Britney Kuoch Period 5 November 9, 2015 COTR Essay The Message of Hope “But now she saw it could also be like this, a river stretching before them clear to the horizon, broad and inviting, shimmering with hope,” (Crew 123). Despite the hard times, she had found hope. To escape the Khmer rouge, 12 year old Sundara Sovann and her aunt’s family were forced to flee Cambodia in order to survive. However, this meant they would have to leave behind Sundara’s family. Four years later, in America, Sundara meets an American boy named Jonathan, who she liked. The novel follows Sundara as she ventures through a new place away from her home land and family with hope. In Children of the River by Linda Crew, searching for hope in every situation was a message …show more content…
To begin, Sundara’s hope for the survival of her family was used to illuminate the importance of holding onto hope. Sundara had to leave behind her parents and siblings when she left for America. She had no knowledge of the whereabouts of her family or if they were even still alive. In spite of this, Sundara said “’But as long as I don’t hear they die, I still have hope.’ She made her voice light. ‘I know a Korean girl—her mother just find her sister again, almost thirty years since the war in Korea. Me, I’m only four years so far!’” (Crew 51). The last moment Sundara had spent with her family was four years prior to when those words were spoken, yet she had kept hope for her family’s survival for all four years. When Sundara stated she had only been waiting four years so far, the …show more content…
When Soka discovered Sundara’s association with Jonathan, “Part of [Sundara] longed to beg for Soka’s sympathy, make her see how hard it was to keep the old ways when you were young,” (Crew 116). In her mind, the thought of begging suggests Sundara held at least the slightest amount of hope it would succeed. In other words, she possessed hope Soka would be sympathetic and more tolerant of her actions. When Sundara pointed out to Naro that Soka was 17 when she married him and Sundara was 17 years old herself, Naro asked if Sundara wanted to get married already. Sundara responded with, “’Oh, no! I just wondered . . . Things are different here. Girls go out with boys. . .’” (Crew 66). Naro told her she couldn’t go out with anyone because doing so would be against their Khmer traditions. The fact Sundara had asked in the first place implied she had hoped he would allow her to go out with Jonathan. If Naro had bestowed his approval, he would have assisted in convincing Soka to acknowledge Sundara’s new wishes. Thus, Sundara’s hope for being understood by Soka demonstrated a message of holding
The fourth Chapter of Estella Blackburn’s non fiction novel Broken lives “A Fathers Influence”, exposes readers to Eric Edgar Cooke and John Button’s time of adolescence. The chapter juxtaposes the two main characters too provide the reader with character analyses so later they may make judgment on the verdict. The chapter includes accounts of the crimes and punishments that Cooke contended with from 1948 to 1958. Cooke’s psychiatric assessment that he received during one of his first convictions and his life after conviction, marring Sally Lavin. It also exposes John Button’s crime of truancy, and his move from the UK to Australia.
reacts to the crosser. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker’s first impression of the swamp
Initially, Elisabeth is the matriarch of the four generations of women talked about in the story. Elisabeth works in the house, but she’s married to a field slave and has three daughters. Not much insight is given on Elisabeth and her feelings, yet through the narration it is as if she lived vicariously through her youngest daughter, Suzette: “It was as if her mother were the one who had just had her first communion not Suzette” (20) Even though Elisabeth too worked in the house, Suzette had more privileges than her mother and the other slaves. Elisabeth represented the strength and the pride of her people: “You have a mother and a father both, and they don’t live up to the [plantation] house” (25). She would constantly remind Suzette of her real family, which signifies the remembrance of a history of people and their roots. It is up to Suzette to keep the heritage even through the latter miscegenation of the generations to come.
Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate is the story of an African boy, Kek, who loses his father and a brother and flees, leaving his mother to secure his safety. Kek, now in Minnesota, is faced with difficulties of adapting to a new life and of finding his lost mother. He believes that his mother still lives and would soon join him in the new found family. Kek is taken from the airport by a caregiver who takes him to live with his aunt. It is here that Kek meets all that amazed him compared to his home in Sudan, Africa. Home of the brave shows conflicts that Kek faces. He is caught between two worlds, Africa and America. He feels guilty leaving behind his people to live in a distant land especially his mother, who he left in the midst of an attack.
In her novel The Daughter of Time Josephine Tey looks at how history can be misconstrued through the more convenient reinterpretation of the person in power, and as such, can become part of our common understanding, not being true knowledge at all, but simply hearsay. In The Daughter of Time Josephine claims that 40 million school books can’t be wrong but then goes on to argue that the traditional view of Richard III as a power obsessed, blood thirsty monster is fiction made credible by Thomas More and given authenticity by William Shakespeare. Inspector Alan Grant looks into the murder of the princes in the tower out of boredom. Tey uses Grant to critique the way history is delivered to the public and the ability of historians to shape facts to present the argument they believe.
and make fun of black elders. And would talk to them any kind of way.
River of Hope: Forging Identity and Nation in the Rio Grande Borderlands by Omar S. Valerio-Jimenez is a wonderful book exploring the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Gender, cultural change, class, and racial standards are just a few topics Omar touches in his book. This book gives meaning not just to Mexican readers but American readers as well. This outstanding study of the United States-Mexico borderland shows the history of the land starting with the Spanish colonization moving all the way to the Tamaulipas.
After a basketball game, four kids, Andrew Jackson, Tyrone Mills, Robert Washington and B.J. Carson, celebrate a win by going out drinking and driving. Andrew lost control of his car and crashed into a retaining wall on I-75. Andy, Tyrone, and B.J. escaped from the four-door Chevy right after the accident. Teen basketball star and Hazelwood high team captain was sitting in the passenger's side with his feet on the dashboard. When the crash happened, his feet went through the windshield and he was unable to escape. The gas tank then exploded and burned Robbie to death while the three unharmed kids tried to save him.
In the story "So Much Water So Close To Home" a young girl is raped, killed and found in a river where four men are fishing. What makes this story interesting is that after discovering the body they did not report it until after they left, three days later. When one of the men who discovered her, the husband of the narrator, Stuart returns home he doesn't tell his wife about the incident until the following morning. Because of this, Claire believes that all men are responsible for the murder of the girl. Due to these facts she acts irrationally, suspiciously, and with distrust not only towards her husband, but also to all men in general.
Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang is an inspiring true story about a young girl who is forced to make an agonizing decision of country versus family. In her story of joy, sorrow, lament, resentment, and countless other perplexing experiences, she must decide whether she is her family's child or Chairman Mao's. In Red Scarf Girl, Ji-li is faced with the heart-breaking decision of her future, and finally after years of confounding peer and family pressure, she resolves to love her family. Throughout the book she is a zealous supporter of Mao, though is constantly running into contradicting encounters in the beginning, middle, and end.
In the book by Carl Rogers, A Way of Being, Rogers describes his life in the way he sees it as an older gentleman in his seventies. In the book Rogers discusses the changes he sees that he has made throughout the duration of his life. The book written by Rogers, as he describes it is not a set down written book in the likes of an autobiography, but is rather a series of papers which he has written and has linked together. Rogers breaks his book into four parts.
The novel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011) written by Sherry Turkle, presents many controversial views, and demonstrating numerous examples of how technology is replacing complex pieces and relationships in our life. The book is slightly divided into two parts with the first focused on social robots and their relationships with people. The second half is much different, focusing on the online world and it’s presence in society. Overall, Turkle makes many personally agreeable and disagreeable points in the book that bring it together as a whole.
Who is the birthday party a rite of passage for, the birthday boy or his mother?
In July’s People, Nadine Gordimer gives a very detailed and knowledgeable explanation of the political turmoil within South Africa. By expressing the emotions of a family involved in the deteriorating situation and the misunderstandings between blacks and whites, she adds a very personal and emotional touch, which allows the reader to understand the true horror and terror these people experienced. Gordimer writes of how the Smales family reacts, survives, and adjusts to this life altering experience. She makes obvious throughout the book that prejudice plays a major role in uncovering the reactions of Bamford and Maureen Smales.
In Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie attempts to use history in order to gain leverage on the present, to subvert the single story stereotypes that dominate many contemporary discourses on Africa. Written in the genre of historical fiction, Adichie’s novel transcends beyond mere historical narration and recreates the polyphonic experiences of varying groups of people in Nigeria before and after the Civil War. She employs temporal distortion in her narrative, distorting time in order to illustrate the intertwining effects of the past and present, immersing deep into the impact of western domination that not only catalyzed the war, but continues to affect contemporary Africa. In this paper, I will analyze her portrayal of the multifaceted culture produced by colonialism – one that coalesces elements from traditional African culture with notions of western modernity to varying degrees. I will argue that Adichie uses a range of characters, including Odenigbo’s mother, Ugwu, Olanna and Kainene, to each represent a point in a spectrum between tradition and modernity. Through her juxtaposition, she undermines the stereotypes that continue to characterize Africa as backwards and traditional, proving instead that colonialism has produced a cross culture where the two are intertwined.