We Are Looking for Home by. A.S. King by Candace Vargas

Home

candacemvargas — 2024-11-12 20:57:25 UTC

"Home is never going to find us if we all can't agree to be nice. It has to be a unanimous vote" (221).

"YOU is a lie. There is no YOU" (222).

candacemvargas — 2024-11-12 21:03:02 UTC

There is a message of how people in a society collect their thoughts and actions and people who think their own way are seen as different outsiders. The people who are "me's" instead of "we" are simultaneously admired and hated in a society as such. How are people accepted or rejected based on their curation of ideas and messages?

"No one should be so happy and welcoming to forty million strangers" (224)

candacemvargas — 2024-11-12 21:07:29 UTC

This piece has underlying political commentary scattered throughout it. People are diverse collections of memories, hopes, dreams, fears, etc. This text has a commentary about the rejection of different ideas (the collections within people) and how society is set up to accept a certain thing. How do our collections impact our perceptions of other collections?

"A funnel of opposing ideas" (229)

candacemvargas — 2024-11-12 21:15:44 UTC

This text shows the contradicting thoughts within and between people. King uses /slashes/ to separate different thoughts about an idea and usually they oppose or contradict each other. This feels like a commentary about hypocrisy in America and works to highlight how people skip over major things.

Knowledge, thoughts, and opinions within people are forms of collections

candacemvargas — 2024-11-12 21:19:55 UTC

"We have accumulated trillions of memories between us. Amassed tragedies. Gathered all kinds of matter. Humans collect everything. We collect galaxies of information. We collect photographs. We collect the right thing to do in any situation. We collect the wrong things to do too. We are curators of joy and misery. We collect ourselves. We are dangerous" (209)

We vs. Me

candacemvargas — 2024-11-12 21:21:35 UTC

Meaning and Messages

candacemvargas — 2024-11-12 21:23:10 UTC

"Inside of us is a divide--a fault we fall into every day" (222)

candacemvargas — 2024-11-12 21:26:05 UTC

There is a divide in the way people think and how they treat each other. This shows how collections of thoughts can work against some (groups of) people in a society like America.

Collections--their value and their harm

candacemvargas — 2024-11-12 21:31:38 UTC

Collections of ideas and people are valuable and create meaning and diversity in a society. However, how societies curate their collections of ideas sends a certain message to groups of people. These group collections of ideas and habits can pull away from individualism and can potentially harm peoples ability to think for themselves.

Relation to society

candacemvargas — 2024-11-12 21:34:20 UTC

America has cultivated a culture where collections of people are for or against issues, ideas, and other people. In some instances, this has normalized hate, such as the instances in the text where the people say hateful things to queer students and the principal does nothing about it. King also calls out how these thoughts can contradict each other. The use of /slashes/ really work towards this point. My favorite example of that is:

"We believe our mothers are crazy / they had it coming / best mom in the world" (222).