There have been a multitude of things I’ve learned this unit. One being how things can have more than one meaning. When we covered Claudia Rankine; she introduced for the first time this year how we must dig deeper to find other perspectives or be put in other’s shoes. In one of her poems Rankine says “You and your partner go to see the film The House We Live In. You ask a friend to pick up your child from school.” Just one way emersion she tries to bring to you. Another thing to be brought to my attention is how things can have two different sides to the same coin. For instance, Ronald Reagan and Dinaw Mengestu. Both mentions how they view their cities/ country, but both do it from different experiences. Regan talks about how he sees America as a proper nation and Dinaw seeing New York as a melting pot of cultures that he enjoys listening to.

Looking at Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif”, the story is told with two girls from the children’s shelter. I enjoy Toni’s idea of letting the reader know that the girls are friends but different races of white and black. She does an excellent job of making the reader decide who is white and who is black without directly telling you. This work stuck with me because of its uniqueness, never have I ever seen an author use this kind of style. “Recitatif” from my perspective could almost be described as a suspense, mystery just from the aspect of the “race bating”. A similar work I can compare this to would be Marvels “Guardians of the Galaxy”, a group of heroes that could  also be seen as vigilantes, bandits. Of course for the sake of the movie they are good guys but if you strip it down it could be left up to the audience to determine their actions. The works while similar in a way are still very different. Aside from the obvious that one is about two girls that keep meeting up in life versus a group of space guardians. One is a coming of age story amongst a group of misfits who band together for the common good. The other about two characters with common and humble beginnings who live their life and end up in very different situations. This work taught me that racial stereotypes do not mean anything. One character becomes successful while the other lives a more stagnant life. All while the reader never knows which race is living is what life, showing that it does not matter what you are but what you do to get there. 

I enjoyed the meanings behind the work of Robert Frost’s “The Mending Wall”. At face value this is just a poem about an elderly man who fixes his privacy wall every spring after it breaks down every winter. Thinking deeper one can say that the old man fixing the wall in the spring is him not accepting change from things that decay in the winter. As in the he has a hard time keeping up with the times of society so he keeps his wall up to block things out and keep his ways in. This writing reminds me of a song from J.Cole called “neighbors”. In the song he talks about moving from one neighborhood to a predominantly white neighborhood but, he keeps from over spending on his items to not draw unnecessary attention to himself even though he makes his money legally. I make this comparison because in the song, J.Cole is staying the same to keep himself safe in a way; same as the old man in “ The Mending Wall”. “I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each”. 

I think “Roger Malvin’s Burial” is an okay read with okay moral. The story sort of reads as a karma story when all is said and done. The fact that Reuben leaves Roger there in the woods only to marry his daughter and later “accidentally” kills his son. It’s hard to tell if Cyrus’s death was accidental or not but it was more of a if he had to the chance to take him out he would situation. I believe that Rueben wanted to clear his guilt so he took a shot at something close to Cyrus with the mind set of “if it hits him it hits him”. There’s a scene from the “The Walking Dead” where Carl Grimes gets shot by a man named Otis in the woods who was originally aiming for a deer but ended up hitting Carl instead. This is a work that reminds me of the story. This story stuck with me because of how morally wrong it was. I just did not understand how someone could keep a secret like this for that long and then clear their consciousness by taking out their child. 

I thought that “Saving Sourdi” was interesting being that it was the younger sibling that saved their older sibling from trouble. Normally any form of media or literary work has the older sibling as the mature, responsible, hero saving their younger sibling and cleaning up their mess but not this one. This story was not that challenging on the mind, I felt as if it was easy on the reader but, still a good story. I found that a situation in WWE weekly TV show, there is a faction called the LWO where senior member Rey Mysterio was attacked by newly joined member Santos Escobar. This is when the young luchador Dragon Lee came to the aid of his idol. Making the comparison of the young saving the old.  

I enjoyed the creativity of Kate Chopin’s “Desiree Storm” telling the story of adultery using a storm. Theo work itself was just alright to me since I’m not the biggest fan of love affairs. This reminds me of another J.Cole song called “Kevin’s Heart” which is a play on the comedian Kevin Hart’s name. The song tells the story of an affair and how the bad choices will always come to light no matter how long it takes. 

For this course I feel as if I put in the appropriate amount of work. I would come to class prepared for the day and ready to speak on assignments. I did enjoy the course itself. I liked the aspect of hearing different takes from other people and allowing me to take in information from another perspective. I will use my gained knowledge from the course to continue to allow people to speak their opinion.