#abbae

[god-is-a-womyn]

Share your short poems

I just wanted to make this a reblog chain of short poems that one can read quickly in the lunch line, while walking, etc. to have to enrich your busy day. I am always fascinated that poets can pack so much meaning into such few words. 

“Broken English” by Aysha Syed.

When my mother struggles to spell a word in English I want to break the entire language into little pieces so the edges of these letters will stop cutting her

The double meaning of “broken english” as both bad English and literally shattered words emphasize the difficulty of the English language barrier, especially to American migrants. The way they morphed English into shards is so beautiful and effective to me. 

He Visits My Town Once a Year by Amir Khursrow

He visits my town once a year.  He fills my mouth with kisses and nectar.  I spend all my money on him.  Who, girl, your man?  No, a mango. 

I feel like this poem is very our class I do not want to say much because I just enjoy this poem and I want everyone else to enjoy it! 

[god-is-a-womyn]

how slavery is taught

You would think, with slavery being such a central topic to American history, that everyone would know about it. Sadly, no. According to a 2018 report by the Teaching Tolerance Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, only 8% of high school seniors could identify slavery was the central cause of the civil war. EIGHT PERCENT??? This is not fake news people. This isn’t a new phenomenon either--the 2015 scandal, for instance, where the McGraw Hill American History textbook captioned a “patterns of immigration” map with “millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.” The company scrambled to ship fixed copies or stickers to cover the mistake, but only AFTER student Coby Burren and his family complained. It just makes me wonder what other mistakes are we letting slide? This was in 2015. It has been 4 years and clearly little has changed because 8 PERCENT. That implies only 2 out of 25 high school students have received a basic education about slavery. That is massive wow I cannot even comprehend that. If American students do not get a foundation of understanding the full scope and severity of slavery, how can they begin to fully comprehend things like the Black Lives Matter Movement, which are so rooted in fighting against the modern injustices that African Americans face today? The nuanced ideas in Homegoing would be glossed over. 

What do y’all think about this topic? As current APUSH/HUSH students, do you think Westridge is lacking in certain areas of African American history? Could you say you have a solid foundation of knowledge regarding slavery and the movement towards civil rights? If yes, please elaborate (and note that you can share your thoughts about the curriculum in the Westridge school survey that was sent out-- this is our time to make change!). 

[god-is-a-womyn]

tips on eliminating “to be” verbs

stuck on your essay? annoyed with those to be verbs? follow these simple tricks to get rid of some! 

1. search “ing” on your document: “ing” verbs can indicate present tense but we often say stuff like, “this is showing” or “this is revealing,” when you can say “this shows” or “this reveals” instead! (-ing is also in the word “being” itself) 

2. search “is” on your document or circle all the times you use “is” : when writing your paper you often do not pay attention to how many times you use “is” because it is so natural in speech, kill it! 

[god-is-a-womyn]

the status trophy: “wife and daughters”

I was thinking about Kavanaugh’s opening statement and his insistence on his credibility of character and how he kept going back to saying stuff like oh trust me I was top of my class, I played football, I went to sports games, etc. And this made me think about why does it matter what you did in high school? Why do certain things like being on the football team instantly make you some credible guy? We have these social markers that label you as trustworthy or credible that mean nothing except the stereotypes we place on them. 

This reminded me of toxic masculinity and how everything Kavanaugh claimed to be feeds into this idea where he is the “ideal credible man” with football and academics and his Christian wife and family. They are all traits that revolve around him. In Sula Jude also thinks in the frame of toxic masculinity. He expresses a want to build the New River Road with his hands and show off his strength instead of working in a hotel kitchen “like a woman” (83). Jude was denied his job so he decided to marry because he wanted to “take on a man’s role anyhow” and his “adulthood recognized” (82). Jude considered marriage as a marker of his manliness and wanted to marry Nel to gain one of the social markers we still consider today as the mark of a “credible man.” Both Jude and Kavanaugh have this deeper idea of women as secondary, a tool to increase their image. The fact that this still exists in the form of Kavanugh trying to attain credibility by telling us he is married with a “wife and girls,” which he NEVER uses out of the context of his own image annoys me so much and UGH. 

Sorry this was kind of a rant but the world is messed up ya kno.

[claraseger]

would be so wonderful if abby, amy, clare, and kate came through and blessed us right now😞

[god-is-a-womyn]

keanu reeves

All of us have seen Keanu Reeves on the screen, whether on TV, in movies, or in viral memes. He’s known for being a very low key eccentric celebrity, and he recently became viral for something he said on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. When Colbert asked him, “what happens after we die?” 

Keanu replied, “I know the ones who love us will miss us.”

This is such an insane quote for me. 1. its not an average answer that you would expect 2. its not centered on ourselves. He didn’t automatically think, what happens TO US after we die. He offered the perspective of the people around us. And to be honest, isn’t that the most important perspective? What we should be asking ourselves, what we should really ponder, is what happens to the world when we die? I’ve always been one to think about legacy and the impact we leave behind, and I love Keanu’s break from the self-centric frame of mind. 

What are your thoughts on death, legacy, what happens after we die? 

[god-is-a-womyn]

fish / fisherman

In the powerful moment when Yaw and his mother reunite, she gives him this advice, “When someone does wrong, whether it is you or me, whether it is mother or father, whether it is the Gold Coast man or the white man, it is like a fisherman casting a net into the water. He keeps only the one or two fish that he needs to feed himself and puts the rest in the water, thinking that their lives will go back to normal. No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free. But still, Yaw, you have to let yourself be free.” (242) 

I cannot stop thinking about this quote. I keep wondering about the many ways in which we are the fish and the fisherman simultaneously and about how as one group gains freedom, another loses freedom. This reminds me of how James needed to escape his family in order to be free and live his best life, which allowed him to achieve freedom of spirit and happiness, BUT it had unseen consequences on his daughter who had to live as a poor, unmarried woman who is jealous of what she could have been. Or how Yaw was “caught” in the net of his mother and escaped that net to go to school, and yet is scarred (literally) by his past, being held in mental captivity. Or even Sonny, how his family line had been the “caught fish” by being captured as slaves, and even now that his family lineage has become free, he is still haunted by oppression left over from his time in “captivity.” I had always thought of the fish that were let go as the lucky ones that got away. Now I can see that they are scarred too, and that scars (both mental and physical) can last much longer than expected, and can even carry throughout generations.