As I stated in my blog from the other day, this past weekend I went to Texas to visit my uncle who lives there, while it was an amazing weekend, there was one thing there that bothered me. Yes, my uncle lives in an area with many cowboys and although it is rural and city, in the little town where we did some shopping most of the stores are geared towards cowboys and cowgirls. In one particular store that was actually very nice and had many cute items, one thing stuck out to me. There was an Indian sitting in a chair, a 'fake' Indian man in an outfit just sitting in a rocking chair and the man told me his name was Bob. I was wondering why there would be an Indian just sitting in the store in a rocking chair near the food area. The man working there told me it is just to simulate that cowboys and Indians now get along. I wasn't exactly sure what to think, I believe it gave more of the impression that cowboys and Indians the game is still something that is considered okay. I was not sure how to look at it, but I did snap a picture of "Bob" and I will upload it to this post. I think that this weekend has allowed me to look at the topic for next class on "what does it mean to be American?" I think it means pride for yourself and pride for your country but being born here doesn't necessarily mean you are American, I think you can be American and be born half way around the world, if you believe in yourself and your country, ours being the USA, in my eyes your American, no matter what color, skin, ethnicity, etc. I have not yet read the readings for class but I am going to do that soon and see more about how I feel about what it means to be an American.
Today was a very interesting class. I liked the articles we read and I thought the discussion on Becoming Namio Leon was very interesting. Something that I wanted to say but didn't get a chance to say was this: I think that the book was well written and on many topics that were all brought into one, heritage, disability, addiction, coming of age story. That being said, I did not care of Skyla. She was not a mother that needed to be in these kids lives. Her addiction to achololwas stronger then her and she was not getting any better. She was two different people, one person while she was drinking and drunk and one person when she was not drinking. Although the person she was when she was not drinking she was a better person, but still a mother who really loves her children and cares for them would not want "only one" and I don't care what anyone says no matter how much the boyfriend (Clive) had to do with it, a mothers love for her child is UN breakable, and she was broken. I think the book opened up a lot of our eyes and I'm glad that we could all discuss this book with respect for one another with different opinions. I have started reading the books for my final project. So far I have read a book called "GRL 2 GRL" it was very interesting. It was a collection of different stories about girls who are gay and those who are transgender and the experiences they have gone through, all told from their point of view. I understand that we each have our flaws that we don't like and sometimes those flaws get picked on when in school or what not, but these poor women were tortured by others because they were gay or transgender and didn't want to be girls. My eyes have really been opened with this piece of literature and I hope that there are less and less people like that out there each day because we have to realize that we must accept people, even if we do not agree with things they do. Just like Skyla, I'm sure she had her positive moments, although those were not really seen in the book, she is person that needs help and I don't agree with the things she did, I do agree that she has potential if she WANTS to get help and if she really tried and wanted to, could be a good mom to BOTH of her children. I hope that the next few books I have to read for my project open my eyes even more. I will say that I have judged people before, and I don't like that I have done that. And through looking for the scholarly articles I hope to find more peoples opinions on literature of this nature and what it means to other people. On my last note, this weekend I am going to be in Texas for my uncles birthday, and I am going to keep my eyes open for anything that I can share during, "seen and heard."
So, I think I am going to change my final project topic to Transgender, instead of my original choice of African Americans. I think the reason I would like to change to this new topic because I realized that in class we have discussed African American literature, and I wanted to research something new. I have seen a few specials on TV about Transgender children, and I think it is a very powerful thing. I was really taken back by how confident these children were, and at such a young age with themselves. I think it would be interesting to see what kind of articles there are out there about this topic. On a different note. This morning while I was taking an online quiz for another one of my classes, I was watching Saved by the Bell. It was an episode about raising money for the cheer leading squad to get new uniforms. They held an date auction for the guys and the money raised would be donated to the cheerleaders. Well, this upset me at first because they had the "geek" as the show would label raise only 15 cents. Just because he is smart, wears glasses and spenders and walks with a hunch, he is a geek that is only worth 15 cents. Then the athlete makes about 50 dollars. And then it is Zach Morris's turn. He gets bet on by all the ladies, and the one that wins is an overweight girl who pays 100 dollars. This really ticked me off- after she won Zach looked stunned and had to be pushed next to her and his face was a face of disgust. This is sooo wrong! I don't understand why. The girl was cute, nice, funny, smart and the only reason he was upset was because she was heavy. What kind of message does this send to young female viewers watching? It is an issue of diversity because as we all know, overweight people are just as unaccepted as others. It just really ticks me off, because its so unnecessary. Anyways, those are my thoughts for the day-
I am just coming to the end of my spring break, and I have started some much over do time for homework. I just recently finished reading "Becoming Naomi Leon." I am not sure how I feel about it, I don't really see how it relates to the class, except for the fact that Naomi and her family are Mexican/Spanish. I mean, the book did focus on their families and what they find important and their holidays/religions and such, but I also felt it more focused on the situation with he mother and taking the child and not wanting the other soon because he was a little different. Now that I have typed that all out, I suppose the book does relate to this class! It is a diverse book with many different aspects that children of different cultures might experience. Well, since I just contradicted myself! That's that, I will be interested to talk and write about this book for my questioning the text, although at this point I have no clue what I'm going to ask because I still am not sure how I want to approach this book. Anyways, this past week I volunteered in my friend's mom's classroom in Detroit. She is a 3rd grade teacher and during silent reading I noticed many of the children were reading books that were written in Spanish, as many of the students in the class are Hispanic. I thought that was very interesting, because everything is taught to them in English. Also I wanted to post about what I want to do my final project on. I wanted to focus on the group of children's books that focus on Obese and overweight children. I think weight is a very important aspect of a child's feeling about themselves and how others view them, even more so then race, culture, etc. I feel passionate about this topic, and hope that I can find books that I can do this on! We will see how many books there are once I check out the library. By the way..has any one's face book changed over to the new version! Mine just did and I must say, I am not a fan!
