“So what’s your story? Why did you leave your country? And could you imagine if the shoe was on the other foot? ‘So tell me about your worst trauma! Were you ever abused? What’s your story?” (Ahmed)

      These lines really stood out to me while I was reading because I never realized how the two questions go hand-in-hand. While someone may think asking the reason you left your country is harmless, the meaning behind it is a lot bigger than we may think. These people aren’t leaving the country by choice, they were forced to leave as a need. Leaving their country meant trying to escape horrible conditions in which they were abused, it meant they were trying to escape a place that has brought them trauma. I feel like these lines emphasize how senseless humans are and it highlights how we aren’t as effective sympathizers as we may think. Despite trying to get a better understanding of what the refugees might be going through, people don’t realize the level of difficulty it is to talk about the hardships in their lives. Overall these lines intrigued me as it opened my eyes to how unaware and insensitive people can be. These lines are pushing me to be more alert when I speak, because what might seem like a normal conversation for me, can be a very difficult conversation for someone else.

“Take care of one child or a few hundred, Which would you choose?’ That’s what Maurice used to tell me whenever I mentioned us having a child” (Danticat, 11)

This quote here really left me with mixed emotions because Maurice made a very valid point. In this part of the text, Nadia had asked her father’s wife if they had kids, and she responds with this, basically saying that they don’t have time for it because they’re handling so much already. When reading the story, I at first felt really bad for Nadia as she never had a father figure because he left to go back to Haiti, while her mother had no intentions of ever going back. But once I came across this line, I viewed it very differently. I feel like it is a hard concept to accept because it’s her father, but he was trying to help as much as he can. It’s a little weird because in the end, that’s still her father and he should’ve cared to be there for her, but his intentions were pure from what I see. He wanted to help as many children as he could as he knew Haiti was corrupt and poor so these children didn’t have much. I overall just really enjoyed this line because when I read it, I actually verbally said “that’s a good point”. It’s one of those situations that I feel doesn’t have a way to have happy endings for everyone so he chose the majority.

“Oh, but by now you are tired of all this looking, and you want to reach your destination-your hotel, your room. You long to refresh yourself; you long to eat some nice lobster, some nice local food. You take a bath, you brush your teeth. You get dressed again; as you get dressed, you look out the window” (Kincaid 12)

The text as a whole makes traveling to a new place seem like its a routine when we think we are doing something so different and unique. My family and I like to travel a lot, we travel a couple times a year, but this line is exactly how it goes. Each time I visit a new country or go to a new city I think about how this is another place I’m getting to know, somewhere that I am going for the first time, yet I do the exact same thing he describes in the line above. I find it so interesting how similar we can all be without even realizing it, but being able to write about a whole night with specific detail and have it relate to myself and I’m sure many other people comes to show how un-unique we are. Landing wherever, I’m always eager to get to the hotel and rest and get ready, then excited to try the good food, almost identical to how the line describes the series of events. Ultimately, I just love how this line proves that people have a lot more in common than we think because we do small specific things in almost indistinguishable manners.

“Now every cliche by which the assault could be minimized hurried to claim space in my head. These things happen, it was only a matter of time, count your blessings, and, yes, it could have been worse- and such bile rose into my throat at these thoughts.” (Cole, 195).

These two lines above really interests me because of how relatable they are in a general spectrum. I feel like it is just human nature for people to instantly think about how a situation can be avoided after it happens. We tend to focus on the past when there is clearly nothing that can be done about it. I have recently been adapting to a more positive mentality of “if I can’t do anything about it, I should stop worrying about it”.  However, it seems that though Julius first reacts like the majority would after a situation like this, we see that he quickly adapts a completely different mindset and kind of just shrugs its off. He additionally says that the situation “could have been worse”, which is not something that most people would think after being assaulted. Seeing this quick shift in Julius’s character is interesting as I too am trying to shift to a more stress free lifestyle, but I’m not sure I would be this calm after a situation like getting mugged.

“Later that day, it snowed, the first snowfall I had witnessed in the season. A furious sense of imbalance came over me as I watched the flakes tumble down and disappear on contact with the ground.” (Cole, 151)

This line was a line a particularly liked because it made me realize how people all over the world have different views on things based on its accessibility. In places like Africa, South America, Asia…etc. you will never see snow, but in places like New York, this is a yearly occurrence. Oftentimes, New Yorkers dread the occurrence of snow because it’s messy and a hassle to deal with, not to mention it creates problems in many ways (parking, MTA, sidewalks). As a New Yorker I think of snow in one of two ways, I rather (1) I dread the idea or (2) don’t think about it at all. I would never think “oh it’s the first snow of this season” or I would never think about how the flakes tumbling down. We can see that Julius does do this, and this is most likely because he didn’t grow up with snow his whole life. Snow is something that I don’t appreciate because to me it’s normal, but ask someone from a different country that doesn’t grow up with it, and it’s a different story. I guess I just like the fact that this line makes me want to appreciate things in my day-to-day more. Thinking about it on a bigger scale, food and water are stuff I really take for granted, I have access to these things whenever I want. Unfortunately, not everyone can say the same. Thus, this line has really impacted me to look at small occurrences through a bigger picture and learn to appreciate the things we don’t normally think about.

“Okay, she says, the secret, Come I’ll tell you, she says, playing for time, the secret to good skin and hair is – and here she pauses – is plain cold water. Listen, once you get that water in the kettle and you heat it up, then all the goodness flies out.” (Wicomb, 24)

Though this part wasn’t significant or special, I really liked reading this line. From what I was getting in the beginning was that Grace was getting a little annoyed as Fiona would persistently ask “what her secret was”. She wanted to know Grace’s secret to looking so young at her age of 74. After a few times of Fiona asking and Grace repeatedly saying she has no secret, she decided to switch up her response. Grace seems to “cave in” (in reality she isn’t) and says the secret is “plain cold water”. I enjoyed this line because I felt this is exactly what I would do in the same situation. However, after reading a bit more we see it is actually the truth. Grace’s choice (really the authors choice) to respond the way she did and then say “all the goodness flies out” once the water is hot is definitely something I would do to be sarcastic if someone is constantly annoying me about something I genuinely have no answer to or something I just don’t care to think about . Using dialogue like this in the text is what interests me the most when reading but relating to characters and making them seem realistic is what attaches me to a reading. It is also fun how I jumped into conclusions when in reality the author even states she was being truthful.

 “I’ll tell you what I mean. (He goes and stands at the window, his back turned on her) Your father, Gloria, is also my father. For a long time Old Joubert was sleeping with his black maid in the backyard. I am the result of that squalid union.” (Nkosi,21)

     This whole text was overall a bit of an annoying read, just because of how repetitive the dialogue is. Throughout the text, a women is trying to convince the doctor that they have met before, but begins to play mind games with him. She first suggests they have met before, then suggests they haven’t and continuously changes the story line. The doctor is in complete denial that they have ever met and sooner or later gets annoyed and the woman. Throughout the text, despite their being banter and moments where one or the other was annoyed, there seem to have been a bit of flirting going back and forth between the two. The two end up kissing. However, it is later revealed that they share the same father. It really disturbs me that the doctor knew this information, he knew that Gloria and himself had the same father, and still allowed a kiss between the two to happen. It is bad enough knowing that it was something that happened in the past, but to let himself do it again after having the knowledge that he did, really bothers me. This line being towards the end of the story, made me reflect on all that happened before hand, all the knowledge that was in this man’s head as he argued with this woman or as he flirted with her, regardless of which it was, knowing what I do now, it is all so wrong.

“I saw women, tied to the trees, their stomachs cut out.” (Kapil, 2)

This quote in Kapil’s poem really stood out to me because it genuinely disgusted me. This is a very horrifying line that I hate to imagine. While reading this line, it was simply one of those lines that just disturb you as you read. During my first read of the poem my head began to wonder, it really left me picturing these scenarios occurring in thousands of different ways. I just feel like this line is very relatable in a way, not directly but the concept of it. Women are constantly in danger during their day to day lives. So many women get followed, kidnapped, raped, hit, etc. every night while walking to their car, home, to work. This specific line just reminds me of all the women who have been in danger before, they may not have been tied to the trees or have their stomachs cut out, but it’s still terrible to see. Unfortunately, somewhere in the world this is most likely happening and that is very sickening to think about.

(I really tried to figure out how to comment on the post itself but I couldn’t sorry)

I really liked the point you brought up on how you were expecting a sad ending because with writing I feel like it can really go either way. In movies and writing, you are saying that something could have happened to Sakina because of them men harming her in a way but I feel that a happy ending is common in things like this. I feel that the way you are thinking is actually more realistic to something that would actually have happened to Sakina rather than the movie/writing way of thinking of it. But sometimes movies and writing do end in tragedies so it’s cool to see people not really expect the ending. Great work overall!

 “A succession of images raced through his mind. Attack… fire… escape… railway station… night… Sakina.” (Manto)

This was a passage I really enjoyed in the text because of how I felt like I can picture exactly what is happening to Sirajuddin. At the moment, Sirajuddin was facing a moment of tragedy as he was unconscious waking up to a very chaotic and frightening scene. In this moment, he has no clue where his daughter is from and no recollection of how he even got to this point. This passage really fascinates me because it uses one word sentences to show the little he remembers, yet these all have a big significance when you continue reading. It shows how one word can mean so much. The author is saying so much with so little. By including this sentence, we can get a sense of the fear Sirajuddin must have been feeling and it gives off signs of PTSD that he must’ve gotten from his horrible experience.