Lucky, By Alice Sebold

The bizarre fact regarding people, is they can be given everything necessary to live: food, water, shelter yet the way a person interacts with the world is majorly influenced by numerous other factors. Intimate relationships, such as the consistent involvement of family, is one factor that has an immense impact on how humans respond to different situations in life. Melinda Sordino, a high school student at Merryweather high, had been raped, at a party a couple weeks before freshman year. She deeply felt that nobody cared leading her to have socially distant herself from everyone and no longer putting any mindfulness into her outward appearance. Just in the matter of a few weeks, an entirely new Melinda had been fashioned without even the slightest acknowledgment or concern from her parents causing a chain of followed reactions.

In Lucky, Alice Sebold shows how her life was utterly changed when she was brutally raped and beaten in a park near campus as a college freshman when she was eighteen-year-old, how she struggled to be understood by the people around, from family to her friends, and how she tried to recover from the physical and psychological trauma and finally triumphed, getting the attacker arrested and convicted. Just as written in the book, "You save yourself or you remain unsaved."(Sebold, 54)

Everyone in this world struggles in life. Nobody's life it's perfect. In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the author weaves several important themes throughout the story. This story is about a young girl who was raped in a party called Melinda. Melinda went to a party and got raped. After that, Melinda called 911. Melinda’s friends stop talking to her because she got students arrested. No one knew that she was raped. Melinda’s influence that night was the alcohol affects. Alcohol always takes control in someone’s mind or body . In this situation, Melinda went a little too far in her first time meeting Andy. However, it was not her fault the fact that she got raped because she did not know what she was doing. Also, she did not expect anything that things were going to get down that far.

She was sexually abused as a child by her father. She rationalized his abuse as a desire to be closer to his only daughter. However, Tracy failed to realize that if her father was lonely and frustrated, he had alternatives to molesting his own daughter. Tracy attributed his sexual abuse to him being lonely and frustrated. Another example is Louise as she was spending her life waiting for her idealized father to come back. Unable to face how callous and irresponsible he had been she used extensive rationalization to keep him godlike. Her rationalization enabled her to deny her rage at him for abandoning her. These two examples show how victims can make the unacceptable acceptable with even the worst

Looking back at her tragic series of sexual assaults, Samentha Moore reminisces on her habitual inexorable feelings of “self-conscious and blaming” (source 5). Moore experienced her first two traumatic assaults before college; she was left vacant, aloof and disconsolate after the police disdainfully responded to her assaults. Around the time, she experienced her third assault in college, Moore was discourage to report it ands was left miserable and unable to desert her pain, loneliness and self- punishment. Her agony later developed into an eating disorder; Moore thought maybe if she “made myself (herself) less attractive it (the rape) wouldn’t happen again” (source 5).

The story of Alice Sebold’s memoir begins with her as a freshman at Syracuse University and the scene in which she is brutally raped. Sebold writes in vivid detail on how the rape went throughout the beginning of the chapter. She was walking back to her dormitory through a park during nighttime when she was suddenly assaulted and raped by a black man. After the traumatizing experience, she makes her back to her dorm where she told her friends about the rape. One of her roommate’s black friends gives her a hug in order to apologize on behalf of the black men and to make her not judge them as rapists due to the incident. After meeting with her friends, they take her emergency room. A police officer later tells her that she was “lucky”

A violent rape in a tunnel to a virgin girl in baggy clothes, it is a nightmare, but sadly it did happen to Alice Sebold. She was violently raped and beaten. When she came back to her dorm in her college, it was obvious what had happened and she was suddenly seen as an outsider. People stared at her and she was no longer Alice, instead she was ‘the girl that had been raped.’ Her social life became dismal. She often needed to seek help from her family because of the emotional trauma that she had been put through. She ended up taking the man, Gregory Madison, into court and she won. But the emotional cost on Alice Sebold was heavy. A normal person in her situation would likely be at risk for having PTSD or a stress disorder, but interestingly Alice had very little symptoms of PTSD. She was very resilient and it was because of her willpower that she was able to convict her rapist.

A well-written story involves important topics that are interesting for the reader, but also incorporates strong emotions. Susie Salmon, a fourteen-year-old girl, is raped and murdered by a neighborhood man. She tells the story from her point of view in heaven as she watches her family grieve over her loss and search to find her killer. In The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold creates a suspenseful novel that explores rape through the victims eyes while also telling a heart-wrenching story with conflict, imagery, and plot twists.

In the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, tells stories of four Chinese mothers and four Chinese-American daughters and their mother-daughter relationship. The four mothers met in a San Francisco church in 1949. Suyuan Woo, founder of the Joy Luck Club, convinced the other mothers An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Yingying St. Clair to join the club. The club would meet every week at one of the mother’s house where they eat food, play mahjong, and brag about their daughters. The Chinese-American daughters tell their own personal story which includes Jing-mei Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, and Lena St. Clair. The novel is narrated in third-person omniscient point of view.

Luckiest Girl Alive is a bestselling thriller by Jessica Knoll. The novel centers around how the life of fourteen year old TiffAni Fanelli substantially changes after enduring a traumatic experience at an exclusive Philadelphia private school. Even thirteen years later, with a new name, sucessful career, blue blooded fiancè, and a million dollar wardrobe, a reinvented “Ani” Fanelli is still haunted by what occurred. After a television documentary is set for production on the events that transpired at the school, Ani is put at odds with whether to come face to face with her horrific past for closure, or continue to live in the perfect false state of oblivion that she has created for herself. From the very beginning of the novel, before finding

The concept of the American Dream has always been that everyone wants something in life, no matter if it is wealth, education, financial stability, safety, or a decent standard of living. However, everyone will try to strive to get what they want. The American Dream, is said to be that everyone should try and get what they hope they can get in life. In the play “A Raisin in the Sun” the author Lorraine Hansberry brought to us is about a family where each has an American Dream. The question is will each one of them be able to fulfill that dream?

The novel The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan shows the past and present experiences of several women including An-mei Hsu, the mother of Rose Hsu Jordan. Beginning at a young age, An-mei has to endure many situations. Her grandmother tells her that her mother is a ghost but she comes back to take care of her grandmother when she is ill. Due to the absence of her mother during her childhood years, she tries to be there for Rose as much as possible but is pushed away. An-mei believes she has nengkin, the ability to do anything she puts her mind to but after a devastating event at the beach her beliefs change. Through exploring An-mei’s tragedies from the past, it is revealed that An-mei loses hope in nengkin, but tries to make a difference when it comes to her daughter’s marriage.

My fourth favorite quote from The Help By:Kathryn Stockett is when “Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?” To me it means that you shouldn't care what others say about you cause you'll never please anyone and there will always be a person talking badly about you so you should only worry about living your life the way you want it.

“The Lucky Years.” That is the title of world-renowned oncologist Dr. David Agus’s latest book and the phrase he coined to describe today’s era of medicine. In the midst of a scientific and technological Renaissance, Dr. Agus attempts to captivate and inform his audience of how these upcoming years will drastically change the world of health. He promises that his book will “[give] you the keys to a new kingdom of wellness.” He tells his readers that the world of being able to edit their own DNA, losing weight without dieting, and using their own immune systems to battle cancer is much closer than they think. Having the honor of attending one of Dr. Agus’ lectures, I learned that he wrote the The Lucky Years to expand his medical reach across a large number of people. It acts as a paper extension of himself, since he is unable to reach every patient in person. Many health experts, just like Agus, write books and articles for widespread publications in hopes of increasing the general public’s knowledge of the medical world; however, while Dr. Agus’ intentions for his book are optimistic, does he actually grab the attention of a wide audience? More importantly, will this book increase his audience’s health literacy levels to a point where they can utilize the Lucky Years like he states?

The Year My Sister Got Lucky The book titled “The Year My Sister Got Lucky” is an interesting work of literature, written by the New York Times bestselling author Aimee Friedman. It narrates the story of a teenager whose life changes when she moves to Fir Lake with her family. Actually, the main character is Katie, a fourteen year-old girl who is insecure, emotional and sensitive. Besides, she considers herself overdramatic because of her constant concern for the challenges she faces.