Month: September 2021

1.   To be completely honest I’m a big procrastinator. This assignment is due basically tomorrow at the time I usually wake up and I’m up at 11:50 doing when I could be relaxing in bed right about now. Anxiety and aversion really ruled over my writing in the past. On occasion, I would do assignments to get them over with but most of the time I wait until the last minute. When I do write about something I don’t like it takes me a while to finish said assignment and I will keep on second-guessing my work. What I’ve learned from Eickmeyer’s writing is that I definitely will plan before I write. For this upcoming assignment and future ones, I’m going to set aside times during the day when I will just focus on the said assignment and break down the process instead of jamming it all into one night.
2. Two worlds I existed between were my Greek community and basically the real world. I attended a Greek American day school from nursery until eighth grade. I was basically in a bubble for the first 14 years of my life. The only diversity in my school was that there were two Asian-Greek Americans (Dad greek/Mom Chinese). My only exposure to the outside world was AAU basketball where there was a ton of diversity but my first tryout for my team was a culture shock because I’ve been around all greek kids my entire life. This helped prepare me for when I transitioned into high school where it was a melting pot of all types of people.

Anxiety has been a huge setback for me in terms of writing because I would always second guess my skills and edit to the point where I don’t like the final product. It ends up looking too obvious that I revised the writing piece multiple times. On rare occasions I even start over which would usually end in better results. However, Eickmeyer’s strategy on breaking the task down could help me in terms of preparing to write rather than starting from nothing. He mentions “process stages” which are essentially steps to take before writing your final piece such as drafting and revising. I don’t do these stages often but doing them could definitely improve my confidence when writing my final piece.

The two worlds I exist between are similar to Ku’s in her literacy narrative in terms of ethnicity. At a young age my parents divorced causing their families to distance themselves from each other. After my mother received full custody and I was only allowed to see my dad once a week. So every now and then I would see my dad’s side of the family but I naturally grew closer towards my mothers side as they raised me while my mom was hard at work. Recently, I had an 18th birthday party where all my relatives were together at once. Yet, it became clear that I spent more time with my mother’s relatives than my father’s. Even after years of me trying to get to know my father’s side better I became uninterested and it will probably stay like that for more years to come.

1. According to one theory of language, there are firm lines between different languages, and different languages (say, English and Spanish) represent entirely different universes, whose speakers cannot share a common reality. Describe why Anzaldua disagrees. Find a quotation or idea in the essay that supports your argument.

Anzaldua disagrees that there are firm lines between different languages because she speaks different types of Spanish with other people. If she believed that other languages represent entirely different universes, she wouldn’t have explained the seven different types of Spanish that she speaks with people. Anzaldua said, “I may switch back and forth from English to Spanish in the same sentence and the same word” when speaking to different people (72 JTC). She also explains that she says “Tex-Mex” with her siblings and “pachuco” with people her age. This demonstrates that there is no one firm dialect for each language and that people can mix different languages to communicate with each other instead of creating barriers. These various languages were created for people to communicate with others that don’t share the same language as them, which shows that people can share a common reality without having to speak the same language.

2. Describe Anzaldua’s style in her literacy narrative in your own words. Why do you think Anzaldua chose this style? Find a quotation or idea in the essay that supports your argument.

Anzaldua uses both English and Spanish throughout her narrative to give readers an oversight of her culture. Anzaldua mentions that she “walked around in a stunned amazement that a Chicano could write and could get published,” which led me to believe that the first Chicano novel she read, City of Night, was her inspiration to write a bilingual narrative (74 JTC). She incorporated both English and Spanish in her literacy narrative to prove that a bilingual tongue is legitimate. Having an accent and not speaking “perfect” English didn’t mean that your voice shouldn’t be heard. She mentions that “Chicano students were required to take two speech classes” to fix their accents (69 JTC). This is invalidating bilingual students, and throughout her narrative, Anzaldua proved that bilingual people are valid. At the beginning of her narrative, she asked rhetorical questions: how do you tame a wild tongue? By writing a bilingual narrative, she proved that a wild tongue, being a bilingual tongue, cannot be tamed.

3. Which of Liao’s conventions for literacy narratives (59 JTC) are most apparent in Sedaris’s essay? Which conventions, by contrast, seem less important to Sedaris?

Liao mentions that “Literacy narratives are stories in which something changes.” At the beginning of his literacy narrative, Sedaris explained that while he learned French in New York, he “understood only half of what this woman was saying because she spoke perfect French (Sedaris, 11). However, Towards the end, Sedaris responds with, “I know the thing that you speak exactly now” when his teacher ridiculed him (Sedaris, 15). This shows that Sedaris learned how to speak French even when he thought he’d never be able to understand it. Another one of Liao’s conventions that are most apparent in Sedaris’s essay is a discourse community. Sedaris explains how everyone in his class was ridiculed by their teacher when they all had the same goal: to speak French properly. By contrast, cultural identity seemed less critical in Sedaris’s essay. His narrative did not involve an issue about his cultural identity or the different languages he spoke. He simply told a story about how he learned french.

4. Near the beginning of Manson’s essay (written while she was a freshman at Baruch), she describes her silence this way: “Am I hurting? Am I depressed? Am I lost? I don’t know, and I would rather give too little of the truth than too much of a lie.” Do you believe she feels the same way by the end of the essay? Why?

I don’t believe that Mason felt the same way she did towards the end of her essay. She struggled to explain her feelings and never had any words to explain exactly how she felt, so she would always remain silent. However, towards the end of her essay, she decided to try to explain how she thought to a friend instead of remaining silent. In the beginning, she didn’t have any words to describe how she felt about her grandmother’s death. However, towards the end, she learned how to cope with her depression as she says that she learned a new word, setsunai- the mixture of feelings such as sadness, heartache, love, and nostalgia- which explains how she felt about her grandmother’s death. She also explained to her friend that she felt like she was in a car and it was “moving slower and slower” (88, JTC). This is significant because, in the beginning, she said that she felt like she was in a car that was moving way too fast, which shows that she’s learning how to express her feelings instead of remaining silent.

1. Anxiety and Aversion have definitely been barriers to my writing in the past. I usually tend to leave writing assignments for last which end up on me completely overthinking everything and getting frustrated at the teachers when it was clearly my fault for leaving it for last minute. I would always question what the point of the writing was and why I had to do it and give reasons why it was such a bad assignment when at the end of the day it is school, I should be used to this. I wouldn’t be asking all these questions if I had gotten it done earlier. One way I plan to adopt Eickmeyer’s skills and strategies in writing my literacy narrative is by breaking It up into small pieces until it’s due date. I will try to not leave everything for the night before and actually try to work on it day by day.
2. Two worlds I exist between are being Latina and being completely fluent in Spanish and living in the US and being completely fluent in English. Those two worlds collided for me because every time I mention that I know both languages people automatically expect me to be a professional translator. It got to the point that family members CALL me to help them fill out papers or help them with phone calls that need to be translated from English to Spanish. I wouldn’t say I don’t mind doing the favor of translating, but just because I know both of the languages does not mean I am perfect at translating it from one language to the other. I can admit I still struggle with certain words and have to use other words to simplify it not only for myself but for the person I am helping. It also catches me off guard when people need me to translate for them. People would WAKE ME UP to help them translate or help them fill something out and I have no other choice but to help them because saying no would be very rude of me right? Well that show I was raised in my Latin household.

1. 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.
2. 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.

1. I think I get more anxious than averted in writing. I never dislike the task or topic, but I do get very anxious when work starts to pile up. I often struggle when I convince myself to believe that my assignments are a lot more difficult than they actually are. I also get confused with what the assignments’ requirements are and tend to have quite a few questions. One skill I will try to utilize from Eickmeyer’s skills and strategies is to take notes when the professor explains the assignment, that way I won’t have as many questions as I usually do, and the work won’t seem as difficult when it’s broken down and explained. 

2. Two worlds I exist between are secular Americanism and Modern Orthodox Judaism. Throughout my whole life up until enrolling in Baruch, I’ve been attending Modern Orthodox Jewish private school. While being brought up Jewish and observing all Judaism has to offer, I am also your average American girl. Some assume that going to an Orthodox Jewish school will separate one from secular society, but that is not the case. I spent my days in Jewish school in a dual curriculum and learned about all things Judaism, but also learned secular studies like English, history, science, etc. It has never been a struggle for me to keep up with the dual curriculum because it’s just what I’m used to, but ultimately, I’m very grateful for Judaism and everything it has to offer, and am just as grateful for being an American.  

1. 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.
2. 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.”
3. 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.
4. 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.