KyraNWilson

[kyranwilson]

Research

The hardest part of this whole project was writing the general introduction. It was so much pressure because its worth so many points, and it was just really hard to introduce someone/Mr. Kreinbring to my project. It’s like trying to tell someone how great something is but they won’t really know unless they experience it themselves.  

[kyranwilson]

AP Lit Research

This whole project was just really difficult because I couldn’t find things to talk about. I felt like I was talking about the same things over and over again, so that was really frustrating. It was like I was trying to find different ways to talk about the same thing. 

[kyranwilson]

Reading the Work #7

One of the biggest topics in this book was sex. It seemed as though to determine who the character was, and how uptight or laid back the character was, it was about what they thought about sex. There were two different sides , which were interesting to me. There was the side that believed that sex was just a physical thing, and wasn’t about love or feelings. On the other side, there were the characters that believed that sex was something that held emotion and showed how you felt about the other person. 

The reason this was so interesting to me was because I see the divide with these two opinions in high school now. Some people take sex more seriously and some people see it as a physical thing. I’m not really sure which one is right.. 

[kyranwilson]

Reading the Work #6

“It was not death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness of both. In sorting it all out, he hit on the notion that if one day a year were devoted to it, everybody could get it out of the way and the rest of the year would be safe and free. In this manner he instituted National Suicide Day.”  (1919.23)

This line of my book, Sula stuck out to me because it was a different kind of way to deal with things. I think that the character Shadrack needed some type of control because he felt so out of control within his own mind. He basically had PTSD, but no one had diagnosed him, so he was just going through this sickness without any help. Obviously he felt afraid, so one of the things that did frighten him, death, was going to be something he would find a way to control. I think this was one of the only things he felt in control over. 

[kyranwilson]

FAMILY IS EVERYTHING 

I have a very BIG BLENDED family. I have 3 sisters, 1 brother, 2 moms, 2 dads, 3 grandmas. I don’t consider any of them step parents or step siblings. We are all family. We are all very different, but we still love each other despite those differences. 

The one few things we have in common, is that we all LOVE very hard, and we all ACCEPT each for who we are. We believe that everyone deserves love, and we are capable of giving it. Our favorite thing is showing people that we love them. And the way we show this are in different ways. For example, words of affirmation, physical touch, gifts, etc. 

I love my family more than anything in this world and I would do anything for them, but the most special thing is that I know I have that love in return. 

[kyranwilson]

Reading the Work #5

When I was saying that I connected to the book a lot in my last post, I meant that I was actually emotionally invested in the book. When something happened to the characters, I actually felt sad for them. Even though some of the situations were extreme, and would be hard for anyone to relate to, somehow someway I felt for them and I felt the characters pain. For example, in one part of the book, Sula’s grandmother had to kill her own son. Now most people would think this is a terrible thing, which in most cases it is, however her reasoning behind it (he was mentally ill, and had become so out of himself he was suffering), made me feel for her. In the part after this, she was in a way talking about how painful it was for her because she loved him so much, but she believed that he was so ill that it wasn't her son anymore. During this chapter, I truly felt invested in the book because it was like she was a real person, and I wanted to help her. 

[kyranwilson]

Reading the Work...some more

So when I was reading Sula, for the first time I really felt connected to a book, and the characters in it. I was struggling to connect at first because the first character I was introduced to was a man named Shadrack, a mentally ill black man. However, when getting further in the book, the author started bring up Sula and Nel. They were easier for me to connect to because they were young black women, like myself, and they were both going through some of the same issues I went/go through just because I’m black. It wasn’t even things that they struggled with that you would expect like race issues. It was mostly just identity issues.

[kyranwilson]

Reading the Work... More

So the other day, I was pretty bored so I went back to reading Sula. I was so into the book that I finished it in that one night. It just got so good because there was an unexpected twist in the story. Sula killed someone. I just didn't really expect people to die in this story, and then to see how everything changed after Sula killed her friend made the book so good.

[kyranwilson]

My querencia is love. My querencia is basically wherever I want it to be. I feel like I feel comfortable wherever I am, and I can be whatever I want and blend in well everywhere. I feel like it's basically wherever the people that I love are. These are two of my buds and we can literally go anywhere and make our way. Even with my family I feel like we can go in any setting and excel or do fine there. This post was really hard for me because I don't have a specific place that I feel I belong because the places where I belong are with my family, my friends, and in all the people I love.

[kyranwilson]

Ceremony

Thank you God I finished. I couldn't handle this book. I think it was because all of the talk about the land. With some things like the cattle I could see the connection to the big picture. For example, I thought that the cattle symbolized change. However, a lot of the other things made me question what the point of it was and even if I knew why it was put in the book (because that's Silko's style) I still was like, "What's the purpose of this being here?"

[kyranwilson]

Ceremony

Once again this book makes me mad. Handmaids Tale made me mad because it brought up different conflicts with women that kind of frustrate me, but I felt like it was good that Handmaids Tale did that. On the other hand, with Ceremony, it made me mad just because it was so confusing. I started to get the hang of the back and forth, and I understand that that is the style of Silko's storytelling, but I don't think that was the best way to get her purpose across. I believe it wasn't because I didn't catch the purpose. Maybe I wasn't her intended audience, but it seems like a lot of us didn't like the story or it was really hard for us to get into it and understand it.

[kyranwilson]

Ceremony

I think that the fact that Tayo can't shoot the Japanese because they're too much like him could be hinting towards a bigger theme. Maybe I'm jumping ahead of myself but I'm just guessing the author could be saying something about the fact that we are all people and we're fighting against each other is wrong. I believe this especially because how Tayo becomes sick and relives bad things from the war. I think that author is trying to show how bad it is and how killing people can do bad things even to the people that survive. I know I'm all over the place with my thoughts but this book is all over the place with time so I'm just pulling out possible themes.

[kyranwilson]

This picture is basically me reading ceremony. I’ve been very confused as I’ve been reading because of the amount of detail and the fact that I don’t really know what direction the book is going in, or what the narrator is talking about. It seems like it’s going off in all different directions, and I can’t really sort it out in my head. Also I already went into this book hating poetry, so the confusing poetry makes the book even worse for me. I’m just really annoyed because all though it’s starting to become a good book, WHY DID IT TAKE SO LONG TO GET GOOD?

[kyranwilson]

Any Questions..

I thought that both ending were really good. Ironically the endings didn't leave me with any questions because I felt like the book was very straight forward. I felt like the question "any questions?" wasn't actually meant to evoke a response. I think that Atwood have to choices, you can either go into the light and take what she's giving you as a warning, or you can continue to live how we are now in regards to the way we treat women. I didn't have any questions because it didn't really matter to me what happened to anyone in the book. I thought what really mattered was how I would take this book and use it now in real life.

[kyranwilson]

Reading the Work #2

So I’m basically still in the introduction stages of my book. This is basically where the author, Toni Morrison, is still introducing characters and giving me there backrounds. I’m kind of struggling though finding how all the characters connect. It’s hard to connect because it jumps back and forth from person to person, and when it goes from person to person it jumps to different years. I know I like the book just because it’s interesting, so hopefully this bump in the road will go away so I can continue to enjoy the book.

[kyranwilson]

Reading the Work #1

I finished the first two chapters of Sula which was only like 12 pages. Even though it was kinda short, I already love the style of Toni Morrison’s writing. She writes, in this book at least, as if she’s telling a story to her grandaughter. She’s real about everything that is going on, and doesnt sugarcoat anything. What makes me already love this book so much is that somehow, someway, I’m already connected to three of the characters that have been introduced in the novel.

[kyranwilson]

Aunts

During the discussion yesterday in class we talked a lot about what we would do in that situation or if we were in a position of power? This theme of power constantly came up and it made me recognize that girl groups turn against each other to fight for this power. Instead of thinking we could all do well together and lift each other up, we as women think that we should push others down to get ahead. This is a cruel way of thinking once you put it to a bigger scale like in Handmaids Tale. I think that Atwood put theses girls groups in place and put them against each other just to exemplify how we treat each other as women now.