...makes a memoir? Name - _____ ______ School-> __ __ Author Note: This assignment is being turned in on (DATE __/__/__) for ( Teacher-> ___ ____ online Comp 1 Course. * Which memoir did you select? I selected "The Good Immigrant Student" by Bich Minh Nguyen. * What is the theme of the memoir you selected? The theme of the memoir was, how she is a foreign student feeling like an outsider. * Based on the author's biography provided in the textbook, how do you think their background influenced the memoir you read? Bich Minh Vguyen felt alone, scared and she stated several times invisible. She was a Vietnam refugee who escaped when the war came to an end. She felt like an outsider trying to get by without drawing much attention to herself. She lacked social ability as a child and learned through her differences of being observant, quiet and listening. * Have you experienced something similar to what the author reflected on in their memoir? How did it affect you? Although we are much different I also found myself fearful of being called on, asked to speak or read out load in class. Partake in presentations or anything which included me standing in front of a class room and judged by my peers. It affected me in which I felt people would laugh at my inability to read fluently, how people would judge me, how I would be observed while giving speeches in front of class while my face would turned a shade of red and a change to my voice as if the words I were...
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... A Reflection on the Effects of Memoirs The primary purpose of my research paper is to present a cross-section of the current conversations taking place around the way memoirs affect the writers who publish them. Based on my research, it appears that the effects tend to involve emotional and psychological consequences, as well as legal troubles in some instances. The discovery of this conversation helped me to refine my research topic into the question, “Do the benefits of publishing a memoir outweigh the risks of their effects for writers?” This research explores the positive and negative effects of memoirs on their writers to determine whether or not the risks are worth the rewards. Although writing a memoir can result in lawsuits and family discord, it more often proves to be therapeutic and can be the starting point of a nonfiction writer's career. What if I told you that memoirs are incredibly important to our society, because they document the human experience in such an honest way? Although they are valuable, they can also be risky. One key issue is that a memoir’s admissions risk causing major drama for writers, including legal trouble. In addition, they can be a catalyst for burning bridges with former employees. They can also potentially destroy long-term personal relationships. In this paper, I work to discover if it is worth all the drama to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. As I began my research, I initially uncovered several negative...
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...Prompt #2 The way that I reacted when Jeannette Walls said, “We didn’t have food but at the same time, we were luckier than other kids”, was that she was finding reasons to be grateful. As a child Jeannette Walls lived in extreme poverty with parents who were not supportive financially, or emotionally. In order to cope with the downs of her childhood, Jeannette Walls, tells herself that she didn’t have it as bad as other people. A couple ways one could look back on Jeannette Walls’ childhood and find ways that she was ‘luckier’ would be to look at the valuable life lessons that her dad taught her. “We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa myth and got nothing for Christmas but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. ‘Years from now when...
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...to Halloween of 2005, my memory of this night is one of a comical nature. I was dressed in a white unicorn onesie, with no cares in the world and an excitement about All Hallow’s Eve that still exists today. Around the third hour of trick-or-treating, I remember stumbling, due to the darkness, and falling into a ditch. In my mind, this was quite a deep ditch, more of a hole, and it took a lot of both time and effort to remove my six-year-old self. When asking my aunt what really happened that night, the answer was much simpler: I stumbled and fell into a small ditch, about five inches deep, and then stood up...
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...me is A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, which was written by Ishmael Beah. The book is about Ishmael and his older brother and how they survived during the war in Sierra Leone. The boys live in horrific conditions and under a constant risk for their lives. The only thing that keeps them going is their hope, faith, love and memories about their family since they were told that there family was alive. However, due to the heartbreaking circumstances, the boys do not meet their family. As a consequence of such a cruel surviving, Ishmael and his friends are forced to become fearless child soldiers. However, Ishmael is eventually rescued by the United nations where he undergoes complete rehabilitation in the United States. Ishmael’s book inspires me to fight against injustice and crimes. I was born in Nepal, where we moved from, to the current residence in the US. Nepal is also under great political instability and social differences. Hence this book inspired me to fight against injustice and crimes. As a consequence, I am trying to make people aware by encouraging my friends and family to educate the Nepalese citizens. The book also provides a unique perspective of the dark sides of civil wars. I have learnt not to judge people instantly because their upbringing may have been completely different. Here, at the community college, I have met friends from different cultures and backgrounds. I have listened to their stories and realized how wrong I would have been to judge...
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...Culture consistently informs the way one views others and the word, two examples of this are "Two Kinds" and "By Any Other Name". The first example that displays how culture informs the way one views others and the world is in Amy Tan's Novel Excerpt, "Two Kinds". Across the novel Tan writes about a child trying to fit into a new culture. In the novel it says, "We didn’t immediately pick the right kind of prodigy. At first my mother thought I could be a Chinese Shirley Temple"(Tan, 18). The excerpt shows that Tan's mother tried to make her fit into American culture. Her mother does this by forcing Tan to be a prodigy of Shirley Temple. The second example that displays how culture informs the way one views other and the world is in Santha...
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...CULTURAL SOCIETY: “MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA” By Ariane Coleman American Intercontinental University September 04, 2011 CULTURAL SOCIETY: “MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA” America has been considered as the “melting pot” since the beginning of civilization. Consequently, varying styles, theories, cultures and norms of these people within the melting pot have made it difficult for Americans to have norms that are entirely independent of any one cultural influence. Although some other ethnocentric cultures view “westerners” as a loose and uncouth nation, I must admit that a look into the Japanese geisha practices raised both of my eyebrows. “Geisha literally is a “performing artist.” In Japanese, “gei” means art and “sha” means people or person.” (Missouri Botanical Garden, 2011) A performing artist in western culture depicts MJ, Elton John, and some of the greats from American pop culture. Conversely, this is not the circumstance in the case of geisha. Regardless of the sociological perspective we can conclude the same things: Norms are not to be violated in spite of the culture. If they are defiled then there are consequences. However, such consequences that I deem appropriate are irrelevant due to the extreme expectations that society places on women in these positions . Let us first consider the primary institutions involved in the lives of geisha women. In Memoirs of a Geisha the Japanese cultures’ norm is drastically different from the “ideal” American’s norm. There is...
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...In this paper, I argue that Alison Bechdel shows the reader that she and her father are inversions of one another through visual and textual evidence throughout Fun Home. The two are homosexual and struggle with expressing their true identity due to what society believes is the gender norm. Gender is so inescapable that in our society we assume it is in our genes and these definite responsibilities run the way we live in the most profound and inescapable ways. It makes it difficult for people to express who they truly are. Society has expectations of gender and gender norms. This is because gender is one of the ways that we as humans organize our lives. In the novel Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, the reader is able to see these societal expectations in the memoir....
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...When writing a memoir, the goal of the author becomes very different than in novel or other fiction-based writing. The writer is not just telling a story, they are relaying the story of their life and it important to make the reader interested and realize why it is they chose to tell this story to begin with. A memoir is the most personal form of written word, which puts a greater demand on the writer to produce the best quality work they are capable of. There is a certain defensive aspect that comes along with memoir writing. No matter how happy or horrific the story is, it is the author’s natural instinct to defend it. Similarly in everyday life, there are things that people are naturally inclined to defend such as family, friends, or the way in which someone chooses to live their life. Maybe their choices or actions aren’t exactly admirable or necessarily considered “right”, but nevertheless they defend them if anyone were to ever challenge them about their legitimacy. In Jeannette Walls captivating memoir, The Glass Castle, the reader becomes enthralled with Jeannette’s constant battle between defending her family and the greatness she hopes the Walls will amount to, and settling for the fact that her family is based off of false hope and senseless lies with her incredible story telling techniques. The time the Walls spent living in Welch, Virginia serves as a major transition period for everyone in the family. While Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen were...
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...There are child soldiers throughout the world that no one knows about, who are forced to fight in wars with no cause like Ishmael Beah. The memoir A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah is appropriate for the Sterling High School English IV curriculum because the content of the text has connections to the real world and the text is complex enough that the reader has to infer information about the circumstances Beah is in and the ability of humans to come out of the devastating effect of war. Throughout the memoir, the reader has to connect Beah’s scenarios with the outside world for a better understanding of the content in the memoir. In general, while Beah is in New York with other child soldiers he states, “Some of the children had risked their life to attend the conference” (196). Here, Beah connects his circumstance with others to portray that there are child soldiers all over the world fighting battles and risking their lives for a cause they do not believe in. The reader gets a better understanding of the outside world from the content of the book because they have to make connections with what is happening outside of their comfort zone. This is appropriate for English IV curriculum because the reader begins to understand the world from Beah’s explanations of what he has been through to understand the reality and toll of war. Furthermore, during the beginning...
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...terrifying ordeal began. This horrific experience is now known as the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a shameful part of our past, where the Jews of Europe and other minorities were persecuted by Nazi Germany. The Nazis treated them inhumanely in concentration camps, forcing them to endure harsh working and living conditions as they tortured and killed them. To this day, survivors are telling the tales of how it changed their lives. In the memoir, Night, by Elie Wiesel, he talks about the terrible and inhumane things he had to endure. The Nazis had purposely treated these innocent, everyday people inhumanely every single day they were in their custody. The Nazis were a very cruel group of people who absolutely despised the Jewish population and all they stood for. When they believed the Jews stepped out of line they resorted to the extreme punishments, most inhumane. The memoir Night gives a picture of this when Wiesel writes about a time he had caught an officer doing something he shouldn’t have been doing, “I obeyed. Then I was aware of nothing but the...
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...This Boy’s Life is a memoir written about the author, Tobias Wolff, childhood memories and his growing pains during the 1950s. Throughout the memoir, Wolff goes through a process of discovering his own self-identity. (A process that many adolescent faces.) As described before the passage, being realistic about his identity makes him feel bitter. Jack doesn’t approve of himself and rather identify himself as another person. On page 213 and 214, Jack is writing his own recommendation letters from his “teachers” to get accepted by prep schools. After the passage, he describes how he and his friend would fight each other. Here, Wolff explores the theme of self-identity through hyperbole, humor, tone, connotation, and more. In the first paragraph,...
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...very complex and often self-destructive family system. Jeannette Walls's memoir Glass Castle begins with her riding in a taxi through contemporary New York City on her way to a party. As she looks out the taxi window, Jeannette sees her mother digging through a dumpster. Even though her mother had been homeless for years, Jeannette was all of a sudden filled with shame and gloom about her mother's life. Jeannette then begins to reflect on her childhood and how her Mom and Dad's choices affected her. The story then transitions to a three-year-old Jeannette and her story of catching her dress on fire while cooking her dinner. After a few days in the hospital, Jeannette's father shows up, lifts Jeannette out of bed, and leaves the hospital without paying the bill. The memoir continues with the family moving town to town in the American Southwest. Only staying in one place until Jeannette's father could no longer hold a job, or her mother demanding they spontaneously uproot and start again. Jeannette's father's paranoia about the state and organized society, coupled with his alcoholism, leads them to move more and more frequently. Finally, they settle down in a small mining town, Battle Mountain, Nevada, for a few months; where Jeannette enjoys adventuring in the desert to escape her current world. Jeannette's mother even takes a break from her art projects to hold down a job as a teacher to extend their stay. This stay only lasted till an altercation with the law forces the family to...
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...students were chosen to help follow through with this plan. In Melba Pattillo Beals’ memoir, Warriors Don’t Cry, she shows her experiences at Central High and how they helped shape and characterize herself into the person she is today. She reveals to us that strength is not the only thing that helped her succeed in her fight for equality. Beals shows that she is brave, hopeful, and prideful; giving her that extra push she needed to get through her...
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...Imagine for a minute: you are a teenager that is dedicated to your religion and just a loving person in general. Now, you get ripped from your home and everything you know and are subjected to horrors that you can't even begin to believe are real. This is what happened to the author, Elie Wiesel, in his memoir, Night. Elie faces traumas that make him debate his religion throughout the book. At the beginning of the book, he is spiritual and hopeful, he begins to lose his faith as time passes, and at the end he is silent of his beliefs. As a young boy, Elie wanted to learn about his religion and have a deep spiritual life. He is persistent and strives to keep a close connection with God. According to Wiesel, his father “wanted to drive the...
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