The book, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker, is a unique narrative and window into the life of not just any man, but a black man facing modern society. His story is told uniquely through a series of essays that cover his life as a whole. The narrative begins when he is in his youth, with a quickly changing cover of his school history. His father remains unemployed, and his mother is forced to cover their family. Even though it is just Damon, his father, and his mother, his mother is not quite able to support the Young family by herself. Because of this, the family goes through many financial struggles, in the beginning and throughout the story. The author covers his life, struggles, and most importantly, inner feelings and thoughts as he navigates through life, as a person always wondering, “Is it because I’m black?" Despite his relatively financially unstable youth, Damon begins writing poetry. While his poetry started as a way to seduce girls, it developed into a potential career for him. Throughout the book, he continuously uses his skills to pursue careers in the writing industry, beyond just teaching. Going into this book, I believed that the black-person reality of discrimination was something of the past. Despite my original thinking, I can say that it was neither confirmed nor denied. Even more so, I now realize that I can’t actually understand the effect of having a black definition in today's society. In my best interpretation of it, the black community faces a notable amount of direct and indirect discrimination. However, indirect racism becomes the dominant pressure, an act of hiding its existence at all. It was a surprise to me—a shock of cold water—to come to this realization. The whole book was a surprise to me. Indirect racism became almost the focal point of this book, with even less direct racism examples. Rather than being called slurs, he more often faced the question, “Is it because I’m black?”. The book becomes a collection of stories that when looked at singularly could be just an unlucky experience. However, when he takes the pieces and forms his whole story, you get to see racism in a light only visible to the one facing it. This book, a window into another life, only allows people to touch the tip of the iceberg. The window that this book built allowed me to see a glimmer of how actually to describe racism today. It forever changed my thinking from the undeveloped thoughts I had before. The book forced me to realize that I had, without thinking, forced racism into this box that I only allowed positivity to leak through. The rest of it, the reality that racism is still heavily prevalent today, was trapped because of my unconscious will to see that part of life positively. Part of growing up, however, is my realization that these shades of white are diluted with drops of different shades. This book did much to develop and grow my thinking beyond the assumption that something is either completely present or completely gone. -Ashton S
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Imagine a life of constant hardships, where every choice you make can determine your entire future. Imagine the dream you hold on to your entire childhood gets shattered. Imagine, at the age of 18 years old, you get put on death row. Set in North Carolina during Luke and Toby’s senior year of high school, this story captures the hardships and adversity that the best friends endure every day. Right away in the book, the old, abandoned plane in the middle of the woods plays a significant role in the story. This is an anchor in Luke and Toby’s lives. This is a place where they would play for hours when they were kids, or huddle in the capsule when life at home was hard. It’s also where their dream of flying away and leaving behind all their troubles first began. The plane is a symbol of safety, security, stability, and hope. This also shows the reader the firm foundation on which Luke and Toby’s friendship rests upon. They have a strong bond of trust and closeness. They suffer through all their hardships together. As the story gradually progresses, however, a series of events occurs where their trust becomes less and less stable. The introduction of two new women in their lives, for example, tests their loyalty. Along with that, throughout the story, the story flashes forward to Luke on death row. We read the letters Luke writes to Toby in his cell. The tone of Luke shifts between his letters on death row and his life before. He relays his relationships between the other inmates and reflects on his broken childhood, along with the strong friendship bond him and Toby shared. This story shifted my perspective in that it woke me to how privileged and fortunate I am. Of course, I’ve always known how privileged and fortunate I am, but this story made me realize that people all around me can be struggling in life. In other words, people don’t have to look a certain way or act a certain way to have a less fortunate, less privileged life. Even people I sit next to in school, people I pass by in the hallway, it’s very likely some endure the same ordeals Luke or Toby did. That also makes me realize that these people have much greater stress in their lives and face many more hardships than I do. This created more empathy for me because the story allowed me to dive into these types of lifestyles and made me feel what they were feeling. For example, I felt the same frustration Luke felt toward his mother for not supporting the family. I felt Toby’s frustration toward everyone’s pitying eyes who felt bad but didn’t care enough to help out. I felt Luke’s helplessness on death row, and the feeling of being unheard. I felt the betrayal Toby felt when Luke chose others over him. All of these examples sent me through a rollercoaster of emotions that ultimately, by the end of the story, gave me a certain awareness for those who have lives like Luke and Toby. -Nora L When I was mulling around books to choose from, I noticed one word jumped off the cover of this book; Indian. Today, we know to use more appropriate terms like Indigenous or Native American, but the fact that this was a diary drew me towards it. This Native American person was calling himself an Indian? Compulsively, I sifted through the general summary of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” and could not put it back down. This book follows Arnold Spirit Jr., who goes by Junior. Junior was born on the Spokane Indian reservation (“the rez” as they call it) in Wellpinit, Washington with a rare condition called hydrocephalus. Excess cerebrospinal fluid puts very harmful pressure on Junior’s brain and leads to often seizures. Junior is a brilliant student and a very talented artist, expressing himself and his feelings through cartoons. However, he grew up on the rez being bullied, with an alcoholic dad, and with practically no friends. He did have one friend, though, and he was Junior’s best friend in the whole world, Rowdy. Rowdy and Junior were polar opposites, apart from their shared love of basketball. Rowdy could’ve beaten up anyone on the rez, and Junior could’ve been beaten up by anyone on the rez. They were perfect for each other. Until Junior decided that he needed to leave the rez to truly live. So, Junior enrolled in Rearden High, the white-dominant high school outside the rez, and effectively became a traitor. It was a collision of worlds when Junior transferred to Rearden. He learned that you couldn’t solve everything with violence like the rez, that people are racist, mean, and even more racist, and most importantly, that among those mean and racist people, there are some great humans. Throughout the entire book, Junior overcomes struggles with deaths in his close family, being around alcoholism, and struggling with poverty. Junior summarizes the physical and figurative differences between Rearden and Wellpinit with this quote on page 199: “I’m fourteen and I’ve been to forty-two funerals. That’s really the biggest difference between Indians and white people.” “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” surprised me mostly due to my naivety about Native Americans in the United States. The thing that shocked me the most wasn’t the impoverishment, it wasn’t the alcoholism, it wasn’t even the 42 funerals Junior attended. It was how similar yet so different our lives are. We all go about our days so similarly. We wake up in the morning, go to school, sit through our classes, go to practice after school, do our homework, and repeat it the next day. On the rez, they do all of this with so little given to them. They create every opportunity leading to where they are. This is why Junior left the rez, he was making an opportunity for himself. It challenged the way I thought about Native Americans to see this new narrative. We’ve always been taught of their tribe-like behavior as if they still live in tipis. So we don’t think often of them, while silently they draw every legal short stick. Strength and resilience are two words that have been instilled in my character for as long as I can remember. Growing up I’ve always prided myself on being a strong and resilient person, but I can’t even begin to imagine being as strong as Junior was throughout his upbringing. The lessons about strength and resilience explored in this book had a very profound impact on me. Junior faces many challenges as he strives to break the cycle of impoverishment within his family on the rez. I discovered, through Junior’s trials and tribulations, that strength is not just physical, but emotional and intellectual. Junior’s literal and figurative escape from the rez shows how resilience holds true throughout even the most adverse situations. I am beyond glad that I picked this book up, and will forever carry the lessons it taught me about constituent resilience and strength through all circumstances. - Trevor K. How many people in Decorah can say they don’t have a home? Esperanza, the narrator of “The House on Mango Street,” has a place to live, but she doesn’t have a home she feels she belongs in. “The House on Mango Street” is a book composed of vignettes detailing various scenes from the life of a young girl living amongst the minority. Esperanza is a Mexican-American girl who has to live a life that is dictated by her social class and her race. There are many books written about people different from me, but I chose this book for the way it describes Esperanza’s experiences—the vignettes feel personal, like reading straight from someone’s diary. There was no overarching plot throughout the book that jumped out to me through the story, but the style of writing was prominent throughout the book. “The House on Mango Street” reads like a diary, like memories that were important for one reason or another. Esperanza often wrote about small details, like candles on top of a fridge, a song, a couch, that it felt so vivid and personal to read. Another thing that I noticed was closely entwined with the emotions and feelings Esperanza had was the actual house itself. The house on mango street was not what her immigrant parents wanted—it was neglected, poor, looked down on—and I noticed the house seemed to be representative of Esperanza herself. When Esperanza gets her future read, the only thing found was “home made of heart”. This stuck out to me as representing the house, and the fact that the only thing homelike about it is what Esperanza can find in her heart with her family. Together these vignettes don’t have a specific plot, but rather an evocative emotion ingrained into each chapter. From first glance, Esperanza and I do not appear similar—we are from different ethnic backgrounds, different classes, even different time periods—but we feel the same. Esperanza tells her stories like she is tired, like she has a bone-deep weariness at the end of each day. Thinking back on the book, I feel as though I am remembering this story as though it is my own, and it helps show that no matter what country your family is from, how much money you have, how you are treated—there aren’t any new emotions. Teenage girls are teenage girls no matter who the world thinks they are, and all feelings are universal even if individual circumstances are unique. -Klara Kelly There are some books that once you read them leave an impression on you for the rest of your life. Then there are some books that become part of your childhood once you read them. The book Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell is both of these things. Eleanor is a bigger girl with big red hair and even stranger fashion. Eleanor moves to a new school and has to ride the bus every day to school; this is when she meets Park. Park is the only Asian kid in the school and has always felt different. Throughout the story, Eleanor and Park fall for each other and learn about themselves. Eleanor and Park go through so many challenges of growing up and going through high school together, however, the biggest challenge is Eleanor's stepfather. Read the book Eleanor and Park to find out if the two can overcome the challenges of life and love or if they break apart over time. I went into the book knowing it was meant for people about my age or a little younger so I didn’t expect much. I thought it was just going to be a silly book about two kids growing up and had close to no expectations. I was quickly proven wrong about my original thoughts. The book is meant for a younger audience but it is anything but a silly little book. The book made me think a lot about how different people are treated in high school and if I was in their situation if I could even overcome it. Reading this book while I was also in high school was the perfect time to read it because there were so many times when I put myself in their shoes and I truly don’t think I could have done what they did. I have always tried to fit in and I don’t like being the odd one out so for Park to give up on his old friends to hang out with Eleanor even though she is the weird kid and I wish this weren’t true but I don’t think I could do that in high school. I went into the book thinking I was too old to read a book like this but now I realize I was the perfect age to read this book and for my opinions to change for the better. As I said earlier this book really changed my opinions on myself and others around me. Looking back I don’t have close to anything in common with Eleanor or Park. The main challenge around Eleanor is her messed up family but I couldn’t relate to that if I tried. My parents are still happily married my two brothers love me and I don’t have nearly any of her family problems. I also have close to nothing in common with Park. I am not a minority by any means I am a straight white woman and have never really felt out of place as Park did before he met Eleanor. Though I have almost nothing in common with these two characters they still changed me in ways I never thought would happen. The book changed the way I looked at others and the way I perceive others around me. I have started to think about my classmates for what they do and not what they look like or for their family. There are so many people that you just make a judgment on without thinking. Some of these judgements are rude and some are just harmless thoughts that you have. For example, some of my peers wear off-brand clothing and I have judged them for it. It wasn’t anything harsh but in my head, I started to think about them differently. Until I read this book I never realized that I took a person's clothing into consideration about their personality way more than I should. I have started to look at people for who they are and not for what they wear. This book has truly changed me for the better based on my perception of others and the way I simply see people. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to read about Eleanor and Park when I was in high school allowing the full impact of the story to affect me. -Clara H. Destiny tells the story of a teenage Syrian boy, his family, and the people that they meet along the way. As a nearly decade-long war spreads through Syria, Tareq’s once peaceful life is uprooted when he experiences a loss like no other. He, his father, and his 4-year-old sister, Susan, must embark on their long resisted journey to Europe. With a Daesh threatening pit stop in Raqqa, the family must quickly make their way to Turkey with the newly joined company of Tareq’s teenage cousin Musa. Once they arrive in Turkey, Tareq and Musa are sent to Istanbul, to find work, while Susan and his father remain in Gaziantep. After experiencing the challenges that Turkish life holds for Syrians, a resistant Tareq leaves Musa behind to smuggle his family to Greece. With the little money made, the family is able to send Tareq and Susan across the unpredictable Aegean Sea into Lesvos, Greece, an Island off the coast of Turkey. After a dangerous and uncertain smugglers' ride to the Island, Tareq is met with the generosity of many volunteers, including American college student Alexia, who makes a life-lasting impression on Tareq and the people that mean the most to him. This book opened my mind up to a refugee's journey in a completely new way. I was always aware that making the decision to leave one's home can never be easy, but I was under the impression that there were many people whose job was to make it easier on the refugees. Instead, throughout this book, I found that more people are making it extra challenging to cross borders, which is happening on top of the already life-threatening situations refugees face. What surprised me the most was that many of the smugglers were Syrian refugees themselves. It was hard to believe that someone who had escaped from that kind of danger wasn’t fighting harder to get their fellow Syrians out safely. Reading this book really made me think about the life that I have and how it is sometimes taken for granted. Here we are losing ourselves over a lost sports event, or a failed assignment, while kids all over the world have bombs exploding left and right. One thing that is highlighted in this book is the idea that what is ultimately the most dangerous for humanity is the divide between the love in our hearts and the hatred that our mind convinces our hearts to feel. This is something that affected my opinion on a lot of conflicts around the world. I think that in the future, it will be a little bit easier for me to understand the pain and the loss that the people fleeing these countries experience. Tareq’s life was so different from mine that it was easy to see that this book was fiction. However, after reading, I keep thinking about how real this journey is for so many people, and that was difficult for me to grasp. By Kera W. In this stirring book, I got to know Kimberly, who is a Chinese immigrant who moved with her mom to New York. I followed her through many years and hardships. The book opens with the apartment that her aunt helped them get, which is in terrible condition. They struggle with towering poverty, and adjusting to American life. Kimberly's mom works long days at a clothing factory that follows little to no safety protocols, and after school, Kimberly is expected to help out until they have fulfilled their quotas for the day. You see what it’s like for a middle school girl to try and integrate into a school while trying to overcome a language barrier. It's extremely gratifying to see Kimberly slowly but surely get the recognition she deserves for her immense amount of smarts and kindness. From love, to high school parties, to financial troubles, Girl in Translation is a wonderful story with a very honest feel to it. I was surprised at how much of a (excuse me) bitch the aunt was in this story. She was supposed to be helping her family thrive, but instead continually (and intentionally) kept them from improving. She kept them in a terrible, low paying factory job and a roach infested apartment that was going to get knocked down any day. She was constantly trying to make sure that Kimberly and her mom never did any better than her. When Kimberly ended up doing better than her son in school and getting full scholarships to a private school and Yale, she got so mad. The aunt then tried to threaten taking away their apartment and manipulating them in other ways. She never thought of anyone but herself, and relied on the undeserved authority she had over Kimberly and her mom to keep them beneath her. I was also frustrated about how unsupportive some of Kimberly’s teachers were towards her because of the language barrier. This changed my thinking about how I thought everyone would understand the difficulties of immigrating to America. I know very few immigrants, and so learning a bit more about the way people can get trapped in poverty, or factory jobs, was very eye-opening. I learned how little I know about how the immigration process works, and I still know very little. I don’t feel like one book is enough for me to say that I’m “changed” or “more empathetic”. I wish it was that easy, but I feel like I need to learn the stories of other people and what their experiences are today. I find myself more curious about child labor in factories, and what can be done to ensure that everyone is paid properly. It’s very easy for me to write the experiences in the book off as just letters on a page, but things like that happen every day. I hate that the people who have such excess live in such close proximity to people who heat their houses with their oven and cover windows with trash bags. Maybe I will be compelled to do something about this, or maybe I will forget about it amongst my comfort, as so many of us do. I am now realizing this book has made me more cynical. Maybe that’s for the best. By Andie Gegax If someone had grown up an only child and then found out suddenly they had a sibling they had never met, their life would be completely changed. For Yahaira and Camino, their lives had already been turned around by their Papi’s sudden death. Their Papi had been the center of both their lives, but still hardly present in either one. Each with different mothers and in different countries (the United States and the Dominican Republic), the two girls had no way of knowing about their father’s split life - until Yahaira finds a marriage certificate that did not have her own mother’s name on it. Then, several months later, their father dies in a plane crash flying between the two countries. In the aftermath of his death, both families reeling, the sisters discover each other first online and then in person. Yahaira flies solo to DR for their father’s ceremony. While navigating the rules of sisterhood, each girl must measure what their fathers presence in their life really meant to them and how they can reconnect with themselves through their new other half. Clap When You Land explores the meaning of family through a complicated and poignant story that also addresses the topic of sexual assault and, on the sidelines, unplanned pregnancy and queerness. For me, this was a really good read because I had not been expecting that and I wouldn’t have read this book were it not for this assignment. As Acevedo experiments with point of view, the reader learns from both of the girls’ perspectives. She leads up to when their paths finally cross and you see how their surroundings set them apart from one another. It makes me curious to know how similar they would be if they both grew up either in the U.S. or in DR. This book definitely taught me the importance of those people in your life who you might not see on a daily basis, but are still just as important as the ones you do. The fact that it’s written in verse makes it easier for me to connect with the characters, because the author is not afraid to say the things that are often deemed bitter and uncomfortable in normal conversation. I relate to some of the content easier because of this. I think I am more empathetic after reading this book because we, living in rural Iowa, are hardly ever exposed to what life is like in poor countries and what life was really like for Camino. By Elsa J. 1⁄3 of America’s population is living below the poverty line and it’s almost impossible to get out. With a ruthless economy that keeps them stuck and only serves the 1%, as well as everyday life that becomes tremendously harder without the cushion of money, Linda Tirado, author of Hand to Mouth, explains the hardships of being poor in the United States. She also tackles the many stereotypes that people associate with being poor, explains all aspects of living life being poor, and how society treats them. Linda Tirado wants to explain to us what living in poverty is like, how simple it is to treat people with respect, and how “destructive behaviors” aren’t really destructive at all. I think that it’s important for everyone to read this to get a small glimpse into understanding a person's life along with experiences and to stop judging. It has shown me things like how the United States doesn’t do a lot for the poor and that minimum wage isn’t liveable off of, or how a lot of people view poor people as being lazy. Tirado does a very good job explaining the stereotypes as well as the difficulties of being poor, her explanations and personal experiences give you a view into what it’s like. She also does a very good job explaining the hardships of working a minimum wage job, and how big corporations prey on their workers, giving them little to nothing for the long, hard hours of the job. This book gave me a different perspective on life relating to money and how society treats those who are poor with disregard and push ugly stereotypes onto them. I think the main point of the book was to get people who aren’t poor to understand and to realize that being poor doesn’t make someone “lazy” or “unmotivated” to work, but instead that they are tirelessly working against a system and a society that views them as such. Tirado quotes, “I am not asking for sympathy. I am just trying to explain, on a human level, how it is that people make what looks from the outside like awful decisions.” by Ramsey Z. Imagine being on death row as a teenager in high school. We’ll Fly Away by Bryan Bliss, is a captivating story about two teenage boys and how one of them ends up on death row. Not only is it about one of the boys experience on death row, but about how they survive their challenging lifestyles. Both boys have struggling, abusive families, and learned how to live on their own at a young age. Their names are Luke and Toby. Luke lives with his mother and his two younger brothers Petey and Jack. They live in a small apartment that they can barely afford the rent for. His mother has been off and on with work, as well as going on trips with men she meets. Luke is in charge of taking care of his brothers, cleaning, cooking, and practically anything else that needs to be done. Toby often comes over to Luke’s apartment and helps him do his chores. He does this to escape his abusive father, who is often drunk most nights. Luke and Toby stick together to make each other's lives easier, and this has created an inseparable bond between them, or at least until other factors got involved. Toby, Luke, and I are not very alike. We have only a few similarities, such as we are all teenagers in high school. Luke had a scholarship to wrestle at Iowa which made the book more interesting to read knowing there was some connection to where I live. Other than that our lives and experiences are drastically different. There are small differences, as well as significantly large differences. For one, I am a female, and both Toby and Jack are males. It was interesting to hear about high school from a male's perspective. Another difference between us is our lifestyles, I come from a well off family, with both parents around. I never have had to endure the same struggle that Toby and Luke have experienced with their abusive families.The larger difference between particularly Luke and I is that Luke is living his teenage years on death row. The book switched back and forth between the events leading up to him ending up in death row, and letters he wrote to Toby once he was in jail. I think because of these differences between the characters and I in this story, it meets the criteria of this challenge. “I didn't want to hear another word he was saying, but then he was like, "You get to choose if you care. They can't take that away from you. And you get to choose if you're going to walk through the rest of your life like a dead man. I've made my choice." The main focus of the story was what happened leading up to Luke's time on death row. But, after finishing the story I realized I gained the most insight from the small portions of the book when Luke was in jail. Luke became super good friends with a guy named Eddie when he was on death row. Eddie was one of the most impactful people in Luke's life. He made Luke think about his actions and words and how they can harm or help him. Along with impacting Luke’s life, Eddies words impacted mine as well. The quote I stated earlier stuck with me long after I read it. Yes, our lives are completely different, but we both had the choice of which road to go down. |
AuthorSTenth grade students at Decorah High School share how they're reading outside of their own experiences and how it has changed them. Categories
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