This week we read 2 Native American folklore stories, and one darker story about growing up on a reservation. Below is a free write about the folk lore I wrote earlier this week. In the 2 stories, “Arrow to the Sun” and “Raven”, they both offer an explanation for something happening around us, for example, the raven story explains how we got the sun, it was made up in a time before we knew so much about our planets and solar system, so they made up a story to explain why we had a ball of light in the sky. And it was told for generations. Folklore can also teach lessons, like the story “the tortoise and the hair”, its a tale warning of those that are cocky and careless with their work. It also coined the familiar phrase, “slow and steady wins the race”. Stories like these usually serve one of those 2 purposes. All folklore has valuable lessons, they were made up by wise people long ago and they continued to be passed on because people still held that lesson in high respect. In a simpler world, solving religious conflict could be resolved by accepting lessons from kids stories into your life, but there is so much history and pain (like the "trail of tears") attached to these conflicts it would take a lot more than that to resolve them. We have made a lot of progress and things are getting better but life for Native Americans is not what it is for us, and the government has no idea how to work with the reservations.
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This weeks guiding question; What systematic expectations are placed upon people of color throughout United States history? How might these expectations still affect people of color today?
This week we read 2 stories by Langston Hughes, a social rights activist and poet, the one I will be talking about is called "One Friday Morning" and how it relates to our guiding question. In the story a young girl is denied a scholarship because she is black. The prejudices that people of color experience now are not usually as straight forward as the example in the story but even decades later people of color are facing the same prejudice roots in different ways. In a movie I watched with my school at the Napa Valley film festival it brought up a point I hadn't heard of before, our subconscious prejudices that seep into our everyday decisions. How we judge people based on a glance is often biased by race. In "One Friday Morning" she describes the American dream as it was stated in the pledge of allegiance, for liberty and justice for all. She and her teacher talk about how they will fight for equality for the next generation, we have these same discussions, we are the next generation of change. Just because racism isn't publicly accepted anymore doesn't mean there isn't more progress to be made. There is much work to do before our country is equal and completely undivided. The question I will be responding to today is, "How have major wars throughout United States history affected women voices in writing?" I read the two poems, "Viet Mihn" and "the Bombing of Baghdad" today, Both of these stories were written by women from Vietnam, Tra Thi Nga, and Wendy Larson, who moved to New York and collaborated on a book. These poems are both very serious and bleak in nature and what happened was a horrible tragedy but there is a silver lining, these women found a space to work together and be listened to after having this experience. Without it, they may not have been as well known as they are. At the moment, they are published writers and activists fighting for an issue that is very personal for them. We can't know what their lives would've been like if these events didn't happen but as of now, it sparked them onto an impressive life path that is spreading the word and immortalizing events that may have been forgotten and buried without people like them. Of course, no one would condone the sufferings they had, but for these women, it gave them a chance to show the world a very powerful voice.
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AuthorCaity Cattolica Tittle Archives
January 2019
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