Bullet Points are one of the poems that caught my interest because it is a reminder that black folks in America are in constant fear of cops even if they are in no danger of a situation. Yes, it can be a stereotype you see in movies or shows but it is a sad reality that African Americans get killed while being detained by a cop. Brown repeats I will not kill myself which shows a reminder he is innocent if he were to be detained by cops. A man who knows death is nearby and has to deal on an everyday basis.

American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin is oddly a strange one. A kindhearted white woman saying the N-word. In what way does a woman like that say the N-word? Is it through the use of racism or the use of trying to fit in a black community? Is it hatred or the influence of many young African American saying the N-word influencing her to say a such word? When a word is thrown a lot in a community it tends to be like a trend, everybody says it even if you are not part of that community the word comes like the wind as if it is contagious. Think before you speak.

Lastly, the poem From is quite interesting. Many people that are from one place and move to another or you see someone coming into your home tend to have cultural differences. So this poem demonstrates what people say, how they say, what they actually mean in translation of many languages that I do not recognize. It shows for example let’s say your family are from India and they move into the U.S then the offspring of the family is born into the U.S then they will have an cultural- identity crisis. This can be said for some people that migrated into other countries. The main problem is if you’re born in another country and you visit your parents native country, people over there will have strong opinions about you and say you have an accent, you are not one of us since you don’t practice tradition like us. That sort of stuff and draw an effect but people more or less tend to be considerate of others emotions.

Trevor Noah used comedy, to sum up, the conflict of colonization from Great Britain to India. What makes the video funny is the use of accents British and Indian. For people who do not like history tend to learn more from dark humor jokes from such tactics Noah uses to grab his audience so that they may understand the British and Indian colonization problem. In a way, Noah uses his comedy as a lecture on colonization so that his interpretation may not be boring for his audience, he makes it short, sweet, and funny.

Despite her love for English and literature Amy Tan is not a scholar. She is simply a writer who enjoys the many “Englishes”.  Her argument is that the action or use of intent, passionate imagery, Rhythms of speech, and the nature of your thoughts are what counts toward your English, not Standard English. Yes, it makes you sound professional but it is the feeling that counts. Amy used her mom as an example to convince us that she may have “broken English” to us readers but in her eyes, it is perfect English.

Context & Exigence

The video was taken in Ted and was published on YouTube in 2015. The video is responding to self-identity which many Americans perhaps have problems with. 

Author: 

Fatimah Asghar is a poet, performer, artist, photographer 

Text:

Audience:

The audience is YouTube viewers, anyone who watches Ted Talks, poets, 

Purpose:

Fatimah struggles to find her identity growing up. She wants people to open themselves like a book so that they can feel comfortable. You shouldn’t look at people in a 1 dimensional way like she stated so that you don’t view people as the same as others. Take the time to be less judgmental about meeting someone who has a lot of background identity.

Argument

What does it mean to be an American? she asked.

Evidence: 

Asghar’s personal experience was coming from a family of immigrants but being born in America. She was criticized by other people saying that you’re not American enough in school and that she was not Pakistani enough from her family. 4:20- 4:50

Rhetorical Strategies: 

At the beginning of the video, I thought Asghar was going nuts when she was yelling born here. Then I realized not only is she giving a monologue but she’s giving a poem. At times it sounds like I’m saying it out loud but I’m using it to hear a poem in my head. 

Citation:

Context & Exigence:

When this text was written in 1985 many things were going on like terrorism, police brutality, and racial inequality. 

Text:

This text was published in “On Call: Political Essays by June Jordan ( Boston: South End Press, 1985).  

Author:

June Jordan is a Jamaican- American writer, poet, playwright, essayist, and political activist.

Audience:

Wille Jordan’s family, Africans American, the court, and the police department are responsible for the death of her student’s brother, at the state university of New York.

Purpose:

The author wants to educate AAVE to other students that can be black Americans, those who are interested, and the people who think AAVE is incorrect when it has its own set of rules.

Wille’s brother had suffered police brutality from racial inequality which ended up in his death. Wille shared his experience with June and she tried to convey to us readers and to people that she was protesting about black English.

Argument:

AAVE is not wrong English. You speak for yourself about what your identity is.

Evidence:

“There are three qualities of Black English- the presence of life, voice, and clarity”. (Jordan 6). This shows that AAVE is not so bad after all, you are still communicating in English but just in another dialect. 

Rhetorical Strategies:

I like how there are certain rules for the use of AAVE. It’s hard to follow but I never knew there was such a rule therefore it can be used as English.

Citation:

“June Jordan.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/june-jordan.

Rhetorical Situation Worksheet:

Context & Exigence:

Tan believes she got her voice from her mother’s but also felt embarrassed, and ashamed, because of her mother’s English when she was young. But as Tan grow as a person, in literacy and literature she began to feel some sorrow and regret feeling negative about her mother’s English, and fully embrace her to the point where she sometimes sounds just like her mother tongue.

Author:

Amy Tan is an American author who received her B.A with a double major in English and linguistics also with an M.A. in Linguistics.

Text:

Mother Tongue was published in 1990 by a literary magazine called “The Threepenny Review.

Audience:

Amy Tan’s mother is the intended audience as well as Chinese people who live in America.\

Purpose:

The author is trying to convince others that she is a writer and not a scholar of English or literature. She gave an amazing story about her journey in her literature so that we can understand the struggle she faced for not having a good resource to learn English from her mother. But instead of putting the blame and being ashamed of her mother’s English, she accepts her at all costs.

Argument:

Tan believes that her mother’s English is not “broken”, she does not like that phrase.

Evidence:

“It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than broken as if it were damaged…(Tan 2). The whole idea of saying someone’s English is “broken” seems to break people like one person would assume you are not intelligent therefore you won’t be treated as an equal. People have a tendency to be judgmental but try to find respect in someone else English so that they don’t feel included in society.

Citation:

“Take Online Courses. Earn College Credit. Research Schools, Degrees & Careers.” Study.com, homework.study.com/explanation/when-was-mother-tongue-by-amy-tan-published.html#:~:text=Mother%20Tongue%2C%20by%20Amy%20Tan,and%20based%20in%20Berkeley%2C%20California

Amy Tan Official Website.” Amy Tan, www.amytan.net/. 

Rhetorical Strategies:

The part where she states “I am not a scholar of English or literature.” Right off the bat, she tells us she can straight up give her personal opinions, which makes her reading so much easier to read and by that I mean she does not sound like a robot when I read, other times when I do read the authors sound alike.

1 Page response to Tan:

Feeling connected to Amy Tan fills up a void of comfort when it comes down to using the English language. The reason for this is simple, despite having different ethnic backgrounds, we have something in common which is the struggle of literature at a young age. For example, in elementary school, I was the best student in math class, like the teacher made me teach my classmates no joke but when it comes down to any, I mean any writing assignment, gosh I would fall behind my classmates. One of the lines Mother’s tongue states “Math is precise; there is only one correct answer. Whereas, for me at least, the answer on English tests were always a judgment call, a matter of opinion and personal experience.”(Tan 3). This line touches me as far as even remembering my past experience. There is something about finding one answer, one solution but that all changes when it comes down to literature. You can express any given word yet I’m not creative enough to find an image. But as time progresses I grow more into respecting literature yet I’m not at the mastery level. If only I can find a way to reach that level I would be satisfied.

Instructions: Please respond to the questions that follow with as much detail and description that you can. The more you put into reflecting now on the complexities of your language and literacy development, the better off you’ll be in completing our major assignment for our first phase of this course. Take as much space as you need.

1a .One time I was drawing as a kid and my Grandma came home to visit me and my family. I was drawing with colored pencils but I don’t remember what I was drawing then X-men popped up in my mind and I automatically had an image of the character Wolverine. So I went to my Grandma to explain this superhero called Wolverine but I was speaking to her in English which was a problem so I had to stop and translate everything I said into Spanish but there was another problem she has no clue who the heck is wolverine so I had to use my color pencil and use all 6 of them to make them like I have claw-like as wolverine and that’s when she remembered this superhero.

2. A robust material from my memory I can recall is a “mouth model”. This mouth model helped me a lot to improve my speaking skills when I was taking speech class back in elementary school. I remember Miss K was frustrated with me to pronounced some vocabulary so she pulled out a mouth model so that I can follow my tongue and the mouth model tongue to produce those pronunciations nicely. I felt so satisfied in those precious moments because no one has ever thought me English in that form of procedure.

3. Ms.Ricardo was my ESL (English Secondary Language) teacher in elementary school which was my most hated class of all time. I would be called in during gym class so I would get angry like any kid missing out on fun time. But recalling now I must say she was the one who actually helped improve my literature skills in general. Heck because of her I was able to write long sentences which I did not possess the capabilities to do so.

4. I’m embarrassed to say but I would get made fun of for not “speaking proper English” when I say mispronounced a word with a group of friends or people around my age in school.

5. I would like to make a speculation about how the internet affected the way people around my age make conversation. So as a kid or my childhood, I did not grow up with the internet. I simply did not have access, I had local channel on t.v that no watches in my school. In my experience, I barely make any engaging conversations with a group of friends in school because they would always talk about movies, shows, sports, celebrities, and games and you need the internet to fully understand its content and context. It really affected how other kids would socialize with the internet.

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