Remember By Necolena Wittrock

I would hide my frustration from my parents and they kept encouraging me to try but in some cases were trying hard to find the right process to help me read. My older brother would read The Little Golden Books to me and I would memorize the words on the page then recite them as if I was

As I read many of the essay in This I Believe edited by Jay Allison I felt like many of them related to my life, some more than others. Out of the many essays in This I Believe my favorite is “Remembering All the Boys” by Elvia Bautista. This is my favorite essay because her and I share many of the same beliefs and views on treating people with kindness and compassion no matter what wrong they’ve done to you or your family, which are core values my family instilled in me at a young age. At one point in her essay she says, “My brother was sixteen when he was shot by someone who liked red, who killed him because he liked blue”(17). A few lines later she says “And we will go together and bring a big bunch of flowers enough for both of these

Anya’s Ghost written by Vera Brosgol in 2011, is a graphic novel that uses a ghost to help Anya experience new things about the world while also learning how to embrace her Russian heritage. This follows an average teenage girl that is struggling with body image, acceptance problems, loneliness, and anxiety. Anya tries to get rid of her cultural identity at her school, and hopes to fit in like everyone else. However, she feels that she is not fully able to do this. She meets a friendly, innocent ghost named Emily who helps her navigate through her highschool life after winning over her friendship by helping her talk to her crush, and cheat during an exam.

The book I read was Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. The title of the book represents so much of the entire book even though it’s just one simple word. The main character, Melinda, was raped at a high school party while she drank too much. She later called the cops and lost all of her friends. After the party, she was an outcast.

Never Give Up Never Back Down Forgotten Fire written by Adam Bagdasarian is a novel about the horrific events during the Armenian Genocide. Invictus written by William Ernest Henley is a poem that focuses on the human spirit and its ability to overcome adversity. In both writings, the authors address the reader about the hardships of life and how to conquer them. Within the two works, Forgotten Fire and Invictus, the authors, both show the importance of never giving up and never losing hope.

Throughout her short story “Recitatif”, Tony Morrison analyzes the politics of race and disability. Morrison highlights our tendency for subconsciously categorizing one another based on outside appearances. This demonstrates how deeply racism and other prejudices are engrained in us. It is disheartening because we try to squeeze an entire person into five single letters. Are they B-L-A-C-K or are they W-H-I-T-E?

Ribbons (2011) is a free verse poem by ali cobby eckermann that effectively illustrates the thematic concern of having a dual national identity and being part of aboriginal - australian culture. The poet accomplishes this by a soulful tale, leaving behind the people she knew best and expressing herself being “tied” to the land forever, outlining her lifelong spiritual bond with the land and its people. eckermann reveals that a firm bond is established between her and the land wherever she may be through poetic devices and techniques such as poetic structuring, repetition, symbolism, and characterisation. Characterisation of the children as being young “anangu” is shown in stanza 1 of ribbons. Anangu, the defining term for australian aborigine is reflected in the children identifying their national identity as being part of australian and aboriginal culture.

Change by Rape Only 7% of the perpetrators of sexual assault are not related to the victim based off of reported cases that RAINN, a National Sexual Assault Hotline, recorded. The book Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, shows where this statistic is true. Following the protagonist, Melinda Sordino, during her freshman year after having been raped in the summer, the book highlights external factors that affect her identity. She struggles to cover up what happened while she meets new people who change her identity in many ways, sometimes helping and other times changing it for the worse. The main people who externally affect her identity are her parents; her peers; and her rapist, Andy Evans.

Richard Rodriguez’s autobiography, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, depicts his transformation from a socioeconomically disadvantaged first generation child of Mexican-American immigrants to a successful author, academic, and intellectual. During his metamorphosis, however, Rodriguez goes through an arduous process of assimilation that grants him a mastery of the English language and an embrace of American culture at the expense of his cultural heritage. His struggle to find a balance between these two worlds is prevalent throughout his autobiography, demonstrating the complex nature of identity and the manner in which language and culture impact it. In the text, identity seems to be formed at times around perceived similarities,

All throughout Catherine Chung’s novel Forgotten Country, people choose not to let their feelings be known. Sometimes people want to forget the past and they think that their memories are too painful for them to be worth remembering. However, if one is silent about their feelings, it only makes them harder to be understood. When people cannot understand each other, they grow further apart due to misunderstanding and emotional distance. Silence can even tear apart families.

Courtney Bell Mrs. Biddle and Mrs. Yates Competroy of World Literature Period 8 25 September 2015 Summer Assignment Legend by Marie Lu is a young adult fiction, and an action novel. The book is written about two separate teenagers lives that intertwine with each other. It starts off with Day a criminal that is on the run from the government called Republic. He has a series of crimes that goes against the government so he can never return home and be with his family ever again because if he does he will be sentences for his crime.

That day, I saw Rebecca for the final time. I run, run until I can’t feel my feet anymore, run until I can’t see anyone in the massacre behind me. I stop. I look. I hear.

All I wanted was for the pricks to stop. Finally that inescapable darkness feeling overtook me. This time I welcomed it like a warm blanket that would keep me safe from all the pain. As I lay there in the hospital bed inert and mute, my mom stayed by my side. My grandma had to pry her hands from the side of my bed just to get her to go check on Kaden.

From a very young age, about 5, I remember reading being the easiest thing I knew how to do. Most kids in my school hated it, but I had a passion for reading. The liberating feeling, and sensation of being able to do something on my own, encouraged me to read even more. Two people

The history of my literacy has been a long road of a frustration and learned lessons. As a child, I was a bit of a loner so reading and writing were the closest thing to a social life for me. The things that I bottled up inside came out through my writing and it became somewhat of a pass time for me. As long I could remember literacy as has been an important value for me in my life because from very young age I got express my true self without being judged by the outside. Even though in my later years I would deal with some heartaches and set back that lead me to give up on my love for reading.