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Favorite Work of Literature - Everyday Use by Alice Walker

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Favorite Work of Literature - Everyday Use by Alice Walker

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Of all the literature we have read this semester, Everyday Use by Alice Walker stood out the most because it teaches us that heritage is something to be appreciated every day and not something that should be left in the past to admire from afar.

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Window - An Open Letter to the South by Langston Hughes

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Window - An Open Letter to the South by Langston Hughes

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An Open Letter to the South by Langston Hughes is a window because it gives us a perspective from a black worker who wishes for solidarity between  black and white workers. It teaches us that African Americans in the south had little to no job opportunities compared to the white workers. The South pre-Civil Rights Movement was a time in which black and white Americans were very much segregated. The narrator of the poem wishes to be treated at the same level as the white workers of the South, stating that they are all brothers and should treat one another as such by unifying instead of being separate but equal. The poem can still apply to today, too, as black workers are still paid less and given unequal job opportunities in the US.

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Mirror - Queer Theory: According to my Grandmother by Richard Blanco

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Mirror - Queer Theory: According to my Grandmother by Richard Blanco

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Richard Blanco's Queer Theory: According to my Grandmother is a mirror because it is centered heavily around gender norms and what actions would lead people to assume they were gay. It is told from Blanco's perspective as he recalls instances from his youth in which his grandmother would make heavy assumptions when he didn't act the way people expect men to act. When reading through this short story I was very much reminded of myself and how the way I dress and act leads people to make assumptions about me. While these assumptions aren't always wrong, it's baffling what little things can make people assume about you. It shows that gender norms, regardless of how hard we have tried to remove them, are very heavily rooted in society worldwide.

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Mirror - Forgiving my Father by Lucille Cliffton

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Mirror - Forgiving my Father by Lucille Cliffton

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Lucille Cliffton's Forgiving My Father is a short story tells of a young daughter who's father recently had passed. What makes this short story a mirror is the focus on strained family relationships. Like the narrator in this story, when I was younger I was often caught in between my parent's disputes, even after they divorced. While my father is still alive, we have always had a strained relationship and it has been difficult trying to forgive or spend time around him. The emphasis on forgiveness in this short story, however, made me realize that dwelling on the past won't fix things and that forgiveness isn't necessarily for those who have wronged you, but it is a crucial for yourself as part of the healing process.

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Shameless speaks to me as both a window and a mirror because while I cannot relate to all of their personal struggles, I know what it is like to live amongst a dysfunctional family. The comedy-drama features the Gallagher family, a diverse cast of six kids living with their alcoholic father. The family has to steal food and money to make ends meet while the father takes everything and offers nothing in return. The show is meant to be something everyone, specifically those in lower class households or with dysfunctional families, can relate to. Of all the characters in the show, the third youngest daughter Debbie is the easiest character to relate to because like me, she struggles to connect with people her age because she is much more mature.

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Heritage by Linda Hogan is a poem about Hogan's life growing up in an interracial family, being half-white and half-native. This poem serves as a window because it taught me about interracial families and the internal conflict often faced by multiracial individuals. In the poem, Hogan attempts to reconcile with both sides of her heritage, being fascinated by her father's side of the family, who are Native, and her tribe's culture and traditions while also feeling resentment toward her mother's side of the family, who are white, because of her tribe's oppression at the hands of white man. She is unable to bring both of her heritages together because one side has systematically oppressed the other, making it feel impossible. Instead, she begins to favor her Native American Heritage in an attempt to distance herself from her tribe's oppressors.

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Window - The Great Silence by Ted Chiang

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Window - The Great Silence by Ted Chiang

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The Great Silence by Ted Chiang, told from the perspective of a Puerto Rican parrot, is a window because it explores humankind's fascination with extraterrestrial beings, with which we have been trying to communicate with for a long time. The narrator questions why we as humans keep attempting to reach out to creatures beyond our planet when parrots have the ability to communicate with us. After all, we share many similarities such as being vocal learners and ability to form thoughts and words. They teach us that intelligent lifeforms are most likely quiet because they are terrified of humans pushing them to the brink of extinction just as they have with the Puerto Rican parrots and many other creatures, resulting in the Great Silence. The narrator warns the reader that we will not only be the cause of other species' extinctions, but our own as well.

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Girl by Jamaica Kincaid is easily a mirror because it is something most if not all women can relate to. Gender roles are heavily ingrained in society, and women are still told to act and dress a certain way. Growing up, I was always expected to behave in a polite, proper manner. Like the narrator of the story, I was constantly told by my mother and grandmother how a girl should act and was often criticized for defying their expectations. Part of this was because I preferred to hang around boys as a child and adopted a lot of their mannerisms. To this day, I still retain a lot of the same behaviors I exhibited in my youth.

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In Essex Hemphill's poem titled Commitments, Hemphill talks about his experiences as an openly gay man. He states that he has always been the black sheep of the family which is unfortunately common amongst LGBT youth. Rejection comes in many forms, and for Hemphill it is being pushed away from his family, causing him to feel isolated. This poem is a mirror because as a member of the community myself, I understand exactly how painful it is to be cast aside by family because I don't fit the world's strict social norms, and more often than not I find myself alone at family gatherings because I am different and have no one to relate to.