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For my Blog Post Poetry, I decided to analyze the "Men telling a woman's story" playlist. For the first song I chose to analyze about is "Keisha's Song" by Kendrick Lamar. I haven't heard about this song before, but it was quite similar to others songs that I have heard before. While reading through the lyrics for this song, I realized that the main key point of the song was for Kendrick Lamar to show to or teach to his little sister about the hardships of living as another person (prostitute). In one of my readings I found out that Keisha, who was one of Kendrick Lamar's friend who became a prostitute at a young age. I then started to think about the readings I have read about for Kendrick Lamar in my previous weeks. Kendrick Lamar went through many tough obstacles in life; one of them is having to see his friend become a prostitute in order to just to make a living. I then came to a realization about our society and how important it is to teach our children's about how bad prostitution can be and how to refrain from being one. Prostitution is a common everyday problem for our society, just the same as Thief and Robbery. It will never go away because it is something that they have to do in order to make a living. Although they have to do it to make a living it must be stopped because it is motivating our children's to go and do the same. Reading through the lyrics, Keisha was stabbed and I believed this to be a point in which Kendrick Lamar was trying to get across to the people who are trying to be or are a prostitute. He is trying to show and persuade to them how dangerous occasions can occur and what can happen if you do become a prostitute. While reading the lyrics, I believed for the tone of the song to be sad, but motivated or determined to spread his message across to the thousands and thousands of his followers (audience).

For my second song, I chose to analyze about "Brenda's Got a Baby" by Tupac. This was my first time listening to the song and I was confused about what Tupac's view was on for Brenda. Wanting more information I did some more research about Brenda and Tupac and realized that they both went through a lot of tough times. While reading one of the sources on Tupac, it mentioned how Tupac was trying to make people realize the importance of not having a children at a younger age in life. My view on what Tupac was trying to say through his song was that society should pay more attention to children's and also make them more aware of how complicated it can be for young people to have children. Tupac is basically saying that it isn't Brenda's fault for having the child, while the society treat her like she has committed a mistake or crime. Tupac's song made me realized about the realities of our society and how unthoughtful some people can be. We often heard bad things happen in our daily lives and we just continue to live another day normally. When those news reoccur in our personal lives and not on the news, we start to realize how much society needs to improve and also notice how important it is to pay attention to the true meaning of Tupac's song. Tupac did a really good job of mixing rhythm and conveying information. He combined what he knew about Brenda's story, various wordings, and the overall message he was trying to convey, firmly grasping people's minds. For me, these passages represent what Tupac can say when recording music.

For my last song, I chose to analyze about is "Runaway Love" by Ludacris. After reading through the lyrics of this song, I realized that the common theme of the music is trying to make people aware of the prostitution/immaturity of sex. Ludacris in this song tells the story of a girl who had sex at a young age because men convinced them that they could provide and take care for them. Ludacris tells the story of Erica, an 11-year-old girl who was pregnant by her 16-year-old boyfriend. Then, the 16-year-old boyfriend left her because he did not want to take care of the children at his age. Ludacris tried to make the audience aware of how bad it is to have children as a child. Ludacris continues in his song about more young girls giving birth because boys/men persuade the girls/women that they will take care of them. He also mentioned that these girls do not have the identity of a father to protect them. Ludacris's main point is that he wants people to face reality and face the problems of young girls with children. From this song, the connection that I had to the lecture is the concept of imagery. An image is a picture that uses words to express ideas. When Ludacris talked about suffering, Erica tried to get along with the baby because he didn't have enough money to do an abortion, which portrays Erica's life. Ludacris uses hell as a contact point with Erica's home. This sends a message that Erica's life is uneasy and her own home is a place of pain that she cannot bear.

This is a picture of what I believed thousands and thousands of people are scared to do. While there are people who are scared to let their voices be heard, there are those who aren't and they are the light to those who are scared. The songs are the voices and light to the ones who are scared of their voices being heard.

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The Hero's Journey or Coming of Age Story

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The Hero's Journey or Coming of Age Story

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A common story process that I have seen the most throughout my life is the Hero's Journey. Using the outline with the detailed steps allowed me to think critically of what I watched and what the thought process is behind the making of a film, art, or story such as Star Wars. Artists who make albums usually based their albums or music off of their present and past life of what they went through. It allows for those artists to express their feelings and try to engage with their audience or listeners. Based on this, I believe that a Hero's Journey story could be applied to the album of Kendrick Lamar. In the Hero's Journey schematic provided in the class lecture, the steps of the Hero's Journey are the call to adventure, assistance from a supernatural aid, threshold, abyss, atonement, and return. While reading through Kendrick Lamar's album, I realized that the call of adventure for our Hero was that he grew up a good kid in a city where many crimes are being committed. Kendrick Lamar grew up in a nonwealthy family and in an area where minorities were mistreated and disrespected. In one of Kendrick Lamar's albums, he mentions he had a job as a security guard and was fired due to a robbery. Before Kendrick Lamar was accepted as a security guard, one of his friends had inspired him to go and do a robbery with him. This showed us the audience that Kendrick Lamar didn't have as many opportunities to grow which is a conflict in a Hero's Journey. Having bad influencers can hinder oneself from growing and also makes it a lot harder to repent from one's past. The supernatural aid for Kendrick Lamar is his English teacher. Kendrick Lamar's English teacher helped him in his threshold stage and helped Kenrick Lamar realized who he was as a human being. Kendrick Lamar's teacher taught him poetry and how to implement poetry into his daily life. Through the use of poetry, Kendrick Lamar was able to express his words and share his life with the rest of the world.  His teacher inspired him to pursue his passion for using words and rhythm to change people's perceptions and help others learn. The temptations Kendrick Lamar's had growing up were drugs, gangs, and sex. He mentions how tempting all three of these impacted his life and especially how prevalent they were in the area he grew up in.  Kendrick Lamar mentions the importance of gangs in his area and how his own partner even had cousins who were gang members. In contrast, Kendrick Lamar went through a lot in his life, and to push away all the temptation to grow as a person being given the setting he grew up in. I took the "MAAD City" track of the mixtape to be the abyss for the hero Kendrick Lamar. I chose this song as the ground zero for the hero because he mentioned in this song after graduating high school he had no clear direction of where to go and start. He mentioned sleeping in his mother's basement and once reality hit him, he decided to himself to do something about his life. In the song "Sing About Me I'm Dying of Thirst", Kendrick Lamar mentions his passion for singing and continued to live his life and spreading hope through his music. This is Kendrick Lamar's atonement in his Hero's Journey story. In the Heroes Journey story schematic, the last stage is the return. Dr. Dre signing Kendrick Lamar is the return stage for Kendrick Lamar because as a kid he looked up to Dr. Dre. Being able to sign a deal with a person who had a huge impact on him growing up as a kid must have made Kindrick Lamar feel accomplished. In summary, Kenrick Lamar's albums and his life followed a Hero's Story schematic. It is interesting how this schematic can be applied to many people's lives and even those of artists.

Here can be a picture of Kendrick Lamar believing in himself even when times are tough and every step he took to get to where he is now.

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The theme that I have chosen from the story "The Last Poets" is "Learning from your past mistakes and using it to make your future better". I thought of this theme because it is something I notice a lot in the book and is something that Christine also tries to highlight to the reader. Many characters in the book "The Last Poets" would be seen as a bad person and someone you wouldn't want your children's to be near or talking to if they were to be reviewed on a live television or news show. There are many stories of bad people doing bad things, but it is really rare to hear about a bad person learning and changing themselves from their past mistakes. I think that the author's main key point of the story "The Last Poets" is to explain to her audience that no matter who you are there will always be something in your past life that you would be able to learn from and use that to make your personality and future a better person and place to live. In the book "The Last Poets" Christine Otten brought up multiple stories about Jerome's past family life where his father is missing and nowhere to be found. Even without the guidance of Jerome's father, Jerome was able to still guide himself on the right path, apart from his father's. I thought of this theme when I was reading about how Jerome had chosen and planned to murder his father in the book. This shows to the audience that Jerome must have had an unusual past, but these unusual circumstances didn't stop Jerome from learning from his past mistakes and using those mistakes to make his future better. Jerome's decision was justified based on the fact of how he saw himself treating his mother when he was wanting to murder his father. Any person from the outside world with different opinions and perspective discovers that a child is trying to murder their father, then that person will think that the child is crazy and should be observed carefully. This shows the importance of opinions in life, and how to consider different opinions before judging a person’s character and life decisions. The story of Jerome and his father is related to the subject I thought of because Jerome continued to grow into a better person after learning from his past self and using that mistake to make himself and his future better. Another character from the story "The Last Poets" would be Felipe Luciano, despite being the bright kid he was, he was sentenced to jail for the scene he was consulted in, which would be the stabbing. While in jail there were many difficulties for Felipe in his everyday life in solitary confinement. After Felipe was released from jail he didn't go back to his original gang but went to school. Felipe has decided that crimes weren't his correct choice and that education will pursue him on a better path for his future. While reading the book I thought about how a person's point of view can be impacted based on how a situation was interpreted. Felipe served his time for the crimes he committed, he did his time to the community. He was a good and bright kid before the stabbings, but I believe the harsh neighborhood he grew up in had a major impact on how he was viewing some particular things. There was a chance that the stabbings wouldn't have happened if he was to get the help he was needing. It is also hard to say that Felipe could have stopped himself from falling into all the crimes he committed. Ms. Shapiro’s offer to help him could have prevented Felipe from becoming a gang member, but no one really knows about Felipe’s own thoughts. It is difficult to say whether the entire stabbing was Felipe's fault because, in fact, the only reason he committed the crime was that he grew up in a society and location where gangs are very popular. I believed this can also be applied to real-life situations. There have been many children under the age of 18 who have committed crimes that should not have occurred. We should also consider the child's life and area of growing up before fully judging a person and their decisions, without knowing one bit about them, no matter the crimes they have committed.

Here is a picture of Jerome's and Felipe's life after their occursions. They both learned from their past mistakes of what not to do and what to do.

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I learned that settings are the way we perceive our surroundings or environment based on our previous knowledge and cultural presumptions. There are also three settings that I know of, which are Immediate settings, Temporal settings, and Geographic settings. Immediate settings are the close space around the characters, Geographic settings can be considered as the physical place or location, and Temporal settings are the time. Considering the surrounding environment for Umar, we can presume that the Geographic settings occurred in Akron, Ohio and that the Temporal settings occurred during the late 1960s to the early 1970s. Due to the location and timing of where Umar lived, it influences Umar to think and do things like an adult, which is something I personally think that a little kid would never do, unless they were put into a situation like Umar. Because of his geographical location in time, it actually limited the opportunities Umar has and doesn't have. It also affected how he gets along with people, his outlook on life, and so on. Umar comes from a lower-end background where he lived in Akron, Ohio during the 1970s. Umar's family and he didn't have much, thus forcing Umar to improvise. He was forced to get a job to provide for his family at such a young age, which also meant that he couldn't go to school. If he was to go to school, no one would be able to provide for his family. Due to this, Umar was limited to the several opportunities he could have had if he went to school. He could have received the knowledge that is needed in order to make more money, which would then be more than enough to provide for his family. Umar didn't have the option to choose between school and work, even if he did go to school, it would have taken him a long time before he actually receives the knowledge that is needed, so he was forced to choose work over school. My parents came from Laos during the Vietnam War to America around the 1960s. Somewhere around the 1970s, my parents were able to obtain their citizenship, my mom went to work, while my father went to school. After my father graduated around 1988 my father chose to work as a farmer to provide for the family of 12. Starting at the age of 8, I had to go and help my parents out at the farm, while still attending school. All of my siblings and I would get picked up after school, get home, dress up, and take whatever homework we had with us and we would do our homework while we were on our way to the farm. We stay at the farm until 8 pm and then we would come home. We would go to the farm Mon-Fri and then to the supermarket in San Francisco on Saturday, where we would sell the vegetables that we have harvested during that week. This would be a rinse and repeat until my siblings and I got into high school, where we would then be able to work part-time while in school. Let's move on to conflict. Based on what I have read so far, I believed that Umar's family is the problem Umar has to work and not go to school. He comes from a lower-end family and his grandmother makes sure to not let him forget that. Umar had a speech impediment growing up and his grandmother would always make fun of him for that and never try to help him out at all. Umar had to deal with so many hardships as a youngster, it is not easy at all.

We can assume that in this picture, the person pushing the rock is Umar. There would be many obstacles that he may encounter and he will continue to push through until he gets to the top.

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The character that I chose to analyze for this Blog post is Jerome. The reason I chose Jerome for my Blog post is that I find Jerome to be quite an interesting protagonist in the story.  We the audience/readers were able to learn a lot about him from his point of view throughout the story as we progressed onward. The story mainly revolved around Jerome and there were many situations where it was difficult for him to either move on or think back onto. As we progressed through the story there were many terrible upbringings in the story that Jerome had to either move on from or straight up face with. As a child, so far in the book, Jerome had a speech impediment and due to this, he had a very rough life. He has a rougher time learning and trying to talk for his age. Due to this, Jerome's grandma tends to make Jerome feel like a fool, and this was one of the many setbacks that were keeping him from growing. Although Jerome's grandma takes him for a fool, throughout the story we were able to notice the many ways that Jerome was trying to grow for his own sake.  Whether it be working at Roxy's to make money or trying to improve his speech impediment. The fact that he was able to improve his speech impediment throughout the story shows to the readers/audiences how resilient and hardworking Jerome is in order to attain the goals he set for himself or his future. In the story, Jerome said that he has struggled with converting his thoughts to words and always ends up stuttering at his best efforts. Later on in the story, we were able to realize that he is doing much more than just simple words and is now able to transform his thoughts into poetic lyrics. Jerome's improvements showed us that as long as we work hard for whatever it may be, we will be able to achieve it, no matter what obstacles we have to overcome. If I can recall there was a scene in the chapter “Akron, Ohio, 1953,” around pages 30-35, where Jerome was lying in bed and overheard his grandma and grandpa talking about his father. They were talking about his father's return, which is unacceptable to his grandma. Jerome's grandma then stated her own opinion of Jerome's father. She said that Jerome's father was lazy, useless, and also the reason why Jerome has a speaking disability. Due to this, Jerome was also able to realize why his grandma hated his father and him so much. This doesn't stop Jerome from pursuing his path or goals for his future. In the chapter "Akron, Ohio 1960" page 73, Jerome's father came home one night drunkenly beating his mother. No longer able to endure the scene, Jerome ran to his mother's aid to defend her from Jerome's father. As a kid being able to stand up for someone takes a lot of courage and grit. From this scene we the audience/readers are able to see how much Jerome has progressed and will continue to progress onward in the story. I believed that if Jerome hadn't gone to work at Roxy's and didn't have his grandma insulting him, he wouldn't have mustered up the courage to defend his mother from his father. All things happen in life for a reason and I believe that Jerome was finally able to realize partially the capabilities of what he can do.

Here is a picture of a kid leaping across to the other side. Which I believe is something that can relate to Jerome. It is the leap of faith that Jerome is taking for himself.

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Hello fellow classmates and Professor Karen,
My name is Yumong Lee and this is my first year in CSU Stan. I am majoring in Computer Science and  hopefully trying to get my Bachelor's within these next upcoming four years. I enjoy chatting with my friends and doing homework together in order to solve any obstacles that I might encounter on when doing any type of homework. I also enjoy playing games and working out to relieve some stress. I look forward to all of my classes, professors, and classmates.