I Like Myself By Karen Beaumont And Illustrated By David Catrow

Amy Tan had many personal experiences in her story. For example, when Amy Tan was living in Northern California, her mother had very high expectations on her. Her mother wanted her to be with the American society and be the best she could be. Amy Tan had to get a haircut very short to the way other famous children were acting in the United States. Amy’s mother was the one who encouraged this. With that, in the story “Two Kinds,” the young girl named Jing-mei live in a part of California and she had to get a very short haircut. Jing-mei’s mother wanted her daughter to look and act the same way Shirley Temple did. Within both of the girls lives, they each had to act like an already famous person exactly to please their mothers.

Technology, the advancement of knowledge and productivity through the application of tools, information, and techniques to create an effortless process, has ultimately lead to the declination of our society and our future. In “A Thing Like Me,” Nicholas Carr addresses the development of technology from the day it was created and how it initiated an immediate impact within the lives of humans leading to an unhealthy dependency. Carr establishes how technology, what was intended to be a tool, has become the “pacifier” of our generation. This “pacifier” causes a loss of freedom, not through the laws of the government, but rather with the values of freedom one holds within themselves. This freedom is the individuality that distinguishes each person from the next, and forms a desire for the development of oneself through the experiences of life and the wisdom that is acquired along the way. Technology has blinded man from this pursuit of self-enhancement and with the advancement of technology occurring daily, there is no resolution. Each day people are confined within themselves and the pieces of technology that will continually limit them in their lives. Freedom is more than just a concept of laws instilled by the government, it is the thought process found within each individual person and their “hunger” to become more. With technology, social media was created and immediately immersed within our lives. The society of today has

At some point in their life, every person has been told to “walk in somebody else’s shoes” because they need to be aware of the struggles that other people face, but it is often tough for people to understand things outside of the scope of their own practical knowledge. In her memoir, Lucky, Alice Sebold suffers from this same problem. Throughout the course of her narrative, Sebold thinks of her experience as something that is accessible to be understood by outsiders; in addition to this, Sebold paints her reactions and experiences as a model that she can apply to other victims of sexual assault. Even though Sebold’s story is one of strength in the face of horrible occurrences, her lack of acknowledgement in regards the ways in which other people’s consciousness and coping mechanisms differ from her own makes it far more difficult to sympathize with her than it should be considering the content of her memoir. Evidence of her closed world understanding can be seen from the beginning of the memoir, when she reports her sexual assault to the police (Sebold, 3), later in the narrative, when other people react to her experiences and related feelings (Sebold 146), and finally, and perhaps most significantly, when her close friend Lila undergoes a sexual assault (Sebold 220).

What would you do if you lost access to running water? That is what the small town of Porterville, Ca is currently experiencing. Water is an essential part of life, a place without water becomes inhabitable. The drought in California is not affecting everybody the in the same way but it has become a bigger problem the longer it lasts. Finding a solution to such a big problem is not an easy task. If you approach the problem from only one direction you might miss something vital. Limiting water to everybody seems to be a simple solution, but if that happens there are many problems that appear because of that. In the book Think Like a Freak, by Levitt and Dubner they explain why looking at a problem from a different angle will yield unexpected results. Although there is no simple solutions, there are ways to fix the drought and to be better prepared for the next inevitable one.

“In 2009, 33 million people in the United States were second generation immigrants, representing 11% of the national population. The children of such immigrants in the U.S., also known as "second generation immigrants," experience a cultural conflict between that of their parents and that of mainstream U.S. society” (Wikipedia 1). Amy Tan the author of “Two Kinds”, and the young character in the story both are a second generation immigrants, who have struggled in their life with parents, about the culture they assimilating and their real culture.

What does being beautiful really mean? It is the possessing qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, or think about. It goes way beyond the looks but what is within. The media seems to have a different view on beauty. The concept to tell someone what they are or what they should be, is what the media exhibits to society with ideal females known as “models.” In Curtis Sittenfeld, “Your Life as a Girl,” she describes the life as a female and the way they are being viewed. Although all females are beautiful, they feel like they need to appear a certain way to be categorized as such. Living in a world where others opinions are more powerful than one’s own, makes it harder for women to actually consider themselves as being beautiful.

The writing life is the short story book which has seven chapters. It talks about how to become a good writer and how to create a good writing by passing through the perspective and personal experience of Annie Dillard. In the part of how to become a good writer, she tells her personal experience about what is the things that help she to become a good writer. Also, what is the things a writer should have and what is a person a writer should be. In the part of how to create the good writing, she compares the writing with other handicrafts such as painting, photographing, singing, and wood working (Dillard 3-6). In addition, she gives us about the idea of “Line of Words” that is the major part of creating a good writing.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Gilman is a chilling portrayal of a woman’s downward spiral towards madness after undergoing treatment for postpartum depression in the 1800’s. The narrator, whose name remains nameless, represents the hundreds of middle to upper- class women who were diagnosed with “hysteria” and prescribed a “rest” treatment. Although Gilman’s story was a heroic attempt to “save people from being driven crazy” (Gilman p 1) by this type of “cure” it was much more. “The Yellow Wallpaper” opened the eyes of many to the apparent oppression of women in the 1800’s and “possibly the only way they could (unconsciously) resist or protest their traditional ‘feminine’

The famous leader Martin Luther King once said, “Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having their legs off, and then being condemned for being a cripple.” This quote pretty much summed up the way in which African Americans felt during the 1960’s. They had basically no meaning to life. They were irrelevant. Whites wanted no part in them. This was especially the case in the state of Mississippi. Anne Moody, writer of the autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi explains the importance of the civil rights movement in the state of Mississippi and the influence it had on her life and her viewpoint.

Adversity can be seen in many different ways. Some people look at adversity as a learning experience, while others view adversity as a situation marked with misfortune. When a person is faced with adversity, rather than viewing it as something to hate, they should see it as a opportunity to grow. In the stories by Doris Lessing, W.D Wetherell and Alice Walker, they all show different types of challenges each character had to over come and their journey to do so. These stories all shared similar outcomes, they demonstrate how each character used an obstacle they were faced with, and turned it into a beneficial experience and how it shaped them into the person they are today.

To most, growing up would mean to increase in age, but it means something more than simply the number of years you have been alive. As you grow older, you would become mature, seeing what you would do in life, and knowing your limits. With increasing age, you would have more responsibilities. But, one can't always be mature. You might act like a teenager one day and a toddler the next. Growing up means to accept who you are, having your younger years with you, and to know your parents won't always be there to guide you.

Racism has always been a hot topic issue in America. Starting, of course, with slavery and enduring long after its abolishment. Many try to put an end to it, but this is one of those things that will take many, many years to completely eradicate from society. In this paper, I will briefly discuss both the Clark Doll Experiment and the film A Girl like Me, discuss my opinion on racism in America, demonstrate how racism effects the schools, and discuss how and why my interpretation of this compares with the views of another culture.

In “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy,” Emily Esfahani Smith writes about the conflict between Viktor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Happiness” and the culture today, which focuses on happiness in life rather than meaning. She introduces Viktor Frankl as a star medical and psychology student who survived the Holocaust in 1942. While Frankl was kept hostage in his camp, he was forced to find the good in life in order to survive. After being liberated, Frankl recorded his experience and what he learned in nine days, creating a best-seller in the United States. Smith explains that even though it has been concluded that Americans’ happiness is at an all-time high, the Center for Disease Control says that almost fifty percent of Americans have not found a purpose in life. Smith tells that bad mental health, self-esteem, and depression are less likely to be found in those who have found a pleasurable meaning in life. Happiness is associated with being a “taker”, while having a meaning life is associated with being a “giver” according to Smith. The downside to having a purpose for one’s life is the fact that he or she is usually more unhappy due to stress and worry than those who only strive for happiness, Smith explains. A study in 2011 proved that if someone has a negative circumstance occur in his or her lifetime, that event will give him or her more of a drive to find meaning in life rather than happiness. Smith concluded by linking these other sources with Frankl’s

The book I chose to interpret, I Like Myself by Karen Beaumont, introduces a young girl who has become confident in who she is. Being confident in who one is something that most children deal with some point in their life. Within the book, I identified themes such as self-acceptance, self-esteem, and individualization that relate to Erickson’s psychosocial stages of development, William James’ theoretical approach to the self, Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems theory, and Harter’s Self-Perception theory.