Life A We Knew It By Susan Beth Pfeffer

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.

In Barbara Carey’s poem “Returning to the World,” a girl tries to get away from her troubles by isolating herself on the fire escape. The poem teaches us that in order for a person to understand their problems and become courageous, they must take a break from everything around them. Carey uses metaphor, imagery and personification to express this idea.

Discuss how your investigation of the generic conventions of poetry has influenced your understanding of at least one poem that you have studied in this unit.

To read is to feel connected; to feel as though we are not alone, each of us read for a different purpose. Just like reading authors have a purpose for writing. The purpose behind Elie Wiesel novel “Night” is the duty he felt as a survivor, he felt as though he was a messenger and needed to tell the world about this catastrophe. There are many aspects that make a novel good and bad, each is determined by the details given by the author, but also the lack of detail can make a novel feel as if it’s bad because it leaves us hanging; wanting for more. There is always a way the author can make their novel better, just like with everything there’s always room for improvement.

Sitting in a comfortable leather chair on a cloudy January day, I sat in a house and interviewed Susan Gustavson, a life long Jew that is in her mid-fifties. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Columbia University, where she got an MBA in marketing. She told me about her opinions on the Judaism.

The non-fiction book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot, details the happenings and life of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman and tobacco farmer who became a medical miracle in the 1950’s. The book is written in an attempt to chronicle both the experiences and tribulations of Henrietta Lacks and her family, as well as the events that led to, and resulted from, research done on Henrietta Lacks’ cells. Henrietta was a very average African American woman in this period; she had only a seventh-grade level education, and followed traditional racial and gender roles by spending her time has a mother and caretaker, as well as working on farms throughout her life until the involvement of the US in World War II brought her and her husband, “Day” Lacks, comparatively better work opportunities in industrial steel mills. However, after her death in 1951 Henrietta became much more than average to doctors at John Hopkins when the discovered that cells extracted from her cancerous tissue continued to live and grow much longer than any other tissue samples. Further investigation and isolation of these thriving cells led to the creation of the first ever immortal human cell line in medical history. The incredible progress in medicine made possible by Henrietta Lack’s tissue cells were not without downfalls, though. The treatments and experiences received by Henrietta and the effects it had on her and her family demonstrate both racial and gender

¨There was a law against luke. Not him personally everyone like him, kids who were born after their parents already had two babies (pg 6)¨. Would you like a law against you? Among the hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix clearly shows that dictatorship is horrible. In this novel Luke is not allowed to leave the house or be seen. Luke leaves the house in cover and meets a girl the same as him she can't go anywhere so she tries to convince luke to rebel to be like regular people with her but he is to nervous. Luke shows the character traits of brave, jealousy and adventurous as he hides in the shadows.

In the year 1953, Ray Bradbury published a book titled Fahrenheit 451. This book explores a dystopian world where houses are completely fireproof, and instead of putting out fires, firemen start them. They do this for one reason, which is to destroy all books. The author has many things he wanted to convey, one of which is that books are people. The theme of Fahrenheit 451 is that books encompass the author’s entire life and their opinions. Along with this, Bradbury was trying to show that by reading a book, the reader also shares these experiences.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was an interesting read. It includes some interesting points I have not thought of being in the medical field. Henrietta lacks is the main character who gets diagnosed with cervical cancer and passes away in 1951. Her cancerous cells which were illegally passed to a doctor were the first immortal human cell line, named HeLa cells. Rebecca Skloot is the narrator of the book she goes through how the access to Henrietta's cancerous cells allowed for important discoveries to help aid others in the 21st century.

In the novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot the author, provides multiple instances of the diseases that Lack, and her family suffer from. Skloot's first evidence of disease is the recognition of Henrietta's sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea and syphilis, which were induced by her husband sleeping around with other women (Skloot, 2010, Pg.16). Additionally, and of the most importance, Henrietta also suffered from cervical cancer which ultimately lead to her death and the discovery of HeLa Cells. In addition to her own diseases, Henrietta also had a Daughter named Elsie who suffered from epilepsy, Mental deficiencies, and neurosyphilis. Elsie's Neurosyphilis was caused by Henrietta's lack of care towards continuing

Let the Circle be Unbroken portrays an african american family’s hardships against powerful white landowners and family tragedies. All in the perception of the strong-willed Cassie Logan. Let the Circle be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor is an enjoyable book with engaging characters, unpredictable plots, and an amusing genre.

One of the books I have read this summer is Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. This book is about how a girl named Miranda who is the protagonist and who is telling the story, lives a normal teenage life. She attends high school, hangs out with friends, and was on the swim team. Scientists predict that a meteor would hit the moon. They also predicted that the meteor wouldn’t be big and there wouldn’t be too much damage. However, when the meteor hit the moon, it got closer to the earth. This resulted in natural disasters to occur which wiped out a lot of people. Miranda and her family have to struggle to survive, expect the worse to happen, and make hard sacrifices in order to survive.

The TED talk, “Seeds of Our Ancestors, Seeds of Life,” by Winona LaDuke was really sad. Thinking about how many types of foods of gone extinct, and that there are companies that keep trying to patent and genetic engineer our food. Food is more than something we just buy, it keeps us living, yet we don’t seem to put much thought into it anymore. The statement about only about 30 different varieties of food giving us our calories makes sense, but I can see why it’s so sad. It’s depressing that species of food are going extinct, we think about animals going extinct, but we don’t often think about our food. I’m curious about all of the types of food that I will never be able to try because they have gone extinct.

The Solitude of Self is a speech that was given by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was a leader of the women’s suffrage movement. This speech mainly discussed gender equality in every situation, including education and suffrage. Stanton clearly was opposed to the idea of inequality and believed that every person, man or woman, deserved to have the same rights.

Miranda’s life is like any ordinary teenagers life. She has to deal with her friends, Megan and Sammi, who are always arguing with each other (Pfeffer, 6) and she has to go to classes, as she is in high school. (Pfeffer, 5) Miranda’s parents, however are divorced, making her different from her other friends. Thus, Miranda often relies on her older brother, Matt, to deal with conflicts she faces everyday besides her mother and younger brother, Jonny, who lives with her in Pennsylvania. (Pfeffer, 3 and 14) As life continues for Miranda, the issue of an asteroid colliding with the moon generates huge attention, but Miranda feels it will be just a small event and just another excuse for teachers to give more work. (Pfeffer, 10-11)