Binti : Character Analysis

Throughout life, we lose a countless number of possessions and many are taken away from us. Loss is an inevitable part of life, we lose friends, family, cell phones, papers, and even tiny items such as paper clips. Though, most people do not actually appreciate what they have until it is taken away from them. In Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, Lina loses her lifestyle, family, and freedoms when she and her family are taken as war prisoners during World War II.

The book, Between the Shades of Gray, takes place during World War II. The character Lina is arrested and deported by the NKVD following the annexation of Lithuania. She was then forced to provide labor in order to survive the extreme conditions of the Stalin’s camps. Her ability to cope, her relocation, and the death of her mother contributes to her development and survival.

Jimmy knows too well the agonies of abandonment. First, when his mother, Cecilia, ran away with Richard to pursue a better lifestyle. Then, due to his father’s, Damacio Baca, alcoholisms and violent behavior; he also had to leave Jimmy behind. In spite of the drawbacks from abandonment to being a maximum security prisoner in Arizona State Prison, Jimmy preserver’s the darkness of prison by overcoming his illiteracy. However Cecilia and Damacio is not as fortunate as their child; Cecilia is shot by Richard after confronting him for a divorce and Damacio chokes to death after he is released from the detox center(Baca 263). Therefore the most significant event in this section of the memoir, A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca is the death of Jimmy’s parents.

Grace has been told for more than half her life that she was crazy. Her mother’s death that she witnesses was an accident, there was no scarred man, and there was nothing she could do to change what had happened. But Grace knew they were wrong. With the help of her friends Noah, Megan and Rosie, she managed to discover that the scarred man was Dominic, the first love of her mother, who was there to kill her mother, but chose instead to stage her death. Grace came down just as Dominic was taking the picture, and picked up the gun that was lying on the floor. Firing blinding, she missed Dominic and shot her mother instead. The traumatic moment of shooting her mother was blocked from Grace’s mind as it was unable to handle what she did. Her family tries to protect her from this, saying it was an accident, trying to get Grace to stop pushing. When pushing too hard, Grace discovers the truth of what happened that night, and what she did, and with the

Toni Morrison’s short story, “Recitatif” is about two young girls, named Twyla and Roberta, who grow up in an Orphanage because their mothers were in no condition to properly take care of them. The main theme in the “Recitatif” is concentrating on racism. A very mind- grabbing event in the story is how the author never tells the race of the two girls. Morrison leaves class codes but not racial codes, as in the story Twyla states, “ It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the mornings—it was something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race” (pg 201) , even the girls do not mention which race the other is. Recitatif is a great story as it plays with the reader’s emotions and effectively makes the reader aware of the stereotypes and each races characteristics.

All refugees, the circumstances notwithstanding, face immense hardship throughout their lives. In time, these hardships give way to new opportunities, dreams, and perspectives, as even in the face of suffering, one always retains their intrinsic self. Kim Ha, the protagonist in Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again, experienced this through her family’s daring escape from war-torn South Vietnam. Consequently, Inside Out and Back Again serves as a fitting title for her story.

In conclusion family should always help each other out. By helping each other out you can do this much more efficiently like how the Gilbreths had a family council to made sure everyone knows what's happening and how they are handling the situation. Also finding tactics to help make things go faster for people who live in a large family like the Gilbreths is helpful because then you can spend more time with your parents and siblings other that spending a long time doing something like taking a bath. So being efficient can help in many was in in this novel it helped bring the family together and spend more time doing other things like studying for school or helping the father with motion study. Lastly, the movie and novel Cheaper By the Dozen

Jing-mei originally believed that in order to “be Chinese” one must live in China and abide by the stereotype of Chinese people; after her visit to China, she finds that “being Chinese” is accepting the Chinese DNA in her blood and understanding the culture. In the beginning of A Pair of Tickets, Jing-mei does not feel Chinese. She repeatedly denies being Chinese saying, “… and all of my Caucasian friends agreed: I was about as Chinese as they were” (Norton 179). She had never experienced the culture first-hand and never truly connected with her true heritage. She sees China in her visit. This is the first opportunity she has ever had to interact with other Chinese people. Coming from a social group of all Caucasian friends, first-hand interaction allows her to understand the Chinese people in a much more advanced manner. They seem less

“You’re going to have to grow up sometime” something my mother still says to me now, even having turned 21 this year. I feel grown up simply because of my age but am I truly? Sure, the exciting times of living on your own, staying up as late as you want, and voting would qualify you as a grown up but honestly being an adult can be a bit of a bummer sometimes. Responsibilities, jobs, and bills; they’re all inevitable. However, we are fortunate enough to experience nostalgia or remember ‘the good old days’, reminiscing on events that remind us of childhood, a time when you hardly had to worry about anything other than your mom finding out that you got your brand new pants dirty after she told you not to wear them outside to play. But it’s hard

To be a distinguished person is defined as to notice or recognize a difference of one person or thing out of others. At the University of Houston, to be a distinguished cougar means that among others, a particular person has displayed true leadership, mentorship, resourcefulness, and reliability. When I think of these two aspects the only person that comes to mind that deserves the reward-Distinguished Cougar, is none other than Troisha Busano.

In Toni Morrison's short story "Recitatif", the story revolves around two girls, one white and the other black, and how their social status affects their way of life. The narrator, Twyla, has five significant instances in her life where she is in a setting with her childhood best friend, Roberta. When they first met at the orphanage, they disliked each other, but because both of them still had a parent to their name, they were seen as social outcasts to the other children of their orphanage. Through their social disgrace they became friends and helped each other out. As they grew up, their lives were distinctly different with Twyla living the life of a lower-middle class citizen while Roberta was living a lavish lifestyle, creating conflict between the two. In the end, there is a slight sense of reconcilement in that they clear up a misunderstanding of their past, but there is an open question to what had happened to an element of their past.

The main character is a girl named Usha, who was young when she moved to the United States. She grew up abiding to Bengali culture and lifestyle in Massachusetts. As she gradually matures to an adult and her own person, it's shown that Usha struggles to find a balance between the American culture that she's surrounded by and the Bengali culture that fits the mold of her family.

In this short story, Butler deconstructs the socially constructed sex and gender roles of men and women by placing female characters as the source of power and domination. As “ the lic government official in charge of the Preserve, and thus the important of her kind to deal directly with Terrans” (Butler 1), the female alien, T’Gatoi, holds a strong and powerful role in the story. Her political position not only puts her beyond her male counterpart but allows her to hold power and privileges that are usually given to men. With T’Gatoi, Butler's several of masculine and feminine role, allows her to display a gender that contradicts the creature's sex. Furthermore, by stepping outside gender binaries, the monstrosity that occurs is the grotesque

An advocacy activity I observed this following weekend was at an off-Broadway play performed at Second Stage Theater in New York City. The play, Notes from the Field is written and performed by Anna Deavere Smith. In this performance, she gives her viewers a look into the past history of our country as well as some recent major headlining news that took part in our society. She re-enacts the behaviors of some characters but gives the viewers a different perspective then what the media portrays it to be. In the play, Anna shows some tragedies that took place in schools, and prisons systems. She shows the division of ethnic groups and how the civil rights actions have still failed even in today’s communities.

The author of Recitatif, Toni Morrison, is an acclaimed writer known for her fictional stories and her explorations within the black community. Receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 was one of her most acclaimed accomplishments. Morrison’s American Midwest family had an unfathomable appreciation and love for black culture and showed this through there many traditions and storytelling. Recitatif, a fictional short story, was written in 1983.