Sugar baby, sad baby(?)

That woman looks like she's gonna get things done. She looks determined to do whatever it is she wants to do. Her huge hands look like feet. Maybe they are feet. Art is weird. Somehow the largeness of this sphinx makes me feel like I am standing in front of god; something unreal and beyond my imagination. Why is it made out of sugar though? Did the artist forget about every other material in the world? Or is it supposed to symbolize that a woman is sweet? Or is it symbolizing that even though some people look strong, they can crumble at the slightest touch.


- Raj

Every culture is a male-dominated culture. Patriarchy is everywhere and it cannot be escaped. The subject of "dress-codes" for women is a very controversial one. I don't think Westerners understand the idea of covering-up one's body. I personally for sure don't know enough about it to scream out my opinion left and right. But here are some facts that I do know. Last semester, I read a book called No god but God by Reza Aslan. He explains all the misunderstandings about the Qur'an and Islamic culture. Nowhere in the Qur'an is it written that women need to completely cover up their bodies. They are only advised to cover their bosoms and to not have too many ornaments on display. The wives of Muhammed  were the first women in the Islamic tradition to cover up their faces. They did so because their house in Medina also served as an early Islamic temple so there were a lot of people passing through it every day. Muhammed's wives wore veils to protect their privacy and modesty. Their veils became the symbol for their high societal status. Soon, other women started to wear veils as well to seem like they also had a high societal position. It was their decision to wear the veils. Only recently, men started to force women into wearing burkas. This issue is complicated, both in Islamic and Western countries. Until recently, Turkey, a country with a high percentage of Muslims, did not allow women to attend university while wearing a burqa. There was also a controversy when some important politician's wife chose to wear a burqa, and he was losing votes because of it. This whole issue is too complicated for me to fit all the facts and my opinion into 15 minutes of writing. However, I am sure of one thing: no woman should be denied her basic rights and be forced by a man to wear something she does not want to wear.

Yankees v. Indians

When I was little I used to watch baseball religiously with my dad. I loved it so much I even opted to play in the baseball little league rather than the softball one. The first game I ever went to was with him at the old Yankee Stadium. We got shitty seats through the Little League and the section we were in was comprised mostly of fathers and their 8 year old sons. Everyone wore jerseys with cargo shorts and baseball hats but I sat there in a Polo sundress, just as interested in the game as everyone else. I got a ton of strange looks that day as people questioned what on earth this small girl with the neon pink nail polish was doing at a baseball game seated with her entire baseball team. I definitely turned heads that day which I was pretty okay with since it happened every time I showed up to game. Each Tuesday night a different group of opposing team’s parents realized there was a girl on our team. So like I said, at the game that May, I definitely turned heads and people looked over with confusion. I think the only bigger spectacle at the game that day was the guy in the section below us wearing the Native American headdress. Ironically, the Yankees were playing the Indians that day and I vividly remember turning to my dad and asking him why the guy was wearing that since it was very clearly not Halloween. I didn’t even process the opposing team was named after the a wrongly named group of Natives. My dad explained it wasn’t the first time he had seen but how it never seemed to make sense to him. I remember being quiet on the drive home, I was tired from the heat and full from the cotton candy but I also couldn’t stop thinking about the clearly Caucasian Yankee fan in the Native American headdress.

Liv

Writing

"There is no motivation higher than being a good writer."

I think I agree with you Tom Wolfe. There are some days I can write a paper with no problem, the words just flow out of me. But other days, I struggle to even create an outline. When this happens my own motivation is the approaching deadline. I do have one question for you though. What would you consider a good writer? I always thought I was a good writer, until others began to critique my work. I'm not saying feedback is bad, its helpful; everyone can always improve their writing. But is there a certain standard one had to achieve to be considered good? You know, there are different types of writers. There are those that focus on entertainments, and others who write novels. I would consider them both to be good writers, because they are passionate about their work. Can't passion make someone a good writer? I bet theses writers have the best motivation in the world, since they are dedicating their careers to writing, but probably not. Don't we all experience "writer's block" once in a while. For some reason I am able to produce an essay in a hour if I am being timed, but if have more than a week to write a paper, I just can't find the motivation within me. I guess you could say I work best under pressure.

- LG 

Good

"There is no motivation higher than being a good writer."

If you're a writer there's no motivation higher than being a good writer. If you're a singer, there's no motivation higher than being a good singer. If you're a student, there's no motivation higher than being a good student. And if you're a person, there's no motivation higher than being a good person. All of this sounds nice and I would like it to be true. But I think that humans are too materialistic. Being good at something is not good enough of us. We can pretend that we are motivated just so that we can become "good," but the truth is that we want a reward for achieving that goodness. A good writer wants to win a Pulitzer Prize to prove to everyone that he is, in fact, a good writer. A good singer wants a Grammy, a good student wants straight As, and a good person wants to be called "good person." IN the end, simply being good is not good enough for anyone. We also want to receive recognition for our so-called goodness. 

                                                                                                                                                  -Malwina

38

Helpless. Like a deer in headlights or a dog trying to make its way home in the pitch black darkness of night. Nothing to be seen, little to be heard. They have spoken their last words and sighed their last breath. Now they are lined up like cattle one by one about to be sent off for slaughter. Is it the action that makes the man or the man that makes the action? We all do bad things, what makes them stand out? Surrounded on all sides with nowhere to hide and nowhere to run everything they’ve ever done is displayed in the hood they wear, the ultimate mark of shame, betrayal, sadness, and desperation. I wonder if any of these people are innocent, if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, a bad trick of fate that now has them spiraling helplessly to a point of no return. Heinous actions should never go unpunished but do we live in a society so focused on punishment that it does not want to help those who desperately need it? But then again, how can you determine who really can be helped and who is too far gone. I guess for all of these people they are too far gone from the man or woman they once knew. Now, unable to lift their eyes to meet their own gaze in a mirror, they are unrecognizable even to themselves. Sometimes people can stray down a bad path but luckily for most of us there are exits, paths to take us back to where belong or where we can find ourselves again. I wonder if these people on this stage missed their exit or simply passed it by. If they chose to go too far down the rabbit hole or it happened to them out of necessity. We never see faces when people are hanged, I’m glad no one can see this. It seems to me that no matter what someone did or what brought them to a creaking wooden platform with a burlap sack on their head, they deserve to die with whatever remaining dignity they have left.

Writer

"There is no motivation higher than being a good writer."

What makes a good writer? It seems like the rules are constantly changing. Don't start a scentance with "and" or "but". Don't use fragments, never, not ever. Not even for creative dramatic effect. But still be creative, still douse the pages with the inner workings of your mind, a mind that doesn't always make sense or compute millions of floating fragments of thoughts into perfect 12 point times new roman sentences. No, words come out of my brain as a jumbled mess of thought that I then rearrange and reshape and cut down and dilute until there's nothing remotely close to what I am left in them. And sometimes even that's a little too outside the box.

In high school I asked my English teacher why I couldn't write my short stories in the rich yet sparse full of swirling emotion fragmented genius way of Junot Diaz. She told me to come back when I had a Pulitzer prize and that until then I had to follow the rules. But Junot Diaz didn't. None of the Greats did. So I don't either in the hopes that maybe one day I can be great, and if not, I'll be content knowing that that my writing is me.

-EB

Immigrant

I know that Junot Diaz wrote this from the perspective of an immigrant, of the choice between being afraid of every part of existence under an oppressive regime or a society with a strict social code of conduct and dropping everything, risking everything and everyone you hold dear to try and save them and yourselves somewhere new. Somewhere safe. But that's not the way I read this quote. This quote made me think of the citizens of a host country to which people are immigrating. They too face two choices, to bar their doors, to build walls of hatred to keep their fear contained and enveloped close, like a comforting blanket, and the other even more daunting task of letting their fear out, of setting it free, under the hope that without walls they can lean to be less afraid of what they see as "other". As the child of an immigrant family, I see the struggle my family endured to get here. I am also American, born and raised, and was fed the same biases as all other children though the media and through schooling all my life. This is why it is so difficult for me to understand people who are so scared of immigration. What differentiates our thoughts? How can I be just another face in the schoolyard to you, and yet simultaneously something other?

-EB

American Dream(s)

This picture shows two sides to America — but there are so many more. The readings in this class have led me to contemplate how the idea of the American dream exists as a singular entity, like we all think we're striving towards the same thing, but in reality the circumstances that we are born into dictate how we dream and what we aspire to do — who we aspire to be.
Privilege is probably the characteristic that defines America more than any other — it's what many of us are born with, in some form or another, and it's what everyone aspires to achieve. But the degree to which privilege can arise from accomplishment, form action, is pretty limited. Most people either have it or they don't, and many of those who do then take advantage of opportunities afforded to them and accumulate capital in the form of increasing privilege. But this is almost impossible to do for people who are afforded little privilege and opportunity.
Opportunities are what shape our dreams and our perceptions of our own capacity for greatness — they will shape our definition of greatness. And so with every variance in privilege and opportunity arises a different idea of the American dream.

MT