Blog Reflection

I know that as human beings we are supposed to know a little about everything and that the requirement classes we take are because we are going to need them eventually. I also understand that this blog helps us to express ourselves to the outside world, how we do so and how we respond to feedback. But let's be honest, I don't like to write at all and literature is not my strongest subject. I did not feel comfortable writing this blog; since I felt it was pressured and I couldn't truly write what I wanted because I had to follow some type of pattern in our writing. I think I like the journal better because I could keep a relation to myself and figure some stuff about me. On the contrary, I haven't learned anything from writing in this blog. I think this class has been more of "how to be a writer" instead of teaching us how to publish, which ways are better and what should we expect from the world or something like that. Instead, they leave us to write freely and to learn by ourselves what writing is good and what writing is bad. And yes, we have to think by ourselves, but we are in this class to learn and improve our writing style.

Maybe the only thing I could learn about this blog is how to take feedback, and how to give feedback, somehow. I think feedback should be the good type of criticism, let this be that what we say helps the writer improve. But it will be better if we could say what we really believe and think. When we are given a process to follow on feedback, this may makes us hold back into what we really think of the work. I think that I like to keep things short and straight to the point. Just a brief introduction, the facts, and a conclusion. That’s how my writing and publishing will be from now on. 

**added may 5,2015**

Well, I have written 15 blog post, including this one, and most of them are between 300-500 words (some more, some less). Since day one, I think my writing has changed in a way that I now state more of my opinions and it's more personal and direct to my writers than before. One of the blog posts that was most significant to me was the one where I had to talk about myself, called "So you wanna get to know me?". I think this blog post it's of more significance to me since I had to talk about myself, which I don't usually do and that I mostly try to avoid. It was a rare experience, and the outcome of it was not what I was expecting when I started writing it. As my development as a student, this blog has help me be more responsible and be more careful of the things I publish to the world. It was a nice journey, but it take a lot of time even though it was worth it.

The TSA

In our Advance English class we were assigned to create a skit about discrimination and perform it. So my group and I, THE writers, choose the topic about racism to Latin Americans. So we created a scene, where a professional person has to go on a business trip and is wrongfully accused by a TSA agent. The TSA agent is a redneck U.S. citizen who believes all Latin Americans are illegal immigrants, dumb, and filthy “creatures”.

I believe doing this script is really important since still nowadays we have to deal with discrimination. I live in a Caribbean island, so that means I’m also Latin Americans, and racism also affects me and all my fellow citizens, too.

I also learned the process of writing a small play, and all the details and focus it needs to be done well. We have to think of everything, and don’t let a single detail out. So it was a little stressful when it came to writing the whole thing, but at the end it gave a great feeling to know we had created something out of scratch. Also we had to perform this play we wrote. Looking for the props, how to use them, the little space we had, and using the right tone so the audience could hear us was a real struggle. But at the end of the day, the struggle was worth it and I believe we did a good job. Also, my fellow classmates, who put on as many hard work as my group did, did an excellent job on their skits and we all gave a great message about discrimination and how should it be put to a stop.

"The 60's" by Mark Piznarski

So if you haven't read my recent post about the 1960s, please do so. Here is the link: http://jeanettemarquez.blogspot.com/2015/04/what-happened-1960s.html

So, like I said, I'm going to adapt the next two types of discrimination into the mini-series "The 60's" directed by Mark Piznarski; and these are racial and gender discrimination.

Let’s start with racial. In the movie we are presented with two families and one of these are the Taylors. The Taylors are an African-American family, and we are presented with a son, Emmet, and his father, who is a minister in a church. His father was a pacifist activist of the civil right movements. He believed that they could achieve their goal by being calmed and pacific, and showing the world how even when they weren’t being aggressive, “white” people still harmed them, and sometimes even killed them. We can see how the father gets beaten up at the beginning by sitting down in a “white” café, trying to make a difference. This is because “white” people didn’t believe that “black” and “white” could be at the same place, because “black” people were “less” than “white” people. Because of this and more discrimination to black people, Emmet believes the best way to stop “white” people, and prove them they could also be like them, was violence and creating a riot. We can see later in the series that this turns into a bad ending, since it gets the dad killed by mistake because of Emmet’s act of rebellion.

Next I’ll be talking about gender discrimination. Like I said before, there were two families. I already talked about the Taylors, now I’m going to talk about the Herlihys. The Herlihys were a normal “white” American family, with a housewife, a veteran, three children (one girl and two boys), and raised in a religious manner. What I’m going to talk about is the mother, the daughter and one of the son’s girlfriend, called Sarah. Ok, so I wanna be brief so sorry if I let things out. First of all, we have the daughter, Katie, who doesn’t like to follow the rules as to what a woman and girl should do, so she sneaks out to a party and sleeps with a musician. After this, she gets knocked up and her father accuses her of not doing things the traditional way, and how he was ashamed of her. So she decides to leave him and raise her baby on her own. For this, she seeks the help of the father, which really doesn’t help much, but at least haves a place where she can live and people will help her take care of the child. I believe she was brave, to go out to the world and do things by herself, considering this was an era where women didn’t had much power. Let’s continue to talk about her mother. This woman was a typical mom, who cooked, stayed home, took care of the children, and contributed to everything her husband did. We can see how she takes a stand against him when she decides to sign the petition her son was asking, that was to bring the troops homes and stop the war. The husband tells her how can she do that when he does not approves of such thing, but she lets him know how she respects his opinion but he also has to respect hers. For me this is very important, since women had little voice in this decade. Talking about women’s voice let’s talk about Sarah. Sarah was an activist against the war. So, she loved when this brave man stood in front of a bus to make a stand and had lots of good ideas to stop the war and human rights. We can see later on how, he treats her like a shadow and she can’t stand this because she wants her voice to be heard and that people take her seriously for who she is, not for the man she stands behind.

I know I could’ve go in deeper, but right now that’s all I can think of. I hope you could understand how discrimination affected in this decade, and be clear that there were more types of discrimination than the ones stated above. Thanks for taking the time to read!

What happened: The 1960s

When we think of the 60's decade we mostly think about hippies, peace, love, and the death of Kennedy. I can bet when this decade started most of the people thought it was going to be the change of an era where discrimination was going to disappear and was going to stop. Well, sad to disappoint you guys but it was nothing like that. Here I am to comment how the 1960s were in the USA.

We found discrimination everywhere in society in this decade. Discrimination coming from race to gender and even political believes. Even though these problems existed in the decades past this one, they performed an important part in the 1960s, since people created movements to go against these wrongful things. 

From the beginning of the 1960s, there was the Vietnam War in process and, as we know, the United States decided to interfere. This cause many people doubt were the government stands, since the US had nothing to do with that war and, still, they were sending a big number of troops to fight in a war that wasn’t even theirs. And this means killing unnecessary and providing violence instead of suggesting peace. It’s obvious the government did not like that and went against the peace activists that were trying to bring the troops home and stop the war. Also, as always, women were being discriminated, since people didn’t tend to believe that women have equal rights and are supposed to be housewives, or stand behind a man. Women were not expected to have a voice and be independent. The last, but not least important, type of discrimination I’ll be talking about is racial. Did you know that after years of being banned, the KKK surged back (supposedly secretly) in the 1960s? I think this is enough to say how black people were still being discriminated, and black people decided to continue the civil right movement since they considered it was unfair to them, which it was.

Ok, so I know it’s not much but there is a really brief summary of types of discrimination so in my next post you can know what I am talking about when I adapt what I’ve talked about into a mini series called “The 60’s”.

See you in the next post!

How about equality?

Trifles by Susan Glaspell is a one-act play that was performed on August 8, 1916. 1916. If you haven't read it, please go to this link,"Trifles", and do so. 

So if you read it, you know the story it’s about a murder. But even though the main idea it’s about an unsolved murder scene, there is a second topic I would like to discuss; and this is discrimination to women. Since the first scene, we can see how the sheriff, county attorney and neighbor practically ignore the women in the room, when they are talking and reviewing every step of the crime. In this time, women were shadows. Women were expected to know how to cook, clean, get married, have kids, take care of the children, stay home, keep everything in place, and tolerate the arrogance of their husbands. It was like this: if you were born a girl your job was to be a slave to the man you decide to marry. And don't get me wrong, some women like to clean, cook, take care of the house, etc. And that is not a bad thing; the bad thing is when women are obligated to do such things for a stupid society standard. And we can see this in this play.  The men start to make fun of women for commenting on the undone quilt, and asking if she was going to knot it or quilt it; which is ironic because at the end of the play that the answer to that “silly” thing that women are wondering, is metaphorically used as the verdict of the case. What is really unbelievable is that this play was written almost 100 years ago, and as of today, women still have to fight for rights and equality. If you are thinking “But it is better than it was 100 years ago” let me tell you, you are right. But even though it’s better, it’s still a problem in society how women cannot be taken seriously just for GENDER. OKAY, GENDER!!! Not intellectuality, responsibility, punctuality, teamwork; you know, stuff like that, but for THE GENDER THEY WERE BORN WITH. People, its 2015 and we still find it “odd” when a women wants to run for a political campaign, joins the army, it’s in the Supreme Court, CEO of a company, good athlete, etc, etc, etc. And yes, the widow did killed the man, but come on, she was that little bird in a cage, singing, wanting to be free and fly away, and her husband killed everything that made her human. She wanted to be free, to be able to live a life where she was no prisoner, so she chose to kill the bastard who took away her humanity. I’m not saying it was a good strategy, since she got caught and all, and murder is awfully wrong. But the husband had already committed murder, yeah, he killed his wife’s soul. And she wanted it back, so she did what she had to do. I repeat, I am not in favor of murder, but I am in favor of humanity and everyone deserves to be able to be happy and themselves. No matter the race, gender, ethnicity, type of music you listen, etc.; what matters is personality and that we all accept each other’s as we are: people.