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For this poetry blog post, I decided I would pick the readings of “men telling a woman's story.” I think the concept of a man telling the story of a woman is interesting since many people say that a man does not understand what a woman goes through during their lifetime and vice-versa. The first song I analyzed was “Brenda’s Got a Baby” by Tupac. Tupac is the speaker in this song and he tells the story of a young preteen girl, age 12, that becomes impregnated. He states in the song that she tries to hide the fact that she is pregnant, but ultimately, it ends up being found out. When the baby is born, she has no one who can help her. She cannot pay for a babysitter since she can not hold a stable job. She ends up going in a dark direction of drugs and prostitution to cover the expenses of a baby. Tupac comments on this song that have children at a young age is never a good choice. Having a child at a young, especially during the teenage years, can destroy a person’s life. Oftentimes, younger people are not prepared mentally, emotionally, or financially. Having a baby at the wrong time in your life can make or break your success, finally at least, in your life later. In terms of figurative language, in the last few lines of the song, or the last stanza, the line “So she sees sex as a way of leavin' hell” is an example of an alliteration. The second song I analyzed was “Keisha’s Song (Her Pain)” by Kendrick Lamar. In this song, Kendrick Lamar is the speaker, but unlike the last song, this song is directed towards Lamar’s younger sister. At the time, his younger sister was only 11 years old, and he wrote this song to try to steer her clear of the hardships of prostitution. Unlike, Brenda in the last song, Lamar to trying to help and inform his sister and what not to do when you are young. I also read that Keisha, who I believe was Lamar’s friend, opted for prostitution at an early age for a source of income. Later in the song, we find out the Keisha is stabbed in the bladder and left in the street. Kendrick goes summarizes her whole “prostitute life” with vivid imagery, only to finish Keisha’s story with an abrupt ending, emphasizes how life is long and difficult, while death often happens abruptly and without warning. These two songs are both similar in the sense that it includes that hardships of position and childbearing. I think these songs, however old they are, are still relevant today. I believe that many people would benefit from reading these lyrics. These were an eye-opener that sometimes prostitution is required of due to the hardships of disadvantaged people with lack of support.

Included is a picture of a dysfunctional family symbolizing the family Keisha had to deal with, leading her to the life of a prostitute.

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Hi Jason, I think you did a great job in explaining the concepts of the Hero’s Journey. I liked how you explained the meaning of the words in the short story. It was really hard for me to understand the short story but with your explanations, you helped me understand what was going on in the story. The example you added was a great connection that described one of the themes. I agree that “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City” shows the story of how people can overcome their goals.

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The Hero's Journey: "Good Kid, M.A.A.D City"

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The Hero's Journey: "Good Kid, M.A.A.D City"

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For this blog post, I have decided to focus on Kendrick Lamar’s “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City.” I think that this is a great example of a hero’s journey. Every song has many meanings and connections and overall as an album, it is a masterpiece. Even the name of the album has a bit of an innuendo in it; the title “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City” really stands for “Good Kid, My Angry Adolescent Divided. What Lamar was trying to convey through the title was his struggle of rising from where he came (hero’s journey and their struggles) to where he was at the time of recording the album (end and post-end of hero’s journey). I have never really listened to Kendrick Lamar my whole life and I somewhat regret not knowing about him and this album earlier. It is an eyeopener to how many people, specifically people like Kendrick Lamar himself and others who are considered “disadvantaged” or “minorities,” live in today’s unjust society. After reading the entire album, I realize how tightknit and meaningful every single word is; when he was writing for this album, he was speaking the truth about his life circumstances and conditions. A hero’s journey starts with a call to action, and in the case of Kendrick Lamar’s “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City,” he is portrayed as the “good kid” of the story stuck in a “mad” city. When he means by this is the environment he grew up in when he was young; he is explaining how he grew up in a city with a lot of crime and most people do not get very far in life, if they try to change their life at all. His call to action was to change this vicious cycle and be different them everyone else; He wanted to succeed. The supernatural aid would have to be his English teacher when he was taught and exposed to poetry. He loved poetry and decided to dedicate himself to further drive into creating and reciting poetry, which deep in its roots are ties between it and rap genre, and all other music for that matter. His English teacher guided him and was his “goddess” in the initiation stage of the hero’s journey. For his metaphorical death and fall, I found that track 9 of the album, called “Swimming Pools,” is a great example. Everyone around him drank and he feels pressure to drink, even though he might know it will only cause him harm. It explains his troubles it brought him and his complex relationship with alcohol. This is near pit bottom for him. Overall, I believe the “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City” album is a great example of what a hero’s journey looks like. This album not only sheds light on how hard life is for some people but also how hard it is to achieve what you really want in life. I also get some The Last Poets vibes while reading and writing this blog post. Both Kendrick Lamar and The Last Poets started from nothing, faced their troubles, there being better and worse times for them, but they persevered; because of their perseverance, and also a bit of luck, they succeeded and reached what they really wanted in life.

Included in a picture around the time he released the album "Good Kid, M.A.A.D City" when he was looking back at his youth and the troubles it came with.

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Every single state, or to be more specific, every single city, is different culturally, socially, and economically. No two places are the same on Earth; they might be very similar but are not the same. Throughout my childhood, I have lived in several cities both in Stanislaus and Merced county, and while they are our neighbors, the people, and their culture within, vary greatly. The same can be applied and said about Felipe. The population of East Harlem, which is part of Manhattan and a smaller part of New York City, between 1960-70 was roughly 100,000; this signifies that Omar lived in a metropolitan and urban environment. Since he also lived in New York City, especially in a part of the town that was not the best, it was probably not the safest or cleanest place to live. If you were to compare East Harlem and Turlock, you would most likely find as many commonalities as difference; the main reason for this is the cultural differences. When Felipe goes to California with his grandmother, the environment is completely different. Personally having moved house’s 3 times, it was often hard to make friends. I would be at a school for about 4 years and then move to a different school, of which I knew no one or anything about it. While this is small scale, it did affect me and does affect others also. I can only imagine Felipe’s experience, not only with a new city or school but an entirely new state; he traversed the entire United States. Contrary to the original thought, however, Felipe ends up loving it there. He ends up liking it so much that he is saddened when he must leave back for East Harlem. This is due to the stereotypes protruded by cities. Southern California is seen as a famous major city that is lavish and extravagant. It is also in the state of California, which is stereotyped to be beautiful with its sunny beaches and cities. East Harlem, however, is seen as a gloomy, dirty part of New York. East Harlem is also a mostly Puerto Rican population so there is nothing special for him there. East Harlem is also represented during the winter, signifying the gloominess of his home. In California, though, everything is new to him and he has so much to explore. This is an accurate representation of Felipe’s “double life.” Not in a sense that he is lighter-skinned, but the difference in the qualities of California and New York and how they vary so much. Felipe is also in a stage where is still trying to figure out who he is. Does he want to live in sunny California or in gloomy New York; this is similar to him either wanting to be a 4.0 GPA student or a thug? This is Felipe’s next mission: figuring out who he is and how he is going to follow through with it.

I have included a picture of Felipe when he was younger to represent himself still trying to find out who he is.

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There are many themes present in The Last Poets, some more than others, but for this blog post I will specifically discuss and question the theme of “the past and mistakes of a person does not reflect the future of themselves or other close relatives.” This theme is present in many parts of the story, not just Omar’s part of the book. Both Reggie and Omar grew up lacking the presence of a father and I remember it explicitly stating in the perspective of Reggie that he too related to Omar situation as he was in the same boots as Omar (I am not sure what chapter that was, but it was somewhat in the first 100-150 pages of the book). Another great example is Felipe; we learn about him later in the book, but he too has the absence of a father. In fact, most of the Last Poets did not have a father growing and that probably was one of the main forces that brought them together. Especially in East Harlem, poverty was abundant, and having a “support group” was helpful. Eventually, they might have to decide to be proactive and create music, which they did and plenty of it. Another prime example is Omar's early struggles with his speaks impediment. Now in the future, we know that he is better due to various selections of music and other production he made, but that initially was a struggle to him; and we know from the book that it took him a while to manage the strength to overcome that struggle, but he persevered and that is what made the difference. I also personally know relatives that also follow this theme, except it is reversed: they started at the “top” and “fall down to the bottom.” They are brothers and their parents were wealthy. They owned several restaurants on the island of Faial, Azores, which is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and is part of Portugal. Because they had so much, they never cared about education or working as they already had plenty enough. Today, they have no job, no education, and no money. Both of them are around the age of 30 years old and they ruined their lives. They had so much to look up to, but they neglected it. As I stated early in this theme, your past and mistakes, whether that is starting “high” or “low,” like Omar and Felipe, you ultimately decide if you will succeed, whatever that means to you, or if you fall, similar to my relatives in the Azores. Oftentimes, though, being at the bottom is and the experience it entails drive many to succeed and many people don’t know that feeling. That bottom can be many different things, but one can be the lack of a father. Notably, most of the Last Poets didn’t have a father growing and that proves that your upbringing is what you make of it. Your “starting hand” can greatly affect your success, but ultimately it is you who decides what you want and what is “success” means.

Also included is a picture symbolizing the struggle of many, but eventually, you will get to a place that you are happy (college is a struggle to getting a job you want).

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The character I am going to analyze is Jerome. I see Jerome as the protagonist of the story even though there are only several chapters in the first 100 pages of the book where the point of view is told from a third-person limited perspective. So far, a majority of the book is told from Jerome's point of view (1st person) during his early childhood years. I also see him as a round character. Some of the other characters that come up in the story, including people such as his grandma, are mentioned repeatedly and we know and hear from them, but not much detail is given about them. His grandma, who criticizes and talks down on him constantly, is a flat character. Furthermore, I see Jerome, the main character, as a dynamic character. While it is still early in the book to say if a character undergoes change or not, I think what Jerome did for his mom by facing his father makes him brave and dynamic. As a child, so far in the book, Jerome had a speech impediment; I am currently on page 84 of the book and as of that point he still has the speech impediment (however, if he got into music, he probably got better). When analyzing a character, part of the analysis is to evaluate what the character says; for Jerome, however, with his speech impediment, he is different. This is also the reason for his grandma “hating” him. He often struggled to formulate sentences from his thoughts and suffers because of that. I specifically remember in the chapter “Akron, Ohio, 1953,” on page 36, when Jerome is awakened by Jerome’s grandma, grandpa, and mother talking about his father. They were specifically discussing Jerome’s father's return, which grandma passionately did not want. Jerome’s grandma says that his father is lazy and useless and that part of the reason that he has a speech disability is due to him. Also, in this chapter, she, of course, is talking down on Jerome for lack of ability to talk eloquently. Without a father present AND a toxic household, where his grandma never has something positive to say about him, it is hard for him to function. Moreover, in the chapter “Akron, Ohio, 1960,” which starts on page 73, Jerome defends his mother by going against his father. It must be very hard to hear his family talk bad about his father and then go against him. While it is a bit hypocritical, his reasoning is correct. His mother was there for him when his father was not, so if there is a person that he should be defending, it should be his mother. I truly feel bad for Jerome and the situation he is in; and while his mother wants to help and defend him, they are also staying at his grandma’s house and her rules preside. Not much can be done in his situation.
I have also included a picture of a family with the absence of a father figure as this pertains to Jerome’s current family situation.

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Hi! My name is Jason and I am a freshman. My major is English with a concentration in SSMP (credential prep). I am planning on minoring in Portuguese. I plan to become a teacher and later on get my M.A. and become a professor. I like to read and make music. I hope this semester is manageable and that next semester we will all be back on campus.

jsilveira