Dear Ms. Silko

Ms. Silko:

First of all, I would like to thank you for addressing a topic as controversial as border control. As your essay showed, this is an issue that is easily and often swept under the rug by citizens and even government officials. Learning about the condoned behavior and actions of the Border Patrol was upsetting, but the sentiment in your words provided emotional insight into the border culture.

Your account of the Border Patrolmen and the dog was particularly unsettling and interesting. The anger of the Patrolmen was especially notable for how quickly they shifted their vexation from you and Gus to the dog. You later mention how politicians and media use dehumanizing and demonizing terms, and this is a perfect example of those in action. The Patrolmen did not see you and Gus as fellow humans, but as animals that are under the reign of the government and border. You did an impeccable job of representing this through the leash on the dog and the dog’s desire to not serve its masters. The patrolmen used the leash to restrict the dog’s freedom and to use it as means of control over the dog, but this did not keep the dog from rebelling in the only way she could. In the same way, the government and Border Patrol were trying to keep you and Gus, and millions of other people on the road, under their control. They use the border as means of restraint and limitation of liberty, but that does not keep people from doing what they feel they need to do. You mentioned you and the dog “exchanging looks.” I believe that you and the dog had a connection and understanding that night. You both know what it feels like to be restrained when all you want to do is “break loose.”

Thank you again for your informative and stirring words

Sincerely,

Samantha Welch

The Things I Carry

Trudging over the hills and through the swamps, I am accompanied by the baggage that I left behind. The look of loss and despair on my parents’ faces weighs heavily in my pack. I left them my original dog tag. Lieutenant Cross believes that I lost the first one, but I only pretended to lose it. The “lost” dog tag I gave to my parents, in hopes that when they rest their eyes upon my name, they will know that I am still alive, with the other dog tag around my neck. There was an air of betrayal between us as we said our goodbyes, knowing that I might not return.

     With each step of my weighty combat boots, I can sense the locket my wife gave me, moving around in my pack. Each step seems heavier and harder than the last, knowing that I am moving farther and farther away from her and the promise she made with the locket. Right before I kissed her goodbye, she said, “This is not goodbye. A piece of me and your child are inside this locket, and as long as you have it, you will have us.” This is all I have learned of our unborn child, and this weight is carried at my core.

     These memories I carry also carry me. The recollections of the days before the war are more pressing than the jungle humidity, but they are a reminder of why I press on each day. All of this is bearable, except for one load: the bars and stars on my arm. To the unknowing eye, they represent courage and progress. But to me, each piece is the poundage of a body: the bodies of the lives I have taken, that will never return to their families. 

Journal #13

There are two variations of the American Dream: the first is the mere idea. This is the American Dream in its pure form, because the dreamer has not yet experienced it. The second form is the true American Dream. This is only brought about through an attempted experience of the first form. For most, their American Dream will not follow the ideal path of the first variation. This is the case for Zitkala-Sa when she writes about her “School Days of an Indian Girl.”

            Her story commences in the hopeful light of the pure American Dream. Though she is being separated from her home and family, the separation will be a prosperous one. She will gain knowledge and prestige not just for her, but also for her whole family. Naturally, events do not continue along this progressive path, as is clearly stated when Zitkala-Sa says “I had arrived in the wonderful land of rosy skies, but I was not happy, as I had thought I should be” (430). Every immigrant who has ever travelled to the United States in hopes of fulfilling their American Dream has felt this same angst as Zitkala-Sa. She had been fed the heavenly images of “rosy skies” and liberating bliss, but this is never encountered. She says that she was “not happy, as I had thought I should be.” All that she had been told about her new life was not true, and after having to be disjointed from the only life she had ever known, she felt that she deserved to have her Dream.

            Zitkala-Sa did achieve one form of the American Dream. In her later life, she continued to rise above expectations and reinvent the norms for her race and gender. Whether she herself believed to have achieved the American Dream or not is nebulous. The closing paragraph of the excerpt from “The School Days of an Indian Girl” reveals that even victory and triumph in the eyes of her peers could not satisfy the discontentment that events and choices in her life had caused her and her mother.

Journal 12: Queen of Tact

“IT has been suggested to me that the American general reader is not well informed regarding the social and political conditions which have come about in the Sandwich Islands, and that it would be well here to give some expression to my own observation of them.”

This singular sentence demonstrates the self-control and tact that Queen Liliuokalani possessed and carefully employed during her reign. Instead of ranting about the appallingly small awareness of the “American general reader,” she delicately accepts the suggestion to properly inform those who did not know the social and political conditions, and writes a visceral and factual appeal that would affect anyone who read her words.

Journal #11: response to Melissa Yuen

Though I probably lack the authority knowledge to say so, I greatly praise Melissa Yuen for the connections she has drawn between the short story and poems from our reading. The country and culture of her origin are radically different from America and its culture, but Melissa recognizes the similarities between all humans.

            Melissa questions the wrongful sense of entitlement that white people still possessed long after the Civil War. This sense of authority had its roots the initial capture and transportation of Africans to America. White people looked upon the indigenous Africans as uncivilized and in need of socialization to the European culture. The white people thus empowered themselves by believing that they were superior to the Africans and giving themselves the duty of refining the African peoples. So I stress that in the eyes of the English settlers, the tribal Africans really were inferior. Once this mindset had been distinguished, it continued for several centuries, as we well know, and still continues today in various pockets of society.

As Melissa said, the readings portrayed whites in a very negative light. To truly understand the actions of majorities, which in this case was the white people, we must examine the reasons and leaders behind the actions. The whites (condemning blacks) did not see themselves as doing anything wrong, and they probably had many reasons to justify their actions. Though those reasons have been deemed invalid (as they should be), the beliefs of white people were still their beliefs. People will always believe what they believe, especially when there is a charismatic leader telling them that this belief will enhance their life. This is sufficient incentive, more often than not, for people to commit heinous crimes against their fellow man, and truly believe that their acts are justified. 

Not Even a Day is Built in a Day

            There is a common phrase that reads, “Good things come to those who wait.” This expression is most likely rooted in the Bible, specifically in the book of Psalms.  After reading E.W. Harper’s “Learning to Read” and Charles Chestnutt’s “The Wife of his Youth,” I had to do some waiting before coming to a realization that was worthy of documentation.

            The woman named Chloe in Harper’s poem helped bring some specific Bible verses to mind. Psalm 27:14 says to “wait for the Lord; Be strong; and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the Lord.” Chloe had to be patient and wait many years before she had the opportunity and freedom to learn to read. As Kaity Wegen said in her blog, there was not one specific “Aha!” moment, because gaining understanding of the poem was more of a “gradual process,” just as the process of literary freedom for slaves did not happen over night

            There is a female character in Chesnutt’s short story by the name of Liza Jane. She is very similar to Chloe in her patient waiting for what she knew to be true and worth waiting for. She had spent the last twenty-five years loyally searching for the husband of her youth after they had been separated during the war. Her faithfulness is comparable to Biblical faithfulness, especially in the book of Hebrews when Abraham’s faith and patience are tested. Liza Jane, just as Abraham, “after waiting patiently…received what was promised” (Hebrews 6:15).

            My final realization occurred when a parallel was drawn between the poem and the story. The lengthy struggle of patience and obedience that Chloe and Liza Jane endure embody the abolition movement. The cause of abolition did not appear overnight, and it took many years to bring awareness and support to the cause, but eventually they achieved their goal. The abolitionists faced innumerable obstacles, just as Liza Jane was doubted to “really…find her husband” (Chestnutt), and Chloe was told that she was “too late” (Harper) to waste her time attempting to learn to read at her old age.  The women’s unchanging devotion to their individual causes is the same devotion found among abolitionists to their cause. 

The Paradox of Constant Change

History is an odd thing. You begin learning the history of your home country at a young age, then the history of your state, continent, and the entire earth (or what we have come to know of it). While you are learning all of this, you are also creating your own history, and seeing how it connects to the histories of others. The most prominent aspect of history that I have made note of is its tendency towards being paradoxical. Societies and individuals, politics and technology, and intelligence and wisdom are in a constant flux and reinvention of themselves with the forthcoming generations.  

     Awareness of this common thread throughout the history of the world allows parallels to be made within the ever-turning wheel of history. During the Era of Reconstruction, Americans were struggling to find their place in the society that they had once known to be completely different. Caucasians were now alongside African Americans and former slaves, working on brand new inventions, such as barbed wire and the lightbulb. Also accompanying them or working below them were even more immigrants from Ireland, China, and various other foreign countries that had come through Ellis Island seeking a better life for themselves and their families.

     Modern Americans are still living among similar happenings. Americans are now competing for and collaborating on jobs with many more immigrants from Asia, and now the Middle East as well. They are now producing computers, iPhones, MRI machines, and a million other new technologies that arise every single day. And what is the inherent goal that all of these Americans have? To achieve a better life for themselves and their families. History will always be the same, because the wheel of change will always be turning.

Journal 8, Option 1

When comparing and contrasting John Brown’s last speech and William Cullen Bryant’s “The Death of Lincoln,” a very specific image comes to mind. I picture John Brown, though nine years Abraham Lincoln’s senior, as a young boy in a crowd. His father has taken him to listen to a memorial for Lincoln where Bryant’s speech is read. Brown is so struck by the heroic imagery and martyrdom of Lincoln that Brown decides, at his juvenile age, to take up abolition as his cross to bear.  

If I continue this image of John Brown a few years further, he becomes obsessed with the cause of abolition and his desire to follow the footsteps of Lincoln. Brown’s life in the perspective of the American dream is one of passion. He has found something to build his life upon, and he will stop at nothing to achieve it. He is even willing to die for it, just as Lincoln did. Lincoln’s life in the perspective of the American Dream is very similar, except that he went about achieving his goals in a more organized and civil way. In this sense, Brown almost seems like the overshadowed younger brother of Lincoln, wanting to exceed his older sibling’s accomplishments and going rogue to pursue them.

Brown would probably have liked to believe that his life and death were comparable to Lincoln, especially the in Bryant’s poem. Lincoln is depicted as a martyr and Christ-like savior, liberating the slaves. This image of him appealed to the majority of Americans at this time, because the majority belonged to some branch of Christianity. If Lincoln was the sage of abolition and savior to slaves, then to John Brown he was God, calling Brown to further “remember them that are in bonds as bound with them” and calling him to “act up to that instruction” (1356).  

Mother Imagery

         

The feeling of loss is not one to be easily dismissed. When one loses a relative to death, a friend to college, or even a book they were very fond of, that sense of emptiness is never completely filled again. In “The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother to her Daughters Sold into Southern Bondage,” John Greenleaf Whittier depicts the void of a mournful Southern slave mother through his employment of painstaking imagery.

Each of the six stanzas begins with the same vivid couplet: “Gone, gone, -- sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone…” (1220-1222). Whittier also ends the stanzas with that same couplet, in addition to the lines “From Virginia’s hills and waters; Woe is me, my stolen daughters!” (1220-1222). This piece of imagery is used so often in the poem that the reader feels imposed and repeatedly attacked by the burdensome statement of the mother. Now that this slave mother has been separated from her daughters, all of her days will be greeted and closed with the constant haunting of her departed daughters. This constant haunting has replaced the physical presence of her daughters, and the mother’s mind will always be filled with the possible whereabouts of her daughters, as seen in the imagery that Whittier uses to compose the centers of the stanzas.        

Bonus Blog: Incidents

         During the era of legal bondage in the United States, slaves were viewed with a very distinct and general stigma. This stigma was most often seen in the form of inferiority, especially unintelligence. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs combats this stigma with eloquent diction and vivid adjectives. When describing her master, she uses words such as, “contrived,” “blandest,” and “blighted” (776). When depicting the painful effects of slavery in her everyday life, Jacobs employed “constrained,” “abyss,” and “deliberate” (776-777). With certainty, many college students might not know the meanings of these words, let alone utilize them in their quotidian speech. Reading articulate designations such as these would have been surprising even to abolitionists and former slaves, in addition to shocking and almost unbelievable to slaves and slaveholders. What a rude awakening it would have been, to Jacobs’ former owners, to read her graphic and direct illustrations of them.

            Jacob’s also dedicates several sections reflecting upon her mental state at that time. After her master told her that he would build her a secluded home of her own, Jacobs firmly stated that she would “rather toil on the plantation from dawn till dark; I had rather live and die in jail, than drag on, from day to day, through such a living death” (776). Through her earnest and painstaking descriptions, Jacobs’ was able to show that she was more than just a toiling slave, lacking the brainpower to understand what she was suffering through and act to challenge it.

Quadoomed

            In Lydia Maria Child’s, “The Quadroons,” a character, Rosalie, is born with curse. As seen in the title, Rosalie is a quadroon: a person whose parents are a mulatto and a white person and who is therefore one-quarter black by descent. Amidst a time when multi-ethnicity was neither valued nor evidently common, Rosalie is suspended in an unshakeable web of multi-ethnicity. Her formative years are marked by ignorance of her place in society, due to the secluded cottage in which she was raised, out of reach of the walls “The edicts of society had built…of separation between her and them; for she was a quadroon” (Child 116).  This “separation” gets the best of Rosalie and her lover, when he leaves her for a woman of less ethnic diversity. After dying of a broken-hearted loneliness, Rosalie passes on her curse to her daughter Xarifa. Neither she, nor her mother could achieve complete happiness with their lovers because of their “proscribed race” (117). They were both doomed to the same fate, that which could only be broken by death.

            Rosalie and Xarifa represent the relationship between whites and slaves at this point in American history. The two races could not live side by side as equals, until there was a death to them both. This death could have been Child’s hope that in the future, as in death, everyone would be claimed by a power greater than themselves, which sees all humans as equals. 

The Wife

            Washington Irving’s “The Wife” would be considered unique and rare if it had been written centuries earlier, or in any of the centuries following its production. His view of women was quite radical at that time, and possibly even more extensive in the present.

When I think of an American married couple in the 19^th century, I usually imagine a marriage of convenience: they were of age, their families would benefit from their conjoining, and the husband needed an extra farmhand or maid. Obviously, this recipe is completely void of love.

Reading the writing of Irving, a man, whose words are a narration of the infectious love of another married couple, is quite striking when brought to my attention. So how significant must it have been at the time for women and marriage and America, to have an American man portraying his country and the people of his country in this light? In the perspective of Irving, America was a place of success and hardships. These trials were onerous if endured by one, but when in the company of a fellow American, one was encouraged to persevere.  Irving’s picture of marriage was a partnership of comfort and support, especially during the formidable days. And women, they were the epitome of balance: meek, yet strong, serious and spirited, firm and loving. This piece of literature would have been a great advertisement in England, targeted at people who were feeling oppressed, unloved, and weary of their lives and relationships.

            With his contemporary narrative, displaying marriage and America at their best angle, Irving solidified not only his place in literature, but also a place for women, marriage, and America in a world that was struggling to recognize their potency. 

Fast Times at American History

           Reading about America’s brief history that is so densely concentrated with excitement reminds me of the invigorating times that are occurring right now. Just in my lifetime that spans a brief twenty years, I have seen the creation and domination of the internet, the infiltration of computers at home, women assuming very prestigious positions in the government, the spread of mobile phones, the invention and influence of social networking sites, and the election of an African American president, just to name a select few. Who could have foreseen any of this a mere one hundred years ago?

            If there was some sort of blip in spacetime, and Thomas Jefferson was thrown into 2011, I wonder what he would think of these times. He would probably be surprised to see so few horses, none of which would be pulling wagons or carts, but even more surprised to see how dependent we have become on our inventions. Yes, technology allows us more time to do less laborious and menial activities, but most of the things we do with that extra time require less brain or physical effort than if we were completing those tasks. Every free moment we get, we are found checking facebook, our e-mails, our text messages, instead of reading a book or newspaper, two entities that were revolutionizing the time of Thomas Jefferson. I also imagine him saying something along the lines of, “China? Really? The next leading world power? Dang, America is probably doomed to linger in that shadow for a long time.”

            Everything around us is constantly growing and changing and reinventing itself. This is something that I love about America. From the prime of its history, America has never ceased to thrive nationally and germinate its seeds of development all over the planet, even beyond into outer space! I could attempt and make predictions about what will come for this country, but I know that any expectation I have will always be exceeded (in one way or another). 

To be an American

The Mayflower. A Thanksgiving feast with a tribe of Native Americans. Pilgrims with their silly buckle shoes and bucket hats. When I was in kindergarten, this was my definition of an American. As I progressed through school and learned more about history, my definition changed. There was a transition from that of English pioneers, to our founding fathers, Betsy Ross, and the freedom that only a majestic, bald eagle can display (or in the case of, a turkey). Somewhere in between third and fourth grade, there appeared within me an affinity for Native Americans.  After visiting Native American dwellings in places such as Mesa Verde, and developing a better understanding of their history and culture, I was able to define ‘American’ as a Wappo, a Sioux, or an Arapaho, to name a select few.

            The fourth and (at this point) definite change of what I considered to define an American, occurred during my junior year of high school. I was in a U.S. history class that was graced by a teacher who was tolerant, caring, and globally aware.  Between her influencing characteristics, and my multiethnic classmates from varied backgrounds, a fourth definition of ‘American’ was instilled in me, and still stands today.

            Being an American is a beautiful thing, because anyone can become an American. Any individual from any ethnicity, culture, country, and religion that comes to America in search of a better life and is willing to work hard to achieve that is an American. If you appreciate this unique place and consider yourself blessed to have been born or brought here, you are an American. I am proud to be a descendent of people who were true American pioneers, and I take pride in the good and hopeful opportunities that America still provides people.