ELA REFLECTION

Final ELA Assignment 

My High School Book Shelf

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

(Reread) The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

The Color of Water by James McBride

Survival of the Sickest by Sharon Moalem

As You Like It by William Shakespeare

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Dear 811,

I think this year I actually enjoyed the majority of ELA. Of course, the grammar lessons and vocabulary quizzes weren’t the best but I think that as a class we really had some fun times and made the most of our final year at 51. I’m going to remember our stellar discussions of Romeo and Juliet, I wish we had time for more because everyone brought such in depth and interesting ideas to the table, so thanks for that. You all are so smart!!

I’m also always going to fondly look back on book clubs. I think that when we get to choose our own texts and who we read them with we can truly make the most thoughtful conclusions. Although it was always a struggle to first get the book and then keep taking notes, I think I’m always going to remember acting out Eleanor and Park or plowing through To Kill a Mockingbird. I think Ms. Galang gave us great activities and the perfect balance between time in our groups and time to present.

Also, since I have the attention of whoever’s reading this I just want to thank you  for an amazing year. I know that we are all excited for high school but I appreciated this class so much, you guys are so supportive and I firmly believe each and everyone of you is destined for great things. 

And lastly, wasn’t Am I Blue? great??!!

Love and Synthesis Pages,

Ella

Romeo and Juliet

Poem from Nurse’s Point of View

So much

can change in 

a day.

Even the bright spark

of life in my young girl vanished in

a day.

My young girl, in

a day

she fell in love, in

a day

she lost a cousin, and in

a day

she lost her life.

In my performance, I wanted to convey the misery that the nurse was feeling at the loss of her almost daughter, Juliet. Even though she is not a biological parent she still cares deeply for Juliet and is devastated when she “dies.” I tried to portray this through crying as best I could and seeming to be in a fragile emotional state throughout the performance.

Speaking of, I think the performance went fairly well. I know that I memorized my lines and was proud of the emotions I conveyed onstage. If I could change anything I would encourage my group to memorize more. From our unit I gained an in depth understanding that I can apply to many more challenging texts I will read in high school. I think that once you fully read a Shakespearian text one has a certain confidence that they are capable of tackling other literature.

Poetry Project

Anniversary (poetic response to Photograph of the Girl by Sharon Olds)

Their wrinkled hands,

as gnarled as the wood bench they sit on,

greets the other’s with a familiar embrace

of forty years.

Today.

And as the soldiers yell,

and their grandchildren cry

and their spirits fall as steadily as the rain that serves for a lullaby,

they turn to each other.

For even though,

the ring was taken,

and a new war waged,

the silver sold,

and more beliefs caged,

the dress tarnished,

and crashes and booms,

the flowers rotten,

and an upcoming doom.

Love lives on.

What really struck me about Photograph of the Girl by Sharon Olds was the process of puberty competing with the process of starvation. In my poem, I compared how despite terrible circumstances, regular life events such as falling in love, changing internally, or in this case the event of an anniversary, still persists. I used simile and enjambment in the first stanza, simile in the second, rhyme and onomatopoeia, and stanza overall as literary devices.

47th Street

The melodious beats of Joni Mitchell 

trickle in from the bright orange crack

underneath my sister’s door that resembles

a sliver of sunset.

I hear the ever present honks from fifth avenue

that erupt from darkened cars

and the sound of ice breaking

under the feet of late night wanderers.

I hear the friction of my ear against my pillow

and scoot my feet

down

down

down

so the bedroom air greets my toes

with a frigid embrace.

But all this thaws

as the tempo of my heart slows

down

down

down

to a lullaby.

This poem was rather easy to compose because all I had to think of what I hear overnight, every other week. Sunset Park never sleeps and it seems like there is always hubbub on fifth avenue. In this free verse poem I used repetition of down, speaker, imagery and a very obvious allusion to Joni Mitchell.

Sonnet: A Questioned Desire

I wish to live a life I have not known,

far from the cars and trains I ride daily.

And except for the flowers, all alone.

Free to frolic around the land gayly.

Fore the only creatures that I do see

are rats that crawl beneath forgotten tracks

and birds that chirp by trash with hollow glee.

But could I live with life enclosed in packs?

To survive a wild all alone?

I love my bed and feather pillow,

which both reside in my Park Slope home.

Is it the same to lie under willow?

Nevertheless, if I should have to run,

it shall be under a radiant sun.

In all honesty, writing a sonnet was hard. I would think of a line and when it didn’t meet the criteria, I had to start from scratch. However, when a line did work, I felt a light wash of success. Also, because of the rigid structure, if one sticks to it, whatever work produced will have some artistry in it. I used the literary devices of alliteration (free, frolic,) speaker, rhyme, rhythm, and stanza.

Heart Poem: Photograph of the Girl by Sharon Olds

The girl sits on the hard ground,

the dry pan of Russia, in the drought

of 1921 stunned,

eyes closed, mouth open,

raw hot wind blowing

sand in her face. Hunger and puberty are

taking her together. She leans on a sack,

layers of clothes fluttering in the heat,

the new radius of her arm curved.

She cannot be beautiful, but she is

starving. Each day she grows thinner, and her bones

grow longer, porous. The caption says 

she is going to starve to death that winter

with millions of others. Deep in her body 

the ovaries let out her first eggs,

golden as drops of rain.

Connection- The poem connects to me because as an adolescent, I’m experiencing the same changes as the girl in the photograph. However, she must handle this uncharted territory in a much less comfortable setting than a house in Park Slope, Brooklyn. 

Reading Response-

Upon receiving the poetry packet, I thumbed through the various pages. Some poems took up whole pages, the haikus took up fractions of pages, and nestled in the corner of one page was Photograph of the Girl by Sharon Olds. At sixteen lines it was similar to length of poems I had previously written this unit; not too long and not too short. After reading the poem I liked it even more. Olds’ frank but eloquent and vivid observations resembled my writing, or rather what I wanted my writing to be.

The poem describes a photograph of a Russian girl in 1921 experiencing two processes; starvation and puberty, both of which Olds portrays. For example, at the conclusion of the poem it is stated that, “Deep in her body the ovaries let out her first eggs, golden as drops of rain.” This describes the start of menstruation, a component of becoming a woman because of the ability to conceive a child. Aside from stating that the girl is going through puberty, Olds celebrates it, using simile to describe eggs as equally as gold as drops of rain. Earlier in the poem Olds mentions the 1921 drought. In that instance rain is needed and revered, and Olds deems the girl’s eggs of the same quality. To continue, the girl is also fighting starvation. This is stated in the caption of the photo, clearly stating the hardships of Russia during the early 1900’s.

However, the two processes are also fighting each other.  “Each day she grows thinner, and her bones grow longer, porous.” While the absence of nutrition is reducing her width, the girl’s length is increasing. Starvation is trying to make her disappear but growth fights this, stretching her thin skin even thinner over new lengths. Furthermore, Olds continues to describe the new, curved radius of her arm. The word “new” conveys puberty yet the curve shows the lack of body fat, skin having nothing to wrap around but the curve of bone.

This poem illustrates a starving teenager in the most beautiful way possible, which still brings a heavy tinge of sadness to the poem. This girl is growing up in such harsh conditions and I think that puberty is such a developmental time in a girl’s life that having your body and life change at the same time would just turn one’s world upside down. I know that I experienced these physical and mental changes in a really comfortable setting and yet I still felt like I was deserving of pity at some times. If I felt like puberty could be hard, how did the millions of children growing into adults in unstable settings feel?

Macbeth Response (Extra Credit)

Macbeth was a process that took three months, countless rehearsals, after school classes and a daily routine of pouring over lines night after night. As Lady Macbeth I had 54 lines, over ten monologues, and a full immersion into Shakespeare’s epic tragedy. At times this filled me with joy and sometimes with bubbling resent, but in the end I’m so glad to have gotten the chance to experience Macbeth by William Shakespeare, a tragedy with roots of love but in the end, driven by greed.
Although many people may see Macbeth having a plot steered by greed, it begins with love. Lady Macbeth states, “…yet do I fear thy nature. It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way.” This illustrates how well Lady Macbeth knows her husband, he is a kind man who would not take immediate advantage of chances that might come to him. She wants him to capture greatness, to hold power, not only because it would give her power as well but because of her love for him. I also saw this love in my blocking. Mr. Mceneny would often tell me to touch Macbeth’s face or hands. If Lady Macbeth didn't truly love her husband, these movements would be rough and forceful, yet they are delicate and gentle.
However, by the end of the play, Lady Macbeth’s loving wants for the couple evolves into Macbeth’s overwhelming greed. Macbeth begins to get paranoid, killing whole castles and becomes a hateful madman. For example, the apparitions tell Macbeth to fear Macduff, the thane of Fife. After hearing these omens, Macbeth sends assassins to kill Lady Macduff, her children and all the mansion’s staff instead of hunting down Macduff. In addition, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth do not speak at all during the second act. He has isolated himself, only trusting his own thoughts, however twisted they may be.
Both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth were greedy in their own right but as the epic continues, the greed is not present because of understandable desires but because of paranoia, malice and fear. These states of mind were all very interesting to act and messages I was hopeful able to convey to the audience during my performance.

First Draft of Foreword

Any resident of New York City rides the subway. Businessmen, the homeless, teenagers, grandparents, babies, and countless other demographics. All these humans share the subway with another type of animal; rats.
As a NYC resident myself, I’ve seen my fair share of rats. While waiting for a train, I can see movements among the brown and grey tones of the subway tracks. I see them scuttle over to empty soda bottles and fast food wrappers people carelessly toss onto the tracks. They feverishly suck out the dregs of said receptacles in a way that only rodents do. To any bystander, this is not attractive or admirable in any way, but after research on our fellow city inhabitants, it doesn't seem so gruesome.
It’s hard to make it the city and rats know this struggle like anyone else. They burrow into subway walls, digging holes deep enough to not be caught and with access to the station’s garbage room. This room is their haven, filled with trash bags to us, but hills of food for them. All stations try to rid themselves of these devilishly clever creatures with poison but rats know what not to eat and what to look out for.
To continue, while rats may cast a gross mood, the underground, dark nature of most subways produces a frightening aura. I wasn’t allowed on the subway alone until I was 12 and at night, the gloom of the subway still scares me. There’s no cell phone service and while stations have help buttons, you never know who will arrive on the platform. Ironically, the most dangerous subway station (highest crime rate) is Broad Channel in Queens. New York Daily News states that, “With just 224 people swiping into the station on an average day, that works out to 27 crimes per 100,000 trips.” Residents of the neighborhood chalk this up to the mix of “hoodlum” teens and tourists. This illustrates how crime rate does not depend on busyness of station but inhabitants.
I’ve seen rats and gotten goosebumps from a dark station and I hope this story combines the two to inspire you, the reader, to help out anyone whenever you possibly can because the city can be daunting and its up to all its inhabitants to keep it as safe as can be.

Critical Thinking Question Synthesis Page

Question-  How does this text address the points of view (perspectives) of other groups, especially those who usually don’t get to tell their side?

The nonfiction book, Horsemen of the Esophagus by Jason Fagone, explores the perspective of a journalist just immersing himself in the world of competitive eating and the perspectives of eaters new and old, stereotypical and not, who do not usually get to tell their stories to the masses.

Fagone shares his journey from news writer to a man traveling the US and the globe to find the joy, perils and little known facts about competitive eating.

• “There was a time, of course- a year and fifteen pounds ago- when I didn't watch people gorge themselves in public and try to figure out what it meant, or if it meant anything at all. I was a serious journalist with a good job.” Page 77. 
• “The contest had come a long way in a very short time. Just eight years earlier, it was so small and obscure that Norbitz himself had to solicit contestants from the ranks of Coney Island’s passerby.” Page 33.

These two quotations display how Fagone did what very few people do; quit their job in the pursuit of something that calls to them. Because Fagone was a serious journalist he describes the competitions with sophistication and details, which are not necessarily associated with competitive eating. He also incorporates facts such as the above quotation from page 33. This demonstrates how because of Fagone’s background, he is able to give a fresh point of view on the growing American sport of competitive eating.

In “Horsemen of the Esophagus,” the reader is exposed to the personal lives and motivations of competitive eaters.

• “Finally, the contest in Middletown. Dave rented a big Dodge and took Lisa and Juanita and Adam on their first trip as a family.” Page 29.
• “And Koby thought that phrase-“fat realtor”-was disrespectful. So no interview.” Page 62.

Besides his own, original perspective, Fagone includes numerous, personal passages from interviews with “eaters.” Dave “Coondog” O’Karma’s start of competitive eating was also the first time his family traveled together, showing how the sport can bring people together. Dave was a painter experiencing a midlife crisis until he began the sport and it had a positive impact on his family as well. In addition, when Takuro Kobayashi canceled his interview with Fagone because he was offended by Fagone’s word’s on another eater, comradery was displayed. Compettitive eaters take their hobby/job seriously and there is a sense of community between them.

Overall, the text is very eye-opening, I began this book disgusted and ignorant on the topic of competitive eating, and while it remains gross to me, I learned so much. Each eater has their own story, whether it be Coondog’s midlife crisis or Kobayashi’s utter commitment to the pastime. I think Fagone wrote it to expose these stories, and while he maybe is not trying to change opinions, he is educating readers with a variety of information on this growing sport.

To continue, while I have no desire to become a competitive eater, this book relates to me because I think I am part of Fagone’s target audience; someone who knew very little about competitive but had negative opinions on it. The book is not a persuasive essay but shows how you should judge something after learning about it. On the outside competitive eating can be gross, barbaric, disgusting and inhumane but beneath that there are real people who don’t think of it that way. They consider it a sport and an art, something that takes practice, skill and time. 

Banned Books Argument Essay

“Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.” In this statement, popular and esteemed author Laurie Halse Anderson states what causes censorship of media such as books, movies or plays, and the fruits of banning these creative outlets. John Green, author of “Looking for Alaska,” the story of an awkward teenager whose search for “The Great Perhaps” takes him to boarding school and new, wild friends and adventures, would agree. Looking for Alaska should not be banned from schools or stores because it’s powerful themes of love and friendship, and it’s educational value. 

In Looking for Alaska, readers learn the value of friendship as main character, Miles, transitions from an awkward teenager to a more amiable, well rounded, young adult. In the beginning of the novel, Miles did not have many friends and spent the majority of his time alone with only the last words of dead philosophers to keep him company. “I nodded knowingly, and that about exhausted our conversational topics. I might have asked a question about Jesus Christ Superstar, except that 1. I didn't know what it was, and 2. I didn't care to learn, and 3. I never really excelled at small talk” (Green 1). This quote, where Miles is describing his encounter with an acquaintance before he leaves for boarding school, illustrates how Miles was not interested in others, he did not care for other people, and did not want to try to get to know people. At his new school, Culver Creek, he emerges from this shell and becomes fast friends with “The Colonel” and Alaska Young. The three spend time talking, complaining about authority, and scheming. However, during these activities they do smoke cigarettes and drink cheap, strawberry wine. For these reasons, parents and educators argue that the three’s friendship is based on a shaky foundation of alcohol and drugs, habits they fear their children will imitate. Although children should not be drinking or smoking, the characters do not intoxicate themselves for amusement. Alaska, who's mother is dead and is often in trouble at the school, drinks as a distraction. The drinking is not portrayed as fun, but rather as a substitute to fill character’s voids. In addition, at the conclusion of the novel, Alaska dies in a car accident. It is discovered that Alaska was drunk, blatantly displaying the perils of alcohol to readers.

One of the main reasons Green’s book has been challenged is because it exposes readers to sex. The novel, however, actually uses sex to illustrate the crucial difference between love and sex. Miles, aka “Pudge” as he is referred to at Culver Creek, is smitten with feisty Alaska. He silently loves her throughout the text, conveying his intense feelings to the reader. Miles does not want to have sex with her, but rather, “I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase” (Green 88). This shows the reader how love does not need to be proven by sexual intercourse, love is wanting to simply be near someone. This passage is right after Miles and another student, Lara, have oral sex. The passage does include information about the event, which readers could consider graphic because of it’s description of male genitalia. It is important to acknowledge that parents should be able to be the first to teach their children about mature topics such as sex, but Green’s work blatantly displays how sex is meaningless without the right partner. In a 2008 episode of the Youtube channel that John Green collaborates with his brother, Hank Green, on called The Vlogbrothers, he explains why he wrote the sex scene. “There is one very frank sex scene. It is awkward, un-fun, disastrous and wholly un-erotic.” In this statement, Green shows why the scene was included, for its teachable content. Green did not incorporate sexual activity into his novel to elevate action, provide interest for coming of age teens, or other expendable reasons. The contrast between Miles’ wholesome, pure feelings for Alaska utterly clash with the bungled and blunt sexual activity he engages in with Lara.

What adults do not realize when they are challenging writing are the restrictions they are setting on their children’s minds. Looking for Alaska is a book that can be used to improve writing and deepen thinking. President of the American Library Association, Michael Gorman, has stated that, “It all stems from a  fearfulness of well-meaning people. We believe in parental responsibility, and that you should take care of what your children are reading. But its not your responsibility to tell a whole class of kids what they should read.” This reveals how the opinion of a single person cannot fairly limit the exposure of a certain subject that other people receive. If one parent has an issue with the content of Green’s book and successfully challenges it, then the rest of the children who don’t read it will not experience it’s worth. Green, winner of the Michael L. Pritz award from the ALA, composes sentences such as, “…if people were rain I was a drizzle and she was a hurricane” (Green 88). What this makes clear is the sophistication of Green’s writing that can be used in english classes to improve teen’s writing craft similar to how classics, such as the work of Mark Twain or Harper Lee are used. These books have introduced children to more advanced writing like that of Green.

Looking for Alaska is a coming of age story that deals with important matters such as intimacy and friendship, while providing readers with a text to refer to when in need of a mentor text or a book that bares all the ugly, glorious aspects of adolescence. John Green writes stories that are honest, because of this, he pushes the envelope of young adult literature. However, if all seemingly racy books are banned, there will be no envelope to push. Without controversial media  nothing in the world changes, accepting set standards leads to a monotonous human race that will not fruit masterpieces like those of Ray Williams, Al Weiwei, Georgia O’Keeffe, or Mark Twain, authors and artists who dared to publicize their opinions and spread awareness of injustices. Censoring without considering it’s effects on youth is speaking for a whole demographic without considering their needs or opinions, something no well meaning adults intends to do.

Bibliography

Baldassarro W. "Banned Books Awareness: "Looking for Alaska"" Banned Books Awareness. N.p., 14 May 12. Web. 23 Nov. 14.

Dir. Green. Perf. John Green. I Am Not A Pornographer. N.p., 30 Jan. 2008. Web. 17 Dec. 2014.

Green, John. Looking for Alaska. New York: New York, 2005.