Book Review: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Betty Smith, in her novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, weaves together the perspectives of an American family about one hundred years ago. This book was a mind opener for me, and I would definitely recommend it to any mature adult who knows what he or she believes in.

Although I am a conservative person (maybe getting more conservative every day), I do believe in the poverty cycle as a force that cannot always be over come by the American Dream. Although I have not experienced poverty first hand, I think we are too quick to say "work harder" or "spend your money differently" to those in need. This book takes a peek into social class issues, European racial issues, and even just people issues that occurred around 1910, but it turns out, many of these "issues" as still prevalent today, maybe in a new skin, but still very much alive.

But then again, this book not only lends a lens today humanity today, but digs into life right after the turn of the century, the ideas that sprung up, that died, that carried on. The acculturation, or possibly assimilation, that immigrants must experience upon entering the melange of America, and how that trickles out among second and third generations, how family culture and the culture of Manhattan blend or veer apart - what's more is the families of this novel are German and Irish, races that are now a part of most people's schema of America (although I have to add in that the American race should not be looked at as white or European, but a beautiful blend of many other cultures as well: these "other" races should not be seen as an separate other, but as a part of the whole, an important part of the true picture of America).

Nearing the last few chapters, I was longing for this book to never end. I wanted to follow Francy's story further. I wanted to know if she lost her Brooklyn accent, who does she marry, what happens to Neeley? But I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. I has many "mature scenes" including an almost-rape, adultery, and the main character regretting saying no to losing her virginity. Nothing, I felt, was disrespectful or crass, but I know I would not put this book in the hands of one of my eight graders. The themes are really beyond their years anyway.

I will admit, at parts, the beginning was a bit slow, but now I am missing the story and the characters like you miss an old friend who has moved away and lived a bit since you saw her last. I actually listened to it on CD and enjoyed how the reader imitated many different accents. If you want to fall into a different life, learn more about people and humanity, or just become more well read, I recommend this book. It's a charm.

Novelinks: The Kite Runner

Rewind five or so months ago and I was camped up in the basement of the HBLL pulling ideas out of my hat on how to teach The Kite Runner. It was for my teaching reading class: a project called Novelinks.

Novelinks is pretty cool actually. It is a website that any teacher can access where other teachers post ideas on how to teach a book. My trusty classmate Kasey and I spent a few qualities hours putting our project together and it payed off. Our grade was a 199/200, and I think we lost one point on the reflection (not even part of the project).

So the other day, like today, when I didn't feel like typing up my forever-and-a-day research paperz and lesson plan upon lesson plan, I mosied on over to novelinks.org and bam, our project had been published.

Because I know you are all dying to teach The Kite Runner, here it is.

(Some of the work on this link was done by another student, but the work done by Kasey and me is cited with our last names.)

What I have been reading

Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons.

I am a little bit over half way through right now. The book has such beautiful voice, and is able to create this voice not only with words, but also with style and grammar. It gives a glimpse into such a different life which fascinates me; although I do think it is important to be careful of the single story. This book is not a representation of a poor broken family in the south, it is a representation of one girl's life and experience. Still, fascinating. The quote on the front of the book says that Ellen is a southern Holden Caulfield, but she is so much sweeter than that. I am excited to see how Ellen turns out. Does she rise above all her tragedies and  find happiness? If only it weren't so close to the end of the semester and I wasn't so buried deep in lesson plans and unit plans and essays and papers, then maybe I would finish this book.

Stanley Kunitz

In my poetry of the natural world class we were studying the nature poetry of Stanley Kunitz, and this quote stuck out to me: "to be human is to know yourself to be living and dying at the same time." I am not sure what I think about this quote, but it definitely made me think. One of my American literature professors would always say that each breath that we breathe out is an exhale closer to death, but breathing is also one of the most fundamental things associated with life.

A good friend of mine is a deep thinker and has quite a reflective blog. When he graduated from college, we wrote about his lament of all the things, mostly the people, he left behind. He said that we wishes that he had begun these relationships knowing there was an end to them.

Is there an end to our relationships?

I have a particularly hard time with losing people, but I don't think that I want to start every relationship knowing it will end. Cherish the moments together, yes, but always be anticipating when things will end? Are we always dying? Are relationships going to end? Honestly, I am not sure. So I might as well always live and love as if living and loving are never going to end, and even if they do, I don't think I would change my mind.

When Hamlet said, "To be or not to be?" I like to think this is what he was talking about.

I am obsessed with Haiku

"Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward." - e e cummings

Just because I like to, I decided to write a poem. Then I transformed it to Haiku version because lately, I have been obsessed. 

If the sea catches

fire maybe it will burn the

entire ocean

between us, but if

the sea catches fire and it

doesn’t burn anything I

am going to tell

you that I forgot to swim,

I think. Because when

I put my foot in

the water I get beached. So would

you please unharbor

Your docked boat and come

across the water to me,

If the sea catches

Illuminated Texts: These are unreal

What I have been reading

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

Read it. It is sooo good.

                        Be thankful for the fleas.

Poem a Day

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens.

For you, a thousand times over

What I have been reading: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Why you should read this book:

1. To better learn about the modern world outside the United States, and to better understand what happened in Afghanistan.
2. To see (and feel) Hassan's selfless friendship toward Amir.
3. To redefine sacrifice, and see both sacrifice and trials in a way most Americans don't understand. 
4. To know that failing to act or not doing something can be just as bad as doing something or committing a wrong. 
5. To really understand my favorite line: "For you, a thousand times over."

Why you should not read this book:

1. It is heart-wrenching. In my opinion, it was not too graphic, but the horrors that were portrayed are devastating.
2. You may lose some innocence in exchange for reader-experience and a better understanding of the world.

New List of Life Item: Watch a kite fighting festival in real life.

Prezi

Using Advertisements to Increase Literacy on Prezi

Harry Potter

So maybe I will just always love Harry Potter because it is a part of my childhood, and I felt as though the whole world stopped every time a new book came out. Yes, I was one of those kids who thought maybe, just maybe I would receive a letter on my eleventh birthday. I knew spells by heart and tried out homemade butter bear recipes. Not that I was that different than many other kids my age. Even now, the most obscure Harry Potter references are appreciated by many of my peers. But the real reason I love Harry Potter is because I think it is good literature - and I am a tough critic.

Amidst the many sub-themes, the standout idea in Harry Potter is the power of love. In the series, it is so powerful that it saved lives, makes the impossible possible, and destroys all evil. Now if good literature is a reflection of reality, I would say that is pretty much right now. Love is the most powerful thing I have ever experienced. And I believe that love is only made possible through the atonement of Jesus Christ. God's love for us is so perfect that He sent His son to die for us so that we might be able to live with Him again. Through the atonement, we can come to love God and each other in a pure selfless way. I am amazed at how much my life has changed for the better as I have tried to turn it over to God and love as He loves. Here are some talks about love that I really like:

The Love of God by Dieter F. Uchtdorf
What if Love were our only Motive? by Russell T. Osguthorpe

What I currently understand about differences; I am sure I have a lot to learn.

I found this picture online claiming that it was the border between the Baltic and North seas, but with a little more research, I think it was taken in Alaska. Some of the water is fresh water that has been created from glacier melt. Because of the differing densities, the bodies of water are mixing much slower, so much that is appears as if they are not mixing at all. I don't know how valid this argument is, but this picture really got me thinking.

America is all about borders - that law in this state and this law in that state, moving west and pushing forward the frontier, this race/color verses that race/color. Why can't these boarders mix?

This is apparently the border between Belgium and The Netherlands, right along side a cafe. Can you imagine eating your lunch in The Netherlands and then stepping over to Belgium to take a stroll? What if it were like this between California and Mexico? Maybe you are thinking: that is not the same thing - Americans and Mexicans are just different. How different? (2 Cor 4:18) Seriously, let's think about what really matters. (Weightier Matters, Dallin H Oaks)

I am an English major emphasizing in teaching and therefore, American literature. The more I read, the more I feel sick when people talk nonchalantly about slavery or color. The more I read, the more frustrated I get with causal descriptions of what race is. Do you know what race is? Seriously, think about it. In my multicultural education class we learned that Race is a social construction that categorizes people based on physical appearance. Ethnicity explains where each individual comes from. So what race am I?

When I was little, I always thought I was White. Actually, I thought everyone whose skin wasn't really dark was White. Then my Asian and Mexican and Middle Eastern friends told me they weren't White. I came to find out that at one time in American history, people who came from Ireland were not considered white, or people who came from Bohemia or Italy - anyone who came in as an outsider, an "other." The definition of white has changed over time, and it really isn't just about the lightness of ones skin. What a racist term. I don't want to be white.

But then, am I Caucasian? Someone told me Caucasians came from the Caucus Mountains. I didn't come from there. A quick skim over the Wikipedia page confirmed my opinion that Caucasian is about as racist a term as White. So what race am I?

Who cares what race I am; that is not what it is all about anyway.

This is a picture of the class divide somewhere in Brazil. How could you seriously sit in one of those balcony swimming pools, look down on all that poverty and seriously enjoy yourself? Things like this, interactions between people who are different from one another, don't have to be like oil and water.

Now I am not saying we are all the same. We are not. We are all very different from one another. But I have come to the conclusion that engaging with "the other" is the only way to truly express one's self. A community of people function like a body (1 Cor 12:12-26). If you begin to draw a stick figure and only draw the circle, the drawing does not reach its full meaning until the body is attached. Each of us with our differences makes up a part of a beautiful whole (for more, look into relationality).

So regardless of what race society says you are or what race your neighbor is, I want to always remember that society made up these classifications, and God made up people who look different, talk different, act different - all in different beautiful ways - but all with the same amount of worth as children of God with divine potential. There doesn't have to be borders between us unless we create them.

For more: No More Strangers  by Alexander B. Morrison and Concern for the One  by Joseph B. Wirthlin

Spilling Thoughts

I think it is important to pull truth out of literature. So, what if I know more truth, understand something, have more insight than the author? I am not to try and assume what the author did and didn’t understand, how he did or didn’t see the world. I have eyes. I see the world. However wrong I am, it is the only way I know and no one can prove anything otherwise. So I am to understand literature, and through my eyes, see truth — out of something written from the pen and through the mind of someone else. . . But can every human recognize truth? From my experience, it speaks to the soul. We can all recognize love. . . and love is truth (how different are they anyway?). So the beauty is that there is a piece of something shared in literature. That piece of truth. Which may be the only untainted line of communication between two different eyes on paper. . . But if this not true — for I admit, at least right now in this train of thought, it is speculation — then I must still seek the truth out of literature — and raw human to human communication continues, a little occluded, but as close as I know for this time now.

Do you ever feel like this?

"Once I ordered a sirloin steak and a chocolate sundae, but everything was so cunningly disguised on the table that I mistook the chocolate sauce for gravy and poured it over the sirloin steak."
-Tennesse Williams "A Streetcar named Success"


Such is life

Is this chocolate or a rose? Neither. It is a picture on this blog.
Is it real? What is the definition of real anyway?

A Streetcar

I don't know if you have ever read "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennesse Williams. I am not recommending it. It is a horribly tragic and depressing play. I didn't enjoy reading it at all. But, I could not put it down. I was so intrigued by everything that was going on between these characters - what they were thinking and feeling and why and how they were living. After finishing the play, I read an essay by Williams called, "A Streetcar to Success." I must say it was equally intriguing, but after reading it a few times, I cannot say I agree completely. But I can relate and understand his crisis of identity. (Sometimes I wish some of these authors just had the Gospel because I think it would make them so much happier) Anyway, Williams does have a few things right:

"That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, and the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, Loss, Loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition."

Life is hard. But is that way for a reason.

I think Williams and I would agree, we don't want it any other way.

What I have been reading...

if you are an American, you know the basics of American history - the revolution, Boston tea party, slavery, Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor, Nine Eleven. But what most Americans don't know, and what I didn't know before I started flipping through the pages of my American literature anthology, is the personal and real stories of the people who made up America and American ideals today. They were wrong about things; they were right about things; they did things, things that made a difference.

Most recently, I just read Harriet Jacobs account of being a slave. Even a peek into the dark side of America reveals such courage and strength. Without strong men and woman like her, America today would be different. Even though she had almost everything taken from her, they could not take away her voice.  I shudder to read what happened during the time of slavery, but I also applaud slaves like Jacobs who changed her world, and changed ours.

Maybe I just want to post something, but then I got to thinking about this book I am reading. It is called The Help by Kathryn Stockett. All in one week, people just started telling me about it. It is a pretty good book, an easy read. It has good voice and tells a story. can't say it has made me think too deeply though. Still, it has made me think about change. What causes change?? Thoughts, ideas, writing, people. "Change begins with a whisper," it says. Just a wisp of something soft, but powerful.