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The song Tupac wrote "Brenda's Got a Baby," talks a lot about sexual abuse, and prostitution. This stood out to me because not many male rappers speak about women in this sense. It's a song about how she was raped by her cousin and the lyrics "can't go to her family they won't let her stay..." makes me believe that Tupac was trying to say that her family doesn't want her anymore even though she needs their help. Going back to the prostitution, the song also talks about how she went to selling drugs and her body for money. I think the literary device used is rhyme scheme to point out how it is to be a woman without support and that it's an actual problem. I also feel that in a way he's trying to point out that women of color are at a disadvantage because of the lack of support for their community. the author believes that women go through much more than we think, we just don't know because of how good they hide it.

Another that stood out to me was The Message by Furious Five and Grandmaster Flash, the author believes that money can solve the problems of horrible living conditions by saying "cause it's all about money, ain't a dam thing funny." This really shows how he thinks of money as his escape.

I noticed the literary device of rhyming pattern used by Meek Mill in "We Ball," when he talks about losing his friends and how he's so upset and tired of it. How his friends that he has aren't trustworthy and how he just wants life to get better. This stood out to me a lot because it was very relatable to me.

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When it comes to any topic, gender shouldn't matter. I have noticed the lack of female representation in the rap industry as I grew up and have also noticed how dominated it is by men. I feel that rap and music in general is about telling your story and their audience relating. Women are just as relatable then men. When browsing my music apps I can't stand to get irritated when I see "top. Female artists" and "top male artists" when they shouldn't be separated in the first place. They should be together; male and female artists as "top artists." There is a huge disadvantage for women when it comes to succeeding in the rap industry because they are victimized by society. Most of their stories are about their trauma at home, relationships, and abuse. Women in the industry are important because the world needs to hear what goes on about daily occurrences as a woman. It's unfair that men make up most of the industry, leaving no room for the women. I feel that so many female artists get discriminated by society and are stereotyped. It's nice to see more women these days step up for themselves and its also nice to see more women supporting each other as well as female rappers.

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I noticed two themes throughout this story. One being that your experiences during childhood greatly influence the person you become, and the other being that your surroundings have a major influence on who you are as a person or who you become.

One thing I always say is "you are who you are around," and I feel that this is important because we see that Felipe is obviously not hanging around the right people and he is getting into trouble. I feel that in California he was doing good and he was happy, yet when he came back to New York he became a total different person; a gangster. We also see Omar changing as a person or becoming the person he ends up to be as he lives in a ghetto area with alcoholics, prostitutes, and pimps. The area has created him to be this brick wall, thats hard and tough, whereas if he were to live away from that area he would be a complete different person.

That being said, since they both lived in bad areas, they were also bumping into traumatic events such as Omar dealing with a racist man, Felipe joining a gang, and so on. At such a young age, Omar was introduced to sex and was exposed to things he shouldn't have known about until he was older. In a way this made him mature much faster and definitely took away a. lot of his childhood. Felipe was working and paying most of the expenses for the family at such a young age, and going in and out of juvenile. I feel that these two definitely had a hard life were exposed to adult things too early and were robbed of their childhood. They made a lot of mistakes throughout their life although I do feel that because of the area they lived in, it was almost normal. These events shaped who they became and without them, I'm not sure these characters would've came out the way they did.

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Since we are learning about setting and conflict, I think Felipe did a very good job at this. He gave us locations of where certain things went down, what happened and when it happened. From what he tells us, we know that he was originally staying in New York, and because there was some drama he went to California for a while. Going back to new York he finds himself taking part in a gang that his cousin Jose is in, and it's pretty obvious to his family and English Teacher that he's getting into trouble. His English teacher tries to lead him to a better life by distracting him with reading however Felipe keeps himself around Jose and the gang. He goes back to California because of the trouble he's been in, but comes back to New York after a while. We see that he's obviously been so back and forth and with only one parent that's there for him consistently, we can tell that he isn't living a very good life. Felipe also talks about going to jail for helping his friend, and ending up to lead the Young Lords. He joins the activist group but ends up cheating on his wife Iris. As a reader, we see that he's always struggled throughout his life. He has been through so many hardships that has lead him to be the person he is now.

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For this blog I will be talking about Omar. I really enjoyed reading about him because of how he tells his story in third person. It makes me feel like I'm watching a movie because of how much detail he gives and how much he goes back and forth about his childhood and later on in life as a man.

To start off, I would like to acknowledge the fact that in 1958, as Geronimo, the 12 year old boy, he was hanging out with older kids/people and I feel that this made him feel older. I think that because of how traumatizing his childhood was, he felt almost too mature for for the kids his age because of how much traumatizing events as a child can be. To prove that he was more mature for his age, we see that he was very sexual with his first girlfriend Dora. He was also very much judged as a kid, obviously hearing  his grandparents say such things about he and his sibling(s) was very upsetting to him, especially as a child. Now as a man, Omar tried to be respectful to his grandmother however for some reason she still thinks he will never be anything, and that he is stupid. The fact that his own family could speak about him like that already is very upsetting.

In this reading, I see a lot of his character coming from his father. I think he very much takes after his father because of the connections with shooting Cooper, and his father most likely having shooting someone too. We also see this connection with he and his father through his passion with music. His father was a musician and he Omar is, dreaming to be a musician in New York.

There is no doubt about the fact that Omar has had a rough life, and we see that as he gets older, he is taking after his father more and more.

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Hello everyone, my name is Miranda.
To tell you a bit about me, i'll start off by saying that I'm a sophomore majoring in psychology. I plan to continue working at an elementary school, and working my way up to being a school psychologist. I am beyond blessed to be working with students as a paraprofessional already because I get to learn about the routines for school psychologists and what they really do. I also get to learn more about children and how to help them in certain situations including behavior. Besides that, I love to hike, sleep and visit new places, wherever that be. I love to be anywhere but home, seriously. I was stuck in the house all quarantine so now I'm always out and about shopping, traveling, visiting family, or just hanging out at a friends house. I have a one year old baby brother that loves to be outdoors so if I'm not out, I'm in the backyard swimming or spraying him with the hose. Since I'm at work most of the day, I try to do my homework as soon as possible so I have a lot of time to spend with my family during the week.

I know this is crazy because this is obviously an English class, however I'm not a big fan of reading. I will set it aside until I'm forced to read, or even go out of my way to listen to the audiobook. I have no idea why but I just can't. I always find myself listening to an audiobook while cleaning or finishing other homework. Speaking of, I know that in this class we will be reading a book, so I'm hoping I am very interested in this book so I can at least try to sit down and actually read it. My goal in this class is to gain more interest in reading books so I can read the three books I bought a long time ago at Barnes and Noble, rather than wasting money. My other goal is to improve my writing, because obviously it's not perfect and has many flaws. In middle school I had such a passion for writing, however in high school I completely stopped trying and unfortunately never found that passionate feeling again when writing. I hope to get to know all of you well, and maybe eventually meet in person one day.