My Mother By Lisa Dawn Hicks Kern

In the book, Mama Might Be Better off Dead, there were two main characters that were crucial to the plot of the story, Jackie Banes and Mrs. Jackson. Throughout the book, I found Mrs. Jackson to have the best connection with public health. Mrs. Jackson was an elderly and disabled women with a variety of health care odds stacked against her. She had numerous health concerns; such as, diabetes, peripheral vascular disease, and an amputated limb (Abraham, 1993). Mrs. Jackson suffered these health issues because she was a poverty stricken women and experienced economically depressed living conditions. Due to her low socio-economic status, Mrs. Jackson did not qualify for full coverage Medicaid because she was not considered in a low enough income bracket unless she put more than half of her monthly social security towards health benefits (Abraham, 1993). As a woman with limited resources, Mrs. Jackson was unable to afford the cost of benefits much less her own survival expenses. The duration that Mrs. Jackson experienced insufficient resources led her to all of her unfortunate outcomes regarding her health. One of the reasons Mrs. Jackson needed an amputation on her leg was due to an untreated wound that resulted from her diabetes. Her diabetes had also gone untreated because she was unable to afford treatment and transportation costs to help her infection heal (Abraham, 1993). In the book, no one cared about Mrs. Jackson and it was because she was a poor

In the poem “Still Memory” by Mary Karr, the speaker, through a dream like memory, re-experiences a snapshot in time that held particular significance in her childhood. Karr focuses on the seemingly inconsequential details that made mornings in her childhood home memorable for her. She describes the morning scene with the use of sensory, imagery and onomatopoeia to make the dream particularly zoetic. Although the dream is seen from this childlike aspect, Karr highlights how dreamlike this memory is and how memories are fluid and can be easily moulded and altered by the mind-they are not “still” as the title proposes. The writer also keeps the poem very dreamlike in order to remind the reader that the memory, although it can be recollected and valued, it is never going to be repeated and that the speaker is aware that things can never be this way again. Furthermore, the relation of the poem to dreams brings in messages how of heavily a person can become mesmerized by their memories.

Here, Louie Zamperini who never gave up, never quit, and never stopped fighting. Louie, as a young boy was a thief, never really cared to listen to anybody. Laura Hillenbrand put much detail into Unbroken. She’d call him and talk to him about him and everything he had gone through.

In 2000, Thomas Kinkade, the Painter of Light, created Hometown Morning, which is an oil painting on canvas. This painting is part of the Hometown Memories collection as he paints different scenes from his childhood growing up. Hometown Morning is a painting of a street in Placerville, California that is full of life. It is a small community with people walking down the sidewalk and everyone and everything just seems peaceful. Since the original has been sold, the last location of the painting was at The Thomas Kinkade Museum in Monterey, California.

My mother’s mother, Sharon Lee Clark Hicks, was born on June 26, 1946, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her father, James Monrow Clark, was 31 years old at the time of her birth and he was in the US Navy as a Chief Boson Mate. Her mother, Eleanor Zelda Garfeild Clark, was 23 years old at the time of her birth and she was an office worker at the US Navy yard. My grandmother was the oldest sister of three. Michelle Clark was born when my grandmother was 2 years old, on August, 27, 1948, in Silversprings, Florida. Fifteen years later their youngest sister Cindy Lynn Clark was born, on December 10, 1961, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

"If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman," is a common quote used in the modern day. But just 20 years ago women were still fighting for their rights in America, how has this changed? Well, believe it all starts with women who wanted change, a right to own property or even equal right, it just was taken as unfair. As well as, that a wife had no legal identity apart from her husband, and which put women in a situation realizing they could make things change, started one at a time to become fed up with this arrangement. Circling The Sun by Paula McClain is all about a young named Beryl, who was abandoned by her mother as a child, being left to be raised by her work-devoted father and the native Kipsigis tribe,who share his estate. Beryl grew up to a young women with a fierce love of all things. when the wild child has to grow up, Beryl looses everything she knows and trusts. She is pitched in to a disastrous marriage, Jock Purves, and her husbands intent is to make her life miserable; however she is destined to find a way to her freedom. Trying to find they way she can live and love by her own rules, she charges forward through the unmapped territory of what she think she wants, on a path she finds herself meeting a man, that helps her to find her truest self and her fate. Its a astonishing story of a fearless young women, who extends out past others, to find freedom. Which makes you heart swell; however, Beryl was a women

Since a poem is often less than a standard page in length, it is useful to consider similar poems to each other in order to locate a textual echo. The poems “My Little Son” and “To my Beloved”by Morris Rosenfeld both echo themes of struggling familial structure due to the stress and time devoted to working. In all three of these poems the protagonist is conflicted between the amount of work he has to do in order to support his family, and the lack of time he is actually getting to spend with his family.

In the beginning of the book, an odd scene was described. A mother was rummaging through the garbage, and this was described from the perspective of someone else. This person is the mother’s daughter. She is sitting in a taxi on her way to a party up the block when she lays eyes upon her mother. The author describes the daughters reaction by saying, “I slid down in my seat and asked the driver to turn around and take me home”(Walls 3). The daughter is literally ashamed of her homeless mother. This reaction is appaling to someone who is not in the daughters shoes. “After ducking down in my taxi so my mom would not see me, I hated myself - hated my antiques, my clothes, and my apartment” (Walls 3). Obviously, she regrets the feeling of embarrassment

My name is Jessica Thomas and I was born and raised in Oklahoma City. My parents were born in India but as soon as they got married they moved to America with their siblings. I grew up in a Christian home so my faith in God has always been a big part of my life because it has always been a big part of my families lives. About two years ago my cousin Jency lent me her book called Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers. This book touched me in a very profound way. It is a novel about a little girl who was sold into prostitution by her uncle but was bought by a very good hearted Christian man when she was an adult. Once he bought her he married her because that is what God told him to do. He loved her unconditionally and tries to show her the love

Always wanted to be accepted by others is part our society. I remember wanting to be accepted that it didn’t matter if I dyed my hair, change my clothes or my personality somehow that was never good enough. But the person that I desperately seek acceptance from was my mother. I had to become the eldest child in our family, my brother decided he no longer wanted the responsibility he let go of school and along the hope my mother had for him to have a career. The pressure and expectations amplified for me to be somebody. Sandra Cisneros in her essay “Only Daughter” that intertwines her story as the outsider, the “only daughter” in a family of six sons who articulates a yearning for her father’s acceptance of her as a daughter and as a writer, both of which delimit her as an individual. Cisneros uses diction, tone, and imagery to convey the message.

Have you ever heard about poetry? Poetry is when you express your feelings and ideas by using a distinctive style and rhythm in a story. In my class we do poetry. Sometimes it can be difficult to understand. We also have to know how to read a poem because it is not like a story. What poems do you like? The poems I read were Winter by Nikki Giovanni, The Rider by Naomi Shihab Nye, and The Courage That My Mother Had by Edna St. Vincent Millary. These works are all very different from each other.

While slavery was still legal in the United States, many African American women and men were restricted from expressing creativity and were not permitted to receive an education (reading and writing). They toiled in the fields, worked as house slaves, or even forced to have children, there was no time to “create”. In Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” she voices how difficult it was to be a woman at that period of time, especially for African American women that were forced to suppress their talent due to being a slave. She mentions her mother and grandmother’s personal experience in that they never were able to have the freedom to express themselves. Yet, this is a shared experience of all African American women of the past

In the personal essay “My Mothers Tongue” (1990), Amy Tan, widely known author explains her insights on language and culture identity using details and memories from her own life experiences. Tan conceals that the language in which her mother used with her “was the language that helped shape the way [she] saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world” (1208) and in the process it made her who she is today as an author. Tan illuminates the euro centricity of the Master Narrative by retelling stories of her mother being treated poorly because of her “broken” or “limited” English. She recalls many past experiences where her mother suffered from bad service and treatment from restaurants, stockbrokers, and even hospitals. Using examples from her personal life Tan gets her point across about language and culture characteristics in order to show how Chinese culture is affected by the master narrative and also encourages others to include a variety of cultures in order to overcome bias opinions. Tan’s apparent audience can be ranged from the child of an immigrant to a doctor and offers an authentic and rich portrayal of Chinese history through her conflicting experience of her Chinese and American cultures.

Every day on God’s earth, we see the mother who works 14 hours a day at the department store, just so her child can have proper food on the table. We see the mother who endures countless challenges in life, just so her child can live calmly. We see the mother who works four jobs per day, just to fund her child’s college education, and the mother, whom on her deathbed, only asks that her child be looked after. These are mere examples of motherly love. A mother’s love for her child is immeasurable. The amazing attachment apparent in motherly affection has more depth than mentionable. This type of love has existed since the beginning of humanity and lasts until today.

In Bonnie Smith-Yackel’s essay “My Mother Never Worked” she passionately defends her mother after Social Security refuses to grant her death benefit check. Yackel does not realize that Social Security fairly distributes benefits to contributing Americans. Social Security was reasonable to not granting benefits to a woman who never contributed as a wage earner. It would not be fair if benefits were granted to a fraud who never paid wage taxes compared to wage earners who do. Americans who abuse Social Security benefits by committing fraud is unethical and not to mention illegal. Americans that are in desperate need for Social Security benefits require it far more than frauds. By eliminating fraud the government can properly grant social benefits to hard working Americans. Social Security benefits should be permitted to Americans that work and provide back to their country or they are disabled. Hard-working citizens that pay their duties will receive back from benefits, including employees that are qualified as disabled. Benefits should not be granted to any citizen that makes no contribution to their country such as, tax deductions from their wages. Furthermore, Social Security needs to reach out to the majority which is the poverty-stricken. By informing impecunious people and immigrants of Social Security it could save them from the poverty they suffer from. Even though, Social Security relieves some citizens from a financial burden there are still many improvements to be