Meena Alexander Essay

In her essay “My Two Lives,” Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian American, explains the balance between the identities of the two countries inside her heart, as well as her psychological struggle between her bicultural identities. She describes herself as an Indian-American because she moved with her family from India to the United States when she was very young. However, confused with her identity through her growth, she feels that she doesn’t belong to either of the two countries because of its completely different cultures. When she is at home, she deals with her parents in an Indian way, which is strange compared to the American way that she come across outside. She says that she has a distinctive identity in spite of her Indian appearance

The poem then explores power perspectives and dwells specifically, on feminist and gender issues. The professor represents the patriarchal power of the past. The time of “calm age and power”. The “girl with the titian hair” is symbolic of the feminist challenge to such patriarchal

Poetry is used by writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Kate Chopin to express ideas and words through a sense of writing and rhythm that is felt by the poet who is writing it. Years ago, poets would use poetry as a record of history where they told life events that was happening or how modern societies were expected to be. “The Poetry of this period forms the immediate background and matrix of their own work, so much so that unless one keeps the later nineteenth century.” (Venuti, The translator's invisibility, 2017.) Each author made poetry different by changing the tradition and outlook on poetry which is also known as the dead poet’s society. Authors from the past heavily influenced everything that was created in a poem. “Sweat” written by Zora Neale Hurston was written during a time period women didn’t have an opinion and it was frowned upon to disagree or go against your husband. This woman in the story over comes the current times cultural norms. The “Awakening” written by Kate Chopin, speaks out against societies gender roles and says women are evolving to hold more than the titles “mother” and “housewife.” It was the time of shifting order and woman gaining more rights than was handed to them. Kate Chopin used her poetry to give an insight of what limitations she might have encountered in her life as a woman and it explained her choices she chose to help the reader understand what she may have felt towards the subject during this

Imagine living in a world of perfect paradise, where no one disturbs you or takes away your freedom of thought. You’re living in pure harmony and feel as if your life is going to be peaceful forever. But what if one day someone comes along and changes your world, taking away your custom beliefs and changing your culture. What would you do? In the novel Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, the character Okonkwo, an indigenous member of the Ibo tribe, comes in conflict with the European settlers as they try to convert his tribe to Christianity. Even though many people choose to convert to this new system, Okonkwo, along with a few friends, respond adversely to this foreign settlement as they attempt to restore order in their native village. As the Europeans bring their religion, messengers, and government into the tribe, the outcome of Okonkwo 's response, causes him to bring his identity into query when he realizes that things that were formerly common, will always collapse in the end.

The United States is a multicultural country that has experienced a rough journey towards building a cohesive country. Sherman Alexie’s story Reservation Blues explores the lives of some Native Americans who wrestled with cultural, racial, and religious barriers to embrace the rest of the country. The story reflects the process of racial and cultural integration the country has been going through since its inception, revealing an underlying struggle by the minority groups in the country to become part of the Americans culture that is often dominated by the majority white population. The process of assimilation occurs across all the different groups in the history of the country, and eventually, contributes to multiculturalism. Therefore,

Divided we fall book is about a private first class name Daniel Wright trying to serve his country and do his duty to protect and served his home as an Idaho Guardsmen. The author, Trent Reedy served in the Iowa national guard for 7 years and a tour in Afghanistan. I believed the book was well written by the author by giving us dramatic moments and good postures. The plot of the story was great by giving us details and action to give us an answer. Trent did an excellent telling us a story of a young soldier who’s trying to do good for his country. The story is mostly about a 17-yr. old private in the Idaho Guardsmen who’s going to High school somewhere right by a lake. Daniel was not just a guardsman, he plays for his school football team for

I will consider the way in which the two poets deal with the idea of love as timeless.I will also explore themes of authenticity and identity in their poems about love. In addition I will consider the extent to which their gender may have affected their view of love.

Collapse Book Review Alex Loureiro 4-17-15 Professor. Hauselmann Jared Diamond in his book “Collapse”, goes on a journey throughout the world and discovers what made some of the world’s greatest societies and civilization’s “collapse”. Jared Diamond is currently a Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Jared Diamond is originally trained as a bird scientist. But is best known for a wide range of expertise in other areas of profession, such as ecology, geography, biology, etc.

Without a plot there would be no stories, plays, or movies. A plot is described as the events that make a story and or the main part of the story. These events relate to one another in a type of pattern or sequence. A good story relies heavily on the plot. Setting and characters are built around the plot. Also, theme is very important in literature. The underlying message of a story is the theme. The big idea of a story comes from the theme. Authors use theme to convey their thoughts and beliefs about life. A piece of writing will often have more than one theme. Finishing each week’s assigned reading, I started noticing many have important and powerful themes.

Solomon Northup executed his very gruesome and serious tone throughout his memoir by providing dialogue said by real life people and using diction to give nauseating details to events going on around him throughout his twelve years in bondage. For example, Solomon Northup explains in chapter five how a fellow free slave named Arthur was abused for trying to protest the unfair kidnapping. Solomon states,” He fought until his strength failed him. Overpowered at last, he was gagged and bound with ropes, and beaten, until he became insensible.” (39). The slave masters were not compassionate and defiantly enforced the depressing tone of the memoir. Solomon Northup explains how Eliza, a slave mother, is being separated from her son and the cruel,

“My object is, to give a candid and truthful statement of facts: to repeat the story of my life, without exaggeration, leaving it for others to determine” (3). Solomon Northup is honest to readers from the very beginning of his novel. Northup’s main purpose in writing his story was to reveal to white Northerners a first-person narrative the true horrors of slavery, therefore adding fire to the growing reform of America’s age-old system.

Gender roles within society have changed continuously over time, and with the use of primary sources, it can be seen first-hand what it was like during the time in which it was written. In the source, “Parallel Qualities of the Sexes,” the opinion of one writer is seen through the poem. Because this is just one person’s opinion, it is important to determine whether or not the statements made are truthful to the time period in which it was written. There are a number of questions to be taken into consideration when deciding whether or not a source is or is not credible, such as the gender of the writer, who the audience is, and what can be presumed about the author through the work itself. The credibility of the source then relies on the

A woman arrives at a crossroads. Will a predetermined fate cause her to take a certain path, or does she have free will to choose a different path? Based on the nonfiction works The Sports Gene, written by David Epstein, and “Losing Control,” a person’s fate is the result of choices that that person or people in the close vicinity of that person have made. In “Losing Control,” prior research or preparation affects one’s fate. David Epstein said in The Sports GeneI that people have the ability to direct their fate if they have enough determination. Both these works provide sufficient evidence to support the claim that humans have total control over their fates.

Chinua Achebe chose to write his novels in English to reveal a deep response of his people to colonisation and to make that response understood to people all over the world. Things Fall Apart was written in English to teach people worldwide of the struggles he faced and the people of Nigeria faced growing up. Many authors and critics have written about Achebe’s ‘Things fall apart’ adding their valued opinion on what he was trying to say and his decision to write in English. In the following essay I will be discussing why Achebe wrote the novel Things Fall apart in English and what messages he was trying to reveal, through the help of critics and secondary sources.

There was a frequent reference to “a poet” whose work was widely respected in this novel. The Count de Satigny (who was Esteban Trueba’s ‘suitable’ choice of a husband for Blanca) referred to the work of the poet as “the best poetry ever written, and nothing could compare to it”. When Jaime and Nicholas became adults, the poet became more widely accepted as Clara had formerly predicted the first time she heard him recite in his ‘telluric voice’ in one of her literary soireés. It was evident that the poet lived and wrote about the right of the citizens to live their lives the way they wanted to, making their own decisions and expressing their own opinions without being controlled. For this reason, the funeral of such a poet became “the symbolic burial of freedom”.