White Tiger: Lit Cicles

Our class is doing literature circles for the second chapter of Woman Warrior, White Tiger. The role I chose was lexicographer, someone who looks up definitions of words we may not know. (Definitions are from http://dictionary.reference.com/) I didn't separate the posts, so this is just all the vocab I looked up.

-alighted
To settle or stay after descending.
Page 19: She was combing her hair one morning when a white crane alighted outside her window.

-ideograph
A character or symbol representing an idea or a thing without expressing the pronunciation of a particular word or words for it.
Page 20: In the brush drawings it looks like the ideograph for "human," two black wings.

-opaque
Not transparent or translucent; impenetrable to light; not allowing light to pass through.
Page 20: The bird would cross the sun and lift into the mountains (which look like the ideograph “mountain”), there parting the mist briefly that swirled opaque again.

-timberline
The elevation in a mountainous region above which trees do not grow.
Page 24: I walked in the direction from which we had come, and when I reached the timberline, I collected wood broken from the cherry tree, the peony, and the walnut, which is the tree of life.

-self-immolation
Voluntary sacrifice or denial of oneself, as for an ideal or another person.
Page 28: I had met a rabbit who taught me about self-immolation and how to speed up transmigration: one does not have to become worms first but can change directly into a human being.

-quarries
Page 29: In quarries I could see its strata, the dragon’s veins and muscles; the minerals, its teeth and bones.

-strata
A layer of tissue.
Page 29: In quarries I could see its strata, the dragon’s veins and muscles; the minerals, its teeth and bones.

-tooled
To form, work, or decorate with a tool.
Page 35: The saddle was just my size with tigers and dragons tooled in swirls.

-culled
To pick out from others; select.
Page 36: I accepted all the gifts- -though I could not possibly carry them with me, and culled for travel only a small copper cooking bowl.

-relinquished
To let go; surrender.
Page 36: The villagers relinquished their real gifts to me- their sons.

-abreast
Side by side; beside each other in a line
Page 37: Often I walked beside my horse to travel abreast of my army.

-fiefdoms
The estate or domain of a feudal lord.
Page 37: When I won over a goodly number of fighters, I built up my army enough to attack fiefdoms and to pursue the enemies I had seen in the water gourd.

-palanquins
A covered litter carried on poles on the shoulders of four or more bearers, formerly used in eastern Asia.
Page 38: They had climbed out of their palanquins to watch their husband fight me, and now they were holding each other weeping.

-gestation
The period of development in the uterus from conception until birth; pregnancy.
Page 39: As a fat man, I walked with the foot soldiers so as not to jounce the gestation.

-palpable
Capable of being touched or felt; tangible.
Page 41: The leader stared at the palpable sword swishing unclutched at his men, then laughed out loud.

-inaugurated
To induct into office with formal ceremonies.
Page 42: We beheaded him, cleaned out the place, and inaugurated the peasant who would begin the new order.

- accosted
To approach and speak to boldly or aggressively, as with a demand or request.
Page 43: When no one accosted me, I sheathed the swords and walked about like a guest until I found the baron.

-reprive
To postpone or cancel the punishment of.
Page 44: there was one last-minute reprive of a bodyguard when a witness shouted testimony just as the vise was pinching blood.

-filiality
The relation or attitude of a child to a parent.
Page 45: From the words on my back, and how they were fulfilled, the villagers would make a legend about my perfect filiality.

-deigned
To condescend to give or grant.
Page 48: The boss never deigned to answer.

-opulent
Richly supplied; abundant or plentiful.
Page 49: He leaned back in his leather chair, his bossy stomach opulent.

-wont
Custom; habit; practice.
Page 49: Surely, the eighty pole fighters, though unseen, would follow me and lead me and protect me, as is the wont of ancestors.

-anthropology
The science that deals with the origins, physical and cultural development, biological characteristics, and social customs and beliefs of humankind.
Page 52: I read in an anthropology book that Chinese say, “Girls are necessary too”; I have never heard the Chinese I know to make this concession.

-concession
The thing or point yielded.
Page 53: I read in an anthropology book that Chinese say, “Girls are necessary too”; I have never heard the Chinese I know to make this concession.

Hero

We were assigned to write about a hero in our lives, fictional or non-fictional. I wish I could think of someone original to write about, but since I can't, I'm going with a "my-friend-the-hero" approach.

Kelli moved out of the state to the mainland right before high school. Even before her move I admired her. Kelli had a easy-going personality; she usually went with the flow and often "winged it" and hoped for the best. This in no way means she agreed with everything. When there was something she felt strongly about, she could argue with you for weeks. Her laid back persona also doesn't mean she sat around waiting for things to happen; she was often the spark in our conversations and could easily rant about a wide variety of subjects. She to say she kept things interesting was an understatement. Kelli kept things insane. Whether she was describing a new anime or muttering about the angel and demon on her shoulders she kept everyone interested, happy, and at times, confused.

Then Kelli moved to the mainland. Living a fairly sheltered life in private school in Hawaii, she was overwhelmed by the conflicts of Mainland public schools. The normal stress of high school was amplified with her being new and from a completely different school environment. There was a time things got really hectic as she made friends who involved her in their problems. Somehow she carried the stress of her new life and pulled through everything, a little more stressed now, but still possessing the same spark.

I admire how she can adjust so quickly and pretty smoothly into a completely different environment even with the usual transition-into-high-school stress as well as her amiable personality. She's shown more strength than any fictional super powered hero has ever shown (A cliché line to end my cliché post. ^^;;)

Methods Of Characterization

In class we learned the 5 Methods Of Characterization and were assigned to apply them to one of our characters from out Flat World Tale. I'll be using the unamed main character/narrerator.

Appearence
She's a 13 year old full Korean girl she but doesn't look very asian due to her unusually large eyes and while she's fairly pretty and has a pretty good fashion sense she doesn't wear anything too risky.

Inner Thoughts and Feelings
She isn't sure whether she want to be closer to God. She's afraid to be a devoted Christian because she fears she might not be accepted by her friedns and classmates. She's frustrated at not being able to communicate or understand the people around her. She gains spiritual enlightenment but is still sturggling with coming out and annoncing her faith with pride.

Environment
The retreat is a good place for her to attempt to learn more about herself, but the time, place, and language all work against her. Her assumed school environment is a place where religious views are too heavy subjects and considered strange, different.

What they say
The girl starts out not saying much but agreeing and following Nina. At the end she voices her own opinion. It's just a word , but she does say "Yeah" with her own voice and not Nina's.

What others say about them
A chaperone scolds her on her unwillingness to get as much as she can out of the retreat.
Nina says to her that the retreat was almost bearable with her.

Actions
She does some regretable things at first directed by Nina and the frustrating circumstances; but eventually gets something out of the experience and starts to grow both with God and as a person.

Flat World Tales: Summary

This is a story I'm thinking about posting for the Thousand and One Flat World Tales Project.


Told in first person, a girl is sent by her parents to a week long Korean Youth Retreat the week before the start of school. Mildly annoyed at first, she arrives at the church with crossed arms and a scowl. Her plans of a relaxing last week of freedom from school were ruined with a week of “spiritual bonding” with about 50 other kids ranging from 9- 17 years of age. Of course, these weren’t just any kids, they were kids of vast majority spoke only Korean while she spoke none. Communicating would be impossible as would understanding anyone.

Along with losing a week of lazy T.V. watching and internet surfing; she finds the camp grounds barely proved livable. There was a recreation room, while large enough to hold the 50 kids and chaperones, was an open air room, meaning no walls to prevent bugs and other things from getting ‘in’. Below the recreation room were two bathrooms, one for the boys and one for the girls, containing a total of two sinks, three bathrooms, and three showers. Next to the bathroom was a room for sermons and while this time it was a closed room, it could probably just barely fit them all. Outside in the back was a labyrinth of about 10 or so small tents set up side by side. Cabins were available, but not for use as tents were supposed to “bring them closer together”.

Glaring at the banners in the recreation room she notices some are in English reading “The Change”. Scoffing at the somewhat cliché theme she meets Nina, who voices her opinion about the title, echoing the girls thoughts. Nina, like her, was forced there by her parents and was not enjoying the trip so far. Unlike her, Nina did understand and speak Korean.

They spend the next few days of the retreat complaining about the food; mouthing the praise songs; ignoring the sermons, Nina even goes as far to sleep during one; mocking and barely participating in the lame activities; talking back to chaperones; and making fun of the “dorks who were actually enjoying the retreat”.

The girl grows increasingly frustrated that she can’t understand anything being said to her. At one point, a chaperone asks to talk to the two girls and reprimand them for not following instructions. The girl argues irately that she couldn’t understand instructions. The chaperone responds that she could have asked someone and that this was not the only incident. She proceeds to scold them on how they’ve been acting and threatens to send them home if they don’t “take on a better attitude”. She sends them to separate tents to think about whether they’d want to stay and shape up or go home.

The girl reveals in thoughts that while she wasn’t completely devoted to God, she did have some faith and was somewhat interested in growing closer to God. While this was the perfect opportunity, she provides excuses, like the language barrier and the unfit environment, to defend herself. In the back of her mind she argues with herself that she could have tried before. However, reputations of extreme Christians have always been associated with the lower part of the social ladder at school.

She’s interrupted by the chaperone that lets her and Nina out and asks for their answer. They both answer that they’d stay and behave, mainly because being sent home early would not rest well with their parents, however, they continue to mock the retreat, but only to each other in whispers.

On the last night before going home, they have a ceremony where they re-enacted the feet washing ritual that was supposed to show them how to love, respect, and accept each other. After that was done, they formed a chain and hugged one another. Some girls started to cry and since the girl was well informed of the story already, she could understand the significance of this action and reached a moment of enlightenment. She started to tear and turned to see what effect this had on Nina. Nina scoffed and rolled her eyes saying, “Some girls are so emotional.” After a moment, the girl agreed, muttering a half-hearted, “Yeah.”

The next day they rode back to the church and said their goodbyes as them got picked up one by one. Nina’s car pulled up and she waved bye saying the retreat was almost bearable with her there. The girl hears Nina’s parents asking how the retreat was and Nina answers with a heartfelt description on how the retreat “really changed herself and how she viewed the world.” The girl parents arrive soon after and asked the same question Nina answered not too long ago.

The girl ruminates on her trip and how she could have made it a better experience. She disproves her excuses realizing she could have overcome some barriers with a little effort. The sermons did have English translations that she and Nina were too lazy to read; the praise songs didn’t have to be sung exactly right for her to be able to praise God; and she could have asked for translations from Nina for the instructions. She is glad that she was able to get a worthwhile experience from the retreat. Even if it was just one night of spiritually growth, that one night enabled her to understand what it meant to show love and understanding, helped her find God in her heart, and form a bond with not only God but the kids at the retreat.

She’s interrupted by her parents who ask the question again and she answers with a simple, “Yeah.” It was the same word she spoke to Nina last night, but this time it carried a different meaning, and meant a lot more than a hundred of Nina’s fake sugar coated lies. She had changed.

No Name Woman: Maxine

In The Woman Warrior, No Name Woman, Maxine is told a story about her aunt. Afterwards she imagines what her aunt was like and describes different scenarios her aunt could have been in. Maxine's description and imagination reveals a lot about herself.

"For warm eyes or a soft voice or a slow walk-that's all-a few hairs, a line, a brightness, a sound, a pace, she gave up family. She offered us up for a charm that vanished with tiredness, a pigtail that didn't toss when the wind died. Why, the wrong lighting could erase the dearest thing about him." (page 8)

"If I made myself American-pretty so that the five or six Chinese boys in the class fell in love with me, everyone else- the Caucasian, Negro, and Japanese boys- would too. Sisterliness, dignified and honorable, made much more sense." (page 12)

These two quotes show that Maxine values family and her lineage over romance and love. In the first quote, Maxine scorns her aunt for choosing a man over family. She belittles her aunt's love for the man, saying that qualities in people weren't permanent. You could see someone amazing at first glance but with "the wrong lighting" they could change entirely.

In the second quote Maxine is stern on the fact that she should only attract Chinese boys and that being a sister to all boys was better than being loved by boys of different heritage. This shows she values her lineage over love. "Sisterliness, dignified and honorable, made much more sense." This part of the quotes sounds like she is also describing the nature of Chinese women, showing she commends Chinese behavior and prefers it to love.

"The work of preservation demands that the feelings playing around in one's guts not be turned into action. Just watch their passing like cherry blossoms. But perhaps my aunt, my forerunner, caught in a slow life, let dreams grow and fade and after some months or years went toward what persisted." (page 8)

The idea of her aunt having to let dreams grow and fade might have grown from a dream of her own that she had to let go. In her imagination her aunt at one point finally "went towards what persisted". Perhaps she wishes she had gone towards a dream that eluded her and conveyed it to her story to see one scenario where the dream was chased.

Descriptive Cynical Love Quote

It's four days after Valentine's Day butI felt like posting this... interesting qoute from Neil Gaiman:

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love."

It reminded me of the descriptive passage in the begining of The Woman Warrior, where the villagers attack the aunt's house. And just because this post looks kind of bare with one quote, here are a few more cynical love quotes:

~"Your heart is my piñata."
~"We say we love flowers, yet we pluck them. We say we love trees, yet we cut them down. And people still wonder why some are afraid when told they are loved."
~"True Love burns the brightest, But the brightest flames leave the deepest scars."
~"The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to feel the pain."

Family Story

A few winters ago, my aunt, uncle, brothers, and I went on a skiing road trip. My brothers and I were getting bored so we started talking about what we were going to do when we got there. My older brother stared talking about how he was going to snowboard down the biggest slopes right away. My aunt asked if he had snowboarded before and he said no. "But I'm a natural!" was how he replied with a convinced grin. She laughed and told him he was just like our dad.

When my dad first went skiing he found he could ski fairly well, or at least well enough to stay upright, and started showing off. Some guy saw him and said to my dad that anyone could ski on the bunny slopes and that he couldn't handle the larger slopes. My dad took the challenge and the two of them went to the top of a fairly steep slope. Luck prevailed, and my dad was able to get down the slope with ease, or at least looking like he had done so with ease.

Some people who had overheard them were at the bottom and congratulated my dad. He of course acted like it wasn't a big deal. The challenger wasn't impressed. He took my dad to a steeper slope and demanded he ski it with him. Again my dad was lucky enough to get down in one piece. Nonchalantly he asked if "that was all". They guy was pretty irritated that my dad was doing so well, so he took him to the steepest slope in the resort, so steep it was practically vertical.

A couple of the bystanders decided to try the slope too, all bursting with confidence seeing my dad, who had never skied before, do so well. They all gathered at the top and skied down. If you could call it skiing. Not only was this the steepest slope, it also had the most trees. People were crashing so often, they were more tumbling down than skiing. Things were still going well for my dad and a few other experienced people, but at the bottom of the slope was a huge puddle. Every skier slipped into it crashing at the bottom. Except my dad who had been going so fast, he skied over the puddle getting only the bottom of his pants wet. While he had every reason to gloat, he didn't find it wise to stay when there was a bunch of angry injured and wet skiers on his back.

My brother pointed out this seemed to support his theory that he could handle the slopes without prior experience. But my aunt reminded him that the other skiers weren't as lucky as my dad. And even if my brother was as lucky, he was also influencing my little bother and I who might not be as lucky. The moral of this story would be that even if your bad decisions won't necessarily hurt you, they might lead others to follow your actions and get hurt.

No Name Woman: 2 Quotes

Our class started reading The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. From the first chapter, No Name Woman, we were asked to choose 2 quotes to analyze.

"Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese?" (page 5)

This quote is somewhat different from the rest of the chapter. It describes her personal feelings rather than just random thoughts and ideas. Here she describes how being 'Chinese-American' makes it hard to identify yourself. She tries to categorize all the experiences and aspects of her life that make up who she is into her American part and the Chinese part. What's strange is that in the quote, she begins to describe all these things that look to be part of her Chinese side, but at the end it says: "How do you separate... , from what is Chinese?" implying that those are the parts of her that are 'American'. This might have been written this way to further exaggerate how everything she had was mixed up in the Chinese-American girl she was.

"The work of preservation demands that the feelings playing about in one's guts not to be turned into action. Just watch their passing like cherry blossoms." (page 8)

"The work of preservation" refers to her aunt's or any woman’s duty to be reserved and loyal and "demands that the feelings playing about in one's guts not to be turned into action" simply means that they should not act on impulse or any emotions in general. In other words, the women in China at that time were expected to be self contained, prim, and aloof; and were expected to keep opinions and emotions to themselves; "watch their passing like cherry blossoms." The simile accompanying this thought hints depression. Cherry blossoms are thought to be beautiful in Asian culture and the passing of something that wonderful, like a feeling not let out, sounds pretty remorseful.

Moodle

My English class experimented with a site called "Moodle". It allowed us to turn in assignments, make and discuss on boards, and create collaborative wikis. Recently we discussed in class the positive and negative things about Moodle as well as what we wish we could do on it and the different ways we could use it.

Some positive were that we could discuss with our classmates on it through boards and messages, by turning in assignments with it we would save paper, there was a lot we could do on it, and it was a safe and private environment we could communicate.

Most negatives were technical difficulties. Some negatives were that you could only post or edit wikis one at a time otherwise your work would be lost; depending on what internet service you used, it might not have all the features; and it lagged a lot meaning it was more likely that you'd lose your work due to the first negative. One of my group partners also mentioned that it was a bit plain.

The 'what we wish we could do on Moodle' were pretty much based off the negatives: We wished it would be able to take in info from multiple people at the same time, that it was compatible with all or at least most internet services, that it was faster, and that it could be less plain, possibly more personalized like a blog.

There are many different ways to use Moodle. The obvious ways are posting and discussing English topics; using the wiki to make stories, poems, etc; turning in assignments; and messaging each other for homework, questions, etc. Some creative ideas we came up with were editing each others papers and posting homework incase you were sick or forgot.

Moodle, in general, is a great way for our class to share ideas and stuff like blogger.com, but in a safer more private environment.

Lost Sister by Cathy Song

"You find you need China:/ Your one fragile identification,/ a jade link/ handcuffed to your wrist." (Part 2, paragraph 3, lines 1-4.)

This quote is from the poem Lost Sister by Cathy Song. Our English class read this poem together and we were assigned to explain what this poem reveals about our essential questions: Who Am I? How can my use of language help to develop self and voice?

The girl in this poem, Jade, first talks about her life in China and how her life there made her feel restrained and restricted. She then escapes this way of living by moving to America where she describes how it felt to be free and throws away her old life and old identity. Her victory is short lived as she begins to see the hardships of life in America and at the same time loses more and more of her Chinese heritage, a part of her identity.

Our experiences shaped who we are. The quote states how Jade realized that she couldn't just throw her past in China away. It was a part of who she was, something that would always mean something to her, metaphorically handcuffed to her wrist as a reminder or her roots. Our 'self' is created by everything we did, do, and will do in our lives and our past is a significant part of that.

Introduction

Hello. My name is Herena. For a lack of a better way to introduce myself, I'll rant about how my name should be Helena but because l and r in Korean are the same character it became Herena. ... ... ... Okay, I guess that's done. This intro will be pretty basic and brief seeing as how I lack the creativity and energy to write something incredibly clever.

So I suppose I should just go with the original 'stuff-I-like-and-stuff-I-dislike' tangent. Lately, playing the piano has been a pretty good stress reliever. I've been playing for about six years but never really liked it (, that might have had something to do with me never practicing,) but it turns out banging on piano keys is actually pretty fun, even if you can't play well. Which is good since 'playing well' is about as far as you can get from my piano playing. Listening to music is something else I like. Then again so does pretty much everyone else... I don't like any specific genre, I pretty much listen to anything (, YouTube makes this possible,) but Good Charlotte songs are a favorite. Other things I like: surfing the internet, hanging out with friends, and the spell check on Microsoft Word.

This is a lot more text than I originally planned this intro to have... I guess I'll end with the reason for this blog: English class. In general, this blog will be based around answering the questions, "Who am I?" and "How can I use language to express myself?"