Journal 15

In Response to "Border Patrol State"

While reading this essay I was horrified that such incidences occur in the United States regularly. I knew about Border Patrol agents, I've even watched the show "Border Patrol," but I had no idea that they pull people over and have check-points so far away from the border. I agree that this is a problem, that the indigenous people's don't deserve this kind of scrutiny, however, those that are not citizens have no rights in that country. It sounds a little stern, but its true, Silko did not deserve that treatment in America, and once she showed her Arizona driver's license she should have been let go, no questions asked. It isn't fair that the poor German Shepard was set on her, but as she said, "I had a small amount of medical marijuana in my purse" why did she have that marijuana? was it prescribed to her? I don't mean to be so suspicious, but I was under the impression medical marijuana is for people who are dying of cancer, she seems perfectly fine. Transporting illegal drugs, no matter the amount over state lines is illegal. So what she was doing was wrong.

Then later in the essay she talks about the way indigenous people's of the Americas need to help each other out, that refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala are being smuggled into the United States by Native Americans. This however noble, is illegal. I think racial profiling is wrong, that border patrol agents and police officers shouldn't pull someone over because of their color, and certainly shouldn't treat them so poorly when they do, but this issue isn't black and white. Illegal immigration is just that, illegal, if all laws were treated so crassly our nation would fall apart. But like I said before this issue is more complicated than that. The problems aren't "over there,"but right here at home. Lets face facts, the reason people immigrate here is because it is beneficial for them to do so, in California, and throughout the country, big farms/plantations hire illegal immigrants so that they can pay them basically nothing. It is Americans that are causing these problems, if illegals knew that they wouldn't be hired in the US without papers they wouldn't immigrate here because they would be worse off.

Journal 14

The Things They Carried

Compared to the men in the story, "The Things They Carried," complaining that my backpack weighs too much seems silly. They had to carry so much just to stay alive, whereas my clothes probably weigh 10 pounds (when I'm in jeans.) O'brien wrote, "They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried" (1462).  This makes me think about what we carry mentally, some days it just feels like too much to bear.

If I were a soldier in Lieutenant Jimmy Cross' unit, I would carry chocolate with me at all times. It seems a little juvenile, and impractical in the heat of Vietnam's summer, but for me it is about so much more than a delicious snack. For one thing I've become addicted to it, if I go a few days without the caffeine from chocolate I get horrible headaches. On the other hand chocolate makes me think of family, when a family member comes back from a trip to Europe they always bring swiss or german chocolate back for the rest. My mom is the same way about chocolate that I am, it unites us in a silly way. I'm not sure how I would keep it in my pack, probably like Jimmy Cross' letters, I'd put it in a plastic bag and eat some when I was tired, scared, hungry, homesick, you name it, the chocolate would help.

I would also carry photographs, one of my family, probably the picture I have framed on my desk right now, of all of us after my graduation at our favorite Mexican Restaurant. Then I'd have a picture of me and my best friends, I can't imagine getting through a day, much less a war, without hearing from my best friend and roommate. Then, as cheesy as it sounds I would have a picture of my dog, she's a 12 year old golden retriever, and I don't know how much longer she's going to live.

Vietnam happened about 30 years before I was born. I can't imagine what it was like, I'm also a woman, so luckily I would never have had to find out. Reading this story makes me so thankful that all I carry every day are the clothes on my back and the books in my bag.

Journal 12

Queen Lili'uokalani

 "I used to climb up on the knees of Paki, put my arms around his neck, kiss him, and he caressed me as a father would his child; while on the contrary, when I met my own parents, it was with perhaps more of interest, yet always with the demeanor I would have shown to any strangers who noticed me" (Lili'uokalani).

I choose this sentence from the Queen's autobiography, because it is so strikingly different from my own life. I consider Hawai'i a state of the United States of America, and I didn't think about how completely different the two histories are, how the customs of Hawai'i are alien to those of America. It is my "favorite" sentence because it gives, I believe, insight into the queen's personality, a kind of detached demeanor to those Americans would have her love, but she cares little for. 

Lili'uokalani uses very specific language in her writing, and describes her actions very carefully. She describes a child-like, almost universal action, "I used to climb up on the knees of Paki..."One imagine a little girl doing just this, climbing up on the knees of her father for attention. She uses the phrase, "and he caressed me as a father would his child" the use of the word "caress" is a bit strange in our twenty-first century lives, but it is used to express the love between foster-father and daughter. She then contrasts this reception to the involvement with her "own" parents. By calling them hers, she is recognizing the fact that even though it is in accordance with Hawaiian tradition, she was still aware of the fact that her foster-parents weren't her real parents. This turn of phrase signals that she had to have suffered some of the same feelings adopted children worldwide feel. She claims to have responded, "with the demeanor I would have shown to strangers who noticed me." She calls her birth parents "strangers",  but the fact that she mentions them at all makes one think that perhaps she didn't feel like they were strangers, but they gave her away, and for that reason she was a stranger to them.

I didn't know very much about the history of Hawaii's monarchy, but after this assignment I have realized a lot about American Imperialism, and how power/land hungry the forefathers were. As an American I tend to think that America has always been about freedom, and doing the right thing, but the more history I learn the more I wonder about what America really stood for.

Journal 11

"As the Lord Lives, He is One of Our Mother's Children" Pauline E. Hopkins &

Claude McKay assorted poems

The two readings for today were written by African-American authors, but they came from two very different backgrounds. Hopkins was raised by a civil war veteran in the North, whereas McKay was Jamaican. However, both of their writings center on a horrifying issue of the early 1900's, lynching. Racism at its worst, lynching was when whites took the law into their hands and killed blacks who they accused of committing a crime, or sometimes just because they were black. 

In the reading by Hopkins the speaker is a white clergyman who witnesses a lynching of one man and then comes across the man who escaped. The man who escaped, "Stone," or "Gentleman Jim" is a mulatto, but he appears so white that Rev. Stevens has to ask him later on, "are you a negro?" I can't help but wonder what kind of moral ground the lynchers stood on if they couldn't even tell that the man was negro when he became sexton of the church. Stone eventually leaves the parsonage and moves to a New England town, but he is forever haunted by the treatment he received once leaving Wilmington, where he had a family until his house was burned to the ground, his wife and children still inside. When Rev. Stevens and his son, Flip, come to visit their train is almost ran off the tracks by a fallen tree, but Stone manages to push the tree off the tracks, unfortunately however Stone is hit by the train in the process. After Stone's death it comes about that he didn't kill a man when he worked in the mines, and the community feels repentant. The Reverend speaks at Stones well attended funeral, and one hopes that at last Stone is at peace. This story ends in a death, and yet it still feels like a happy ending, like Uncle Tom's Cabin for Tom, it saddens me to think about how life in America was so horrible that death was preferable for African Americans. Race Relations aren't perfect today, but at least we have moved from lynchings in this past 100 years.

McKay addresses lynching as well, from his outsider perspective, McKay grew up in Jamaica which had its share of problems as well, but he remarked on being horrified at the "implacable hatred of my race" (704). In his poem, "The Lynching" he says, "hung pitifully o'er the swinging char" (708 line 8). As an American I have pride in my country, but when I look back to the past I find there is little to be proud of. These race riots that prompted McKay to write took place only 100 years ago, it seems like a long time, but its really not, 100 years can be one person's lifetime. In the grand scheme of things, such horrible things happening only 100 years ago is barely a blink of an eye. I was most struck by his poem, "America." when he writes, "And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the tough of Time's unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand." (708) and how the poem on the next page "Africa"seem to be in answer to one another. 

Journal #10 The Aha! Moment

I had an "aha!" moment while reading Charles W. Chestnutt's "The Wife of His Youth." It is a story about a well-to-do Mulatto man, Mr. Ryder twenty-five years after the war who plans a party in order to win the love of a Mrs. Dixon, but the day of the party an older black woman comes to his door asking after the man she was married to during slavery. She shows him a picture of Sam Walker, the man she is searching for. Then he tells her he will let her know if he hears anything and she leaves. Mr. Ryder walks up to his room and looks in the mirror for a good while after this meeting. It was here that I first thought Mr. Ryder was Sam Walker. Why else would the author include him staring at himself in the mirror thoughtfully? It wasn't until he began to tell the story of the woman during the party that I knew for sure, I was pleasantly surprised at the end when he recognized her as his wife.

Chestnutt started out the story in a way that made it seem like Mr. Ryder was against marrying a black woman, that he saw white as the goal, especially when Mr. Ryder explains his personal philosophy, "I have no race prejudice," he would say, "but we people of mixed blood are ground between the upper and the nether millstone. Our fate lies between absorption by the white race and extinction in the black. The one doesn't want us yet, but may take us in time. The other would welcome us, but it would be for us a backward step" (57). This made me doubt that Mr. Ryder would claim "The Wife of His Youth," plus I doubted that a man would want a woman once she is old and they obviously have so little in common from her speech to her profession as a cook.

Whenever I have an Aha! moment I think about learning to read, much like the poem by Frances Harper,  "Learning to Read." I of course was not prohibited from reading, I was encouraged and worked with, but in first grade I hadn't quite mastered it yet. Like the speaker in the poem, I thought I might be incapable, and for a 6 year old that is an extremely stressful experience. Anyway, then one day it just clicked for me, I could read, it was the first Aha! moment in my living memory, and one of the best.

Journal #9

Introduction 1865-1914: Man vs. Machine (Computer)

            When reading the chapter a contemporary comparison that I thought about, was industrialization and the factory mentality compared to today's computer based society. The cartoon above represents Man vs. Computer, and I think of this as a competition between opposites, and this makes me think of back in the late 1800's to early 1900's how people saw themselves in opposition to the machine. The improvements in the early days of the 1900's were mostly in the Newspaper industry, which is a dying industry today. Everyday another Newspaper goes out of business as people get their news from New Media sources or download newspapers for free. A similarity between then and now is how people considered Poetry a dying art form, William Cullen Bryant said, "Poetry may get printed in newspapers, but no man makes money by it for the simple reason that nobody cares a fig for it" (24). Today poetry is still around, but its death may just be a slow one. People just don't care a bout poetry like they did in the early 1800's, print culture has changed. In fact one could argue that print culture is on its way to extinction depending on if you consider the internet to be "print culture" at all. If the internet and virtual sources are indeed print culture then it is actually growing. Nowadays anyone at all can get published simply by writing a blog, as I am doing now. 

           If anything we shouldn't view ourselves in opposition to the computer as people shouldn't have saw the machine as a bad thing, because it is helping to further man kind, can you imagine what life would be like today without the computer or the internet? Of course the transition times are always scary, when the country became more and more unemployed because factory's didn't need as many workers, or skilled workers anyway we experienced a time of unrest, crime rates rose, and people were suffering. Today we have similar unemployment, but the political unrest is actually on a declining trend, at least in the United States, maybe people are learning from history after all...

Journal 8

Lincoln vs. Davis

             The American Civil War was between two factions of the country, the North, and the South. The leaders of which can be considered a representation of the ideals of their region. Abraham Lincoln for the North, or the Union, and Jefferson Davis for the South, or the Confederacy. They can be thought of a two sides of the coin of the Civil War. Both born in Kentucky these two men actually had a lot in common, but they ended up in direct opposition of one another. 

           In his inaugural address Jefferson Davis said, "our present position has been achieved in a manner unprecedented in the history of nations. It illustrates the American idea that government rests upon the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to abolish a government whenever it becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established" (1360). He is claiming that the Southern states not only had the right to secede from the union, but that it was necessary for them to do so since the government had become, "destructive of the ends for which it was established." Davis is paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence, and this is representative of the feelings of many southerner's, they felt that the federal government was trying to restrict their rights, and compared their struggle to that of the American Revolution. Lincoln and the North had different ideas.

          In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln said, "this nation, under god, shall have a new birth of freedom-- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth" (1373). This is the exact opposite of what Davis said, Lincoln is claiming that we must protect our government, our country. At this time the government of the United States was unique, not only the first democracy of its kind, but the only.

Journal 7

Slave Poetry

         The element of poetry I am going to analyze is speaker, specifically Frances E. Harper's speaker in "The Slave Mother". The speaker in this poem is someone describing the pains of a slave who has recently had a baby, but "He is not hers, although she bore/For him a mother's pains... He is not hers, for cruel hands/ May rudely tear apart" (1231 lines 17-22). This poem is discussing the practice of slave owners taking the babes of their slaves to also go into slavery since law at the time said that the status (slave or free) of the mother determined the status of the child. 

        People have a tendency to ascribe the feelings of the speaker to the author, but Harper was never a slave. Certainly she was discriminated against, being a black woman at the time was no easy feat, even a free black woman. But the speaker in the poem seems well acquainted with the cruel practices of slavery, some reminiscing, so to speak, on the sound of, "these bitter shrieks/ Disturb the listening air:/ She is a mother, and her heart/ Is breaking in despair" (1232 lines 37-40). The speaker remembers hearing a slave mother torn from her child, and uses the sound of her keening grief to relate it to the audience. The author uses this speaker because the audience intended of this poem were not slaves, but whites and free, educated blacks, and as such they could feel empathy for the slave woman, but their connection would be to an outside party, to witnessing these horrible things, because they have never experienced them.

      

Journal 6

Caught Between Black and White

From reading Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, I got a new perspective on exactly how convoluted race relations were between blacks and whites in the south prior to the Civil War. It is horrifying to see how people were treated as property, but what is worse was how many White slaveholders used slave women for their own pleasure. 

Jacob's described her parents as being "a light shade of brownish yellow, and were termed mulattoes" (770). Obviously her parents and thus herself had white ancestry. I cannot imagine how someone could have a child with a black woman, and yet let their own child live in slavery. I know that in the 1800's people didn't know about DNA, and how a child is literally half the mother and half the father, but they still understood that it takes two people to make a baby, and that the child has some of each parent in them. How could anyone deny the humanity of the slaves, and yet see proof that they are capable of bringing another child into the world. A child that is obviously the product of a white person as well as a black person.

Jacob's mother was especially caught between two worlds. She was raised with her white mistress, they were both breastfed by her mother, they played together as children, and yet she was forced into a life of servitude. Jacob's says this made her family lucky, that the mistress promised to be kind to her children. And yet, she didn't free a single on of them. This wasn't kindness. If anything being treated so good, and then being forced into a life so horrible, could be worse. Jacob's received kindness from some whites, and then was beaten and told, "Do you know that I have a right to do as I like with you, -- that i can kill you, if I please?" (774). I wonder where exactly whites of the time thought they got this right? It certainly isn't mentioned in the Constitution or the Bible.

Journal 5

Common Theme

A common theme in both "An Indians Looking Glass" by William Apess, and "Indian Names" by Lydia Sigourney is the prevelance of the Native American names during the time period, even though for the most part the race is starting to die off. Both speak of how Native Americans cannot be forgotten, even if many times prejudiced white men would prefer it to be so. Of course the two authors come from very different backgrounds, William Apess being a Native American from Massachusetts, and Lydia Sigourney a white woman from Connecticut.

Sigourney wrote in her poem, "Yes say, they all have passed away/ That noble race and brave... But their name is on your waters, you may not wash it out" (1-5). Many Americans of the time period believed that eventually there would be no more Native Americans. That the race would vanish, either because they were not "strong" enough to survive in a White Man's world, or because they would be assimilated. But, as Sigourney points out, they were the first people of this land, every single river and mountain was named by them first. Sure, White people renamed many, but how many more still hold their ancestral name?

Apess' piece was from a religious standpoint. He asks questions that I can't help but wonder how White People of the time would have responded to. How would a White Person of the time have answered, "I ask, would you like to be disenfranchised from all your rights, merely because your skin is white, and for no other crime?" (641). Apess switched the tables on everyone, and proved a necessary point, how can White People justify their prejudiced based on something as inconsequential as skin color? He points out merely by writing this piece that Native Americans are still there, that they cannot be ignored, and they deserve fair treatment. 

The Tenth of January

The Cobbler

Asenath's father, known to us readers, simply as Martyn, is a character that the narrator and the protagonist, Asenath, overlook. He is introduced to the reader by way of Asenath snapping at him when he comments on her being "put out" that Dick wasn't joining them for dinner. We quickly learn that Martyn is a shoe cobbler by trade, since he is working on a boot in his debut scene. At first glance, Martyn is a static character, a dependable father with no thoughts of his own, or if he has them they are of little consequence. The author does something interesting however, she gives Martyn a sense of humor. His conditions are so bad that his young and frail daughter is forced to work in a mill, and factories were dangerous at this time. Not to mention he is a widow to a woman who abused their daughter, and most likely him as well, and yet at the same time he can smile in the face of adversity. An instance of this is when he says, "and not a mouthful have you eaten! Find your old father dull company hey? Well, well!” (Phelps) Asenath is getting married soon, and she is no longer the little girl he knew, but he still loves her like she is.

Martyn plays an important role later on in the story when Asenath comes to him for forgiveness and in some sense absolution, she begs him to place his hands on her head and tell her, "God bless you, child, and show you how." Martyn has no religious training, and yet he does as he is told, hoping for the best for his daughter. And in some ways this laying on of the hands, was like a last rite for Asenath, though no one knew this at the time. The story ends with Martyn about to sacrifice his life for his daughter and enter the burning collapsed mill, but he is held back and he gets the last word of the story, "Sene! little Sene!"

Journal 3

Washington Irving "The Wife"

This writing is interesting because Irving is obviously trying to commend the "softer sex," by saying that women are infinitely suited to comfort men. I think for his time Irving was probably considered to be more liberal where women were considered. It wasn't often that an author would write an entire story devoted to the goodness of women. However, Irving fails at being truly fair to women.

Irving uses the metaphor of an oak tree that is covered in ivy. When the oak is struck by lightening the ivy still holds up the once mighty tree. The man being the oak tree and the woman the delicate, but tenacious ivy. This is a pretty image, and goes along with the saying: "behind every man is a good woman."The only flaw is that the woman has no role of her own, the ivy has no form unless it is the "foliage around the oak."

After the oak metaphor Irving goes on to say, "married men falling into misfortune, are more stimulated to exertion by the necessities  of the helpless and beloved beings who depend upon them..." (Belasco 526). Apparently married men who incur troubles are more likely to try and fix their situation because they have people who depend on them, like their wives. But how many men wouldn't have gotten themselves into trouble if they had treated their wives as equals? Irving's friend, the doating husband, who obviously loves his wife very much, loses his money because, "it was the mishap of my friend, however, to have embarked his fortune in large speculations" (526). I don't know how intelligent this mans wife was, but based off of her reaction of supporting and comforting her husband, she obviously didn't marry him for his money, she wouldn't have cared if he increased his fortune, so she would have, if he had confided in her, told him not to tie his money up in risky business.

The Power of the Pen

They say the pen is mightier than the sword, and for Americans this holds true. The American Revolution had a fairly low body count for the scope of the war, especially when compared to the French Revolution. I think this is because of printing. The Declaration of Independence was a huge stepping stone, literally declaring to Britain and the world that America, and the 13 colonies in particular, was now its own nation. The Declaration might have been a pivotal point, but it was the unique print culture of the "New World" that enabled such a work to be published.

In Europe printing was a strictly guarded procedure that involved getting permission from the government. Free speech did not exist like it does today. In America things were different. Prior to the 1850s the colonies were not united and each governed themselves to some extent, but Benjamin Franklin and other printers began to produce copiously and they made political statements that would have been illegal in Europe, like the cartoon above. This cartoon was then reproduced in all the colonies papers, and began the print culture that helped unite the colonies, ultimately resulting in Revolution.

The American Revolution is the ultimate underdog story, and as such Americans can't stop retelling it. We're proud of what our forefathers did: of the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere, and beating those redcoats. In today's internet based society, print culture has changed once again. Now anyone can post anything they want on the internet (like my blog,) and instead of uniting 13 colonies it unites the world.

Defining American

        I've always thought that being American meant being free, and having certain "inalienable rights,” but from reading Jean de Crevecoeur, Langston Hughes, Emma Lazarus, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich, I came to realize that this wasn't always the case.

Crevecoeur wrote at the beginning of America, and yet America was already something the world hadn't seen before. Crevecoeur touches on the “melting pot” idea, but he leaves out a significant group of people who were not permitted to intermingle like those of the European descent, the Native Americans and the African Slaves brought over. In Aldrich's writing he speaks of keeping certain people out of America, those who might spoil it. Emma Lazarus' poem is of course the famous inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty and it, at least at the time it was inscribed was a lie.

Langston Hughes speaks of those Crevecoeur "forgot," and those Aldrich wanted to keep out. Hughes wrote about the disinherited and those who didn't get the same freedoms as those of European descent. I have always admired Langston Hughes' poetry, but reading it in conjunction with Crevecoeur and the others made me realize how skewed our perception of America really is. As a white person I can find my origins in the people Crevecoeur talks about, but as a woman I feel that I can find some common ground with Hughes as well.   

I am proud to be an American, today, but I am ashamed of this country's past. As a country built on a constitution that promises equality, the past certainly lacked that. This country's patriarchs brought people from their homeland and forced them into a life of servitude; slavery is the scourge of America's past, and it is one thing that sticks out to me as hypocritical.