, Tan can say her mother speaks broken English. And in my case, I can say I speak “broken Chinese,” or Chinlish(Chinese and English together). This is what you can consider a type of literacy, the different forms of languages you take on and if you dig a little deeper how you use these languages in a way you feel most comfortable. When I run into a Chinese person that doesn’t speak English, I would feel uncomfortable because I have to speak in a way I’m not used to or I’ll not know what to say. Which will make the person I’m talking to think I’m stupid or uneducated.

   In a place like China, people would expect you to speak and understand Chinese fully. And there are three languages that fall into the category of Chinese which is Mandarin, Cantonese, Fuzhounese. My parents knows how to speak all three, I only know a few words in each languages mainly the words my parents often used, which are pretty much consider foul words. But besides that, the language I grew up with I can barely speak one without throwing an english words in. So if I were to go to China one day, I would run into a lot of trouble and probably be considered out of place.

When I look at languages throughout the world I can see similar situations happening. A good example is Amy Tran in Mother Tongue, she has a similar situation but with english. It’s how she has a way of speaking english to her close ones. In anyone's case it all depends on what circumstances you are under. Everyone talks different in a environment they are in, and some talks the same too.

Overall, the way I speak Chinese will always be fine throughout my family, but I constantly have have to speak a certain way in the environment I am in. I cannot have a conversation with the way I speak to my family to other people who would not understand what I’m saying. I have to speak the language they are most comfortable with. It’s like how I talk to my friends and how I talk to strangers. Overall people will feel more comfortable with their friends than strangers. I can’t just talk to someone in a different language or way because they’ll just be confused and awkward. So I’ll have to switch the way I speak to where I am, even though it may be difficult, especially in Chinese, I’ll only fail a couple times.


Advanced Essay #2 - More Than Words


Introduction


The goals of this paper is to elaborate on the fact that there is uniqueness to all languages. It is not simply a form of communication, but also has a value to people. Whether people do not speak the same languages should not be an automatic barrier and separation between them. In this paper, I am proud of being able to show the progression of how I felt toward my language from the beginning to the end. Although, an area that I would be able to improve on is elaborating more on the idea of language holding a value for people, rather than leaving it vague for the readers to determine.


More Than Words


Teochew. That is the name of one of the languages that I speak. If you have never heard of it, that doesn’t come as a surprise. Frankly, I did not know the name of it until only four years ago, despite it being the first language I spoke. Some may even call Teochew one of the forgotten languages, but does that make it any less important? Looking in a positive light, does this actually make the language unique? Language is not just words, in fact, it is filled with values.

In How to Tame a Wild Tongue, Gloria Anzaldúa describes the value of she and her family speaking Chicano Spanish, which is a different dialect of “normal” Spanish. She writes ”Chicano Spanish sprang out of the Chicano’s need to identify ourselves as a distinct people. We needed a secret language”. It’s a language that a certain part of her community speaks, and from her perspective, that distinct dialect was made to serve as a special language for themselves.

Relating the idea of a secret language to my own life, I realize that speaking this unfamiliar language, Teochew, springs up plenty of different conversations. Reality is that everyone has a different view and perspective on it.

Starting off, even though I was born in Cambodia, I lived most of my life in Philadelphia, picking up English as my first language. Although, this is a different story for my mother, since she was actually raised there. When I was old enough to enroll in school, I spoke English all the time, since that is the one language that everyone around me is learning and understands. Even if I wanted to speak Teochew, who would be there to understand? It would be pointless to even try. I always thought of my language to be valuable, but it seems different at school.

This is a normal thing that I am used to, but every time my mom calls, I speak her first language. Always hearing English, my peers around me commented on the unfamiliar words that escaped my mouth. “Woah, what are you saying?” “That sounds so cool!” “It sounds so weird!” “Is that your first language?”

Those are just a small part of the collection of responses that I receive when I am heard speaking another language other than English. Although, the responses are usually said with positive intentions. People see it as something unique and are even able to connect it to them speaking a different language at home. That’s where it brings my peers and I to a common similarity, a feeling of mutual appreciation.

Something to keep in mind is that these responses are from people who have never heard of the language that I spoke. Actually speaking Teochew to my family, people who grew up with this language, the responses are almost completely different. I recall a time where I spoke a majority of English, even at home. Having an open ear, I overheard my grandma pointing out a concern to my mom, that maybe I will drop my knowledge on the Teochew language.

To my family, not being able to speak this language is a very inconvenient thing. Since everyone in my family speaks it, they see it as a necessity, not as something unique. It is something normal that I should automatically store in my head. Surely the language is greatly appreciated if they make such an effort to teach it to the future generations, but it makes me wonder if a difference in language separates people. Do people need to change their view on needing to know the same language to be able to connect?

Obviously, being able to speak the same language as the person that you are talking to allows more room for conversation. Although, the thing is that if people hear that you speak a different language, sometimes they quickly give up and do not try to talk.

Anzaldúa also points out that poeple will in fact separate due to language barriers: “And because we internalize how our language has been used against us by the dominant culture, we use our language differences against each other”.

Actually, knowing this unpopular language is something that I am grateful for. Originally when I was younger, I had this little feeling of embarrassment tingling in the back of my mind when I would be heard speaking a different language. Although now, I am proud that I am able to speak something that makes me feel comfortable. Whether around people who understand or even people who do not, this language will always hold a meaningful value to me.


Works Cited


Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands = La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1999. Print.


Advanced Essay #2: The Juice Aisle

​Introduction:
My goals for this paper were mainly trying to incorporate different ways of analysis into my essay aside from the obvious routes. The parts that I am proud of are those that include the descriptive scenes. This essay is alright, however the topic I chose for my essay could have been way better. The topic that I really wanted to do was going to talk in depth about the different social cues and how they differ from America's but I was really restricted on time and could not complete that. If I had better time management I would have been very satisfied with this essay. 

Advanced Essay:

The idea of literacy is a topic who’s definition stays the same throughout time, and space. Literacy is defined as reading the word, and reading the world. This definition is applicable to almost anywhere in the world. Whether you are a mechanic working on a car, or you are a student in Greece reading a book, this definition of literacy holds true. So of course there has to be guidelines for literacy, right? This definition- nay, this idea, just can’t exist, right? It has to have some defining guidelines. Well, just like most things, literacy is made and created by a society, to benefit a society. Thus, it rings true that literacy is different in different societies and cultures to benefit said society and/or culture.

There I was. Staring at this indecipherable, new language. The inscriptions on the glass bottle read strange new words to me that I tried to pronounce. “Jus”, I say to myself, sounding out the words. “It’s pronounced Joo,” a lady next to me said. She had light brown skin and wildly long curly hair. She was wearing a yellow shirt, with blue jeans. I assumed she was around mid 20’s to early 30’s because she didn’t look that old. That or she aged really well. I also assumed she was from the area since she had a slightly weirder accent than mine. The pronunciation of the vowels was slightly… off. She talked as if English was her second language, that’s the best way to describe it.  “Thank you”, I say. She smiles and leaves the aisle, taking the dark red colored juice bottle with her. The juice and water aisles were always interesting to me because in America, they were always the same. They had the same items, the same layout, and the same shelf that was too high for anyone to reach. The supermarket was slightly colder than the outside, and the outside was how you would expect Canada to feel during December. As a 6 year old, a new country really is new. All the streets, and signs, and buildings look foreign to you. Back to the store. The floors were a square design with the occasional tile here and there being colored brown. The lights at the ceiling had a soft yellow light. To my back was a wall of water bottles and Gatorade bottles, and to my front was a variety of different glass juice bottles. The inscription was in French, and I knew this because of my past knowledge. My past knowledge being the wars between France and Canada, and the resulting language barrier between me and this juice. In the past, I’ve read books in French and English, regarding the different wars both countries have had. Sitting in the middle of the aisle, staring at the bottle, I felt like a detective, figuring out a clue that would lead me to a discovery.   

As I stood there staring at this puzzle, it soon occurred to me that this bottle was in French, because the people there spoke French. I know, huge discovery. Well it was, for a 6 year old. Looking back on this memory, the reason I was so confused as to what the bottle said, and I had to figure out what it said was because of the conflicting dominant culture of Canada, and the subculture of America. The literacy of a culture or society, is shaped to whatever needs needs to be filled by that literacy. In other words, literacy for a culture isn’t the same consistently through cultures. An example of this is shown through my experience in the little juice situation explained above. The quote, “People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances.”, said by James Baldwin, really builds onto my previous point. The languages of Canada, aka French and English have been used interchangeably and in tandem in order to better help the people that live there. If the languages there on the juice bottle had been a language such as Albanian, where the majority there did not speak that language, it would have not benefited the people that live there. Therefore, naturally, it would have changed. The interpretation of this is quite literal, as the literacy, in this case, language, changes to match the needs of the citizens. The citizens read both French and English, so the words and descriptions are written in both languages. In conclusion,the definition of literacy is the same throughout cultures and societies, however, the idea and concept of literacy changes throughout cultures and societies consistently changes to match whatever the society or culture needs. Whether this change is shown through ethics, morals, social norms, or more bluntly, language, things are read differently and understood differently. In the case of my Canadian experience, as well as  



Baldwin, James. “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me What Is?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 29 July 1979.

Advanced Essay #2- Chinlishese

Introduction:

The goal of my paper is to present to others that it is okay to speak in broken English or any other language. The part that I am really proud of are the quotes that I picked from Mother Tongue while comparing my situation to society. The area that I need to improve on is is making my writing flow better with different types of transitions.


Essay:

For my whole life, I grew up having to translate for my parents because of their lack of knowledge in the English language. At the same time, it was also hard for me having to learn new words through descriptions using words that I currently knew. I felt that I was always describing something that was so easy and could be one word, if I only knew that word. My parents didn’t finish their homeland’s education before coming to America and when coming to America, they had to leave what little English and ESOL school they had to take care of their families. For myself, I’ve noticed English is very different from Asian languages, especially with the pronunciation of the words and tenses. Languages have multiple interpretations, meanings, and ways to pronounce them - it’s the skill of maneuvering through each pronunciation and proper grammar.  

Cantonese, a dialect in Chinese, was my first and main language until I learned English in preschool. At home, my family and I speak Vietnamese and two different dialects of Chinese, Cantonese and Fujianese. At school, I only speak English because that is the only language that everyone understands and this made me lose my Chinese and Vietnamese. Which is why in Elementary School, I spent more time learning to speak Fujianese and Vietnamese because I knew they were languages that I wanted to keep alive. Even though my parents didn’t go to school, they would do everything they could to help us in school. Buying English and Chinese speaking dictionaries to help us with our reading and vocabulary words. Buying math books and working on the problems together. My parents wanted my sister and I to focus on our education that they didn’t get.

In the story “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan describes her experiences with speaking improper English, “Like others, I have described it to people as 'broken’ or ‘fractured’ English. But I wince when I say that. It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than ‘broken,’ as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholeness and soundness.” (2)   Thinking about this quote and relating it to my life, I understand that the way my parents and I speak is not damaged. With the ability to speak multiple languages at once, my family and I have own language together, “Chinlishese,” which is Chinese mixed with English and Vietnamese. I’ve learned that no one can speak a language correctly, there are always something more to learn and improve on.

Throughout my whole life, I would always mix up the two Chinese languages together because I only knew some words in Cantonese and other words in Fujianese, but they still understood me. I would accidentally mix-up the two languages without even knowing. It didn’t matter how I said it because my parents would still know what I meant.

This mixed language did not roll over with my extended family. My aunt, for example, had a harder time understanding the mix. When she needed someone to go with her to the doctors to help translate for her, I was always there. When the doctors kept asking me questions, I’d have to interpret to my aunt in Cantonese. While I was interpreting, I forgot that my aunt couldn’t understand Fujianese. She kept making fun of me and saying in Cantonese “this is why the young generation are useless because you guys can’t speak properly” and “who teaches you Cantonese.”

This made my self-esteem low. After that, I was cautious in what I was interpreting. I realize that my parents and I have our own unique language. I had to learn how to differentiate between the two dialects. People like my aunt assume that all the younger generation kids are not able to speak any language except English. This is not true. This makes me wonder why can’t people accept their own language. Thinking of what my aunt said, it allowed me think that the language my parents and I speak is our own unique language.

Another quote in the story “Mother Tongue,”  Amy Tan mentions her mom experience’s when they go out anywhere, “the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her.” (2)  In society today, people who can’t speak proper English or any language, do not get the full attention they deserve, like people who do. Everyone in the world speaks their own type or version of languages.

At Geno Steaks, customers who can’t speak proper English, the employers would not take any orders from that customer, which is not fair to the immigrants, who want to try the famous cheesesteak in Philly. This shows that some people in society are shallow to those who are different. People who can’t speak proper should still deserve the same respect because it is not their fault that the language you want them to speak isn’t their first language and only language.

In our society, it is important to not be divided because it is important to be united and help others especially those with disabilities or language barriers. It is very important to make sure that everyone has a voice. It is hard to learn a new language and speak it properly and there is not just one way to speak any language, but a multiple ways too. This is something that should be carried with us when meeting people from all walks of life.


Work Cited:
Tan, Amy. "Mother Tongue."

Bilingual Bewilderment

​Introduction: 

The paper I wrote was mainly focused around a memory I had from Kindergarten, where my polish culture was challenged based on an answer I gave to a Phonics question. The goals for this paper are to get the readers to understand my thesis which is that "a person’s language doesn’t change the message they are trying to get through, 'it doesn’t affect the quality of a person’s idea,'” as well as for them to understand the situation I went through, which affects many immigrants in this country on a daily basis. I am proud of the scene, as well as my conclusion, and I hope to improve my essay introductions in the future.

Advanced Essay:

Literacy can be found everywhere we look. Even though this may be seen as something obvious that anyone would know; why is it that people still have a prejudice against languages, other than the one they speak. I believe that a person’s language doesn’t change the message they are trying to get through, “it doesn’t affect the quality of a person’s idea,” but for many people, their perspective is different. Throughout my life I have experienced this in many forms and instances, whether it be a teacher questioning my knowledge of a subject based off of how well I can annunciate and express my thoughts in English, or my peers judging the level of intelligence I posses based on how well I can communicate my ideas with them. A specific memory that I still vividly remember to this day was an experience in Kindergarten, where I experienced prejudice. It was a time in my life when I was still adapting to the English language and the American culture that varied significantly from my very own.

Kindergarten had gone and passed and I was now stepping into a whole new ballpark... the first grade. My Polish friends and I have been discussing this transition for the whole summer and experiencing it for the past month and a half. First grade wasn’t that bad, we still had fun although we didn’t play with toys anymore, nor did we have nap times like in kindergarten, but the enjoyment of learning was still there for me. I remember one day though when I didn’t feel this same joy, a day when I became very angry that I hadn’t learned English at a younger age like most of my peers. We were working on our phonics notebooks and labeling pictures of things. Everyone in the class was sharing out their answer for one of the pictures when the teacher suddenly called on me.

“Marcin, what is the item in the ninth image?” I looked down at the image and stared blankly. What was it called again? I pondered for a good couple of seconds before my teacher asked,

“Marcin do you not know the answer?” I suddenly turned red in embarrassment and started to think harder. Then it hit me, I opened my mouth and spoke the word,

“Byk.” The entire class stared blankly at me except for my Polish peers who understood what I just said.

“No Marcin, that’s a yak,” my teacher said.

“I said that, that’s what byk means,” I replied.

“Well it’s not correct, let’s try another one,” she said. I didn’t want to start another one though, I got the answer right, it’s just that I didn’t say it in English, but I knew what the meaning was.

Had I really gotten the answer wrong, or just given a different version of the answer? The reason I chose to write about that scene, was because it’s a very vivid memory in my mind. The memory is so fresh in my mind because that’s one of the first times ever in my life that my Polish culture clashed with this new American one. I believe that the idea of a teacher telling me I was unsuccessful in identifying something, just because I didn’t know the word to describe it in this exotically new language, is culturally offensive. I knew what the image was, I could describe it perfectly in my own language but yet the teacher said my description was wrong, which it wasn’t.

Taking a look at the passages we read in class, one stands out to me that really connects with the idea I’m trying to project. "If you want to be American, speak 'American.' If you don't like it, go back to Mexico where you belong," (Anzaldúa, How to Tame a Wild Tongue, 34.) The author brings up this quote after stating that her elementary school teacher would hit her with a ruler on the wrists for speaking Spanish. The teacher would go as far as to do this even when the author was just trying to tell her how to pronounce her name. “If you want to be American, speak American,” really stands out since it shows that people in this country have a close-minded ideology, thinking that for people to belong here, they have to speak the countries language.

What is the message I am trying to deliver with this essay? The message and my overall thesis are that a person’s language doesn’t change the message they are trying to get through, “it doesn’t affect the quality of a person’s ideas.” Across the world we can find many intelligent people with amazing ideas and thoughts, ones that have been, will be, or are, revolutionary to the world we live in today, yet we don’t treat these people’s ideas with the same prejudice just because some of them are thought of or portrayed in a different language. We can’t judge thoughts with the idea in mind that they are worse just because of the way they are conveyed to us, just like we can’t judge someone’s skills or talent based on what they look like.


Works Cited:


Anzaldúa, Gloria. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” https://www.everettsd.org/cms/lib07/WA01920133/Centricity/Domain/965/Anzaldua-Wild-Tongue.pdf

Advanced Essay #2: Ashley

Introduction:

My goal for this essay is to have others who read it understand me and how it is that I was able to learn how to speak the same language that they do. I’m extremely proud of my first paragraph because it’s the part that describes how I felt when I was 5 years old. I’m proud that my language barrier was demolished and that this allowed me to connect it to literacy. In the future, I plan to go to lit lab in order to have it better peer reviewed.  

The Language Obstacle

It’s difficult to understand and try to learn a new language when you’re accustomed to something else and were taught it growing up. It’s also difficult when at home your family only knows 1 language, so they only speak to you in that tongue. Since they only speak 1 language, they can’t help you with your homework because they themselves don’t know what the paper says. They’re going at the same pace as you because they have to learn it with you because they have to apply it to their daily lives in order for them to be able to communicate as well. The only people you can rely on are your teachers and any additional outside resources, when all of your other classmates can rely on their family members. Once something is taught in class, your classmates can go home and just ask their parents for help because they’ve already learned this. Meanwhile, you go home to be just as confused as your parents, having to go bother your neighbors for help.

This was was I had to go through when I was in Pre-K, about 12 years ago. I was born in California, and there I attended school where people spoke. Once we came here to Philadelphia, school was very different because everyone spoke English. My parents enrolled me into a Catholic School, and when I started school, I had no clue as to what the teachers were saying. Everything they said to me sounded gibberish, I was getting lost in whatever the teachers assigned for homework because I didn’t understand them they taught it in class.

I remember what a typical day after school looked like for me. At 2:50, the bell would ring, announcing to the students that the school day was over and everyone was allowed to go home. I would walk outside, waiting to see my mom’s round face, smiling at me, taking me by the hand and telling me that we would be going to the library. All of my friends would say,

“I can’t wait to go home and watch tv,”

“I can’t wait to go home and play video games!”

Meanwhile, in my mind I would say, “I can’t wait to go to the library,” in a sarcastic tone. My mom and I would walk down to the library, from about 3 to 6:30, staying there just to ask others there for help. I would feel so shy and kind of embarrassed because I felt stupid for not knowing English. I would pick out graphic novels, just because they mainly consisted of pictures, so I could easily follow along with the words. After we got our help, or sometimes didn’t, when the homework helpers weren’t there, we’d go home and ask our neighbor for help. My mom would go knock on her door and with her broken English ask,

“Can you help my daughter?”

Our neighbor would smile and always tried her best to explain it to me and my mom because my dad was often absent because he was always working long hours. At the end it all paid off because I graduated being the only one that knew how to read. At the end a lot of the parents and teachers came up to me to say that they were really proud of me because they’d known how much I’d struggled. All of my hard work and efforts finally paid off, from this, I was able to teach my younger siblings English and when they came to me for help, I was able to help them because in a way, it was my way to giving back to those who helped me.

I would practice the English I was taught, just so that I could prove that I wasn’t the typical Mexican who knew very little English. There’s always been this expectation that in order for someone to succeed here in the U.S they have to know how to speak English, which I believe was a main reason for why my mom was so hard on me when I was little. “‘I want you to speak English. Pa’ hallar buen trabajo tienes que saber hablar el ingles bien. Que vale toda tu educación si todavía hablas ingles con un ‘accent.’’ my mother would say, mortified that I spoke English like a Mexican.” Gloria Anzaldúa writes about how there’s always been something set on us, that if we speak with an accent, then people will judge us and not want to give us a job.

Sometimes I feel insecure with my English because I feel that people will think that since I’m Mexican, it justifies why I can’t speak it well. There’s this expectation that I have for myself which is that I can’t mess up when speaking English because I don’t want to show that “weakness” that I ever had a struggle of understanding/learning English. As Amy Tan says, “Fortunately, I happen to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions made about me.” I believe that my parents influenced me in a way that I was forced to learn this language, they set me up to succeed, because they knew how hard it was for them as adults.


Works Cited:


Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands = La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1999. Print.

Tan, Amy. "Mother Tongue." Dreams and Inward Journeys: A Rhetoric and Reader for Writers, edited by Marjorie Ford and Jon Ford, 7th ed., Pearson, 2010, pp. 34-44.


Advanced Essay #2: The Case for Music as a Form of Literacy

Introduction

In this paper, I aimed to present similarities between music and common forms of literacy. I am proud of the points I was able to make. I need to work on being more concise because I struggled with the word limit even though I had already cut out a lot of content.


Advanced Essay

Going into middle school, I knew the very basics of music. I could sight read simple pieces, play scales, and recognize some intervals. Over the next four years, I studied music theory, learning about different aspects that go into a seemingly simple musical sentence. The elements of rhythm and melody and what falls underneath them; endless note values and time signatures, overwhelming scales, modes, intervals, and harmonies. Combining these pieces creates infinite possibilities in only one bar. Combining bars together then creates unique lines, which can be used to construct a piece. What Sherman Alexie said of paragraphs in The Joy of Reading and Writing can be said of musical lines; “A paragraph was a fence that held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose” (Alexie, 12). If a note with a rhythm and a tone is equal to a word, then a bar is a sentence, a line is a paragraph, and a piece is a story. Music theory is the grammar of musicality.

When one thinks of types of literacy, books, articles, languages, and similar subjects usually come to mind. These sorts of literacy provide examples of the different ways literacy is used. I will be looking at a few different pieces that are used for communicative, personal, or both purposes.

Communication can be argued to be the primary purpose of literacy. Letters, texting, and emails provide simple interactions. Larger pieces of literacy, like papers and books, are meant to be read by other people and are therefore types of communication. In a piece of music, there is a transfer of information, often through a story being told. Such a story or scene is brought to life by emotions and atmosphere that the composer creates. Knowing theory helps a composer use the tools to reach for these emotions more effectively. Communication through music also extends to the way it is performed. Just as a word can have different connotations depending on the way it is said, a single note can be played a multitude of ways that are limited only by the instrument itself. Depending on the way a piece is written, certain liberties are up to the performer, bringing forth unique versions of the same piece, as the performer chooses how they want to interpret it.

In Mother Tongue, Amy Tan speaks on the power of language, that it can “evoke emotion, a visual image, a complex, idea, or a simple truth” (Tan, 1). I would say that The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi does all of these things. The Four Seasons is a well-known work, comprised of four concertos, each representing a different season. When listening, one can actually feel each season. In Spring, Vivaldi begins with bouncy and clear melodies played by a lead violin. Summer is fuller, with more of the orchestra and harpsichord filling in and creating an adventurous feeling, which progresses into Autumn, featuring a slightly brighter and more neutral theme. There is no way to describe the sound of Winter other than crisp, like the feeling of stepping on fresh snow. The way Vivaldi and the performers use music brings forth a quite clear narrative of changing nature through each distinct section.

Besides communication, another common use of literacy is personal. Many people choose to keep journals or diaries to record their thoughts and emotions. Some use creative forms of writing, like poetry, to express their feelings, or get something off of their chest. Listening to music can have the same effect. Some people listen to music to fall asleep or relax. Some use it to get fired up for a workout. Some depend on music that they can relate to. When I was in middle school, I spent a lot of time listening to the alternative band Twenty One Pilots. Their music largely focuses on living with illnesses like anxiety and depression, and I was drawn to them because of this. I remember spending nights shut in my room in the dark, listening exclusively to TOP on repeat. Although it seems crazy and cliche, their music made me feel safe at a time in my life when very little did. I depended on their songs for comfort and something to connect with when I was too timid to talk to anyone about my problems.

Music is a versatile form of literacy that everyone uses in various ways to accompany various aspects of life. When considering concept albums like Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, that are chock full of social commentary, masterpieces like Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, that showcase musical creativity and talent, or historical songs like Hirsh Glik’s Zog Nit Keynmol, (inspired by the Warsaw Ghetto uprising), that document suffering and pain, it is easy to see the many forms music can take and the functions it can have. These functions differ more than they overlap with those of The Four Seasons or the songs of Twenty One Pilots, and thus it becomes apparent that music is one of the most multifaceted and important literacies we know.


Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman, “Superman and Me: The Joy of Reading and Writing.”

Tan, Amy, “Mother Tongue”


Advanced Essay #2: Silence

Introduction


This essay is about sensitivity in society today and the silencing of literacy today. People are too scared to speak their opinion because people keep telling them its offensive and through this essay I had explained the ideas which surround the silencing of people. This had been the goal, to portray this idea to the world. One thing I am proud of is the analysis on the quote and I think it had been used well and supported my argument clearly. Improvements for my essay in the future, I would like to have a better written, stronger scene. I think that it is the section which needs the most work.


Advanced Essay

As a child, I had grown up in a majority white neighborhood and went to a majority white elementary school. Then I had changed schools in middle school and suddenly, half of my new class had been African American. This was a new experience for me and I didn’t really know what to do. I could tell they had been different from me in appearance but I still didn’t know if they had been different from me in any other way. I was still innocent at the time and more curious than I should have been.

   We had been watching a movie in class and there had been a short scene where this little boy a been pretending to be this gangster with his friend and I didn’t know why they would want to act like that. After the movie, I had raised my hand and asked my teacher, “Why are those kids acting like thugs cause I had thought that thugs weren’t supposed to be good people?”

   The response that my teacher gave had been some kind of nonsense about kids imagination which I as a kid bought but the key thing that I remember from that day is this kid from across the classroom calling out, “They were trying to act black.” To this day I don’t know who it was but what I do know is what my teacher did in response to it was not the right thing.

   “Be quiet, and don’t say something like that ever again,” with a stern and serious look on his face. I was scared. I thought it had simply been an attempted joke but according to my teacher is was like forbidden language. Today I understand the comment had been racist but when I was a child, I didn’t get the explanation I needed.

All throughout middle school I remembered living is worry that I might say something about black people that may offend them. It was hard because I didn’t understand what was right and what was wrong so my choice was just to stay silent. Not a single word had come out of my mouth whenever anything about black people had come up.

If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say it. 

Every student hears this in school but what defines something as not nice. Something you say to one kid may mean something else to another kid. The only things this statement does is silence students and instill fear into them that language isn’t free to speak and thought is not free to think. This idea poisoned me and still poisons the lives of students all over the US.

In the story How to Tame a Wild Tongue, they had been talking about how you cannot adopt an accent into a language but instead, you must get rid of it all together and the author makes the claim, “Wild tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out,”(Anzaldúa). When people are offended by a specific phrase, they aim to suppress it or ban it all together. As more and more thing become considered “offensive” by society, we will have a world full of mute men and women who dare not to say a word. When relating this quote to this theme, it states we cannot control the use of offensive language, we must discard it and language cannot be discarded. Every word has to mean, and to every person, that meaning is different. As a society, we should understand that that words spoken should not be taken in our own perspective but in the speaker's perspective.

The easy choice is to be silent, the harder decision is to speak.

It does not take a lot of effort to sit in a classroom quietly all day and then at the end of the day just leave and go home. It takes courage and strength to speak about what your opinions and what you believe it. Instead of focusing how some words offend you, you should focus on the message they are trying to get across. Show compassion and empathy for them and put yourself in their shoes. It is not easy to raise your hand and confidently speak to the class. Any teacher would prefer to hear people’s unique perspectives rather than nothing at all.

The world is slowly becoming silenced and slowing our growth as a society. People’s sensitivity is driving this silence which is putting our advancement as a society to a stalemate. People should speak their opinion, every opinion should be heard no matter the topic, and those opinions should be understood rather than silenced. This is the only way we will progress as a society.


Works Cited


Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands = La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1999. Print.


Advanced Essay #2-Don’t Judge a Book by It’s Cover

Introduction

The goal of my essay is to explain how one’s identity is a literacy and how stereotypes based on predictions affect how one views their own identity as well as other people's identity. The essay goes more into depth about sexuality specifically.  The part of the essay that I am most proud of is the third paragraph down. I could improve on allowing my ideas to flow better.


Don’t Judge a Book by It’s Cover

My hands were swinging by my side, the air was cold and there was snow on the ground. The street was loud, booming with crowds of people. I thought that maybe I had heard it wrong. My mind raced with the possibilities of what he could have said, hoping he said something different, praying, as I heard the words run through my brain. The words he spoke tainted the image that I had of him, more than I could have ever imagined.

I was happy not knowing the gleeful ignorance of his misunderstanding when he exclaimed the words “I would not have sex with a bisexual person because of sexually transmitted diseases.” My stunned response led to more rude comments that I would have never expected, unveiling ridiculous stereotypes of a bisexual person, statements such as bi people are whores, and questioning why bisexual people can not commit, or why they cannot choose between heterosexuality and homosexuality.  This is normal for me; my friends and people around me making homophobic, or just generally offensive, jokes at my expense and expecting me to laugh as if my feelings do not matter. It was a few years ago, but the voice still stings in my head, the words, while not important to him, changed the way that I spoke my language.  

The stereotypes that are ingrained in our society allow people to judge a book by its cover, determining one’s value by looking at the outside cover without reading the inside.  People give these stereotypes no second thought, living and breathing based on the judgements that they make.   There is nothing wrong with the judgements, but people can go above and beyond those two dimensional images. It is when you force any one person into the stereotypes where the problem comes up. Forcing people into set images separates them from their identity.

Each person's identity is a language that each person speaks, but it's more than the actual words, it is also made up of the actions, the ideas, and the visual representations of the person. The combination of these aspects is what makes up a person's individual language.

The following quote by James Baldwin in his work, If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? reinforces the idea that people’s language is what makes up their identity and creates the image that people see.  “It goes without saying, then, that language is also a political instrument, means, and proof of power. It is the most vivid and crucial key to identify: It reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or communal identity.”  The way people communicate and interact  are tainted by the outside world, the way people look at them and the way you look at yourself are shaped by the the words and views of other people. They can not speak their language because people do not understand it.  

Sexualty is not on a lever where you can switch it from straight to gay, there is a sliding bar of sexualities. Each person fits somewhere on the scale. The people who do not see and understand this look at the world as a black and white image, the vivid color of each person's identity is drained from their view.  It is no different than the different languages people speak. Some people speak English, others speak Spanish and people are judged by how they speak by different groups.

Some people believe that repeated slurs can change a person's perspective of themselves. This can be seen in Gloria Anzaldua’s work, How to Tame a Wild Tongue in the quote,  “Repeated attacks on our native tongue diminish our sense of self.”  It is acceptable to speak a commonly known language that people can learn and understand, but as soon as it's not easy for the majority of people to understand, it is deemed wrong. People may correct those mistakes and attach negative ideas to that correction. Being prejudged and berated erodes a person’s identity of themselves, it creates a society where people are ashamed to speak a language that is not seen as normal. That feeling of the lack of normality leads to the more negative effects, creating a never ending cycle.

Work Cited


James Baldwin,nytimes,New York Times,July 29, 1979,http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-english.html,

Accessed Dember 8. 2017

Gloria Anzaldua,everettsd,Borderlands = La Frontera.,1987,https://www.everettsd.org/cms/lib07/WA01920133/Centricity/Domain/965/Anzaldua-Wild-Tongue.pdf,Accessed December 8. 2017

Advanced Essay #2: Literacy of Violence

Most 4th of Julys I spent with my dad’s side of the family in Atlanta. I loved how the lights painted the sky bright reds and whites. It took me a while to care about the smoke that came after, to wonder how it choked thousands of Eastern Bluebirds each summer. The few times I witnessed the sky light up on America’s independence day with my mom were quite different. First was the house. When I was little I had imagined our 19th century home was built by a spy. Most walls had large windows overlooking the neighborhood and the bricks allotted the conversations of passerbys to seep through. Usually this front row seat to the average west Philadelphian was entertaining, but on nights like the fourth of July my house felt more like a bomb shelter. The painted sky to Julee was more a reminder of blood than patriotism or maybe they were one in the same.  I would sit next to her and play the wawa welcome america concerts loud but the explosions of light in the sky were always louder.

“Zoey turn the volume up!”.

“Yes mom.” I raised it up a little.Another explosion rang the house. My mother held onto my hand. My wartorn mother was alway caught in a state of limbo with the dead bodies she had to step over on her way to school tugging at her waist while squeezing my innocent American hands.  Shaking her head she directed “again”. I turned it up. The sky lit up before us through the windows and my mother shut the blinds. We were in for a long night. In America there seems to be a widespread acceptance for blind patriotism. There is a lot of pride taken for the scriptures soaked in freedoms and rights. There is little conversation however surrounding the cost of these freedoms and who’s paying it.

Millennials born and raised in America have never really experienced war. They unlike many around the world their age have not seen it outside of images, screens, and textbooks. They may know people who have, after all this is a country priding itself on its melting pot of diversity. However this does not change the overwhelming culture surrounding how we understand violence, how we talk about it, how we react to it. From the words given to us by news reporters, historians, entertainment, and in classrooms we are taught to read violence and more specifically war in a very distanced and desensitized way. This I argue is quite intentional. When Americans distance themselves from the violence displayed on the news they no longer have to evaluate their country’s role in it. Making patriotism appear as a no brainer and oversimplifying its’ cost.

But I was raised by a war refugee. I wasn’t allowed to watch anything making light of events mirroring the source of my mom’s ptsd. “These children are much more outward looking. They see books less as mirrors and more as maps” (the apartheid of children’s literature(christopher myers). In other words the information children acquire from books and other mediums are maps defining their relationships to the world and others. When it comes to violence they are in deed flawed in their oversimplified approach. We recount the events of 9/11 and our victorious assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Yet we seldom discuss the countless villages bombed regularly overseas to achieve our victories. The few times history classes witness gore in war is in a glorious light.

Not only are children being shown the wrong approach to violence but those willing to create texts with broader perspectives are not given the platform to sell their products. “The MArket, I am told, just doesn't demand this kind of book,...has asked that we have only text on the book cover because white kids won't buy a book with a black kid on the cover -or so the market says” (the apartheid of children’s literature). Is there a market then for games and shows and books that create empathy? In history classes we discuss the 60s and racism as if they occurred centuries ago. Teachers gloss over the brutality with sugar coated versions of peaceful protests. This quote is also showing how people are being raised to not just be ignorant of the depth of the injustices this country is responsible for but that they also are being taught to reject any narrative opposing the former . THe quote refer specifically to the lack of literature accurately describing the black experience in America. If white  people will not read about their neighbors then they surely are not equipped with the skills and knowledge necessary to understand and build empathy and agency for those a sea apart from us. This quote also comments on profit. This country time and time again chooses profit over education. Games like call of duty and Halo are mass produced and actively desensitize children of the pain in war. The focus is on profit not concerned at all with the affects the product has on the children.  It seems there has yet been a time when the focus was about how educated people are, about how this is impacting the country’s overall sentiment or lack thereof towards other countries. There is a barrier being created it seems, preventing americans from caring about the impact of the myriad of US bullets piercing through foreign bodies every day.

There is a very tangible difference in the literacy of violence in America than in other countries. Privilege becomes clear in the necessity of the literacy. This literacy in America gets much more complicated when you zero in on each neighborhood. For those who live in neighborhoods where the illegal acts in call of duty are everyday occurrences just beyond their front porch the literacy of violence is a necessity. In Sanyika Shakur’s Monster he describes the violence between the south central LA gangs as war because for those who dealt with those affected by this violence every day their livelihood depended on seeing it as war. “Language, incontestably, reveals the speaker. Language, also far more dubiously, is meant to define the other--and, in this case, the other is refusing to be defined by a language that has never been able to recognize him”(James Baldwin).This language reveals our focus as said previously on demonizing and desensitizing. We have the privilege of rarely being on the receiving end of war in terms of physical danger and we often take this for granted. We have also distanced ourselves from staying aware of the impact of our presence in other countries. This and our entertainment has helped desensitize us from war. My mother is fluent and well practiced in her literacy of violence. She can interpret how far away a plane is to determine whether or not she needs to seek refuge. This language “comes to existence by means of brutal necessity” as said by James Baldwin. There was a necessity in Liberia in the 80s to speak the language of violence in this way. There on the other hand in America seems to be a necessity for speaking about violence in the way that we do. In order to maintain support for the egregious act of violence inflicted on “enemies” we must begin with how we describe and discuss the issue. It must continue to be supported even in the aftermath through an interpretation of violence that is understanding of the US and demonizes the victim.

After years of numbing people of the devastation that is war, the language surrounding it changes.  Millennials in America do not understand war the way their parents or grandparents understand it. They most certainly do not understand it as other countries who see it every day understand. We are taught to be literate in violence in a way that strips it of the value in its impact. We are taught to react to the bloodshed as if it were as fake as the games imitating it. We have comfortable to the point where we gain entertainment from it. This literacy perpetuates the oppressive machine that is America. Our patriotism and consumerism has blinded us and we must stop willfully accepting this perspective.

Works Cited

Christopher Myers, The Apartheid of Children’s Literature

James Baldwin, If Black Isn't English then Tell Me What Is

Sanyika Shakur, Monster



Advanced Essay #2: The Freedom of Speech

Introduction: I feel as though the goal of this paper was to address the different ways a person can use or violate the freedom of speech. I am proud of the research I conducted, but feel as though the paper in general could flow better, and I could include more scenes.

On September 25, 1789, Americans were given something that some take for granted and others do not use to its fullest potential. Yes, I am talking about the freedom of speech/expression. The law that allows us to partake in symbolic expression, give money to campaigns involving politics, gives us the right not to say anything, etc. The law that is not a safe haven for any type of inciteful speech that does not pass the Brandenburg test, a test spawning from the arrest of a KKK leader who made a speech that advised violence. What comes from the freedom of speech/expression and how do people find loopholes? Protests, activism, and the right for newspapers and such to criticize the government are all proper uses of this section of the first amendment. Even though people use words that the freedom of speech protects, some are highly offensive and can cause outrage, which can ironically result in the above proper uses of the freedom of speech/expression ( i.e. protests because of ignorant statements from well known people). In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Gloria Anzaldúa discusses an action that would be against the freedom of speech when she states, “Attacks on one’s form of expression with the intent to censor are a violation of the first amendment” (34). When analyzing different ways to look at freedom of speech I stumbled upon how freedom can affective the user in negative ways. The National Review examines how verbal abuse can affect the one who uses it, claiming, “Racist hate speech has been linked to cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and requires complex coping strategies. Exposure to racial slurs also diminishes academic performance. Women subjected to sexualized speech may develop a phenomenon of ‘self-objectification,’ which is associated with eating disorders”. This, as cheesy as it sounds, shows that what you say won’t just hurt others, but can also hurt yourself. People are also allowed the luxury of lying or stretching the truth without consequences from the government depending on the situation. It is also true that people can say things that others do not agree with, and this can create a healthy argument. Mike Rose, the author of I Just Want to be Average, gives a realistic scenario of when one could possibly encounter an argument when he comments, “No matter how bad the school, you’re going to encounter notions that don’t fit with the assumptions and beliefs you grew up with”(4). A school is a setting where one can alter, completely change or, solidify their ideas by talking with their peers. A real life example of an attempt at a healthy argument was last April, when I was sitting on my bed, dialing the phone number of one of my black male friends for the first time after I’d seen him at the bus stop on the way home and exchanged contact info with him. I had always been self-conscious about talking on the phone because there were always awkward silences that ensued when I had no interesting conversation starters. However, before we could even get to the inevitable awkward silence, right after I said “Hey, what’s up? I just got home,” , he couldn’t stop himself from claiming, “You talk lik’a white girl.” That completely stopped me in my tracks. “What do you mean?” I fired back. I had talked to him in person before and he’s never said anything remotely close to that. Was there some type of vocabulary that was associated with white people that blacks were presumed not to possess? If so, how could he have picked that up from me simply saying “Hey, what’s up? I just got home,”, or was this a cumulative question out of all the times I’ve talked to him, which was still minimal? Did my voice sound like a white girls’? If so, who cared, and since when was designating types of voices to certain races a thing? Of course, I didn’t overwhelm him with all of those thought provoking questions. I personally felt and still feel that everyone has their own unique voice, including myself. He went on to give a desultory answer, but it made me question where this idea of his came from. Judging someone for the way they talk is not uncommon. However, he must have given a white voice high expectations after experiencing it at least once in his 17 years of life and subsequently lowered the expectations of a black voice, much like the rest of society. Overall, the freedom of speech is a human right that we are lucky to have. Whether people choose to use it or not, demean people or compliment them, lie or be honest, is a reflection of that person.

Works Cited:

“The 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.” National Constitution Center – The 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, www.constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-i.
“What Does Free Speech Mean?” United States Courts, www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does. Abusing the Limitations of the First Amendment – Columbia Undergraduate Law Review. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2017. http://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/culr/2015/08/09/abusing-the-limitations-of-the-first-amendment/. French, David. “National Review.” Free Speech Violations — Radicals for Censorship Persist | National Review. N.p., 22 June 2017. Web. 10 Dec. 2017. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448886/free-speech-violations-radicals-censorship-persist.

Advanced Essay 2- The Difference In Our Words

Introduction:​

My paper is about the ways in which we speak differently around certain people and why. I hope to shed light on how society has expectations for how we act in public and how we bend those unspoken recommendations around the people with whom we are closest. I am proud of how I believe I gave people an insight to who I am as well as what I believe is expected from me. I wish that I had included examples of how I deviate from societal norms with my friends in addition to just my family.


The Difference In Our Words

I change how I communicate when I interact with different groups of people. In particular, I speak differently. I change what I say, when I say it, and how I say it. This is true for most people, because we learn when it’s important to follow societal norms and when it’s acceptable to push those boundaries.

Cursing is something that most people do only in particular circumstances. While I am the same way, unlike many others I curse around my parents, who are mostly ok with it as long as I do it with a smile on my face so that they know I’m not serious or angry. Many other times, though, I know to hold my tongue and speak properly and with decorum.

Back in September, my Dad and I were at our friend’s house watching the Eagles game. As school had just begun, the group -- mostly made up of forty-something year-old Dads -- was discussing the pleasures of kids being back in school.

The host explained, “It’s nice to have them in bed at a reasonable hour. All summer, they were just banging around the house at all hours of the night.”

My Dad, sarcastically pretending that I wasn’t sitting right next to him, stated, “It’s amazing to have Leo back in school. I believe we had more than enough time to bond this summer.”

My response was already at the tip of my tongue. It would have been so natural, and so satisfying, to have released the words, “Fuck off.” It wouldn’t have been anywhere near the first time that I had said it, and I don’t believe that’s a bad thing. As Robert Klein explains, “I’m not against profanity. It’s an important part of the language when used properly.” Cursing is not just a way to express anger towards someone, but a way to strengthen a bond between people and to add humor. While I would have been comfortable saying these words to him with a smile if it were just the two of us, I restrained myself due to our present company. Some people might not have understood my sarcasm and would have taken it as me not respecting my Dad. Society creates expectations about how we are to act, and while we all strive to be our authentic selves, we also have to learn about the importance of operating inside society’s norms and therefore when and to what extent we should express ourselves in different ways sometimes.

Jokes are one of my favorite ways to express myself, but I have to be careful about what I say depending on to whom I’m talking. There is a fine line between what is funny and what is considered offensive. Many times it is hard to know where that line is, because it is different for each person based on how well we know each other.

For the last five years I have only rarely called my sister by her name Rebecca. Instead, I call her Tubby Bear Junior or some variation of it such as TBJ, Tubs, or Junior. Now while the Bear and Junior parts of her nickname are acceptable for all audiences, Tubby is a name that refers to someone who is overweight, which in a nickname would normally be thought of as derogatory. In this case, though, due to my closeness with my sister and our common understanding that not only is she not fat but in fact is fit and athletic, the nickname is just an ironic joke. It reflects how close we are to each other.

This is the type of joke that you can only make to someone with whom you are very close. I would never call any of my friends by a nickname that referred to them as overweight or anything related to body image, which can be such a sensitive topic. But with my sister it is ok because she is in on the joke and interprets it as the affectionate nickname that it is.

Just like many other people, I conform to society’s norms most of the time. The only times that I feel comfortable stepping outside what is considered typical is when I’m with people that I am very close with and who know my personality. It is not typical for a child to curse in front of his parents or to have a nickname for someone that contains derogatory language, but due to the bond I have with my family and also with my closest friends I am able to push society’s communication norms with that limited group of people. Pushing these norms not only allows me to express myself in the way I sometimes like to, but it also helps create and strengthen the bonds I have with these people.


“Robert Klein Quotes.” BrainyQuote, Xplore, www.brainyquote.com/quotes/robert_klein_678411.


Advanced Essay #2: The Things I Learned...

Introduction:
While reading other essays, particularly "I Just Want to be Average," I was reminded of my time as a kindergarten, where I was literally the worst behaved student in the class. I wanted to write about all of the things I did but settled for two because to the length constraint. Still, I feel this essay has more story than reflection, and I want to become better at writing reflections.

Advanced Essay:
Once upon a time,  I was not a quiet person. There was a time where I was not cautious of danger. Instead, I greeted it with open arms. Better yet, I didn’t even acknowledge it. There was a time when I was a terrible kid, and that time was kindergarten. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reminded of all of the bad times I’ve had in my first year of school. Kindergarten is supposed to be that time where kids learn basic education. I got nothing out of it. All I remember are the bad things I did.
The teacher passed out these handwriting sheets about some concept we were taught to call ”numbers.”  The sheets she handed out were in a packet of ten pages, each labeled from 1 to 10. My teacher talked to us about what we were doing.When I got my packet, I immediately scribbled in all of the numbers. My teacher noticed me in the speech she was giving. “WHY ARE YOU ON EIGHT?!?” she bellowed. I quickly shot up from my daze and stared at my teacher, as if I was frozen. “Go flip your card.” I got out of my seat, walked over to the corner, and changed my card from green to yellow. That meant I had done something wrong.
I could barely focus, often didn’t know or hear what was going on, and I started talking to myself at that age. What was going on? Something I think was happening was that I was doing whatever I saw. My teachers were just trying to teach me and keep me in line, but I wouldn’t listen. I recall something that Mike Rose wrote in “I Just Want to be Average,” “Students will float to the mark you set.” I feel like that was true for every kid in my class, except me. As if it didn’t apply to me. Everyone else could follow directions. Everyone else could focus on their work. Why couldn’t I?
It was a cloudy afternoon after school one day. My dad was dragging me down the sidewalk outside the school. “You are in so much trouble.” His words exactly, in the same fearsome voice he spoke in when angry. We walked to the car and drove off. My dad got on the phone with mom, going over the details of the bad thing I did that day. I don’t even remember, but I had an idea about it. It was probably that time when I said something like, “I hate this mother%#$* school,” but I have no recollection of it. “ALL HE CAN DO IS EAT AND READ!!!” I was jolted back to reality when my dad spanked me on the leg. Looking back on that day, I realize that my father was just looking out for me. He knew I had potential and desperately wanted me to use it. Mark Rose said it best when he wrote
After a spanking, I was left in my room to read. There was a bookshelf in my room with simple books, like “The Cat in the Hat” and other Dr. Seuss stories. I stood up on the shelf and randomly selected a book. At first, I was just flipping through the pages looking at all of the pretty pictures. However, as I went on, I started looking more at the words rather than the pictures. I knew how to read at that age, so I was able to get through the books. There were a few things I picked up here and there, like the sounds animals make and the many numbers there are. I was actually gaining knowledge, something I seemingly was unable to do in school.
All of these memories of kindergarten, and countless others have helped me understand that there are multiple kinds of education. Mainly two. There’s the sweet, educational things you learn in school, and then there was the realistic, societal things you learn everywhere else. For example, I didn’t know what 6+7 was, but I knew how many curse words there were. I had too much societal education and not enough room for ‘actual’ education. And the way I see it now, actual education is more important. I wish I didn’t act up so much back then. Even after I read that day, I still acted up in school and didn’t officially get it together until 4th grade. But now, I know that I have a balance between education and society.
Works Cited:
Rose, Mike. "I Just Want to be Average." 1989. Accessed December 10, 2017. https://www.cengage.com/custom/static_content/OLC/s76656_76218lf/rose.pdf.

Advanced Essay #2 - Ethan Larrabee

Introduction:
In this paper, my goal was to establish a link between how early one learns to read and their success in the future as well as how this can be used to disenfranchise certain groups of people. I'm not particularly proud of anything in this paper (in fact it still needs a great deal of work) but it's getting late and I can't think of anything else to write.

Literacy, specifically in terms of the ability to read and write, is an essential part of one’s education. Reading is especially important as without being able able to read, one cannot hope to be able to write. One’s ability to read determines one’s ability to better perceive the world around them as the vast majority of our information is presented in a written format. Thus, the sooner one learns to read, the sooner one can begin to truly learn about the world they live in.

I was a rather fortunate child in this regard as I learned to read at a notably early age compared to most children. From as early as I could remember, my parents had been reading me stories which I would listen to with a sort of obsessive focus, which says a lot as I can rarely focus on any one thing for an extended period of time. By the time I was three years old, I was attending a preschool at which I was being taught how to read and write. We started with basic subjects like pronouncing letters and writing our names. While the teaching was effective, it seemed to move too slowly for young me as I craved more. As I was an ambitious child, I decided to teach myself to read. First, I had to find the right book. It had to have enough words to be challenging, while still being a relatively light read. I settled on one of my favorite dinosaur books. It was quite large with full page illustrations and a few sentences per page. It was perfect.

I set about my task in secret, not wanting to risk my parents offering their assistance. This was something that I knew had to be done entirely on my own. Each night, after going to bed, I would stay up for several minutes attempting to decipher the pages. I sat hunched over the book under my covers with a flashlight as to not disturb my brother nearby. The process was slow and arduous as each page took me several minutes to complete and I was constantly sidetracked by the illustrations. Still, I pressed onward, each page becoming slightly easier than the last. By the end of the fourth night, the book was finished. From then on, my reading quickly improved as I seemed to outpace the rest of the class. While others would play, I would find a spot to sit and read. Since then, I have always been at an advanced reading level. I don’t mean to brag, but this was extremely helpful in the earlier years of school.

Literacy is one of, if not the most valuable forms of cultural capital. The ability to read is necessary in society for finding and absorbing information. It allows one to learn independently as they can seek out information without the need for someone to explain it to them. However, if one is deprived of this ability, than they lose a great deal of their independence and makes them much easier to control. For example, slaves were absolutely forbidden from reading or writing as keeping them illiterate made them incapable of arguing for their rights. While a slave could find evidence of the wrongfulness and immorality of their enslavement, they would never be able to because they weren’t capable of obtaining that information. All they knew was what was told to them by their masters, who used this to better control them. This is how Frederick Douglas managed to escape slavery because he taught himself how to read and write. Similarly, in the segregation era, black schools were deprived of resources in order to better control the students. Without being told about the importance of literacy, many of these children never pursued it later in life and so never developed the skill further. In The Apartheid of Children’s Literature, Christopher Myers states “As for children of color, they recognize the boundaries being imposed upon their imaginations, and are certain to imagine themselves well within the borders they are offered, to color themselves inside the lines.” When it comes to children’s literature, books for children of color simply aren’t published. This indirectly deprives them of a way to improve their own literacy skills and, by extension, their knowledge of the world around them.

While literacy has always been an essential life skill, its importance hasn’t been stressed until quite recently. People are only just beginning to realize how much one’s literacy skill determines and what they can do to improve. Hopefully, people can have more access to literacy instruction in order to close a gap that has existed in society for centuries.


Works Cited

Meyers, Christopher. "The Apartheid of Children’s Literature." New York Times. N.p., 15 Mar. 2014. Web.

Advanced Essay #2: Women and Visual Literature

Introduction:

My goals for this paper is to share how visual literature changed how I viewed myself. I’m most proud of the flow of my writing. I could improve in making my thoughts on literature more clear


Women and Visual Literature:

I was sitting on the bed in my mom’s room. She was folding and putting away laundry while the T.V. was on. The T.V. screen was playing some sort of crime show. In the show, there was a man and a woman standing in a gritty city. The man offered a bouquet of roses to the woman. The woman laughed and walked away from the man, refusing his proposal. The woman didn’t get too far before the man shot her to death despite her pleas for him to stop. The woman’s body was left in the streets while the man drove away from the crime scene with his unwanted bouquet of flowers.

That scene gave me a fear of rejecting people and saying no. I grew more cautious of how much authority people have over me and how quickly and drastically I would be punished if I didn’t do what was expected of me. An article by UNICEF states that,  “... exposure to media among youth creates the potential for massive exposure to portrayals that sexualize women and girls and teach girls that women are objects.” Although the media I was exposed to was not sexual, the effect was the same. That scene gave me the idea that I should be afraid of men as well as the power that they had and I lacked. I had the expectation that when I would enter my teen and adult years I had to make the men around me pleased with my answers and behavior even if I would not be comfortable with the outcome. Without even knowing it at the time I was beginning to understand my role in society was to be objectified. Visual literature helped me realize how I was expected to behave and perceive myself. My perspective on what I could be as a woman narrowed down to one option; an object designed to please men.

When I was in elementary school I would spend my time during recess playing make believe on the playground. At times I was the only girl in a group of boys, making me have to take on the more feminine characters in our made up adventures. One recess we decided that we would play in the world of Star Wars. Despite the fact that I hadn’t seen any of the movies at the time, I would always get assigned the role of Princess Leia. The obvious reason was because I was the only girl that would play this game with them. However, my friends claimed it was because of the curly buns I had on the sides of my head. They would pretend to be Jedis and use “the force” to move things as well as have fierce fights with imaginary lightsabers. My job was to mostly sit and watch. On more eventful days I could pretend to be in danger until it was time for me to be saved by my friends.

Looking back on my times spent in the playground I realize that my roles have always been passive. The nature of the characters I would play did not matter. My male friends and I did not care if the women I pretended to be were strong leaders or highly intelligent. In our eyes, these characters were only girls and nothing more. Often times in the media, shows will have a singular female character in a group of men. In an article titled “Hers; The Smurfette Principle” Katha Pollitt defines the Smurfette principle as, “a group of male buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically defined.” Pollitt also gives examples of female characters who only have one singular personality trait. Kanga from Winnie the Pooh is the mother of the group while Miss Piggy from The Muppets only exists as a “glamour queen”. Pollitt comes to an understanding and begins to see that, “Boys are the norm, girls the variation; boys are central, girls peripheral; boys are individuals, girls types. Boys define the group, its story and its code of values. Girls exist only in relation to boys.”  Visual literature has shown me that women are seen as singular traited individuals that exist only to levitate the qualities of men. This representation of woman in visual literature has caused children, like me and my friends, to dismiss the idea of women having larger roles. Women are put in a position where they must prove that they are too complex to just be accessories to the characteristics of men.

Eventually, I realized that I am too multifaceted to be reduced to an object. Despite visual literature introducing harmful stereotypes in the past  I believe it’s steadily improving. Every day I see better representations of gender and I hope children today are gaining higher perceptions of themselves.


Works Cited:

“Not An Object: On Sexualization and Exploitation of Women and Girls.” UNICEF USA, 9 May 2016, www.unicefusa.org/stories/not-object-sexualization-and-exploitation-women-and-girls/30361.

Pollitt, Katha. “Hers; The Smurfette Principle.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 6 Apr. 1991, www.nytimes.com/1991/04/07/magazine/hers-the-smurfette-principle.html.


Design Slide 2.0

Tech Presentation Design Slide (1)

I ended up missing my designated presentation time but that doesn’t mean that the criticism I received was any revered.

The main point of criticism for my slide was the fact that there was a lack of font and the photo was not as front-and-center as it should have been. In order to fix this I played around with fonts until I found the font, “Bungee Hairline” which is what I chose to be my final font due to its bold yet thin lettering and minimalistic aesthetic. I also cropped the photo and eliminated the section of the paper that had a bit of pencil scribble on it as that was distracting and took away from the overall clean look of the slide.

The reason why I aimed for an overall simple look was due to the fact that most of my research said to take advantage of large font and open space as well as the lines of focus. So I thought that the best way to achieve all three of those goals was to one, place my drawing in the center of the slide, two, make sure that it had equal borders on all sides, and three, only place bold font on the left side of the slide therefore taking advantage of one of the horizontal lines of focus while also leaving open space. In conclusion, the goal of my slide is to both simply and effectively convey the change that I have gone through both physically and emotionally throughout the course of my life and I believe, thanks to the power of design, I have been able to achieve this.


Advanced Essay #2: A Mother's Voice

​Introduction:

My paper follows the topic of parental influence on language and how our parents talked/ read to us as children and how that affected our development through life. The goal of y paper is to show how a parent who reads to their child gives their child an advantage literacy wise. I'm proud of my analysis in my paper I feel as a writer it has grown quite a bit and it sounds better all together. Places that could use some improvement, (if we had a larger word count), would be adding more to my scene of memory. 

A Mother's Voice: 

People believe that our school environment has the largest impact on our speech development and interpretation of literacy. This effect on our speech happens much earlier on in life. Our parents are this early effect. A parent who instills the importance of reading in a child's life gives that child an interest in learning, which will blossom into a dominant cultural capital. A parent who is not involved in a child’s life reading wise places this child at a disadvantage. Recently, I recalled when I went to my mother’s house and remembered a conversation we had about our childhoods. I was about 13.


I sat on the sofa and pulled out my book that I had been reading. Animal Farm, by George Orwell.


“Animal Farm. That’s a good book.” my mom said.


“You read Animal Farm?” I said.


“Of course, I read it a few years ago. Do you like it so far?”


“Yeah, I’m really enjoying it...in a strange way. But I wouldn’t peg you as someone who’d read something like this.”


“Why do you think that?” my mother said, confused.


“You read romance novels and I doubt that Nani would’ve asked you to  read something like this.”


“Why does my mother care about what I should and shouldn’t read?”


“You were sort of… for lack of a better word, poor as a child. I was raised reading books and craving to read more books.


“I had to work for my education, and sure, maybe I wasn’t as proper spoken as you as a child but I’m smart, Eric.” I stood up and grabbed my book not saying anything. I went to my room and fell asleep quickly. It was as if the night went by with a blink.


This memory is like an essay we read in class, The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children by Lisa D. Delpit. “I am also suggesting that appropriate education for poor children and children of color can only be devised in consultation with adults who share their culture. Black parents, teachers of color, and members of poor communities must be allowed to participate fully in the discussion of what kind of instruction is in their children’s best interest.” (296).  

As a society, people neglect poor children no matter how much they need help, but the moment a child with money has an issue they get all the necessary help. When Delpit states, “instruction in their children’s best interest,” she believes  that  as a society need to put our differences of privilege aside and help the poor, using our privilege because that is a part of our culture. My mother as a child wanted help and my grandmother never got my mom any help at all.

The next morning, after my “discussion” with my mom, I heard her voice from downstairs in the kitchen. I walked downstairs, making a slight noise and saw my mom drinking coffee in the kitchen, her phone was on the table. On the phone was her mom.

“Never heard of Animal Farm, sounds fancy.” my grandmother said.

“Yeah it’s pretty advanced for his age, guess all that reading at night with him helped.” my mom said.

“ I loved reading to you.”

“ You never read to me, Ma!” my mother snapped back

“ Yeah I did, I read you….”

“You can’t even think of a book, you were never there for me!” There was a moment of silence, my mother burst into tears and hung up the phone, putting her head on the table in shame.

As Mike Rose wrote in his essay, I Just Want to be Average,  “You're defined by your school as "slow"; you're placed in a curriculum that isn't designed to liberate you but to occupy you, or, if you're lucky, train you, through the training is for work the society does not esteem; other students are picking up the cues from your school and your curriculum and interacting with you in particular ways.” (3).

We separate kids into two groups, smart and slow and we do this at a young age but old enough so that child understands that their behind. Instead of allowing “slower” kids to integrate their ideas with “smarter” kids so that both groups benefit schools put you in classes that just fill up your time, rather than giving you a purpose.

Literacy is a tool used to understand words and people, some people understand these messages better than others. Our parents are meant to lead us, the amount of guidance are parents give us varies.



Works Cited:

I Just Wanna Be Average by Mike Rose

Rose, Mike. "I Just Want to Be Average." Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements of America's Underprepared. New York: Free Press, 1989. 162-67. Print.


Baca, Jimmy Santiago. A Place to Stand: the Making of a Poet. Grove Press, 2001. [This is the book…]


The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children by Lisa D. Delpit.
Lisa Delpit (1988) The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Children. Harvard Educational Review: September 1988, Vol. 58, No. 3, pp. 280-299


Advanced Essay #2: The Language of Masculinity

Introduction:

The goal of this paper was to explain how I view code switching, especially in concern to masculinity, as a language.I am proud of the connections I made about how men view being feminine as a bad thing along with how I connect to the grand scheme of masculinity. I could improve more on being concise with my words.


The Language of Masculinity:

When I was fourteen I entered the workforce with my first job, which was anything but glamorous. I was condemned to spend a little more than a month of my summer trapped in a very old and hot gym with a gaggle of small children. While the children were annoying, it was my fellow coworkers who I found to be the most unbearable.

I have this complex when it comes to interacting with guys my own age. I do not consider myself to be overly masculine in the slightest, so I find myself feeling lost and mildly annoyed at the behavior of my fellow men. Not all men, but just the majority of them who flaunt their masculinity and force it onto others. The ones who find ways to insult not only each other but different groups of people as well.

The camp in which I worked seemed to reinforce stereotypical gender norms much to my dismay. Me and the rest of the boys were in the gym playing sports with the older kids while the girls were confined to the “tot room” watching over the smaller campers.

Lunches, where all of us guys would sit in the break room, were the worst for me. Conversation would buzz around me, but it was as if the guys were speaking a foreign language that I barely had a grasp of. I had mastered the art of nodding along and laughing in order to pass as just another guy, but every now and then though one of them would say something that snapped me to my senses.

“Dude stop being such a faggot,” I had heard one of them yell.

“Shut up, you’re the faggot,” another had retorted, his mouth full of sandwich. They all laughed except me. I always hoped that no one would notice my flinch when they said certain words like faggot or retard. Those were words of their language that I had refused to speak.

It had always fascinated me that men use the term faggot as an insult, as if being gay would  suddenly strip a man of what makes him a man. It seems as though men are obsessed with the concept of a fag, which is to say an overly feminine and flamboyant man who likes men. It must make them feel better about their own fragile masculinity.

To me, masculinity is a language in itself. It is one born from years of privilege and entitlement, of aggression and hate. It not only harms those who are not men, but it also harms the men who use it.

As Steve Almond wrote in his article What I Learned in the Locker Room, “We look to pro sports as a reminder that it is our duty to conceal the parts of ourselves that feel vulnerable, the parts we associate — erroneously, but inextricably — with the feminine.”

Hypermasculinity not only harms those who are not men, but it also harms the men who perpetuate it. The fear of being feminine or the fear of being a “fag” is what drives men to act the way in which they do.

Men conceal their feelings, their vulnerabilities, and repress them until there is no other choice but to push those negative feelings onto others. It makes sense then, that they would attack the so-called “faggots” because they are jealous of a man who can take ownership of who he is and who can take responsibility for his emotions and actions. “Faggots” are a threat to their way of life.

Towards the end of my first summer of work, I found myself exhausted keeping up the charade of masculinity. I think the facade that I had put up began to fade because one boy reached out to me during my last week of work. We were in the gym, and he had stopped me in the middle of my weak attempt at shooting some baskets.

“I just wanted to tell you that I notice how uncomfortable you seem around some of the other guys, I get it,” he admitted. “I just don’t want you to think that I’m a horrible person because of how I act around them. I’m not like this really, I just do it to fit in,” he had told me.

I think I replied with something along the lines of, “Yeah don’t worry about it, it’s no big deal,” but in reality I was confused. Why did this boy care so much about what I thought of him?

The answer didn’t come to me until much later, after I had become more comfortable in my own skin. He was trying to reassure me that he was not a “horrible” person, but in reality it seemed as though he was trying to reassure himself, which makes me think about what Gloria Anzaldúa emphasizes in her work How to Tame a Wild Tongue, “Wild tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out.”

This boy had given up who he was in order to fit into the male archetype. He took the parts of himself that were against the norm and cut them out in order to become what every man is expected to be. While he may have found comfort in the conformity, he had lost himself in the process of doing so. I came to realize that you cannot bargain with society, you either speak the language it wants you to or you risk becoming a social pariah.


Works Cited:


Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands = La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1999. Print.


Almond, Steve. What I Learned in the Locker Room. The New York Times Company, 11 Sept. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/opinion/sunday/what-i-learned-in-the-locker-room.html. Accessed 10 Dec. 2017.


Advanced Essay #2: Language in furthering cultural literacy

Introduction
This essay details experiences in my life with literacy and explains the ways in which the ability to get a bilingual literacy should be accessible to all in creating a more just society. I am proud of the ways I connect personal experience with evidence from other personal accounts and broad ideas. With more writing I would improve on adding more perspectives and making the scenes from my personal experience much more specific. 


Advanced Essay

I entered my kindergarten classroom literate in English, and left literate in two languages. This was a phenomenon I couldn’t fully process as a five year old. My brain swirled in circles, as a child does, and learning two languages at once just became custom. I started by learning Spanish the way I had learned English years before, Maestra Maricarmen would point to a grape and we would all respond in unison, “uva.” I spoke Spanish all day long, to the point where it felt weird when I would go home and have to speak English. I ate dinner and went to bed like the usual kindergartener, with the thoughts off all of the things I had learned and had yet to learn. My eyes slowly started to drift into dreamland. My mind began to swirl into a scene where I was doing my homework and my mom was standing above me. She was speaking and speaking in a way I had never realized her do before.

“¿Qué dice la pregunta 5? Creo que la maestra equivocó.”

Through my dream I slowly started to realize what was off, my dream was in Spanish. My body jerked up in shock. What just happened? The sun was slowly rising through the shades on my window. I could feel my eyes droop back into dreamland and I fell back asleep.

As my literacy in two languages was growing, I realized parts of my learning experience that were changing. I was becoming more culturally aware solely through the ability to communicate with others and connect through a common factor. When we went to the Mexican market on the corner, me, the 7-year-old, was the one who would talk to the owner. When I read books, I was able to read about Latin American culture in the language they speak. When I went to class, I was able to communicate with students who didn’t speak any Spanish. When I travelled with my family, I was the one who got us around. These experiences made me realize this great power that I possessed. It was an ability to communicate with others who had very different backgrounds than myself.  

Sixth grade began with a huge influx of new students, most of whom were Mexican immigrants who arrived in Philadelphia a few months before. One of these students, Brenda, was seated right next to me in Maestra Antonia’s class. I looked to her and asked, “¿Hola, cómo estás?” She looked at me with a smile and responded, “Bien, eres la primera Americana que ha hablado en Español a mi.” In translation she was saying that I was the first American who had spoken in Spanish to her. Over the years she would always look at me during class and smile, realizing she was in a community that accepted her culture. The school was full of diversity in language, and we were all learning more Spanish together. This power of multiple literacies helped with the ability to communicate with people comfortably in their own language, instead of the much too common story of other language speakers having to adapt to English for the comfort of others.

The immersion school environment that I had become used to and loved went completely against the idea that “If you want to be American, speak ‘American.’ If you don’t like it, go back to Mexico where you belong” (Anzaldúa, How to Tame a Wild Tongue, 34). Culture and language was celebrated in every course. The ideology was led through further understanding from communication and adaptation.

People are so often limited to their world by the language they speak. They lack perspective on culture because of the vast majority of people they can’t communicate with. This creates ignorant conflict of the oppressor versus the one being oppressed by the lack of ability to express their full culture. This comes into play in the oppressive manner that America treats language and diversity, where it backplays in the constitution itself, “Attacks on one’s form of expression with the intent to censor are a violation of the First Amendment” (Anzaldúa, How to Tame a Wild Tongue, 34).

Other countries treat bilingual education as a vital element in the education system where kids leave bilingual or even trilingual. The American school system sees literacy in two languages as a waste of resources and laughs at that vital element. In result, children aren’t given enough language courses, of which are treated as extra instead of a main course. This limits the ability of students to acknowledge changing diversity and see the broad places that the world has to offer, because of the lack of a diversity in literacy. This in turn changes the way that students of diverse backgrounds are treated, their languages are seen as less and a waste of time to deal with. Those students are treated as dumb and not brought to their full potential because of the way the school system places them in a, “dumping ground for the disaffected” (Rose, I Just Wanna Be Average, 2). Diverse versions of literacy create a more culturally literate and accepting society.



Works Cited


Rose, Mike. “I Just Want to be Average .” Google Drive, Google,   drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Cvq7ioloJpN2JmMDk3ZWQtYmI5OS00OTM3LTk5MDctZWMzZTViNGVhNjBi/view.


Anzaldua, Gloria. “How to tame a wild tongue .” Everettsd, www.everettsd.org/cms/lib07/WA01920133/Centricity/Domain/965/Anzaldua-Wild-Tongue.pdf.

Advanced Essay #2: Curious George Pt. 2

​Introduction:

In, Curious George Pt. 2, I really think I did well on this paper, as there were times writing this that I was just clueless on where I was going with it. With these complications, the essay ended up really strong, and I think overall a good essay. The one part I am not too sure of is how I spread the analysis throughout the paper. I am not sure if I did a well enough job on it.

Advanced Essay:

Almost every child goes through the phase of curiosity, and I was no different. At the age of 7, I wanted travel around the world with my best friend, Julie. Julie and I were inseparable,--physically and mentally--she was imaginary friend, even though she was a purple sprinkle. I sought advice from Julie everyday because she was always right, ever since she popped in my head a year before.This joyous time came to an end, when a fateful Saturday afternoon ruined our relationship.

“Mommy are we gonna get ice cream?” I questioned.

My mother swiftly turned around and gave my the death stare as if to say: ‘Don’t you dare ask me that question again’. My brain immediately registered the look and I slumped back into my car seat, staying silent.

We arrived at a place full of people. My mother, Julie, and I walked through a gate, leading to rows of golf clubs hanging, all different colors. My mother handed me one.

‘What is this, a bat?’

‘I don’t know maybe mommy wants us to play’

‘Play what?’

‘I don’t know Julie!’

‘Stop yelling at me! That’s not nice’

‘Alright, I am very sorry. I’ll ask mommy what it is’

My eyes trailed up to my mother, who was handing the man at the booth money. I tugged on her shirt. She ignored me, didn’t even bother to look down at me. I grabbed her shirt again, with a better grip, and pulled it again. She rotated. Her demeanor changed, and her face looked as though it was caving inwards, with her nose scrunched up.

My curiosity is just like building up a skill or habit, it’s something I was proud of, didn’t get ashamed or embarrassed by it. Although my mother constantly wondered why I was like this, it just came naturally to me, I couldn’t control it. It was like my brain needed to learn and understand what is going on, how everything works, and how to make sense of it all. Like Ta-Nehisi Coates said in the biography, Between the World and Me: “You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to construct yourself to make other people comfortable.” Coates explains that people who use creativity or any other way that is different to interpret the world is inspiring, and nobody should make fun of it; instead let it be an example to aspire to.

We went through a lot of different golf courses, and I went skipping along with my club swinging around in circles. I was singing my favorite song: Leave Me Alone, by Michael Jackson. Right away, Julie started singing along.

‘So just leave me alone’

‘Leave me alone, leave me alone’

‘Leave me alone, stop it!’

‘Just stop doggin me around’

Our duet came to a stop, as the screech of my mother’s voice was heard. I stopped my music video and ran back towards her, realizing I sang my way past the pretty fountain. The fountain had a humongous gold golf ball on top, with four holes in the sides of the ball. In these holes, water poured out gracefully into a pool. Intrigued with the whole thing, my body moved towards the fountain on its own.

Next thing I knew I was standing right in front of the fountain, as I climbed up into the wall and looked over the rail and into the fountain water.

This gorgeous purple golf ball was staring directly at me.

‘You know you want it, just go get it’

‘No I can’t go in the water’

‘Then put ya hand in and get the ball’

‘But…’

‘Do it, you know we want it’

With an evil grin, I let curiosity take over me. I crawled under the rail and stood up. I stretched my arm out, to where the purple ball was, and wiggled my fingers to move closer. Without thinking, I leaned forward some more, way past my limit of balance. I fell head first into the fountain, making a huge commotion.

‘Julie, this is all your fault! We are not friends anymore.’

I grabbed my purple ball and got out of the fountain, and walked a couple of feet to where my mother was standing. She looked down at me and started laughing.

Many people people saw me as a bad little girl playing around, other than my mother. My curiosity lead me to a tool to learn and grow from my mistakes. Without curiosity, there would be nothing to try, therefore nothing to learn from in my life. Learning makes me intelligent, only a fool does not learn from his mistakes. My mother understood this about me, she knew my curiosity would get me in trouble.

“You did all of that to get a purple ball?” She said, with a puzzled look on her face.

I nodded my head and raised the ball to her face.

“You are so cute, let’s go get ice cream and sit in the sun.”

Even in The Giver, by Lois Lowry, everything is so plain and boring city and everyone has to follow the rules with no exceptions, but Jonas is different. When Jonas’s eyes are unusual, he is able to see color, when most people in the community cannot. He has an exceptional gift that allows him to see and interpret things different than everyone else; he is able to see “deeper” into the world that is around him, giving him the advantage of understanding and seeing life.

Jonas and I are just the same, the same glow in the eyes that say: extraordinary. We both are anxious about the world we live in, and we learn the exact same way.






Advanced Essay #2: Keeping thoughts

Introduction:
This essay is about exploring the ideas of speech and how it affects people in different ways living there everyday lives. People from different countries who come to the U.S are affected by the way that they speak and how seriously they are taken. 
James Klenk 
Mr. Block 
English 3 
December 10, 2017
Essey:

When I was growing up I was a lonely kid with the little friend outside of school and not being friends with people in my neighborhood. I understood why I was going to a school far away from my house but I never got the concept of what that meant until I got older and started to experience the world more with the different culture and environment. I am dyslexic with slur speech and a high pitch voice annoying voice, I was weird to talk too. I went thru school not being self-conscious on how I talked but once I got to high school and started to meet new people I started to care about my voice and punctuation.

As my friends and I were talking about the class reading that we had to do for Mr. Kay's class. We were talking about the main character in the book and what we thought about her. As we walked, we were talking about the character choices in the book. I was telling them that I thought that the character actions were too impulsive to make any sense. As I told them that they gave me a look of confusion and giggles. I asked what happened. And all they said was what is the character name. ¨Why her name is Dane¨” everyone laughed with the laughter filling the halls ¨ẅhat did I say, that's her name¨. ¨Her name is Dana, You know that right¨ I looked at them thinking that they're crazy because I knew that I said. ¨You said Diane you know that right¨  as I looked at them I said ¨ Ya I guess¨. I went through that day not truly know what I said wrong but I know that the reason why they didn't fully understand me was that of my speech and dyslexia. The knowledge of know that your being affected by something that you can't change about yourself. I know that I am not the only one effect by a speech in their everyday lives. The short story Mother Tongue  It illustrates the struggle of a mother who is trying to live her everyday life with working, finances and raising a child, and dealing with the knowledge that she will not be fully understood and taken seriously because of her ability to speak English. “I knew from a four fact because when I was growing up, my mother’s ‘limited’ English limited my perception of her”(2). This ideal of speech impacts someone's ability of taken seriously is something that many people have to face in their everyday life with people with speech people are being less likely to be hired over other people. This practice can not only affect business body with them not hiring the best person for the job because they don't speak perfectly but instead picking people that might not be qualified and cause them to lose financially.

Cultures around the world have dictated their version of success in their society with people who ability took and speech a certain part leads them to be more successful in their society. Thru their eyes they cherry picking people that will be able to compete in the world to make them look more smart and intelligent.  The Idea of only picking people that looks and sound like the part cause them to overlook smarter and brighter people because they are different. This Practice not only limits the society as a whole by not putting their best foot forward in the areas of ideas, jobs, and knowledge. But it's also limit the society in another way. Its limit people experience and culture with them suppressing there difference and accents it fixes the average way people speak. As a society, we need to think and talk about if we want this to be the process of people being accepted into a job. If as a society we are comfortable with that we need to ask why. Why are we comfortable with allowing a part of our population that percentage numbers in the double-digit not being able to be heard or taken seriously.  That the real question that everyone should be asking themselves and that will people with claim different causes are more moral the ideals that anyone forms any background cannot listen be the cause of the way that they speak is something that we all need to acknowledge and do something about because for more people it´s unchangeable.