"The Americano Dream" Angela M. Balcita

Being a personal narrative, this text has an interesting structure. I would suggest it might be either chronological or spatial essay. It is chronological, because the author encounters things that happen with her and her dad and they depend on particular timeline. At the same time miss Balcita might use the spatial structure as her order depends on what she encounters first, second, third (dreaming, making dreams come true, reality of them, living in reality, how that reality hits you etc.). 

The author compares a lot of things and uses the "if" effect. 

It is funny how she mentions the accent and how each immigrant can have distinguish sounds pronouncing particular words (i always compare "ranch" and "runch", "Buffalo" and "Byffalo" etc.). The subject of her essay is immigration and which way/ways it is affecting people. That is where her focus is. She evaluates the consequences of the immigration/moving to a different country, adjusting to that new world of unknown, the ability of getting used to live in it either bringing something of your own or blending with something that already exists there. 

Miss Balcita uses repetition (10) and dialogues (1, 4, 7, 8, 14). In the dialogues we could really hear her voice and its tone. At the same time the tone of the essay is somehow nostalgic in my opinion. 

There are 14 paragraphs in the essay.     

Her ideas include what really matters to her. Particular things that have significant meaning. Like the place you live, the clothes you wear and where you shop, accent, sports you begin to like/follow, things that scare or surprise you... Things that you have dreamed of as a part of you "americano dream" and the ones that became a part of your "american reality."

After the class discussion, appeared that our professor introduced us to the new style of writing called creative non-fiction. This creation is one of them. The paragraphs in the text separated by stanzas. Elements that suggest the main idea of the text are in bold and can be read in different ways. The author goes out of her way to compare the truth and the reality. The truth is the process of the naturalization, when the rest is just a dream. This essay shows how the author grows throughout the process of creating this piece which is the most significant part of writing.

"The Onion" article I chose

Dwight Howard Makes Talking Look Almost Effortless During Lakers Press Conference 

OCTOBER 27, 2012 | ISSUE 48•44 | MORE SPORTS NEWS IN BRIEF 

LOS ANGELES—Following a team practice Friday, sources confirmed that new Lakers center Dwight Howard gave an inspiring press conference performance in which he made talking look practically effortless. “He was running his mouth better than ever out there,” said Los Angeles Times reporter Helene Elliott, adding that Howard is “just a total natural” when it comes to incessantly rambling about winning NBA championships. “Having spent so much time out injured, everyone was a little worried that Dwight might not be able to blather on and on at the same level he once did, but he silenced any of those concerns right away with a few arrogant and self-involved comments. His mouth was moving so fluidly that it was like he wasn’t even trying. It was amazing to watch.” At press time, Howard was preparing for Tuesday night’s opening-season press conference by practicing forced smiles and fake laughter in front of a locker-room mirror.

Eudora Welty "The Little Store"

Seeing 2.

I like the fact that Eudore Welty using the photography and writing together, but at the same time, I feel that each of these elements reveal the unspoken truth about one another that each and every of us should discover themselves. It sort of breaks our imagination and let us face the reality without going on the journey of discovery.

Well in the image we could see the old man. As we suggest from the name of the photograph he is a storekeeper. The photo is black and white relating to the time it was taken in 1935. We can not really see the face of the man as one side of it is in the shadow and the other is stroked with the bright light. He is wearing dressy pants with suspenders and a shirt with a tie and a clipper (not sure of the right name of it) on it. It is interesting, but in 1930ies man were already switching to belts to hold their pants, while this man in the picture dated 1935 still wore the suspenders. One of his arm is on the vegetable and we might suggest that it is a sign of ownership over the store. Above the vegetables we could see bananas. Do bananas really grow in Jackson, Mississippi?! :-) In the background we could notice the phone machine (sign of connection to the outside world and other humans) and a poster of "Wright and Ferguson". It appeared to be a name of the funeral home in Jackson, MS, where the author grew up. It is interesting what kind of connections it might have as Eudora Welty mentioned that the family of the storekeeper as him himself "were the only people ever known to me who simply vanished." The store is made up of wood as we might suggest by the wood walls. 

Coming back to the man himself, besides the things that I notice about him, I could add that he sits leg over leg, one arm of the vegetable while other between his legs (it might be a sign of hiding something). He seems to look in the camera, but because if lightning we can not know this for sure. It is almost like he is looking through you in the middle of nowhere, in the emptiness. 

It might be that the image in the background and an old storekeeper reveal to us that one day everything comes to an end. Sooner or later the death will knock on your door, but the birds of life like in the background photograph will sing the song of life and prosperity by the lips of the younger generations. Who knows?

Eudora Welty "The Little Store"

Seeing 1.

I believe miss Welty is using chronological description to organize her reminiscences of running errands to the local grocery store. She encounters where her adventure started, how it proceeded until she reached her destination, what happened there, and finally what was happening on the way back. As well she mentioned that everything started when the sun was up and ended when the day was coming to the end and it was dark. 

I suggest that the author describes all these games she played as a child as an important part of her childhood, but as important as they might be, nothing will compare with the adventure to the store. She recalls quite interesting and amusing games as jumping rope, riding bicycle, dragging her steamboat,  catching lightning bugs, making parade on a singe velocipede etc etc, but as exciting as all these can be for a child, nothing will compare to the adventure to the local grocery store. That is why she recalls them: in order to point out their meaningless in comparison with her little voyage. 

It was interesting, but I noticed her using five senses before I even read the question. She was using our hearing, while mentioning the particular parts from the songs. We could sing them in our head, and could be discovering the rhymes from one line to the other (know-oh/Tickle-toe; Lindsey/influinzy). As well she used sight as her mentioning of the details were so descriptive that it was letting us to draw a picture of the elements in our imagination and see it in front of our eyes. She used taste and smell as she described the Lake's Celery (It was made by Mr. Lake out of celery). And each of us could taste celery in their mouth or smell its little grassy flavor. I felt using of the senses really enriched the story and gave it visual effect.

Eudora Welty used recollection of her childhood memories as a grown woman and as a person becoming a renowned writer. She was recollecting on the things that influenced her and shaped in that particular way. Specific evidence of her childhood perspective? Games and songs, creating silly rhymes, child's hand invited for a choice of candies, importance of the nickel...

The story was interesting and easy to read and I really enjoyed it.

"The Dispossessed" William Deresiewicz

SEEING 2:

Deresiewicz addresses in his essay the black and the whites, the gay and the feminists, the Jews, the working and the middle classes, the creators of the mainstream culture such as journalist, editors, writers, producers... But his target audience, in my opinion, should be considered the working class. Those who so-to-say got vanished over time. He declares so they get up and rise their voices again, unite with each other in order to create the strong community that has his own values and traditions, speak out for themselves, not let the middle class mainstream culturers speak for them, come out from the South and proclaim who they truly are. 

Bill Jones is black. He is artistic director, choreographer and dancer.

Roseanne Barr is white. She is TV producer, writer and director.

Barbara Ehrenreich is feminist, political activist and journalist.

Knowing this, we could assume, that black people will know people of the black culture like Jones; white people will be familiar with representative of mainstream culture as Barr; and finally activists of the feminist movement will be acknowledged who is Ehrenreich. 

Country Music Channel will be seen by "redneck" working class from the South. New Your Times will be read by middle and upper class, for those who able to subscribe or buy newspaper or those whose place of work subscribes to it.

And finally the first passage on page 534 describing the qualities of the working class, I believe, is very essential for the essay of Deresiewicz as it promptly notes what values and traditions the working class used to have, why it used to be powerful and how it used to help the community to develop in time. If the essay were written for a different audience, this passage would have not made any sense, but here and now it is an important part of author's work. 

"The Dispossessed" William Deresiewicz

SEEING 1:

The author defines the "working class" "as a first approximation" as a class whose members are someone who receive an hourly wage. But he admits that there will be a few exceptions. He suggests that working class excludes the true middle class and that the working class has "a very different relationship to their work and their workplace". The author defines the working class as the "American workforce". Those people who sometimes simply are getting unnoticed by us: "the ones who serve our food, ring up our purchases, fix our cars, change our bedpans."

Deresiewicz notices that we hear about the working class from the middle-class observers, those "who get paid to create mainstream culture - journalists, editors, writers, producers." The last ones are "masquerading" as working class even though they are not. As far as I understood, the author tries to prove the point of how one could write or represent the other one when the first has never been in the shoes of the other?! How could the least part of the country - the middle class - talk and make inferences about the majority of that country?! Why the only people who pay attention to the working class are the middle class ones?!

The virtues of the working class are the ability to be unionized, to have a working-class culture with the opportunity to have your own voices, cultural institutions, own sense of who participants of the working class are and what and how they do things. The main virtue of it used to be the ability of the working class to define themselves without depending on the middle class to define who they are. To be a worker used to be something to be proud of. To have the ability to have and pursue your own traditions and values, constituting your own community used to be the most significant part of it. Their virtues are such qualities as "loyalty, community, stoicism, humility, and even tolerance."

On the other hand their "vices tend to be the negative of bourgeois values," such as being "less temperate, prudent, thrifty, and industrious." The working class cares more about their families and communities than about their careers. They take life and their lifestyle for granted and do not strike for more in order to better yourself. 

The working class differs from the middle class, and their virtues and vices differ based on what they strive in life for, their values and qualities.

In order to distinguish working class, working poor, and working families, the author suggests that working poor is "to be called idle poor." It "reminds us how meagerly many jobs pay these days." Meaning that you might be still employed, but you make a bare minimum for your living/or existing. Working families have different values in mind: "the doctor struggling to pay for his kids to go to Harvard, the cashier struggling to pay for medicine". It means each family member works, but they have different goals in mind and different approaches of them. Based on two, Deresiewicz confronts that working class has been erased as a cultural category, but insists that it still exists in our society.

  

Dorothy Allison "River of Names"

When I read the excerpt "River of Names" from Dorothy Allison "Trash" for the first time, I was a bit confused. So later I reread it one more time and decided to read the bio of the author. Something seemed quite strange to me, as the excerpt contained, in my opinion, something that only the person who experienced similar things before in his/her life could describe so in details. 

Appeared I was right. 

Dorothy Allison grew up in poverty and was molested by her stepfather at the early age. Even though by the age of 11, her mother knew about, later in her life her stepfather kept sexually abusing her. She conducted a gonorrhea from him  and by the age of 20 it appeared, she could not have children.

So putting the pieces of the puzzle together, I could suggest that this is exactly what she is writing about in "River of Names". It is a story of survival, going through dealing with health issues and poverty. Even though the narrator is present in the story, we never hear her name. But we could assume that she is lesbian as her partner is another women. So does Dorothy Allison. This topic is very close to her heart and appears to be one of the subjects of her works. We might as well suggest that the narrator of the story is Dorothy Allison herself as she like a main hero are unable to have children. But at the very end we found out that the narrator had a person she was in love with. That person had a fairy-tale life, "that soft-chinned innocence" that gave the contrast to the excerpt. Comparison of life in poverty and life as a fairy tale. 

As well the narrator came out as a bastard. She was brought up by them and lived among them.

The name of the short stories is "Trash". Why trash? Well Dorothy was coming out of the family of so-called "white trash" which derives  form the word used as a racial slur against poor people from the South. That is exactly where the author grew up: in South Carolina.

The excerpt gets the title "River of Names" as there are many more members of the mentioned family. I think she uses here the metaphor "river" as river itself does flew in one direction, it has its beginning and its end and its derivatives so does a family unit. 

I think Allison uses particular words as "classically ugly healthy little boy", "infinitely fragile" to express her tone and point of view of the kids that getting born from "bastards." How fragile they in the beginning and who they are turned out to be.

Overall I liked the excerpt. It makes you think, getting into the details of writing, where the author hiding some parts and we, as readers, are going on a traveling adventure of discovering them.

Edward Hopper and the House by the Railroad II

seeing 2. 

Edward Hirsch (interesting coincidence with the artist Edward Hopper, speaking of their initials) focuses on the next:

- strange, gawky house

- the breath of the house

- someone started at the house

- the house being ashamed of itself

- fantastic mansard rooftop

- pseudo-Gothic porch

- its shoulders and large, awkward hands

- what house did to the people who once lived in it etc. etc. 

So to say he is showing the house in the most disgusting manner it could be shown. The author exaggerates with each and every element of it and the elements that the house is surrounded by. At the end from being focused on the house, featured as a single human being, in my opinion, the author shifts our attention to the whole nation, to the whole world. 

Hirsch uses personification giving the house the human abilities of having expressions, hands, someone being stared at, and someone doing harm to others.

The author create the mood of the poem by making particular word choices. Like strange, gawky, desperately empty, utterly vacant, utterly naked... - all of them create the pessimistic mood of the poem, utterly pessimistic. In my opinion these word choices help us better understand the mood of the poem, the focus and purpose of the author. 

I believe the poem exaggerates and help us more in detail to understand the whole idea of the painting, even though it might be going too much above the top. But like an artist, so does the author put a personal touch into it and find personal connections within it.

Edward Hooper and the House by the Railroad

seeing 1.

In House by the Railroad I feel that an artist Edward Hooper concentrates our attention on the lonely and all by itself house in the middle of nowhere. The house is surrounded by nothing, just empty blueish sky and hardly green but mostly yellow grass. And the funny part about it is that the color the house is painted in exactly the same as the sky, and its roof exactly the same as the railroad. 

Looking at the picture you feel loneliness and solitude that the life of the house is going through each and every day. There is nobody around, not a bird flying around, not a flower blooming. It is almost disgustedly calm and quiet. 

The structure of the house is very simple, sharp corners and even columns holding the front of it are almost under the pressure of doing its hard job. We can suggest that the body of the house is the skeleton or the skin.

As well I notice that the work was created in 1925, during the Great Depression where everything was dead and slowly on the way to coming back to life. The House by the Railroad captured here is right on the pick of that depression, showing to the world the catastrophe of humans. So that we might suggest the house is the epiphany to the whole nation during that period. Hungry, lonely, hopeless...  The railroad that is going right next to the house is the sign that like trains move through railroads to its destinations, the live of humans will be moving in any (right or wrong) direction, no matter what, passing the Great Depression. 

Or we might suggest that the house is the author - Edward Hopper - himself. As we read form his bio, he met his wife only in his forties, so after he did this painting. His life before was different, lonely and pointless, from what it turned into after he met Josephine. It is appeared his train reached his final destination, so I hope the House by the Railroad would be.

the uncommon life of the common objects

What gives ordinary objects their value?

There are different approaches to how we assign value to things. Akiko Busch determines "both monetary and sentimental value"(equals to symbolic value). Monetary -  various price value, whether this or that object belonged to a particular public figure. Or whether it was designed and produced during particular time. Sentimental value depends on our own relationship to the object(s). 

As well value may be defined by the way of "objects tell(ing) stories more eloquently than people". In this case "the price" will definitely go up. 

We create a psychic intimacy with the physical objects that we have/own and the value grows in our eyes. 

"Our objects signal who we are" - here the value of objects determine the price and value of our own selves. 

Some "souvenirs of catastrophe" "will speak to generations about the World Trade Center" - meaning the ordinary objects would help us to reflect on particular events that happened in the past, so obviously their value will increase as well. "To be a souvenir hunter is to be HUMAN". 

The ordinary objects "of the physical world" create "a place where mystery, logic, and pleasure coincide". No matter what object is the subject of our conversation or everyday life, it value will be determined by its ability to be unique, simple and enjoyable for each particular person.

In my opinion ordinary objects become valuable because of our own relationship with them. So I agree with Akiko Busch about her sentimental approach to things. We put value in the objects ourselves depending on what, when, where, with who and how we get them into our possession. What emotions or feelings they fire up in our soul and mind. They tell stories about our own selves to the world and to the public and only extraordinary mind will see it in the ordinary objects that we are surrounded by. Those "inanimate objects" are (without a doubt) "our partners in experience" of life and humans. They help us to visit the hidden islands of our memories.