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At the beginning of the semester when I first started this class I thought it was going to be like any other english class mostly filled with essay. However this class has no essays, was super fun to learn and do the assignment and taught me lots of useful information. I learned the true importance of stories because of this class and how important it is to pay attention to every detail in a story. Its also useful to understand the characters in the story as well as it gives you a better understand of the story and you understand the story from a characters perspective. The stories that we read in this class taught me two stories can be so different from each other just by the time period or setting in which it takes place in. These stories can be told to educate and inspire individuals in a society. Stories can help expand ones knowledge and help to allow us to think critically about an individuals life and how we all live as a society. Throughout this course i have learned the importance of stories and how a story can be an inspiration to anyone in the world. A story can help unite people together and share knowledge with one another. And doing blog posts for this class have helped me achieve a better understand of the stories we read and better explain my thoughts on them. And commenting on other classmates blog posts would help me get an even better understanding of the stories and understand my classmates perspectives from their blog posts. This english class has been different than my other english classes and I have enjoyed this class like no other. By taking this course I feel like I have gained a lot of knowledge on reading and understanding stories.

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I chose to analyze the "Man telling a womens story" playlist. From the playlist I chose three songs to analyze and write about.
The first song I chose is "Brenda's got a baby" by Tupac. This was the first time that I heard this song and was kind of able to figure of what he means by this. He was talking about how Brenda had a baby at only 12 years old and her family didn't seem to care. I believe Tupac wants us to realize that it probably isn't the best idea to have a child when you yourself are still a child. It made me realize how society always has so much to say without knowing the real meaning behind the story. Like in the song it says that Brenda barely has a brain. But Tupac is trying to explain how it's not Brendas fault for having the kid. She was too young to understand what was happening. This song expresses how we need to truly understand what is happening before judging someone for something because we can be in the wrong for being so judging. Tupac did a nice job in trying to express his message thorough this song.
The second song I chose to analyze is "Keisha's Song" by Kendrick Lamar. I had also never heard this song before. But while reading the lyrics I felt like it also related to Brenda in Tupac's song. The main idea of this song was Lamar trying to explain to his younger sister the struggles of living as a prostitute. Kendrick Lamar talks about his friend, Keisha, who at a young age became a prostitute. As  I realized from the previous readings I read about how Kendrick Lamar faced many obstacles in his life one of them being one of his young friends leading to prostitution at a young age for the sake of an income. This makes me realize how prostitution is an everyday occurrence in our society. It is important for us to let kids know the struggles of being a prostitute and how they can refrain from it. Towards the end of the song it says how Keisha was pulled a knife on her bladder and was left there. I feel like Kendrick Lamar included this so he can tell people the struggle you go through to be a prostitute. He is trying to show us how dangerous it is if you are a prostitute because you never know what someone is going to do. He shows anger and sadness in his song by explaining to his audience the difficulties of being a prostitute.
The third song I chose to analyze is "Runaway Love" by Ludricris. Reading the lyrics in these songs they all seem to have one thing in common which is prostitution and immature sex. And it shows us how big of an issue this actually is. In this song Ludacris is telling the story of a 11 year old girl who gets pregnant from her 16 year old boyfriend, leaving her by herself because he doesn't want to take care of a child at his young age. In which he wants his listeners to understand how hard it is to have children at a young age. Ludacris continues to talk about how many young girls get pregnant after being persuaded by men that say they will take care of them only to leave them all by themselves. Which we still see these things in society today. The message that Ludacris is trying to spread is wanting people to understand the problems of young girls having children when they themselves are still a child. And how girls can struggles to not afford for an abortion, meaning they would have to keep the child and then end up not being able to afford necessities for the child.
Overall the songs in this mixtape were very interesting and eye opening. These songs are giving a great message on how hard life can get because of a persons one small decision. Because one wrong decision can lead to lifelong struggles.

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Blog Post: The Hero's Journey or Coming of age story 

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Blog Post: The Hero's Journey or Coming of age story 

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The Hero's Journey is an example found in stories in which a character sets forth into an unknown area while facing conflicts and successfully achieves their transformation before returning back. For this blog post I decided to choose The hero's journey. Kendrick Lamar's Good Kid m.A.A.d. city is a great example that corresponds with The Hero's Journey. In the hero's journey, the character faces a variety of stages that collide with a certain situation that they are going through. Good Kid m.A.A.d. city by Lamar stands for Good Kid My Angry Adolescent Divided City. Lamar chose this title for his song to express the struggles of his success. Which relates to The Hero's Journey struggles from the beginning to the end of a journey. Kendrick Lamar really proved the significance of the Hero's Journey thorough his album Good Kid m.A.A.d. city. I have always listen to Kendrick Lamar's music for as long as I can remember but now I realized the true importance and meaning behind this album. Throughout the Album, I noticed how Kendrick Lamar lays his life out for us to listen to. We can understand about his struggles and how he succeeds pass his struggles in the end. Just like in The Hero's Journey, Kendrick Lamar faces challenges in his life such as living his childhood in a city of full of crime, peer pressure, bad influences, and drugs revolving all around him wherever he went. All this initially lead to his success because Kendrick Lamar wanted a change. Which is when he realized to be successful he need to change himself for the better. His journey lead him to success in the end. We now can see how far he has come with himself being one of the greatest rapper. Kendrick Lamar started off with nothing but by facing his many struggles in both good and bad times, he managed to become successful in his journey and did what he really wanted to do in his life.

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There are several different themes that are brought up in The Last Poets. A theme that I saw in the story would be that ones past life choices do not determine their future or interfere with their future life goals. I believe that Christine Otten tries to emphasize the importance of each of the characters problems and try to relate them to real world problems. Otten is trying to tell us just like the characters in the book, we also face problems and have disadvantages in our lifetime just like in the book. Characters in the last poets experience different problems that are relatable in the outside world. In my opinion the two characters that face lots of difficulty in their lives are Jerome and Felipe. I think the theme for Felipe would be living a double life. Felipe faces lots of challenges as he lives his double life. He lives in California where he has a good place to stay and a good lifestyle to which he goes to New York where he joins a gang and does crimes causing him to get arrested and go to jail. This is when Felipe starts to feel helpless living his double life because in one place he has his good luxury and in another place he's getting caught up with crimes and jail. After getting out of jail Felipe realizes his mistakes. Instead of going back to the gang, he simply joins a college to get himself a better life. A theme I saw with Jerome would be the trouble with his family, especially his grandmother. Jerome had a difficult past, however he did not let that stop him from becoming a better person. Jerome had even purchased a pocketknife, wanting to kill his father because of the way he saw how he treated his mother. On top of that his grandmother always gave him a hard time. At night when he would go to bed he would be able to hear his grandmother talking and criticizing him. He would have a hard time sleeping because sometime he would not believe what he heard coming from his grandmother. But Jerome still overcomes these obstacles in life and continues to grow for the better. Thinking about the book overall we can see that Christine Otten is telling us that even if a person has a bad past you can still change your present and future if you really want to. Nothing can stop you from living the life you want. I believe this relates to real world problems as well because if you live in a bad community you will want to join them, or if you live in a good community you will do good, just like Felipe, however in the end you will understand which lifestyle you want. We can fix the mistakes that we make in our past but only if we try to fix them. And I believe Christine Otten is trying to show us that life can be hard but you must overcome those challenges that get thrown at you if you want to do good in life.

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One of the characters that is one of the most interesting to me is Jerome. Jerome is often called the "dumb" child by his grandmother or friends as he was not always the best at talking and would often stutter. However through his experience with his grandma he has overcame his talking problem and proved her wrong. As I read the book I think about Jerome and his experience from his childhood up until now as he has gotten a bit older. We can see the different types of conflicts that he faces in his life. While reading the book one of the types of conflict being used is Man vs Man because Jerome and his grandmother have lots of disagreements with each other. His grandmother shows lots of negativity towards him by trying to bring him down by commenting rude things about him such as calling him dumb. Throughout his childhood he was always brought down by others. He was told he would stay dumb just because he struggled with talking. But as he go older he proved everyone who told him he couldn't do it wrong. Which tells us that Jerome is the protagonist and his grandmother is the antagonist because Jerome believes in himself for success and personal growth whereas his grandmother is always discouraging him. Another conflict I see in the story is man vs society because the type of society Jerome is living in is not the best. Jerome is the character that is constantly being called names and rudely spoken to by his grandmother which shows us the conflict man vs society.

We can also see how the different types of setting can affect the characters narrative in the book. The last poets has a temporal setting because it takes place during the 1950s. Being surrounded by negative energy can affect a character just like Jerome. Jerome is affected by his grandmother as she is the negative energy in his life. The book takes place in physical setting as well because it takes place in physical places such as Ohio, New York, and California.

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The character that I chose to analyze is Geronimo who goes by Jerome. I decided to chose Jerome because I believe that he is a main character with the most interesting story. I also think the Jerome is the protagonist of the story because of his important role and complexity in the book. I feel like Jerome is often criticized for things he is unable to do, for example not being able to fully talk. He was treated differently than his brother by his grandmother because he didn't really know how to fully speak. Jerome getting to leave his grandmothers house with his parents was a good change for him as it made his character more vital as it teaches us how his father played a big role during his childhood. In the book the author does explain to us how Jerome had difficulty expressing his thoughts and feelings due to himself stuttering whenever he tried to speak. However he knew he never was going to give up. When he started working at Roxy's, he kind of took that as an opportunity to prove to everyone, especially his grandma, that he is capable of overcoming his problems and learning through them. His grandma would always discourage him as a child and he wanted to prove not only his grandma but everyone else wrong and show them everything he is capable of doing. On page 38 his grandmother says "Maybe he's dumb" in which his mother responds to "He's not dumb, I know he's not dumb" and his grandmother responds with "Glad he's not my child". Jerome overhearing this obviously has a big impact on how he feels because hearing one of his family members calling him dumb is discouraging but he feels relieved from what his mother has to say about him. As the story goes on we see that Jerome has improved on his speaking skills and is able to use full complete and complex sentences. His improvement teaches us that no matter what happens as long as you keep trying and don't give up, in the end you will reach your ultimate goal. I do believe his grandma insulting him and him going to work at Roxy's did eventually help him in the long run. Because if he never went to Roxy's and if his grandma hadn't insulted him the way she did then maybe Jerome would have never gathered enough courage to try and change for the better, but he did which was interesting to read about. Overall I think Jerome is a very interesting character to analyze throughout the story not only because he seems like the main character but also because of his interesting and hectic lifestyle. I enjoy reading the way this book is written and how is describes the way Jerome's feeling. It expresses words in such a way that you understand who or what the book is talking about whether it's in first or third person point of view.

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Hello everyone, My name is Harveen Kaur and I'm in my freshman year at Stanislaus State. I am not sure of my career path as of right now and I am still undecided about my major but hopefully I figure it out soon. Some of my hobbies include being outdoors, playing tennis and hanging out with my friends. I look forward to this class and can't wait to get to know you all better!