Reflection Paper : ' Barbie Q ' By Sandra Cisneros

Cisneros' Barbie-Q really stood out as a great piece of literature. Barbie-Q is a quick glimpse into the life of a poverty-stricken child and her way of life. Though my life as of yet has been rather short, my earliest childhood memories are overwhelmingly my fondest and her account really struck a chord. Sandra Cisneros' accurate reflection of a young mind and intricate writing methods expressed great emotion. Her portrayal of a child's mentality evoked my childhood recollections while her realistic tale of childhood bliss in the midst of poverty caused great empathy on my part making this my preferred work we studied.

Sandra Cisneros addresses poverty and unrealistic expectations of women through the lens of adolescent girls, using their youthful perception of a Barbie Doll. Through Barbie’s image of ideal beauty, Cisneros foregrounds the struggles that women, especially those in poverty, face in their attempts to amount to the unrealistic standards of female beauty. Cisneros’s main argument through her short story “Barbie-Q” is that it is impossible to expect women to meet this manifest of beauty, and somewhere along the way of escaping and covering their imperfections they become damaged.

In the short story, “Barbie-Q” By Sandra Cisneros uses a Barbie doll to portray the two young girls inner struggles with perfection and identity. Cisneros wanted to use two girls from families with limited incomes to get the surprise of having a local toy warehouse and stacks of burnt Barbie dolls, which immediately makes them available for a bargained price. The characters that Cisneros uses help show a flow of consciousness by using a variety of adjective and listing to capture the voice of these two girls. She also wanted to show the young girls infatuation with Barbie dolls. This shown when one of the young girls is describing her Barbie doll in comparison to the other

While attending writing class, I learned about the 4 steps in writing, bases for revising, organizing, and connecting specific information, and I also learned about the different types of essays such as descriptive, narrative, process, cause and effect and argumentative essay. I have been a student at Milwaukee Area Technical College for 1 semester, and over the course of my enrollment I have grown and learned more that I knew prior to attending this writing course. Participating in this writing class has taught me so much more than stuff about literature and language, it has taught me another way of expressing myself. I have learned here how to write and express myself, how to think for myself, and how to find the answers to the things that I don 't know. Most importantly I have learned how important technique, outlines and organization are. My goal in this paper is to inform writers about how my writing skills have improved.

This year I have learned a lot from College Writing, this class has taught me a lot about my own writing and what makes a good essay. I have learned a lot about myself as a writer and as a person throughout the course. In this reflection of the past semester I will be going through my past papers and talk about what I liked and how I could’ve made them better. I will also be going through the activities that have shaped my writing the most. Hopefully, I will be representing how I have grown as a writer throughout the year because of this class. Before taking this class I was already relatively confident in my writing abilities and was excited to take the class. Now that the course is completed I am even more confident in my writing because of all the new techniques and helpful tips I learned.

As spring semester began, the anxiety pushed into my life. Since I knew I was going to be the youngest in the class, I was concerned if people were even going to talk to me. I expected to come into the stressful English 101 class as a relatively inexperienced writer; however, I was astounded when I started writing my first college essay. Our topic “monsters” has taught me ways to analyze and compare certain people and objects. My recommendation for those entering this composition class is to not wait until the last minute and ask as many questions as you can to reach your goal towards fantastic essays. Although spring semester is coming to an end, I will continue to improve my writing skills and reasoning as I advance in my English and college career.

As the Fall 2017 term comes to end, I look back on what I have accomplished in this class. English 102 – Composition II was one of the most challenging and toughest class I have taken at UW-Stout, but feel as though it has helped me to improve my writing skills. Even before the semester started the feeling of anxiety had taken over, as writing has never been my strongest skill, but stayed positive and confident I would be successful. Much to my surprise, my instructor, Michael Critchfield quickly addressed that this class would not be easy and amazingly changed my views of writing throughout the entire semester.

In the story, “Barbie-Q”, by Sandra Cisneros starts off with two little girls adoring and examining these Barbie dolls. Every Barbie doll the girls purchase, each doll has some type of damage to them caused by the toy warehouse on Halsted Street burning down. The only reason these girls can afford the Barbie dolls was because of the flea market having a sale on these impaired dolls. The author Cisneros in her story is trying to portray how society expects women to be perfect and flawless but in reality women are far from perfect and they do have flaws.

I chose the story “Barbie Q” by Sandra Cisneros. I believe one of the themes portrayed in this story is society's expectations of women and the ideal image of women. It’s clear that the narrator is a little girl from the first few lines in the story. I think that what the narrator has her doll value and how she plays with her dolls could be translated as a reflection of her own self-image and what life should be like for her.

Although avoiding passive voice is taught a lot in earlier levels of English, I have never done a good job of it up until this class. Although there was no explicit mention regarding passive voice for my goals in this class, when reading my draft, it felt boring. A lot of the sentences that bugged me were abusing the passive voice. Again, upon revision, I thought more about what I said and found better ways to say it in the active voice. There were two benefits to the approach, the first is that the writing seems more energetic; the second is that I think the reader, subconsciously, is better able to pay attention to the

This first semester at the University of Akron has flown by. I learned many new writing concepts that helped me become a better writer. English composition was a required class that I had to take in order to get my degree. Although this class was required I still wanted to take this class to become more knowledgeable about writing. Coming into English Composition I was worried about all of the papers and the workload that I would have to complete. I knew that I was going to have to write a lot more than I previously had in highschool, but I was unsure of just how much. The works that I decided to include in my portfolio comprise of my Literacy Narrative, Image Analysis Paper, and essay titled Mayas Hardships based on Maya’s experiences in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. I selected these works because I felt that they are the ones that require the most improvement to them. The papers i've chosen show how far I’ve came In English Composition.

Over the course of this past semester, my ability to write has improved tremendously. Prior to undertaking this course, my expertise in writing was not as fine-tuned as it should have been. I had never previously been enrolled in a class specifically tailored to writing-- which was quite clear. Upon reading my past works, it becomes apparent that my writing style consisted of fluff, small words, and inconsistently structured sentences. These problems have, for the most part, been remedied with the coursework I have tackled in College Writing. Rather than long, drawn out papers that take an eternity to reach the primary point, my recent work is much nicer in terms of composition and grammar. I credit these improvements to the three primary

Throughout the course of my semester in my Writing Seminar: American Boyhood, my writing has developed and more or less improved. I’ve gained experience in writing longer form analytical essays, and I’ve become more comfortable juggling multiple sources of wildly different types in the same paper as in my second paper “The Evolving Perception of Boy Friendship”, which compares the presentation of boy friendship across an academic essay, middle readers novel, popular essay, and a TV show. Beyond simply improving in writing technique though, I’ve become far more aware of my personal process, both the effective and ineffective aspects of it, and am in a better position to refine this process. In particular, I’ve improved in my ability to select and develop essay topics, and I’m more aware of my perfectionism and how to overcome it when writing a paper. However, my participation in American Boyhood also revealed to me that I am actually quite competent in providing meaningful feedback on the writing of others.

In Quarter 4, I wrote literary analysis, one hundred word sentence, a canterbury tale, division and classification paper, and research paper. For the literary analysis, though I was familiar with the style from previous high school english classes, I struggled with the paper. I found myself frustrated with the time limit as with more time, I feel I could have done a better job. However, considering the time limit, I am pleased with the amount of detail and support I was able to put into the paper. The literary analysis met my standards as it was the best of ability given the time restriction, and it was satisfying to know I could complete an entire analysis in an hour and a half. One hundred word sentence was completely new to me as I had never attempted something like this before. While it was frustrating at times figuring out how to add more detail in the same sentence, I greatly enjoyed the assignment. I liked being able to make a story as well as improving my grammar skills. In the end, the one hundred word sentence was extremely satisfying to complete and meet my standards as it was grammatically correct while still being interesting. Unlike the one hundred word sentence, the canterbury tale was extremely frustrating for me as I struggled to get the lines to rhyme while having enough syllables and flow well. While I love to write poetry, I much prefer free form so this was a learning curve for me. Having completed the tale, I am proud of my work since it

Since the beginning of the semester, my writing has changed and evolved to accommodate and sustain longer essays. With longer essays, there is more room for in-depth analysis. Further analyzing a topic has led me to findings that I did not know existed. As I continue to write, I uncover addition and superior methods to approach my writing to the benefit of me and therefore, my audience. Throughout the semester, I have incorporated techniques to further my narrative throughout my writing.