“She stepped off the edge with Ariel in her arms and danced into the sky. They waltzed with a cloud. And for a moment I could see Mor smile.” The Girl Who Fell from the Sky is a realistic fiction book written by Heidi W. Durrow, awarded a bellwether prize. The author has a Danish mother and African-American father, just like the main character Rachel. Heidi grew up in Portland Oregon, which is also the main setting for where this story takes place. In this narrative, the author somewhat reflects her own personal experience growing up in the United States as biracial. Also like Rachel, Heidi was persecuted often with questions such as “what are you?”. This publication is realistic fiction because many of the events that take place could have …show more content…
Rachel uses sex and sexual behavior as a get away maybe she thinks it will show her who she is. Or possibly she’s trying to convince herself that it doesn’t matter, that she doesn’t care. In one of these risky encounters, Rachel is thinking, “Anthony Miller is taking the thing I thought I was giving. He is not big enough to make it impossible to fight back, but I don’t. It’s like my body thinks: surrender, beautiful.(172)”. Rachel is doing these things because she doesn’t think it has consequence, she doesn’t care. Once in the book she admitted that she wasn’t suppose to survive the fall from the building, that the life she lives is hers to throw away. She feels as though she is only the shade of her skin, only a part of the tragedy she survived. When hanging out alone with Jesse, he starts talking about her skin and how she’s exotic and how she’s black but not really black and continues to not to see her but just her skin. Before they have sex, Rachel refers to his words when she thinks, “He makes me brown and browner still.(134)”. Everyone is seeing her skin and not her, who she is. Rachel; intelligent, funny, pretty etc. She starts to give in to just being a color. After Brick and Rachel have exchanged their heart wrenching stories, Brick makes Rachel realize, “When he looks at me, it feels like no one has really seen me since the accident. In his eyes, I’m not the new girl. I’m not the color of my skin. I’m a story. One with a past and future unwritten.(264)”. Rachel is still young and hasn’t completely figured out who she is, but now she knows what she’s not. She’s not the new girl. She’s not the color of her skin. She is more. Rachel is not what people say she is or make her out to be. Talking to Brick, Rachel realizes she has a future, she can be whoever she wants to be. She’s not just her past or the disaster she survived. She is more, even though she doesn’t know what
The Truman book I chose to read for the first quarter is All Fall Down by Ally Carter. I enjoyed reading this book because the plot was very interesting and I liked seeing how the events would turn out. All Fall Down is about a girl named Grace Blakely who has grown up in Adria, a European nation. She finds out her mom has died. Grace remembers an old man with a scar who was at the sight of where her mom died when it happened. Grace thinks he is the killer. She calls the man the Scarred man. Grace meets some people on the way including Megan and Noah who help her with her search to find the person who killed her mom.
Silver believes that Rachel will grow up just like any other child, but she will be “special.” Until the day that reproductive cloning is accepted in society, Rachel will be known for being “special.” Genetically, Jennifer isn’t Rachel’s mother. Jennifer is, in fact, Rachel’s twin sister. Rachel’s grandparents not only have the title of grandparents, but of Rachel’s genetic parents as well.
Human; relating to or having characteristics of a person(Merriam-Webster). A human is truly just a soul combined with characteristics of other people, and this is proven by Jenna Fox; the main character in The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson. After finding out what her body is made up of, Jenna along with other characters think she is not human. Despite this Jenna Fox has always had the key elements it takes to be a human been. Jenna for one has a past and memories that make up her life even after the accident. More importantly it is unfair to call her a “monster” when she shows characteristics similar to that of other humans. Needless to say, Jenna just as any other human isn’t perfect, and she later learns that in order to be one hundred percent human she must have the same chances of succeeding in life as any other human would. Jenna Fox is human because she has a soul regardless of her differences.
In the NonFiction book Every Falling Star by Sungju Lee and Susan McClelland, a true story of a north korean boy named SungJu whose father was disgraced by the army forcing them to move from a nice city to a poor town where you have to fight for food. Losing both parents due to them leaving to find work or food and never coming back. He was forced at just 12 to live on the streets and fend for himself. In order to survive, Sungju forms a gang with his close new friends and lives by fighting, thieving, begging, performing, and traveling around getting arrested and overcoming many obstacles just to simply survive the rough streets of their new home, making new friends and enemies along the away. While they slowly discover the truth about
This story basically tells of a girl?s pride being hurt. It was Rachel?s birthday and her teacher embarrassed her by stating a raggedy old sweater was hers. The metaphors Rachel uses to describe this article of clothing and her age throughout the story are indicators that she is still a child and that she lives a simple life. For example, Rachel said ?Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside ...
Of course, Rachel being 11 years old, she does not have a broad mindset which is the cause of her simplistic phrases that include repetition that help reflect her true age. “Not mine, not mine, not mine” repeating that the “ugly sweater” was not hers but clearly not being understood, Rachel must repeat this phrase -only in her head- just like any child would when not being listened to. Not only does this phrase inform the reader of Rachel’s weakness to stand up for herself but also of how she is accustomed to not being listened which has her thinking that she must repeat herself. Finding comfort in not only burying her face but in the thought of “mama's cake” and “everybody singing happy birthday”, she demonstrates that she feels smaller physically and emotionally so she continues this saying in her head to get her through her moment of the “sick feeling”. After constant wishing of being “102”, or “invisible” Rachel finally decides that it is too late for “mamas cake, “candles, presents and everybody will sing happy birthday” because she no longer feels “ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, one” she no longer needs closure of her
The author’s use of Rachel’s perspective is important because it establishes a connection between the reader and the character. Noting that Rachel is eleven years old justifies her childish point of view that is expressed all throughout the piece. The entire story focuses around Rachel’s teacher trying to give Rachel back a sweater. Since Rachel’s considers the sweater ugly, she believes that she will be made of for it. For example, when Mrs. Price put the
The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down by Ann Fadiman is a very interesting book. It’s amazing how difficult it is for Americans to understand other cultures because the United States is such a diverse country. However, as an American, I understood the frustrations that Lia Lee’s doctors’ felt when trying to diagnose and treat her properly. In this book both the American doctors and the Hmong peoples faced many hardships and barriers when trying to communicate with each other. After having read this book I can understand where both groups were coming from and reasons for their actions. I could only imagine the level of difficulty and anger that the doctors and Lia’s parents must have experienced over that time period.
story but also to show Rachel’s feelings throughout the story. As Rachel talks about her
Rachel is the oldest daughter in the Price family, she is fifteen when the family first arrives. Rachel is a beautiful girl, and pretty much all she cares about is how she looks. As soon as she stepped foot in the Congo,
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is about the cross-cultural ethics in medicine. The book is about a small Hmong child named Lia Lee, who had epilepsy. Epilepsy is called, quag dab peg1 in the Hmong culture that translates to the spirit catches you and you fall down. In the Hmong culture this illness is sign of distinction and divinity, because most Hmong epileptics become shaman, or as the Hmong call them, txiv neeb2. These shamans are special people imbued with healing spirits, and are held to those having high morale character, so to Lia's parents, Foua Yang and Nao Kao Lee, the disease was both a gift and a curse. The main question in this case was could Lia have survived if her parent's and the doctors overcame the miscommunication, cultural racism, and the western way of medicine.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down tells the story of a young Hmong girl stricken with epilepsy, her family, her doctors, and how misunderstandings between cultures can lead to tragedy. The title comes from the Hmong term for epilepsy, which translated, is “the spirit catches you and you fall down”. Anne Fadiman alternates between chapters on Hmong history or culture and chapters on the Lees, and specifically Lia. The condensed history of the Hmong portrayed here starts at their beginning, and traces their heritage, their movements, and why they do what they do as they flee from enemies to country to country. This record allows the reader to better understand the Lees and their situation without bogging him down with details that may
Communication is cited as a contributing factor in 70% of healthcare mistakes, leading to many initiatives across the healthcare settings to improve the way healthcare professionals communicate. (Kohn, 2000.)
Must race confine us and define us?’ The story The Girl Who Fell From The Sky, written by Heidi W. Durrow, revolves around the protagonist Rachel, who has bi-racial parents. After her mother and two siblings plunge to their deaths from a Chicago building, young Rachel Morse survives and is sent to Portland. Furthermore, part of her story is learning about how she conform into the world while dealing with her ethnicity. Additionally, when Rachel’s moves in with her grandmother, she is faced with racial expectations at home and at school.
Sandra Cisneros writes a memoir through the eyes of an eleven year old. Turning eleven happens to be a tragic day for the main character, Rachel. Through various literary techniques such as hyperbole, simile, and syntax, Rachel is characterized. Rachel is a fresh turning eleven year old who finds herself in an awful situation on her birthday. Forced to wear a raggedy old sweater that doesn’t belong to her, she makes it defiantly clear her feelings towards the clothing item, and we see this through use of hyperboles. Rachel describes the sweater as ugly and too “stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope.” This extreme exaggeration demonstrates the fire within Rachel. She is a defiant and pouty little girl who out of stubbornness has to defy the sweater in her mind. “It’s maybe a thousand years old”, she says to herself in act to degrade the filthy red sweater even more. The sweater to Rachel has become an eternal battle of ages. She is torn on whether or not to stand up and act bigger th...