Blog #8

Personally while reading Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress this year, I believe that I have learned a lot about the people and nation of China during Mao's Cultral Revolution. Dai Sijie has done an amazing job in depicting the topic of re-education in China, which is not an easy one to explain and analyze. Before reading the book, I had no idea that educated people were even sent to re-education camps outside of their cities and "civilization". Sijie has given me a more vivid understanding of re-education most affectively through the description of the working and living conditions at these re-education camps. The work is extremely tedious, not easy to complete, and physically demanding and Sijie clearly conveys this message to his reader. Learning about another time in history is more intimate through historical fiction rather than through a factual historical account because numerous ideas and stories that are extremely similar to those of being factual can be expressed in the writing and more flare can be added to the story which may not be try to the actual event of the story, but it is authentic to the historical time period. A true historical account may not entail of all of the culture, point of view, and people of China during the Cultural Revolution. After reading a majority of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, I feel much more aware and sensitive to the history of China and I can't wait to continue to learn more about this time period.

Blog #7

As summer began to come to a close, the pages of Persepolis over took my days and I was excited to begin a new English class for the year in English II. I had no idea if I would be able to keep up with the pace of a more advanced English class, however I believe that I have succeeded in doing so and I love the class immensely. I believe that I completed my summer homework to my greatest ability and the quality of my work was displayed through the grades I received on these assignments. I also feel that all of the annotations that I have collected whilst reading these books has helped me for better when writing essays and it is an aspect of English II that I have succeeded in. Lastly, I feel that another strength of my work this year would consist of my Persepolis expository essay, which I believed to be one of my best pieces of writing that I have produced for quite some time. However, there are other aspects that I can improve upon in English II. I believe that I should prepare myself for reading quizzes in a more affective manner by reading the text and then going back to review plot, dialogue, and other significant pieces. This would help me to achieve excellent scores on my reading quizzes and would better prepare me for the assessments. On the other hand, however, I feel that I should be not just trying to retain plot ideas to prepare myself for the reading quizzes and for essays, but also enjoying the text itself. Last year I did not make use of enjoying the texts we read and I was so focused on just memorizing points of the story that I missed the exquisite writing styles found in the book. Therefore this year, I want to read the required texts this year and not just continue to analyze, memorize, and pull out themes, but to truly value what the stories have to offer. Overall, I have loved English II this year and I cannot wait to see what English II has to offer me for the rest of the year. 

Blog #6

As a former student at St. Margaret's Episcopal School, each and every year in lower school (kindergarten through 5th grade) we would visit the library and for a week have certain excerpts of banned books read to us during National Banned Books Week. Thus, I am aware to the great works of writing that are banned and questioned each and every year. After viewing the list of banned books, two novels clearly stood out to me, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Animal Farm by George Orwell. I read both of these books in the 8th grade and I really enjoyed reading these novels. These texts were extremely intriguing to me and I still cannot wrap my head around why someone would want to challenge/ban the book in any way. To Kill a Mockingbird could've been banned due to the crime of rape being mentioned in the novel, however the book mainly highlights the life of the protagonist, Atticus, his family, and his process of proving Tom Robinson innocent. Therefore, there are no true reasons to ban and/or challenge the novel. In Animal Farm, a possible reason that it could have been banned or challenged could have been based on the fact that it criticized the Soviet Union, however the United States has never supported or promoted the Soviets in anyway, thus there are no other true ways of being able to ban or challenge the book. I personally believe that whoever challenged or tried to ban these books is extremely uneducated and oblivious to the fact that we should not be censored to the realities of life. I would go very far to read something that is deemed "illegal" by the community if the book conveys an intriguing topic that is politically and socially correct in a fluent way. Overall, National Banned Books Week is an extremely significant week that raises awareness to the fascinating texts that surround us that may be never noticed or to the controversy of some extremely recognized texts being banned.

Blog #5

Personally, I believe that inequality does have to exist for there to be creativity and free thought in our society. Some are more skilled than others in certain aspects of life and there would be no sense of creativity, due to everybody being equivalent to each other and each person having the same amount of creativity inside themselves. Free thought would also not be evident if everybody was equal because the mental capacity and intelligence of every human would be equivalent, producing the same thoughts. Overemphasizing the importance of praise and trying to hide the feeling of failure from children produces a generation of wimps undoubtedly. If children are not exposed to the sense of failure in their early life they will never be ready to face the sense or cope with the sense of loss or failure. Life is never full of just victories, thus if kids are taught early that failure and loss is apart of life, then they will be accustomed to it and will be able to cope. Overall, if society consisted of only equality and success, then there would be no feeling of not being as skilled as another person or failure which is vital because good cannot exist with bad.