Short Story Draft

She is Atzhiri Velazquez. Age at the moment: 8 Year: 2004. Her home in Logan Square was amazing. From the park and school to the lady who lived across from the park who bathed her kids on the corner. Her old neighborhood has seen her through her childhood and my pre-adolescence. The school, Frederick Funston Elementary was the most amazing home school ever! It held her best friends, the teachers that favored her (she was considered a little genius) and her neighbor who got in a fight with her once over something unnecessarily trivial.

We are looking at her now, Atzhiri is coming out of her "house", her parents have never owned a house, instead they lived in basement after rented basement. Even though they moved a lot Atzhiri never worried because they always stayed within her neighborhood boundaries, within the streets she knew so well. She has exited her door, her mother had just done her hair in a pony tail for school, it is a Wednesday. Even though she came out of the door she was still within the gates. Atzhiri is waiting for Erica, her friend from last year. Erica lived at the end of her block and she came to pick her up every morning at 7:48 and they would both walk together to school, which was only two blocks away.

Both girls were no longer in the same classroom, but they still talked, nothing about really. They mostly just walked. Laughed about the funny leaves or the lady who lived int he corner. As soon as they get inside the school both girls go their own way. And they do not see each other at all, even though their classrooms are across from each other.

We see Atzhiri going into Mr. Vargas' 4th grade class. Full of joy and laughter, she sits at her seat. The day goes by as any other day. Manny makes fun of her weirdly NATURALLY highlighted hair, Edwin asks her about her friend Maria, and Claribel is with her all the time, (besties)

It is the end of the school day now, with little homework Atzhiri exits the crowded school with her pink Hilary Duff book bag. She looks for her mom, finds her and they walk home together....

Song/Poem Analyzed

The poem i chose to analyze is the song Dear God 2.0 by The Roots (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Qr5oKKP-M). i think that the rap was talking about the problems in the world and problems telling God about them. First line says "Dear God, I'm trying hard to reach you" i saw this as the narrator trying to tell God about everything that is going on (as if He does not know, or will not acknowledge or help the situation) but without any luck.

In the second stanza, it reads "they said he's busy hold the line please, call me crazy, i thought maybe he could mind read". This proves my hypothesis that God is not listening, he's busy? Then the narrator says i thought maybe he could mind read. I took at as the narrator saying, God should be able to mind read, or at least that's what the narrator thought, but apparently not. People say when they are down "if God knows what is going wrong, why won't he help?" Well we cannot answer that question, but that is pretty much what the speaker in the poem is saying.

Then the song goes on talking about what is wrong with the world. "Acid rain, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis". "Terrorist, crime sprees, assaults, and robberies". It seems the speaker has been thinking about all of this for a really long time, then says "we'll I've been thinkin' about and I've been breakin' it down without an answer" Without an answer. It is not easy to find out why bad stuff happens to us when we cannot contact "our maker".

Later in the song the speaker goes on to talk about himself asking God for forgiveness for not doing what he was supposed to. The next line is one of my favorites and one which i will elaborate on "Why is the world ugly when you made it in your image?" If God made the world, why is it so f***ed up? Because humans messed it up, maybe, but why does not God help us fix it? He is "our maker", right? Maybe. One can also say we made Him, just as we humans made buildings and computers. Humans also wrote the bible.
The original song is called Dear God by XTC (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlJwO664WLI) and it pretty much says that God is messed up because he won't help us, and that we made him up. The speaker in that song says he chooses not to believe in God or the Devil.

However in Dear God 2.0 the speaker wants help and forgiveness, but still believes in God.

♥{Black Boy Response}♥

Black Boy so far is a very good book, as I have said before. Richard Wright is wrote the story from his 10-year-old perspective. Obviously the way he puts things when writing them is not completely the way he saw things back then. If it were then, he would have been a very smart kid. There are moments where racism is very evident to him and he talks about them.

I like the way Richard writes, because when he comes across a moment in his life that seriously affected him, he goes more in depth and then he foreshadows what it did to him. For example when he has to say goodbye to the children at the orphanage, says that he did not know it at the moment but when he would grow up he would realize that he would often be found doing things that did not fully express his emotions.

Another part that really caught my attention is when Richard talks about all the superstitions he learned and I realized that I did not know a lot of them. It was very contradicting, because Richard and his family at Christian, religious. I did not think that religious people were superstitious.

I also like when Richard’s mom is sick about to die. Richard is young but he quickly realizes that everything he went through is going to get harder if his mother dies, he knows that he would have to get a job and take care of himself, and he’s ready for that. He says he cannot wait until he is old enough to leave and take care of himself.

Another thing, is when Uncle Clack asks him about his life at home, and how he’s been. Richard is ashamed of what he has been through. He is in the home of people with enough money to eat well each day, and he’s been hungry for a long time, and watched his both go to work every day and still not be able to feed them and pay for rent. Richard is ashamed of getting drunk at the age of six and saying bad words and doing things he knows now where wrong.

THIS BooK IS GooOOoooOOOoooD (:

Hungry for Attention!!

Firstly, I would like to say that so far I like this book. Yes, I have only read the first chapter, yet I feel a promise of knowledge and understanding of perseverance in this book.

Is young Richard alone in his cravings?

This boy, Richard, burns his home. He moves to a crappy flat with his family, his father abandons them, and is forced to grow up quickly.

Richard is hungry. He is hungry for attention, for a way to escape all that is going on at home. While his mother works, young Richard goes to a saloon and drinks, says bad stuff to people for money, yet the money is not what matters, it is the attention, people laugh at him and with him. Richard wants something to do.

Is he alone? Yes, I feel as though he is. Even though there are other people in the story that are hungry too, it does not mean that they are hungry WITH Richard, or even share the same cravings….

In the beginning of the chapter he talks about burning the house and shares a dialogue with his younger brother, yet afterwards his brother is not mentioned. The reader knows that throughout Richard’s stay at the orphan house, his younger brother is there with him, but Richard does not mention him.

His mother also, is told by Miss. Simon not to visit them so often, so Richard does not see her too much anymore. Richard does not like his dad, or Miss. Simon, and defiantly not his father’s strange woman.

I get the feeling that this six year old boy is very alone. True, the author is going back and putting things the way he sees them now, but still, it seems to me as if he kept to himself a lot. He knew what he felt, but did not express it aloud.

Yes, I guess he was alone, alone in his had, left to talk to himself, because everyone else seems kind of busy doing something else.

King Still King?

So I don’t really know what this bloqq is supposed to be about, so I will write a response to Letter from a Birmingham Jail by King. Wow. Well I really liked this, i thought it was going to bore me to death, seeing that it was like 11 pages (in 12 pt. Times New Roman font). However, it was very inspiring, it really got to me. King talks about why he is in jail, what he’s fighting for, what he is disappointed in, and he does so in a bunch of words. I thought about summarizing the whole thing and then just writing my view on the letter as a whole, but as I was reading I copy and pasted some parts, the quotes that I really liked and inspired me to write about them, I have 4 quotes so bare with me. xD


• “justice too long delayed is justice denied”

I saw something in this first quote, it brought back childhood memories, of what I would go shopping with my mom at a mall. We would go into all the stores she wanted to go, and we would past by the food court, or an ice cream shop, or a toy store and I would ask for something, she would just say “when I’m done with my stuff” and as we kept walking she would keep saying it, then at the end of the day we would just go home and I wouldn’t get an ice cream. I might have gotten a piece of 25 cent gum from one of the little machines, just something to shut me up, but I wouldn’t get what I wanted. King, this is what he’s saying they gave him just something to shut him up at Birmingham, when he went there to see change, real change.

•  “More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will”

Wow. Okay this one is true, you use time more efficiently when they are up to no good. When i was younger I thought more about playing a trick on my cousin, I thought about where, how, and at what time would play a prank even what would I do if I got caught. Yet I would be all lazy in doing my homework, or helping my mom clean up the house. Those of ill will plan their mischief more careful than those of good will, because good will comes naturally and ill will takes time to master *wink *wink

• “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever”

So this one is one that really focuses more on the King and his cause, this says “we will get freedom”, it tells us that the oppressed man is a tired man, a man that will soon be tired of being oppressed.

• “...the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?”

Quote number 4 here asks you a personal question, what kind of extremist are you? What is your real motivation to speak out? Love of hate? You love your cause and hate those who oppose it, but in your heart and mind which one is stronger? You could be fighting for the wrong reasons, and that would be a bad fight. If you got what you wanted, it would be what it will be, but it would have sprung form the wrong reasons.

 
The question is if King is still King? well yes, he was aiming to better the treatment of his people. Now, there is still a few racist people, but most of all understand that it's wrong and point racism out stand up for "the greater good"

Children of the Sea.

I really liked this one. I like how the girl and the guy wrote in journals, about everything that was going on around them, but still speaking to each other. It reminded me of praying, when you pray (or at least from the few times I’ve done it) you think about everything you have done, but you are talking to God and asking his for stuff (luck, money, miracle, etc.)

The love that these two share is enormous, it practically jumps out of the pages and into your SOUL (if you have one). They describe their love with things they see around them (how cute). What makes it interesting is that they are both in some sort of danger.

What is kind of obvious is that the guy is more educated than the girl. That’s not what I wanted to talk about though. I really liked that the girl’s father saved her life, by buying off the soldiers that wanted his daughter. This is what a typical dad would do to save his little girl, and he didn’t think the guy was right for her. Like a normal daddy he wants the best for his daughter and he didn’t think the dude would give her that.

The pregnant girl on the boat, was really cool too, the symbol of her baby being born in the middle of all that crap (literally) is there. Then the baby is born dead, he won’t cry, and she doesn’t want to trhough him into the water, and when she does she jumps in after it, so they both die. A mother’s sacrifice, and everyone else doesn’t give a f***k crap. I guess that the fact that a baby is involved makes it all that more realistic and horrible. =’{

The ending really got me sad, because they make you think that the guy dies, and she is running away from the butterflies of bad news. He didn’t want to trough his book overboard, but has too, she didn’t want to hear the bad news, but hears it on the radio, they are both running away from something, poor souls.