I want to I want to start by saying this reading has left me if a state of shock that no reading has ever done. Many of us, if not all of us, have heard and learned about the unsettling stories of refugees’ struggles/treatment. However, the fact that this story is told through pictures and vivid images has been an eye-opening experience. The image itself allows adds to the powerful words. It’s one thing when you hear the stories, and it’s another thing to see them–putting the two together is just a masterpiece. A specific image that left me starstruck was right before chapter 4. At first, it starts like a ‘crunched up paper’ with the saying, ” there are hundreds of stories like this…” Initially, I thought the ‘crunched up paper’ signified the ending of the whole comic because it opened up with someone entering the detention center to experience and meet people my their drawing. The ‘crunched up paper’ was the magnified two images and showed ‘trapped’ like faces with the saying ” they are not in detention to be punished… not processed”. The image emphasized the term punished and illustrated trapness, which is also ironic because the meaning of detention/detained is to “keep (someone) from proceeding; hold back” (google definition). The image itself is a form of communication from the refugees. This image, along with others, left a lasting effect because I was able to absorb and synthesize what I saw rather than what I was reading. Visual was highly influential in this case and I will say this reading left a mark.

‘WHAT?’ began one boy’s reaction paper. ‘I dont thank I be so kalm if my moms dyed.’

Before the phone rang, I had scribbles ‘AMEN BROTHER!’ in red pencil, in the margin of his single-spaced, handwritten, steam-of-consciuosness masterpiece. But after hanging up with my father’s wife, I wrote him a long note scolding him for oversimplifying and being careless with his spelling. Then I gave him a C.

Danticat 4

After reading on in the except, I learned that Danticat used Nadia’s students’ work to foreshadow her experience and thoughts through this tragic turn of events. Taking a closer look into the quoted section above, Nadia felt sympathy for her student’s reaction prior to the phone call with her stepmother, however, after that conversation her perspective on the situation shifted. for instance, she couldn’t ‘drop everything and come to Miami”. But this only expressed her outer feeling. But Danticat illustrating that Nadia then focused on a different perspective of her students’ work, also illustrates that this was kinda doing on in Nadia’s head as well after the phone call. She couldn’t just oversimplify the dying state of her father and needed to really hone down on it. just like how her students couldn’t just oversimplify the intensive even of the mother dying in the book and hone down on his spelling. We can see that this student’s work was truly a foreshadowing for Nadia’s path because later on, she inquired an intense meeting with her mother and eventually hone down into actually going to meet her father that was dying. Additionally, towards the end of the except, when she made it to Miami, she states that she wanted to see her father but remembered the C-student’s paper in which he was mad at people for saying it doesn’t matter when you die and closed he paper by saying ‘it do matter. Avery sekond kount.” and that Nadia will raise his grade. This incident shows that her students’ thoughts in their work are foreshadowing how Nadia feels because at that moment when she wanted to see her father she realized how every second counted. All in all, this was an interesting way for Danticat to foreshadow the events of Nadia’s interaction in the event of her father dying. Nadia needed confused throughout this except so this foreshadowing technique of giving the reader a heads up through the work of her student was clever and truly helped me have a deeper understanding in this reading.

Throughout A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid used a second-person point of view to address her claims by constantly using the pronoun ‘you.’ She did this in the opening by describing how a vacation in Antigua would be as a tourist. However, in my opinion, her description is on the more brutal side. For Example, on page 4, she states

… but they were much too green, much too -lush with vegetation, which indicated to you, the tourist, that they got quite a bit of rainfall, and rain is the very thing that you, just now, do not want, for you are thinking of the hard and cold and dark and long days you spent working in North America (or, worse, Europe), earning some money so that you could stay in this place (Antigua) where the sun always shines and where the climate is deliciously hot and dry for the four to ten days you are going to be staying there;…

These descriptions amplify her attitudes towards whites (‘you’) having the luxury of visiting this small place. Kincaid deliberately uses ‘you’ to make us feel like we are intentional characters in this novel. You may strick you by playing into this role, but I think that was the point Kincaid tried to express. Having your attention grabbed by placing ‘you’ in the story allows Kincaids’ message to be painted clearly–that ‘you’ are unmindful because ‘you’ are a tourist—an individual who gets can leave from the dull life ‘you’ have and visits a small place that is corrupt and in poverty because of your peoples’ wrongdoing.

I must mention that Upon first reading this novel, I was intrigued because it wasn’t like the typical novels I usually read on. While according to google this novel does fit the standard definition of “a modem form of literature that describes fictional characters and events usually in the form of a sequential story”, this novel, in particular, spoke out to me as a diary/conversational transcription style writing. Jumping from scene to scene it felt like Julius was just speaking out to us, the reader, about his days and thoughts throughout it.

Within this, I found it more intriguing that he would always have moments of self-awareness about himself in relation to others around him. The self-awareness was more of him pitying himself. We see in his interaction with the professor, he alluded to the audience that he had to pay the professor a visit because of the long timeout that he didn’t; he started to paint this image of pity for himself and his relationship with the professor but stating ” He must have seen something in me that made him think I was someone whom his rarefied subject …would not waste. I was a disappointment in this regard, but he was kindhearted…” (7) He later felt pity again when he meets the old man that ran the marathon and additionally when he saw Seth and heard about Carla’s dead or even when thinking about being an “overthinker” when it came to global warming. All these encounters took me by surprise because they contradicted a statement that he brought up earlier on how his walks in the city were “therapeutic.” All the times that he pities himself were during or shortly after his walks. The walks were essentially a way for him to think, relax, and wander off from his normal everyday life in the hospital. However, I think this contradiction that he plays out kind of emphasizes his subtle point of even if you are in a city you still alone motive. I just that leading idea was fascinating, especially as a native New Yorker.

“Grace thinks of Fiona as that woman. She is from overseas where they have funny ways, like using first names when they don’t even know a person, although of course in Grace’s case she is only the char and so that is her name, which is a pity, for With such a holy name it would be lovely to add a decent title: Miss Grace. As a young girl she used to mouth to herself in the cracked mirror, Miss Grace, and toss her hair, and her mother said, airs and graces, just see it doesn’t all end in disgrace. Imagine, wanting to be called by your first name. Fiona, the woman said the first time, holding out her hand. No, I don’t want to be called Miss McAllister; it takes too long anyway. “

I found it interesting how the relationship and meaning of one’s name are viewed differently amongst these two women. Grace, who has been through hardships, considering the time this was written, sees value in a simple name. It holds a sense of worthiness and acknowledgment on the person. Whereas Fiona, a Scottish woman, sees it as a basic placeholder for the person itself–hits why she thinks Miss McAllister is just a waste of breath. From a psychological perspective, it makes sense for these two women to have different points of view. However, I couldn’t help but make a connection to the last reading of “Black Psychiatrist,” where Gloria, a white lady, actually held deep connections with her “new” name. I would have thought that because both share the same race, they would share the same stance/position regarding ones’ title. But I guess again it is all about one’s history. Gloria had a history she wanted to erase, so her name reflected that Grace had a history of being looked down upon. Hence, she wanted a name that held value, and Fiona had a history where she wanted to reflect simplicity in her name. I personally find names intriguing, so of course, this part of the text really spoke to me.

“I have the strange feeling that if I could make this journey.

I could reverse.

The effects of a long-held suffering in my family system that

makes its face known in the arguments of elders over property or

ownership, but also domestic violence towards women and girls

in its many forms.

Who was responsible for the suffering of your mother?’

When reading the poem I found it very intriguing that Bhanu Kapil breaks each line into one sentence as a complete thought throughout the entirety of the poem– expect here. Her breaking the cycle at this particular moment emphasizes the tragedy that the partition had on her family and the urgency/need for her to “fix” it–just for her family and specifically for her mother. While her lines are broken up by periods in order to make you as the reader take a moment and think about the idea presented, I interpreted this changing of narrative to make a longer sentence as a way of her standing her ground and showing us a true example of affected it has had on her family. In addition, I think that the longer sentence holds sentimental value because it not only shows the effect that the partition of India and Pakistan but also the visible hindrance of one so-called legacy and inheritance and the psychological trauma it holds within families. Because 2 million people had to migrate to their respected region and leave many things behind it’s understandable for them now to have arguments over property and ownership. They have once been stripped away from what was once theirs, the human need to fight for is still lingering within the family system. For Kapil to express this in a longer more cohesive line brings so much emphasis to the family trauma but awareness and significants that I thought was nicely put.

When reading this short story, the details on Sirajuddin’s traumatic separation from his daughter were very striking. It was clear with the vivid details and imagery that this had a hard impact on the father. However, when reading further down the passage, I was intrigued by how Mottled Dawn led the readers to see Sakina’s point of view without explicitly mentioning the fine details. For example, we can see that she, too, has gone through a detrimental situation during her departure from her father when Dawn states the shift of the relation Sakina had with her dupatta. In the beginning, we are told that she had no care for the falling of her dupatta when her father tried to pick it up off the ground. Yet, later on, she shows desperate needs of it when stated “it was obvious that she was ill-at-ease without her dupatta, trying nervously to cover her breast with her arms”. In addition, Sakina perspective was also spoked and “revealed” at the end of the passage, although the main focus was on the father and doctor’s reaction to her showing her the result and outcomes of her rape. Her perspective was shown through powerful diction of “painful slowness.” While the story is tragic, I thought it was well developed and told fascinatingly because the author purposely alludes and encourages the reader to read in-between the lines to grasp the sense of Sakina also having a traumatic experience. This not only allows for different perspectives to be put into play, but it also allows a grasp of the full picture/story in a riveting way.