Kelli Gray

[kellig22]

White is for Witching  Helen Oyeyemi

I picked white is for witching because I wanted a real page turner and something to keep me on the edge of my seat, always wondering “what’s next?!” White is for Witching dose exactly that. The main character develops a very harmful eating disorder called pica, where she CRAVES eating nonnutritional objects such as chalk or plastic. I’m excited to dive more into the book and see what will happen. 

[kellig22]

Mentor Poet #6

In the Poem, Dark, the main theme or word that is constantly repeated is “sick.” Jericho brown starts off saying how sick he is of his own sadness then sick of his life & what he has achieved in life. It then switches to how he indeed, knows he’s sad but wants to fix it. Jericho wants to make an effort to improve his self love and his mental health, he comes to terms with the people he knows and loves, he has surrounded himself with them. 

[kellig22]

Mentor Poet #5

Reading “Duplex” at first I had a lot of questions, first of all, I looked up what duplex meant and it is a house divided into two apartments, with a separate entrance for each. as I read the poem it had themes of love issues, respecting your body and rape. SO i was beyond confused to why it was titled “duplex” but then I was thinking, duplex is a house with TWO entrances. maybe what Jericho is saying, you let certain people in each entrances,  2 sides to every person. 

[kellig22]

Mentor Poet #4

This poem was very interesting, I didn’t know if I liked it or not. Brown is writing and hitting every stereotype of a “white person.” the surface theme is America and the White gaze, but as you dig deeper the true meaning is NOBODY is perfect. I think what Jericho is trying to say, is that more people need to understand this,  there is absolutely no such thing as the ~perfect~ white woman or man. there is no perfect anyone, everyone has flaws and room for improvement. 

[kellig22]

Mentor Poet #3

This poem was very interesting, “The Long Way.” when I first read the title and read through the poem, I was confused. I was having a hard time trying to comprehend what Jericho Brown was saying. the theme and attitude is very passive aggressive, Hes calling out rapist & murders, AS HE SHOULD. But what I really like about Jericho Brown & the way he writes, is that he really doesn’t give a fu*k if he’s going to “offend” or “hurt any feelings.” HE speaks up and out for what he believes in, and I think that is amazing.

[rachhamilton]

Poetry blog #2

As the Daughter Recites Psalm 91

Chelsea Dingman

I couldn’t decide on a poem to do for this post so I asked my sis to pick a number between 1 and 81-that’s the number of pages in this book- and she picked 63 so this is what I got. But I actually really liked this poem, it once again displays Dingman’s ability and talent in talking about hard situations like abuse and give us an inside to what has happened. She starts this poem off very strong, “He says he’ll kill her”, this line alone, in its own stanza, you instantly know that this poem is going to be sad and I guess it almost insights anger. You later find out that the speaker(herself) is talking about her mother being abused not herself in this case, and how she feel about her mother’s situation. The title confused me a little at first, “As the Daughter Recites Psalm 91” so I looked up the verse in the Bible and Psalm 91:2 stood out to me the most, it says “This I declare about the lord, he is my refuge, he is my God and I trust him” and then later it talks about how those who love and trust in him will be protected and saved. Dingman never says anything about this in the poem but I think she relates back to it in the last line which is italicized, in order to stand out and show its deeper meaning, “this time, let her not forget.” I think that she talking about the little girl’s innocent search for hope, she sits outside the bathroom reading this bible verse and praying that her mother doesn’t forget and find a way out of her situation.

[kellig22]

I thought it was really cute how you didn’t know how to pick a poem, so you let tara help you. :) this poem is very deep and I really liked that you looked up the bible verse when you didn’t understand, and then went on to explain what the verse was AND how your poet used it. :) 

[kellig22]

Cheating

This week I cheated on Jericho with Becky's mentor poet, Philip Schultz. The book becky gave to me was called “failure” at first I was like “damn this is about to be really sad.” as I was flipping around I couldn't find a poem that I really liked until I landed on “What I Like and Don’t Like.” I think why this particular poem really stuck out to me, is because it reminded me of a poem Jericho Brown would write. 

poems like this are my favorite because they are filled with imagery and always do an outstanding job of really painting the big picture in my head. I liked this poem because it was relatable and easy to read. you knew what Philip was trying to say and what he was saying. This was interesting, but I would love to leave the sad depressing poems by Philip and get back to my warm cozy poems by Jericho, my main bae!! 

[kellig22]

Mentor poet #1

this poem really stuck out to me mainly because of the overall theme, the theme of this poem is death. in the beginning it talks about taking your own life, saying “I will not shoot myself” then moves into a deeper death theme saying “do it the same way most Americans do” and has an underlying theme of police brutality.  The theme is extremely fitting because the author is a bisexual colored man living in America. 

[rachhamilton]

Mentor poet #1

“Billy” by Chelsea Dingman

I think it took me at least 10 times of reading this peom to really understand what was going on and what Dingman was trying to say. The poem says “for my father” at the beginning which typically gives you a sentimental feel like ‘oh this is dedicated to her dad, how cute’ but then you read it and it’s a very sad story. Basically the way that I understand this poem is that she’s writing to herself about her dead-beat father (and if not her, some else with a bas father) and I didn’t get that at first, I kinda thought that she was writing to him but that didn’t really work. This poem kinda tricks you by saying “for my father” then talking bad about him. She says that he wasn’t around much, like she was waiting for him a lot (“waiting for your father to come home from the fields”) and he was unreliable (“ not knowing when he made you quit school, you’d pay for the son before you”). She writes this peom like she’s telling a story, I think that’s she’s trying to tell herself ‘look how far you’ve come’ and ‘you’re better off without him because he wasn’t there’. This poem is thought provoking and very sad as she talks about a father who wasn’t around.

[kellig22]

I agree that this is very thought provoking poem and that it is very sad. I liked how you used tpcastt to organize your thoughts. as a reader who was reading the poem for the first time, I was confused so I was feeling truly blessed to have your footnotes there to help me. 

[rachhamilton]

My mentor Poet: Chelsea Dingman

I went through and looked into a few different poets but none of them stood out to me the way the Dingman’s did. Her poetry stood out to me because of its raw emotion. She writes about topics, like loss and abuse, that many people would be too scared to write about, but she is so intone with her experiences. Her poetry digs into deeply emotional themes that I found very interesting. This is the very first poem that I looked at, from what I can tell, its Dingman telling the story of how her husband died. She doesn’t sugar coat her situation, she tells the reader the outright truth. You can really feel the pain, regret and grief through her words and her imagery. I really like this poet because she is blunt while at the same time being deep, and it really gives the reader an inside look at her life and her experiences. 

[kellig22]

  This poet is perfect for you! as a good friend of yours;when we have day to day conversations and when you give me advice, you are similar to dingman in a way, bunt but deep while giving some of the best advice I’ve ever received. I agree that in this poem, it is very deep. 

[kellig22]

Jericho Brown.

https://www.jerichobrown.com/

When I was looking through the living poet list, the name “Jericho” really caught my eye. I clicked on the link that took me to his website and I really felt like it was love at first sight. looking around his website it had an overall vibe of “warm” and “cozy” it was like the website was giving me hug. The flowers everywhere, the colors, THE POEMS!!! I KNEW Jericho Brown was going to be MY mentor poet, I didn’t even waste my time and flirt with other poets. 

The poem that really stood out to me was “Flower” which I put below…  yellow is by far my favorite color, whenever I wear a piece of clothing that is yellow, I have a really kick-butt day. So when Jericho came out swinging saying EVERYTHING was yellow, I was in love and I knew it was going to be good. 

Flower

Yellow bird. Yellow house. Little yellow Song

Light in my Jaundiced mouth. These yellow Teeth need

Brushing, but You admire My yellow Smile. This

Black boy Keep singing. Tiny life. Yellow bile.

[avanigswamy]

https://www.lcsc.org/cms/lib/MN01001004/Centricity/Domain/81/TAH%202.pdf (pages 94-97 mainly)

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/brokering_servitude

(Secondary Source #5/#6) These two sources give some insight as to why women in China’s husbands ended up traveling to America and ended up starting a family of their own. In Chapter 4 of my book, the narrator’s aunt is discussing with her family about her husband who had left without her to go to the Americas around the 1950s which resulted in him starting a new family there with two new kids.

Better Than a Lazy American Husband | Andrew Urban

How the exploitation of Chinese men in nineteenth-century America was naturalized.

[kellig22]

I thought these two sources went good together. It was so interesting how men would just pack up and go to America without their wives resulting in starting a new family. 

[avanigswamy]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/amp/Families-live-jammed-into-Chinatown-rooms-with-6663902.php

This is my 7th secondary post. I picked this article because for one it gives a modern day perspective of a certain idea in my book; since my book was published in the 1970s, having a current day source is helpful. I furthermore picked this because I wanted to research more on the living conditions in Chinatown. In my book, Kingston writes, “Then five or six people would crowd into the bed together. Some slept on the ironing tables, and the small children slept on the shelves.”

Families live jammed into Chinatown rooms, with no hope of leaving

<p>[...] they imagined a life in which families of four didn’t have to pad down a hallway to jostle for room in a communal bathroom or kit

[kellig22]

This article was interesting. I think its so incredibly sad that they didn’t have proper sleeping arrangements. It blew my mind when you said that they had to sleep on the ironing tables and in the shelves. 

[avanigswamy]

This is my fourth secondary post. While this is clearly not a movie about my book, a lot of the values and themes present in this Disney adaptation of the tale of Fa Mu Lan are discussed in the book. Author Maxine Kingston also references this story several times. One example was in chapter 2 when she was comparing her having the strength to deal with her racist boss to Fa Mu Lan. Also, in Chapter 4, one child receives a doll of Fa Mu Lan. Therefore, I think that this source could provide me with some valuable information.

[kellig22]

I agree that this movie could provide you with some valuable information for future writing!! I know in the movie Mulan, struggles with the whole gender role situation and goes to fights for her country AND her father, who is sick. The plot of the movie could work, maybe, Supporting a future claim?? 

[avanigswamy]

In Their Words – Stories of Chinese Immigrants in America

Immigration has always been a story of sacrifice. Whether it occurred a century ago or just this past year, making the journey to a new land means giving up something from one’s first home. At Char…

Here is my third secondary source which are first-hand accounts of Chinese immigrants to the United States throughout the years.  I decided to pick this because the narrator’s parents were immigrants to the United States in the 20th century.  I thought it might be a good idea to compare these stories to those that her mother has told her in the book.  

As I was reading through the accounts, I read about someone’s mom who was a medical school graduate in China but became a factory worker in the United States.  I thought it was comparable to the narrator’s mother because chapter three in my book was about her mother’s experience going through medical school in China and the treatment she had gotten in China versus the U.S. for her skill.

[kellig22]

I agree that it would be a good idea to compare the two stories. It was interesting to see how she got different skills from the medical schools in China vs the United States. I’ve always wondered how school and the education system differed around the globe, So this definitely helped me.

[kellig22]

Primary Source 7:

In the Author’s Afterword, it talks about Alvarenga’s life after a few months of being home. It talks about how much hes grown as a person from his situation, shows him having hope, learning to appreciate the ocean again and gives some words of advice to anyone struggling. This, Is by far my favorite part of the book. On the last page, The last paragraph highlighted in yellow the author quotes Alvarenga saying “Be strong. Think positive.” Personally, I think this chunk is screaming have hope in anything you do!! 

[avanigswamy]

Several times in this section of the book, the narrator’s mother refers to Americans as ghosts.  Clearly this term is not one of endearment.  Just earlier in the story, the narrator’s mother refers to different people in America as  “Newsboy Ghost” or “Garbage Ghost.”  The author capitalizes these to give them importance (meaning referring to them as people), but not enough to actually give them the acknowledgement of being a person.

The reason why I find this paragraph incredibly important is that it, once again, compares and contrasts her mother’s life experiences in China versus the U.S.  Here, the author uses the ideas that in America, people have less time to lead a life of free-time while in China, people can catch a breath of fresh air.  I’m not sure if this was exactly how life went at these times, as the narrator clearly wasn’t either given her disengagement in the second to last paragraph.

I also though the quote “White Ghosts can’t tell Chinese age” was interesting.  I’m not sure exactly what it means, but I think that it could mean that her mother felt as if she wasn’t given much attention or importance in the U.S.

[kellig22]

I agree with you, this paragraph is very important. In the paragraph I noticed that the narrator said “I was on my feet the moment the babies came out.” then said “I shouldn't have left, but your father couldn't have supported you without me. I’m the one with the big muscles.” I thought the author did an amazing job explaining this, In my Opinion, THIS is what a strong independent woman is ALL about. It clearly showed that she was not scared to step up and be the bread winner of the family.