Melanie Smith, whom was seventeen, was an ordinary girl like no other. She went to school, had a sweet sixteen, had friends, had a puppy, even had good grades, but there was a catch. She ended up coming home from school one day, with her mom and her older sister standing in the living room looking upset. “Your grandmother,” her mother, Maria starts. “Is at the hospital.” “Why?” Melanie asks. “She has,” her mother begins, not wanting to finish what she was about to say. “She has cancer,” her sister, Mandie replies. “She does?” Melanie asks, her eyes starting to water. They nod. She swarms them both in to a hug. “I’m sorry, mom,” Melanie says, letting go of them both slowly walking up the stairs to her bedroom. Melanie’s bedroom was bright.
The main character in this story is a Jewish girl named Alicia. When the book
Her struggles are of a flower trying to blossom in a pile of garbage. Growing up in the poor side of the southside of Chicago, Mexican music blasting early in the morning or ducking from the bullets flying in a drive-by shooting. Julia solace is found in her writing, and in her high school English class. Mr. Ingram her English teacher asks her what she wants out of life she cries “I want to go to school. I want to see the word” and “I want so many things sometimes I can’t even stand it. I feel like I’m going to explode.” But Ama doesn’t see it that way, she just tells, Julia, she is a bad daughter because she wants to leave her family. The world is not what it seems. It is filled with evil and bad people that just want to her hurt and take advantage of
Susie’s mother opened the door to let Molly, Susie’s babysitter, inside. Ten-month old Susie seemed happy to see Molly. Susie then observed her mother put her jacket on and Susie’s face turned from smiling to sad as she realized that her mother was going out. Molly had sat for Susie many times in the past month, and Susie had never reacted like this before. When Susie’s mother returned home, the sitter told her that Susie had cried until she knew that her mother had left and then they had a nice time playing with toys until she heard her mother’s key in the door. Then Susie began crying once again.
Although illness narratives are not novel or new, their prevalence in modern popular literature could be attributed to how these stories can be relatable, empowering, and thought-provoking. Susan Grubar is the writer for the blog “Living with Cancer”, in The New York Times, that communicates her experience with ovarian cancer (2012). In our LIBS 7001 class, Shirley Chuck, Navdeep Dha, Brynn Tomie, and I (2016) discussed various narrative elements of her more recent blog post, “Living with Cancer: A Farewell to Legs” (2016). Although the elements of narration and description (Gracias, 2016) were easily identified by all group members, the most interesting topics revolved around symbolism as well as the overall impression or mood of the post.
For the readers out there who haven’t had the privilege of reading this book, let’s take a moment to recap and spill the beans on this unbelievably amazing piece of literature. It all starts out with the reader knowing the main character, Hazel Grace Lancaster. Hazel has had cancer since she was a little girl, the big part of this information is that Hazel’s cancer is terminal. She has a type of cancer that makes it almost impossible for her to breath on her own, this is known as stage 4 thyroid cancer. Sometime during Hazel’s life, her parents decided that she was depressed, so they've sent her to a support group. Hazel drags on and on about how horribly boring it is, but soon her perspective changes when Isaac, a friend from group brings ...
I looked around at everyone in the room and saw the sorrow in their eyes. My eyes first fell on my grandmother, usually the beacon of strength in our family. My grandmother looked as if she had been crying for a very long period of time. Her face looked more wrinkled than before underneath the wild, white hair atop her head. The face of this once youthful person now looked like a grape that had been dried in the sun to become a raisin. Her hair looked like it had not been brushed since the previous day as if created from high wispy clouds on a bright sunny day.
She’s been struggling everyday of her life for the past 10 years; battling and fighting this horrible disease has made it hard on her and her family. The cancer has now metastasized, making it difficult for her to take care of everyday responsibilities and participate in daily activities. Her 13-year-old daughter is watching as her mother suffers and becomes brittle and weak.
I had just walked into Annie’s room to find her screaming in pain. I ran to find the supervising nurse and rushed back to comfort Annie. Shortly after, the nurse came, fed Annie her medications, and walked out. Not a word was said. But I knew Annie was afraid, confused, upset; managing deep pain in her body. I knew she did not want to be alone, so I stayed beside her for a while, holding her hand until she fell asleep, telling her she would be okay. ================
It had been a cold, snowy day, just a few days after Thanksgiving. My grandmother became immensely ill and unable to care for herself. We knew she had health problems but her sudden turn for the worst was so unexpected and therefore we weren’t prepared for the decisions that had to be made and the guilt we would feel. Where would grandma live? Would she be taken care of? So many concerns floated around. A solution was finally found and one that was believed to be the best or so we thought.
In the poem, "Ordinary Life," by Barbara Crooker, the speaker uses irony to signify how her life is anything but but ordinary. To the speaker, "this [is] a day when nothing [happens]," however, the readers can clealy see how busy the speaker's day is throughout the poem (1). The speaker's first duty of the day is to get her children ready to go to school. Then she spends her entire morning building "block stacks in the squares of light on the floor" (5-6). When "lunch [blends] into naptime" for the baby, the speaker "[cleans] out kitchen cupboards" (7-8). This indicates that the speaker is a hard working mother and does not relax until she finishes all her chores. Furthermore, in the afternoon, she "[peels] carrots and potatoes" for dinner
The joys of having a loving, caring, and sweet grandmother, all stolen from me by cancer. The day of her diagnosis and the doctors giving her a time expectancy. Sitting in the room, Dr. Vargas mumbled, “Lucila Toro, I’m sorry to inform you have stage two pancreatic cancer.” As a child, I was trying to grasp this information of how all my beliefs in God could fail me, death I had hoped my
She knows that when someone has cancer, people look at them like they are a foreign being. She does not want to be seen like that. She wants to be seen as a normal teenage girl. She has a friend from highschool that she sees once in a blue moon but feels the tension every time they get together. She knows that things will never feel the same with her. When Hazel meets Augustus, a boy she met at a Cancer support group, she feels like a normal teenager. They both have cancer but act very nonchalant about it. They both live their everyday lives like it is a normal day. Hazel has a very realistic attitude. She doesn’t like when people tiptoe around the fact she has cancer but also doesn’t like it to be the topic of conversation. This helps her cope a lot. Her dry sense of humor is a huge part of her coping. That is why Augustus is such a great fit in Hazel’s life. They are both very similar in that way. Augustus once said “I love it when you talk medical to me.” (TFIOS pp. 34). To the both of them, cancer has become a normality in their lives. A great part to the way Hazel copes is that she does not care what anyone says or thinks. She does what she likes/wants. She does not care what everyone else is doing. If she did, that would just be an added, unneeded stressor in her life. Hazel also loves to read, and she uses reading as a way of coping. She constantly rereads the book “An Imperial Affliction”. Hazel says it was the closest thing she had to a bible (TFIOS pp.13). Hazel relates this book to her own life. In a way it makes her feel as if she is not alone. She mentions that the author of that book, Peter Van Houten, was the only person she had ever come across who seemed to understand what is was like to be dying but to not have died (TFIOS pp. 13). This is what she uses as a distraction. Reading kind of takes her away from the life she is living and puts her in another role. Hazel also sees cancer
Nancy was only four years old when her grandmother died. Her grandmother had a big lump on the lower right hand side of her back. The doctors removed it, but it was too late. The tumor had already spread throughout her body. Instead of having a lump on her back, she had a long stitched up incision there. She couldn’t move around; Nancy’s parents had to help her go to the bathroom and do all the simple things that she use to do all by herself. Nancy would ask her grandmother to get up to take her younger sister, Linh, and herself outside so they could play. She never got up. A couple of months later, an ambulance came by their house and took their grandmother away. That was the last time Nancy ever saw her alive. She was in the hospital for about a week and a half. Nancy’s parents never took them to see her. One day, Nancy saw her parents crying and she have never seen them cry before. They dropped Linh and her off at one of their friend’s house. Nancy got mad because she thought they were going shopping and didn’t take her with them.
“a mindless town is a smooth flowing town but not a good town. “A wrinkle in time”. i'm like IT, calvin, and charles wallace. (i'm like IT because I hate everyone. i'm like calvin because i'm tall. and i'm like charles because i'm smart, and cute.) But the main characters are mr. murry ,meg ,calvin, and charles. (mr. murry comes in later AKA in ch 6 or 7.) And a group of ex stares are named mrs. whatsit , mrs who , and mrs which come with them.
The ringing became louder and louder until she grabbed the phone and answered! It was Christmas eve and a young girl named Connie and her whole family and extended family were having a Christmas party and Connie was hanging out with her cousin Erica. Something felt a little odd that night like something was watching them. Connie and her cousin Erica were hanging out in the family room and suddenly Erica’s phone started ringing and it was an unknown number so she ignored it. The phone started to ring again and she ignored it again.