Amy Tan's I Am Not A Scholar Of English Or Literature

In “Sharon Cho” from Speaking of Reading, Cho explains what effects reading had on her. Because it broadened her vocabulary, reading gave Cho a higher intelligence than most kids her age. She loved comic books. As a result, they changed her life by giving her a sense of justice, and she learned right from wrong. Not only did she read comic books, but she also read Myths and Biblical stories as if they were comic books. She saw figures such as Jesus as superheroes because he died for the good of mankind. For this reason, she became a better person by applying these teachings to her life, even though her parents didn't understand it

Write or Wrong Identity by Emily Vallowe is a short literacy narrative about Emily trying to discover if she is really a writer or if she just believed what a teacher or parent told her. While writing her narrative Emily gave several details from the beginning of her writings to now. She explains that her mother still has some of the books she wrote as a kindergarten student. Throughout the entire text Emily continues to repeat the same phrase “I am a writer” and the more she writes it seems like she becomes less certain of this statement. By the end of the narrative Emily has stated that by the time she reaches her 90s she does not know if she will still be questioning herself as a writer or if she

Judith Butler’s Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy and Jomny Sun’s everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too illuminate similar ideas by using vastly different styles. Butler chooses to display her work in a very detailed, thorough way. Meanwhile, Sun manages to teach the same lesson, using a much simpler method of writing. Even though both of these texts share common themes, they have varying effects on the reader. After reading Butler’s essay, I felt I was being attacked, as if I was being challenged to help change social norms. With Sun, I finished the book feeling soothed and satisfied with the end result. A particular idea brought up in both texts is the idea of categories and their negative effects. The idea of categories of Butler is shown in Sun by the many characters; I believe that the use of categories overwhelmingly carries more negative effects.

In “A Rose for Emily”, Charles Faulkner used a series of flashbacks and foreshadowing to tell Miss Emily’s story. Miss Emily is an interesting character, to say the least. In such a short story of her life, as told from the prospective of a townsperson, who had been nearly eighty as Miss Emily had been, in order to tell the story from their own perspective. Faulkner set up the story in Mississippi, in a world he knew of in his own lifetime. Inspired by a southern outlook that had been touched by the Civil War memory, the touch of what we would now look at as racism, gives the southern aroma of the period. It sets up Miss Emily’s southern belle status and social standing she had been born into, loner or not.

Leaving the comforts of the first world, Jessica Alexander abandons her job, fiancé, family, and home to venture into the misleading volunteer work of Humanitarian aid. Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid by Jessica Alexander is a conglomeration of stories that are written from Jessica’s memory. “It is a true account based on [Jessica’s] best recollections of the events and [her] experiences.”.

Mai Ngai’s book, Impossible Subjects, powerfully studies the unfortunately understudied period between 1924 and 1965, the lifespan of the national origins quota system. This era begins with the passage of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act in 1924 and ends with the lifting of national origins quotas through the passage of the Hart-Celler Act of 1965. The era from 1924 to 1965 remapped the nation by developing both a particular racial and ethnic identity and a "new sense of territoriality" (Ngai p.3). This period demonstrates the most widespread immigration restriction in U.S. history that literally "remapped the nation" (Ngai p.3). Ngai argues that widespread immigration exclusion created an intensified sense of national borders as well as increased security on those boarders. This helped produce what is now defined as the illegal alien (Ngai). Impossible Subjects primarily concentrates on immigrants categorized as illegal aliens, alien citizens, colonial subjects, and contract laborers. Because these are immigrants whose experiences are not greatly represented in our national narrative, the regulations that have governed them have never greatly been exposed, resulting in a collective oblivion within United States history. Ngai turns her research to important analytical use. Ngai’s most interesting lines of argument lie within her analysis of the creation of illegal immigration from Mexico and her analysis of Japanese internment during World War II.

In the fourteenth chapter of Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster depicts all the elements found in a Christlike character. To begin, a simple fact is stated; “we live in a Christian culture” (124). Foster declares this to establish the fact that Christianity is a predominant religion on Earth, and it greatly impacts it’s surrounding civilizations. “Culture is so influenced by it’s dominant religious systems” that religion may sneak into a writer's work, no matter their personal beliefs on the religion (125). While knowledge of religion is helpful - especially to a reader - too many religious beliefs can lead problems. Foster articulates that intelligent readers possess a diverse knowledge in multiple religions,

Amy Tan was born in 1952, in Oakland, California to Chinese immigrants John and Daisy Tan. Her family eventually settled in Santa Clara. When Tan was in her early teens, her father and one of her brothers died of brain tumors within months of each other. During this period Tan learned that her mother had been married before, to an abusive husband in China. After divorcing him, her mother fled China during the Communist takeover, leaving three daughters behind who she would not see again for nearly forty years.

Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California, in 1953. In 1970, Tan majored in English at San Jose State, in California. Tan began a carrier as a technical writer after she graduated, at the University of California. However, she changed her writing because she was inspired to write fiction book after reading of Louise Erdrich's novel “Love Medicine”. As a result of this, language has helped Amy Tan in becoming the successful writer she’s today. It helped her express her complete thoughts in a way that everyone who reads, understand. Additionally, the type of language that she uses in her writing makes people take her seriously and as important as everyone else.

In Thomas Foster’s book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, it is written that there are five aspects of a quest: “the quester; a place to go; a stated reason to go there; challenges and trials en route; a real reason to go there” (Foster 3). In the book Siddhartha, Siddhartha is the quester who is specifically in search for enlightenment through his wanderings. During his quest, he constantly endures internal unrest. Although Siddhartha searched for enlightenment, he really wanted all of his unsettled questions about his life answered.

Thomas C. Foster’s book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, tackles the process of uncovering the underlying complexities and symbols that authors incorporate into their literary works. In its most lucid form, Foster’s message is that, when reading a work of literary merit, anything you may postulate has a deeper meaning most likely does, since skilled authors do not include items and occurrences just to include them. The dystopian literature novels 1984, Animal Farm, and Brave New World follow this trend as they interpolate different motifs with deeper political and symbolic context; however, Foster’s statements do not only apply to written literature. The movie V For Vendetta, released in 2005, connects to How to Read Literature Like

The current generation is quizzical of the importance that religious teachings hold in our evolving pro-choice society. In past generations, spiritualism was a method of uniting the community and nurturing the young. However, we find that faith has the adverse effect. While separate from other religions, a rise in hate fueled discrimination and separatism is observable between different communities in all corners of the globe. In this generation, it is only logical that as religion is taught, after learning from present and past events, the very essence of the teachings is skewed and put into question.

In the short story “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner escorts the reader through the peculiar life of the main character Miss Emily Grierson. The gloomy tone of the story is set by the author beginning his tale with the funeral of Miss Emily. During course of the story, we are taken through different times in Miss Emily’s life and how she was lost in time, with the town around her moving forward. Through the use of southern gothic writing style, narrator point of view, and foreshadowing, Faulkner aids the reader in creating a visualization of Miss Emily and the town in which she lives while also giving an insight into her sanity.

The novel “An Unquiet Mind” starts off describing the life of a young girl, Kay. Early off in Kay’s life she is experiencing traumatizing life events. One of those events is a very close encounter with a plane that flew over the elementary playground very low and “It flew into the trees, exploding directly in front of us” (12). Early on it seems much easier to see how she developed the mental illness, manic-depressive (bipolar) illness. Also, her father showed signs of a bipolar illness and maybe it could be heredity. Another traumatizing event was when Kay and her family moved to California and the complete shock from the change in background. This switch also leads to Kay drinking before she attends classes for high school. Just at the age of 16, Kay is beginning to see just how much her mood swings are affecting her friends and how the bipolar illness is changing her life.

In "What is 'Academic' Writing?", by L. Lennie Irvin, we are introduced to seven myths about writing. However, the writing myth I most closely relate to would be #3, there's no such as a perfect first draft. In my early years of writing, I would often impression a rough draft as pointless, so I would jump right into my final copy. I continued this method until I started taking high school English and noticed my writing standards began to depreciate. I then realized the best solution was to put in the time and effort and organize a rough draft that allowed the revisal of any mistakes in my writing that would effect my score. A draft is called a draft because it does not need to be perfect, it just needs to be efficient enough for someone to