The Running Dream By Wendelin Van Draanen

Many kids have not been to jail or experienced the loss of a close sibling or parent, and we do not understand the difficulty of being a slave. We can not even imagine that these terrible phenomena can occur. The book Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson depicts two young, black slaves that have survived through the uprising of the Revolutionary War, the immoralities of slavery, and the tragic loss of family members.Throughout the book, Curzon and Isabel suffer through multiple events that have made them chained both figuratively and physically, but the couple of juvenile slaves grow more determined to receive freedom after they go through their hardships.

What really defines a dreamer? Is it the children who have unrealistic dreams of playing in the big leagues or is it someone who has a plan and will go out of his or her way to achieve it? Both of these options can be true. Dreamers are special in this world because they have hope for something they believe in. Nothing is more fascinating than seeing an individual who never gave up and worked extremely hard to reach their goal. Having read only three sections so far, I have explored the individual’s purpose and passion for the work they pursue. The “Dreamers” section has made me analyze what I have and want with my future career. Overall, the elements of the book defining dreamers explains the meaning of a risk taker, the hard work and dedication involved, and the passion it takes to reach your goals.

Runner by Carl Deuker is a book written to describe the life of a boy named Chance Taylor and his dad. Chance is close to starvation and homelessness. He worries about paying the bills, having enough food to eat, and keeping his home, a small boat named the Tiny Dancer. While out on his usual run around the marina and beach, a man asks him if he would like a job. The man says all he has to do is run. Chance will have to pick up a package along the beach each day. The package will be hidden in the recesses of a rock buried at the foot of a maple tree. He then has to leave it in a locker. The man says the job pays a lot of money. Even though he suspects that he is smuggling drugs, he always completes the job and now has extra money in his pocket to spend at the café

Have you ever been forced to pick between right and wrong? Sometimes we are forced to choose between two hard choices, despite the consequences. In the book “Runner” by Carl Deuker, a boy named Chance is faced with a rough life, where his father drinks and his mother is no longer present. He lives on a boat with his father, in Seattle. Soon he is faced to with a offer to run packages around for men he doesn’t know, but get paid in the process. His small family needs the money, but who knows what is in those packages? He takes the opportunity for the money and goes through many adventures throughout this book, such as meeting a girl named Melissa, who lives the opposite life of his, privileged and nice.

“I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we 've got to do it right. We 've got to give those animals a decent life and we 've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.” ― Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin brings up a brilliant point, it’s okay to eat meat but it’s not okay to treat these animals throughout their life as just something that you will be killing. They have the right to live healthily and in a property environment. Throughout the novel The Chain by Ted Genoways it brings a light to all the dangerous conditions animals and workers go through and what actually goes into the meat you buy in stores. Although low prices on farm produced meat sound enticing, the abused caused to animals and the dangerous working conditions for workers cause dangerously poor sanitation, and can affect many Americans health.

Guy Vanderhaeghe’s The Last Crossing is a Western of subtly crossed borders. Vanderhaeghe elicits a sense of blurred lines between opposites, giving the illusion that boundaries are not so statically fixed. The historical figure Jerry Potts illustrates that the division between Indigenous and white is not so easily distinguished by ways of appearances, languages, and relations. The lines of health and illness intertwine as the reader follows Addington’s syphilis, Custis’ mystery ailment, and the Indigenous peoples’ struggle with smallpox. Justice, punishment, and the law become subjective in the novel with regards to Madge’s death, Addington’s military massacre, and Indigenous resistance against unfair treatment. Distinctions between

Injuries like the one she experienced are incredibly rare. In the United States alone, it is estimated that at least two million people are missing one or more limbs, and about 185,000 amputations occur annually. Fifty-four percent of the population receive amputations because of vascular diseases like diabetes. Forty-five percent get amputations because of trauma. Less than two percent get amputations due to cancer (“Limb Loss”). People are 15,000 times more likely to die in a car accident than get bitten by a shark. People are thirty times more likely to die from getting struck by lightning. Losing a limb would make everyday tasks very difficult to accomplish. It would be hard to get dressed, eat, or even tie shoes

While reading “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down,” written by Anne Fadiman, I found how interesting it was to learn about the history of the Hmong people. These groups of people have been through a lot in history, and they fought to keep their culture alive when the Chinese people attacked them for not assimilating to their culture. The Hmong people have different birthing tradition then those of Americans. The Hmong people believed in “Dabs,” which is evil spirits that can steal the baby’s soul. When Lia was taken to MCMC for seizures, we see the conflict that both the doctor and parents had towards communication, which included different diagnosis by the doctors from the diagnosis of the parents. The Hmong people also believe that it is taboo to have surgery or blood

Many people struggle tremendously with the exposure between violence and gang activities. For instance it can affect you in a negative way which can lose you in the long run but, eventually you’ll find your way back. Within the novel of Always Running, by Luis J. Rodriguez, the reader is exposed to how Luis was living a life full of gang activities, drugs and eventually becoming more influenced on activist movements. Within the essay I will be illustrating the three main reasons Grillo wants to life a better life which are Grillo having thoughts of suicide, Grillo’s mother drifting away from him, and Grillo going to jail. These reasons all have a major role in Grillo’s life, which as a result of him wanting to strive for success.

The injuries he suffered were overwhelming, and so sudden that at first, he didn't know anything was wrong. Only when he tried to put weight on his leg did he realize the extent of the damage. He jokes about it today. "I found that I didn't have a leg to stand on," he chuckles. Most of the flesh on his leg was ripped away, leaving his foot attached only by the tendons in the back of his calf. Bones were exposed and the bleeding was profuse. He also suffered head and internal injuries.

In On The Run, Alice Goffman focuses on a particular group of young Black men living in a poor neighborhood, struggling to live a “good” and “fair” life. These boys from 6th street are segregated from resources that would be found in more economically advanced neighborhoods. A “resource” that they do run into more than often is over policing in their neighborhood. As they are disproportionately targeted for arrest to fill quotas, this constant behavior and events deemed as a norm (even little children play a game about cops catching and being overly aggressive to Black boys), hinders their process at advancing within American society. Systematic oppression against a minority group slows and puts racial tension progress at a standstill, as they are continued victims of larger forces. What truly works against them once locked up and released, is that they were not given a chance based on race, now it becomes based on race plus their criminal history. People in such situations are left with one option, in order for them to survive and provide for their families, they must do it through illegal activity. Locking people up and returning then into the same environment which had limited resources does nothing to solve larger powers at play. Laws and documents may exist that describe an “equal” and “fair” society, but without action, words seem to hold less value. The Declaration of Independence, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are both documents meant to symbolize

The Indigenous Australian imagination perceives the way of the world and all that exists as not the result of a singular force or mind, but, rather, the result of powerful totemic ancestral beings who once roamed the land. This ontological tradition, known as “The Dreaming”, serves as an infinite link between past and present, people and place, and both the natural and spiritual world. “The Dreaming,” then, asserts that all of humanity and nature in its entirety is alive and connected. In his ethnographic account titled, Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self, Fred Myers examines the importance of The Dreaming to Pintupi society and its centrality in the constitution of their lived world. Descriptions of what happened in The Dreaming underlie Pintupi social relationships and constructions of “country.” It is through this mythological construct that the Pintupi Aboriginal people mediate their relationships with the land and negotiate aspects of personhood and identity.

Saving Max by Antoinette van Heugten is a fiction book. This book shows the overall all theme of taking the ultimate risks to save someone you love. Danielle is a mother to her child Max who is Autistic, but lately she notices that he has been very violent, so she does everything possible to make sure that Max is taken care of in the best way possible, which starts with taking Max to a psychiatric hospital for a solution to this problem. Danielle is in denial when the hospital shows that Max is in fact a damaged boy. But in Danielle’s eyes she sees him differently, she doesn't want to believe that her son is crazy, but what happens when it's standing right in front of her. Max is accused of murdering one of the patients, but when Danielle

Plot summary: Amir flashbacks to when he was twelve years old in Afghanistan. He lives with his father, Baba, and has two servants, Ali and Hassan, who are also a father and son duo. The latter two are Hazaras, Afghan’s minority, and as such, are subjected to racial slurs and cruelty. Amir and Hassan are playing when Assef, Kamal, and

Take a second, and imagine your life as a teenager, fresh out of college with, aspiring to get a degree in whatever your heart desires. You’ve got lots of ambition and potential. The world is at your fingertips; you can do anything you set your mind to. But one day, tragedy strikes and the unthinkable happens: you lose a limb. Why is not important, but what the future entails is. Let’s say this limb is your right arm, the one you have used all your life to write, eat, type and play the guitar. Now let’s change the scenario a little bit. Instead you’ve lost your legs in a horrific car accident where both were crushed under the weight of the dashboard as your car collided with the 4x4 in front of you. You wake up the next day in the hospital groggy, barely remembering what happened. Shock is the only thing running through your mind the moment you look down to see your legs missing. Your brain thinks they’re still there because yesterday you were just getting out of bed for your morning jog. All that remains are the stubs where your legs used to be and the unbearable thought of being confined to a motorized chair for the rest of your life.