AKOSUA OMARI-DOTTOH – Page 3 – ENG 2100: Writing 1 with Jay Thompson

Akosua Omari-Dottoh Week 4, Blog Writing

One very important literacy sponsor in my life right now is my uncle. He would always share stories with me about his trips to Sierra Leone, where he and my mom were born, and stories about our family and accomplishments. I felt so proud to be a part of such great, accomplished, and truly smart people. Before these talks with him started, about two years ago, I didn’t know much about my mom’s side of the family. I didn’t know and/or appreciated our language, to my chagrin, I didn’t know how to speak it and barely understood. I think this contributed to my almost shame of this being a part of my identity because I was so ignorant to my history and background, which is something my uncle opened my eyes to.

Although my uncle was born in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, he came to the U.S at the beginning of high school. So when talking to me it came from a sense of understanding what it feels like to want to fit in. He then told me about how his trip back to his hometown opened his eyes to a lot. “ I learned about my grandfather, your great grandfather’s accomplishments,” he said. At one point my great grandfather was ostracized by his hometown for his beliefs, but that was really when his success and global effect was amplified. “He was a writer, a poet. Did you know there is a published writing of his at Harvard?” I did not. My ineptitude to see all that I had missed for so many years had been detrimental to my identity. One day my uncle spent hours on top of hours sharing all the stories of his journey’s and how it shaped him. Archaic stories were told, and he showed no ambivalence towards the success and choices of our family members. I could see how proud and passionate he was about it, and I craved that same proudness. So him opening that door for me allowed me to start my own journey.

Akosua Omari-Dottoh Week 4, Reading Response

I believe that Baldwin’s argument is that since black English was created at a time where African-Americans in this country needed a way of communication and created this form of communication in this need, it is indeed a language. This discourse community created a language at a time when it couldn’t possibly be made for them. They were out of place, and others like them couldn’t understand one another because they were from different backgrounds, so they did, in fact, create a language. Baldwin’s argument relates to translanguaging because it suggests this action within white American English to black English, and vice versa. Black people had to use what they heard around them to help them make their own language using both white English and what they created, and whites began to also incorporate black English into their language as we moved on through the years. Gloria Anzaldua’s essay also relates to translanguaging because she shows us how it’s an act that she constantly used depending on who she was speaking with, and still continues to do. Using both English and Spanish when talking with friends and casual company.
A piece of advice from Straub’s essay that was new and helpful to me is that of looking at the writing in terms of the assignment. It was common to just jump right into the reading and “judging” of someone’s writing when looking over it. But I think this skill will help me give better constructive criticism because I know what the writer is trying to do. One of the questions related to this skill that Straub suggests is to ask yourself is what the writer is trying to accomplish, and you are just there to try and help them get there from a reader’s point of view. I wish some of my previous teachers would have followed the advice of knowing your goal in editing and commenting. Not attempt to change the story at hand like I’ve sometimes experienced, but help me to make it better. It would’ve been more helpful to me to know how to better my writing skills and areas I need to work on more.

Akosua Omari-Dottoh Week 4, Reading Response

In the past, anxiety was what stopped me from being completely honest in my writing. It also created a fear that the specific setting was not one appropriate for saying what I really wanted to say, even when it was. My anxiety with writing creates self-doubt. This caused me to submit mediocre work because I let that fear of doing things wrong in writing, allow me to settle with what was okay. One way I plan to use Eickmeyer’s strategy is by breaking it down and spacing out my writing for the literacy narrative. I tend to try and write whole essays in one setting but when Eickmeyer said “ The papers you have to write are just too long, too com-plex, and require too much research for some last-minute flash of brilliance to get you there,” I realized just how true that was. For the amount of pages I have to write, in order to not over stress myself and give myself time to think parts through, I have to pace myself.
Two world’s I exist in are life as a Black American, and life as an African. Even though I wasn’t born in Sierra Leone or Ghana, like my parents, I still consider myself African because they are from there. Even though, in America, we are not treated very differently, unfortunately we have created a barrier between ourselves and a sort of dislike between both communities. On one half I try to stay true to my parents culture and the way they were raised and the things they value, on the other half I was born into a country where being my skin color aligns with a different culture, history, and common way of life. These two worlds are always colliding and sometimes make me question my identity. In one particular instance, I was talking to my dad about police brutality. My argument steered way more towards that of the majority of black Americans, however, my dad’s viewpoint seems to come more from a place of ignorance and lack of understanding. It surprised me because I know that for the time he’s been living here he’s had experiences like those of black Americans but his different cultural upbringing in Ghana didn’t allow him to see and feel what I did being born and raised in this country as a black woman.

Akosua Omari-Dottoh Week 3, Writing Prompt

Mirrors. Only showing you what’s in plain sight, and nothing more. All that is shown is what’s on the surface, and it’s ineptitude to see the whole picture allows it to only tell part of a story, part of the truth. But that is all the mirror can understand. They can show you how you feel, but can never tell you why. My panic attack felt just like this, hard to decode.

There was true trepidation in my heart that day, yet I didn’t understand what for. In the moment all that I could understand was that I was uncontrollably scared. Like a mirror, I could only see what I felt and nothing more. The feeling of fear was archaic for me and always understood. There was always a reason behind it, a cause. Yet the experience left me stuck and unsure. The guise of a comfortable, happy person was quickly established by the wiping of tears, and a smile. And to the mirror that was what I was, what I became. But only I knew that was far from the truth, and what belied in my reflection was false narrative of me.

Akosua Omari-Dottoh Week 3 Reading Response

Anzaldua expresses her disagreement by reminding us just how similar we are. Anzaldua tells us that you can speak a different language and share a common reality when on page 76 she explains that being alike goes beyond language. She says that,” Being Mexican is a state of soul- not of mind, not one of citizenship. Neither eagle nor serpent, but both. And like the ocean, neither animal respects borders.” By expressing her understanding of this she represents connection amongst a community, a culture, that will always be there regardless of what languages that all speak.
To me, Anzaldua’s style is one of confusion to clarity. In the beginning she expresses a sort of shame in the type of Spanish she spoke and her feeling of alienation because of it. Yet towards the end you can tell that she grows proud of who she is and has a clearer sense of self. Saying,” I will no longer feel ashamed of existing. I will have my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.”
I believe that the closest convention prevalent in Sedaris’s essay, is that of the journey from confusion to fluency. Throughout the essay Sedaris was confused with his French teacher’s ways, and believed that he would not benefit or get any better in his French class. However, by the end of the essay, him saying,” for the first time since arriving in France, I could understand every word that someone was saying,” proved that, regardless of what he had originally believed, he was in fact getting better in French. In this essay, the convention of cultural identity is less important because in no part of the essay was there a significant focus on cultural identity. Sedaris’s issue did not have much to do with his identity, but a more external issue he got clarity on.
By the end of the essay, I don’t believe that Manson still thought that she would rather ” give too little of the truth than too much of a lie.” Instead she learned that saying anything she could was better than saying nothing at all, and living in silence. In the last paragraph Manson says,” I said my thoughts, even though they were incomplete. I felt more than that. I always will. But I said what I could, and that was enough.” She learned that no one may never truly understand exactly how she felt of how to understand that she sometimes didn’t even know, but it made her feel better to be able to say what she could cause that would be enough.