Being Country By Bobbie Ann Mason

Everyone has had an embarrassing moment in their life at one point or another; slipping on ice in public or forgetting a coworkers name at the company picnic. Making a fool of yourself is bound to happen, especially in a setting outside of what you are accustomed to. Some people do not like reliving these moments while others have a gift for turning their embarrassment into a great story. Kellie Schmitt’s essay “The Old Man Isn’t There Anymore” is a perfect example of laughing at oneself. Throughout a cluster of Chinese do’s and do not’s, Schmitt tells the reader of one specific event and its comical conclusion. The essay is fun to read and relate to. Laughing with the author is made easy while she gracefully shares her missteps while she and her husband adapt to living in China. Learning new customs for an inevitable occasion most Americans probably are not privy too makes the essay most interesting.

Throughout the course of the book, A Long Way Home, Saroo Brierley, the author, encounters a series of traumatic experiences that lead to bittersweet moments. Unlike a normal child’s infancy, Saroo was physically and mentally consuming. Through his experience, we are able to get a glimpse of the many struggles and hardships young children live in India daily. His petrifying experiences of living on the streets, Liluah, and Nava Jeevan finally lead to his safe haven of being taken by the Brierley’s.

Changes in life can be tough to go through and sometimes they can be easy. Some of these things are harder than others and some can be a better choice. Like moving is one thing that changed my way i looked at people. Then there is growing up, growing up can be hard. Last but not least there is education. These things that you experience can change your perspective on how you look at life.

Billie Jo Kelby is not a boy. She’s a girl; a wiry, thin, redheaded girl that looks more like her father than her mother. She lives on the Great Plains in 1935, during the great drought known as the Dust Bowl. She lives with her pregnant mother and her father, and life seems good, or as good as it will get in her dusty world.

Marriage is a difficult thing to maintain now-a-days, and it was not much different back in the 80s. Bobbie Ann Mason’s Shiloh tells the story of how, the main character, Leroy slowly realizes that him and his wife, Norma Jean, are drifting apart. The 80s was a time period of expanding poverty, rising social problems, and drastic economic changes. Leroy decided to stay fixated on the past, while Norma Jean accepted the fact that the world is changing and prepared herself for it. Things change over time, and the couple disagreed on a way to enter the new world together.

In 1955, Flannery O’ Connor published the short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” which became her best-known short story. Although many appreciated her work it received much criticism for its peculiar character, The Misfit. His callous violent behavior made people uncomfortable with her work describing it as consistently distorted and manipulative. The Misfit’s unsentimental and cruel behavior characterizes true psychological disturbance similar to that of Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer. Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” Is an accurate representation of Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). Through The Misfits recollection of his past, his trauma, and his lack of guilt he depicts a severe case of ASPD.

Girl Interrupted is Susanna Kaysen 's memoir a series of recollections and reflections of her nearly two year stay at a residential psychiatric program at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. She looks back on it with a sense of surprise. In her memoir she considers how she ended up at McLean, and whether or not she truly belonged there. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of her experience. Founded in the late 19th century, McLean Hospital had been a facility for troubled members of wealthy and aristocratic families. By the late 1960s, however, McLean had fallen into a period neglect. This was a time of great change in the mental health care field. Kaysen grew up in a wealthy and prestigious family. Like most teenagers, she was rebellious at times, confused and unsure about her future. She didn’t want to go to college and slept with her high school English teacher. She witnessed firsthand the widening generation gap that was developing in the late 1960s. Older generations looked at Kaysen’s generation 's world with alarm.

My mother, Lisa Dawn Hicks Kern, was born at Wadley Regional Medical Center, Texarkana, TX, on Sunday, June 15, 1969. Her father, James Kenneth Hicks, was 28 at the time of my mother’s birth; he was employed at Red River Army Depot as an electrical engineer. Her mother, Sharon Lee Clark Hicks, was 25 when my mother was born, at the time she was the home maker. My mother had an older sister who was a four year old toddler at the time of my mother’s birth. Kimberly Ann Hicks was born at Wadley Regional Medical Center, Texarkana, TX, on Monday, August 30, 1965.

The poem “No Country for Black Boys” by Joy Priest represents the sorrowful incident which happened on February 26, 2012 for Trayvon Martin in Florida. Trayvon Martin was an innocent African-American young boy who bought iced tea and some skittles. On the way back to his father’s home, he got shot by the neighborhood watch and treated as a victim because of his skin color. Guilt was not defined by what Martin did but by what he said, also it determined something deep-rooted in the young age. No weapon was needed to identify him as a victim. He is a young black boy, so he is already guilty enough to be killed. Black people have the same rights as the other people, however in reality, America’s society discriminates against them compared to other nationalities.

Change is something you are probably familiar with. In “Beneath the Smooth Skin of America,” Scott R. Sanders talks about many changes in his life. The author starts the story looking throw the eyes of himself as a child. As a child he remembers that all that was in his sight was all he could see. The author’s best example of this is he says, ”Neighbors often appeared…where they came from I could not imagine” (27). As the author begins to see more by leaving the area he was around so often he starts to see more and more things. He started moving around to different places and started seeing the things that he had not see before. The author points out many things that he began to see like the stores

“Shiloh”, by Bobbie Ann Mason, explores an interesting theme, the distinct parallel between the surface level of what the events of the story are, and the meaning underneath. This parallel is seen throughout the story, from the start when Leroy Moffitt is building craft kits for at first just to pass time, while Norma Jean is lifting weights and working at a Rexall drugstore for the same reason; To later on when Norma says she doesn’t know what she’s talking about and Leroy thinks that the way to saving his marriage is to come up with a last minute idea. The story engages the theme of the parallel levels through the unstable marriage of Leroy and Norma Jean. The theme of this parallel is shown overtly through the images, descriptions, and characterizations of the log cabins in the story, and of Shiloh. Interestingly, the characters and the world they live in are stuck on the surface, shown through how both Leroy and Norma Jean drift on subjects, and through the names in the story.

Ghost Singer by Anna Lee Walters is a tale of the historical injustices suffered by Indigenous peoples and the modern consequences of those injustices. Although it is clear that the spirit people in the novel serve as the most outwardly fearsome people in the novel, it is important to take into account the overall systemic injustices that the characters of Native American heritage suffer under throughout the histories presented in the novel. Walters addresses fearsomeness and sympathetic characters through the use of dangerous characters and situations presented directly and indirectly to the characters. The fearsomeness of the characters and the sympathy felt for the characters is dependent upon the perspectives of the readers since these fearsome figures are “a cultural construct and a projection” of that cultures fears (Cohen 1). The fearsome figures in the novels are presented to initially be the spirits haunting the artifacts, but upon closer examination the larger more entrenched issue of outdated models of thought in relation to Indigenous peoples appear to be the most important fearsome figure. The protagonist of the novel is dependent upon the views taken, and the fearsome figures that the historians, such as David Evans, and characters are attempting aid the spirits, such as George Daylight. Walters addresses the fearsome nature of a system dependent on examining and judging indigenous societies based on white values, which is problematic since both cultures do not

According to Prater (2012) if this story was chosen as a plot for a new film sequel, the audience would not believe that there is a

Have you ever been reading a book and just can’t stop? Well Road Trip by: Gary Paulsen. Road Trip is an adventure and comedy book that everyone will love. There are 114 pages, and Road Trip has no awards yet.

The essay “My Little Bit of Country” is written by Susan Cheever and is from the anthology Central Park, which is published in 2012. Susan Cheever is the main character in the story. She writes about how she grew up in the city and how she didn’t like the “real” nature. She didn’t like the suburban, and after her family moved from New York, she always went back. She raised her own children near Central Park. For Susan Cheever, Central Park is kind of her safe haven.