Journal#2 Connecting to What I Read

When reading the introductions from the Bedford Anthology Vol. 1, I immediately was moved by the power of the written word. All at once the realization of its immense possibilities and power came into my mind. All throughout my life in school as early as elementary school, it’s been preached to me over and over again about how important it is to learn to read and to be able to write effectively and I’ve always underestimated its true importance to my success in my life. Foolish, I know. But know as an adult (it still seems like a lie when I say that), I can truly see the goodness that has been apart of my life and how it had its origins from my ability to write my ideas out proficiently and to be able to read. Never could I have imagined a time when an entire nation could stand together as one all from the inspiration that was drawn from a mere pamphlet or a letter.  Books influencing government, freeing countries from subjectivity, and creating new nations, it’s all mindboggling. I can remember back to when my mother used to routinely make me sit down with one of those large writing pads for toddlers with the light blue and red colored dashed lines to make me practice writing my letters. I used to detest having to sit there and practice making those strange shapes called letters. Little did I know, I was perfecting my own powerful art form, getting my weapon ready, the pen.

Journal #1- My Definition of an American

Prior to the readings assigned in class, my personal definition of an American would the same, stereotypical as the next person. When we were asked to throw out words we thought were American I wanted to say Apple pie, white picket fences, well kept green lawns, double cab pick- up trucks, kids playing on a merry-go-round, and busy people walking to and fro in a downtown metropolitan type setting. Overall my American definition was a very positive mesh pot of these images and related others. After reading de Crevecoeur’s What is an American? , slowly the details of the images I had previously associated with being American came to light, like the kids on the merry go round were all young Caucasian kids in a “good” suburban neighborhood, the green lawns were being well kept by Hispanic immigrants sweating buckets in the summer sun for low wages, and the anonymous faces of business people walking downtown slowly turned into white males in their late twenties with a single solitary woman getting all kinds of oogling stares from her male superiors. I slowly became irritated as we continued on to read the Langston Hughes poems, bringing to light once again that not too long ago, my mother,  sister, father, and grandmother all would have been denied the opportunity to take part of these positive images. I thought of my grandmother as the mammy type housekeeper in the kitchen spending all day cooking that apple pie now cooling in the window frame that evokes such strong patriotic feelings. At the end of everything, I left with the notion in my mind that nowhere in the definition of an “American” was a negro like me included.

Test 123 Tes Blog 123

Readers,
 This is my very first attempt at blogging. I'm am doing this for a english literature class I'm taking at Texas Christian University. I don't really know what i'm doing so please bare with me until I get the hang of this.