Social Awareness Asignment #3- Social Issues:

Some "social issues" I witness in my life are:

- Bullying/ Cyberbullying
- Child Abuse
- Gay Rights *
- Homelessness
- Marijuana Legalization
- Obesity

The issue that I am focusing on in this response is gay rights. Even though that throughout the years of history gay/ lesbian people have been accepted more and more, some people still have a hard time accepting them for who they are as a person. New York, for example, only recently allowed residents to be legally married if gay, but you can only be married out of state. So even though we are partially starting to be okay with it, it's still not completely. There are over 47,000 same-sex couples just in New York City, and it would be nice to just let them do what they want! This is definitely a social issue because there are people out there fighting for the things they believe in, and there are people out there fighting just as hard to stop those things from happening.

I think that people should just accept people who are gay for themselves. It's not like they're aliens- they're human just like the rest of the world. I find it so silly to see people protesting gay rights, and gay marriage, because it's not like it would be afffecting the protesters! I would just let people live their own lives as they please because frankly, it's not really any of my business what other people do. I believe that people who are gay are people who are just as welcome in the world as anyone else.

Social Awareness Asignment #2- Social Issue in The Help

The book that I am currently reading (again) is The Help by Kathryn Stockett. This book takes place in the early 1960's, so an obvious social issue in the book would be racial discrimination. Even though it was after the Civil War and there were laws that officially integrated blacks and whites, some people (particularly in the south) still had the same hate for African Americans as they did before. In this book, Aibeleen is the main character and she is the house maid for a rich white family in Jackson, Mississippi. Even though Aibeleen does have her own house and her own family and the white family treats her with a substantial level of respect, she still feels intimidated and maybe even a little scared. Even though slavery was something of the past, the events that occurred before scarred her, so she could never do regular things like trust someone who's white, or go to lunch with someone who's white, or just even feel comfortable around them. It's always the things that we do in the past that effect what happens in the future.

Besides for Aibeleen, there are other black maids in the town of Jackson that she knows, like her best friend Minny. Now Minny's story is a smidge different from Aibeleen's, but not because of something that's her own fault. Minny is the maid to a family that doesn't treat her as well as Aibeleen's family treats Aibeleen. The family that Minny tends to is a lot harsher, and theres no kids to make the day just a little bit better. There's only a grumpy old lady that treats Minny like garbage. She tells her what to do without even being nice, she taunts her and makes her do unreasonable things, and she even accused the poor girl of stealing the silver wear and fired her, knowing that she wouldn't get another job when she told the other white ladies what Minny "did."

This racial discrimination is unbelieveable to me, especially because the Civil War was over, and everything should have been all nice and dandy. Not really, but at least there should have been some racial let up from the white people of the south. With knowledge that slavery ended not even so long ago, it's sad to see that people haven't come around to seeing what's right. With the knowledge that there is still racial discrimination today, I hope that in the future we actually come to our senses.

Two Voice Poem

Both Voices, Voice #1, Voice #2

I don't know what's right.
I'm falling into peer pressure.
I need to get away from the pain.

There's a gun in my belt.
I need to protect myself from them.
In case someone annoys me.

Theres a red bandana around my head.
They told me I'd look cool.
I'm part of the gang now.

My mom kicked me out of the house.
I told her I was sorry
I told her I didn't care.


I wrote this two voiced poem about someone in a gang. The first line of each stanza represented the similar thoughts of the two different voices. The second lines were the first voice- this was the person inside who was actually doing the right thing, and realizing it too. Throughout this poem I tried to show that sometimes if you do get into these kinds of situations, there's going to be a lot of concious battle. One voice inside of your head will be telling you things like, "Yeah, come on, it'll be so fun!" but the other voice (the one who knows what's right) will be saying something like, "This is wrong, you're definitely doing the wrong thing." The contrast between the two perspectives shows that even though they can have similar thoughts, it results in different feelings about the topics because of the way you're looking at it.

Response- Elsewhere

I am currently in the middle of the book Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin and I really like it so far. There a lot of interesting elements to it because it's not exactly what I would call normal realistic fiction. Elsewhere is about a girl who dies and goes to not heaven, but a place called Elsewhere, a whole nother world where you age backwards until you become a baby again and are shipped off to earth to start another life. In the book, Liz is surprised at the things she finds in this Elsewhere, and also how they are surprisingly similar to things that were back on earth.

In Elsewhere, Elizabeth finds that there aren't really many differences from Earth, except of course, that she is dead. Not that far into the book, Liz finds someone that she likes, a boy named Owen. She really likes him, and found that living (or dying) in this new place wasn't really so bad after all. I think that it was good that the author added things in Elsewhere that Liz would like, because it's not like she's just being accustomed to, it's something that she actually liked, and I think that that symbolizes hope. Even in these tough times, these times where she didn't even know what state of being she was in, it's a little spark of hope that things could actually go well.

Another thing the author did that I liked in the book was make have people age backwards once they reach Elsewhere. I feel that if everyone gets younger instead of older, it kind of allows a happier feeling into the atmosphere. Also, if most people die at an old age, it allows people to live sort of a double life. As for someone who's young though, like Liz herself, it's a bit of a downer because she died when she was fifteen so she only got another fifteen years to be in Elsewhere. On the other hand, the idea of aging backwards was really interesting to be, and something that I never thought about for one of the possibilities of what happens when you die.

Dear Mr. President- P!nk

"Dear Mr. President"(feat. Indigo Girls)

Dear Mr. President,
Come take a walk with me.
Let's pretend we're just two people and
You're not better than me.
I'd like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly.

What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street?
Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep?
What do you feel when you look in the mirror?
Are you proud?

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye
And tell me why?

Dear Mr. President,
Were you a lonely boy?
Are you a lonely boy?
Are you a lonely boy?
How can you say
No child is left behind?
We're not dumb and we're not blind.
They're all sitting in your cells
While you pave the road to hell.

What kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away?
And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay?
I can only imagine what the first lady has to say
You've come a long way from whiskey and cocaine.

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye?

Let me tell you 'bout hard work
Minimum wage with a baby on the way
Let me tell you 'bout hard work
Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away
Let me tell you 'bout hard work
Building a bed out of a cardboard box
Let me tell you 'bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
You don't know nothing 'bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
Oh

How do you sleep at night?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Dear Mr. President,
You'd never take a walk with me.
Would you?

I chose this song for a song that relates to social awareness because I think that it truly socially touches a lot of different topics. In this song, Pink is talking to supposedly a "higher" figure than her, but he's not being the bigger person. In the first verse, the lyrics talk about how they see homeless people, how people pray, or what they pray for, and how this person that she's talking to see's them sef as a human being, and what their interpretation of their personality is. In the chorus, the lyrics are angrier, and it's basically talking about how this person just sits around and goes about their grand life, while people are suffering and dying, and why they would hold their heads high even when they are doing something so horrible.
I can really empathize with Pink, or whoever felt this way towards this person. I agree, that this all symbolizes the problems in the world: war, death, poverty, homelessness, prejudice and persecution. And that whoever is being talked to, that they symbolize many people in the world, people that are ignorant, and don't even care about these poor people, these people that are suffering, while you're just going on with your life, and making believe that you're still doing the right thing. But that's completely wrong. People should think they're doing the right thing by actually doing the right thing- helping those in need, and not making your life better when its already good, when you can make someone who has a worse life can get a smidgen better, just because you can.
This song makes me really think about not just other peoples lives, but also my life. I often take things for granted, like buying new clothes sometimes, or going on a vacation with my family. But I've realized now that I really shouldn't take these things just for granted, because some people are a lot less fortunate than I am, and they have maybe one shirt, let alone can't go shopping frequently. I've realized that I should be doing more in the world to help those in need and make their lives better, because I'm sure any one of us would appreciate it as much as someone else would.

Music in The Last Song

In The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks, there are many themes, such as love, friendship, and death. But the one I'm focusing on in this post is music. Music may not seem like something that would be a theme in a book, but in this book music is something powerful that connects everyone in the family.

First off, music generally plays a big role in Ronnie's life. As I mentioned in my last post, she plays the piano, and so does her dad. This allowed them to have a strong bond with each other, even if in the past they might not've had the best relationship. Before Ronnie's dad left the family, he taught Ronnie how to play the piano and that was their special thing just between the two of them. But when he left, Ronnie's life was affected and so was her music. She stopped playing because of that, and hated both the piano and him for what he did to them. But after spending time with him at his beach house after so many years of little or no communication, they reconneted.

Another connected that music "played" between them is that when Ronnie and her brother discovered their father was dying from cancer, Ronnie immediately felt bad about not forgiving him before, and she regretted not being with him more. To make this up, while Ronnie's dad was getting sicker and sicker, she finished the song on the piano he started writing for her. That was going to be their special song to share together, and in some ways they did, because she played that song at his funeral.

The final way music is a theme in this book is because it brought Ronnie and Will together in a less serious way than it did with Ronnie and her dad. When they first started dating, the two of them didn't really have much to talk about, because they didn't know anything about each other, so they were still more or less in that awkward stage. But when riding in Will's car, they were playing the radio and all of a sudden Ronnie started singing along. When Will heard Ronnie, he started singing along as well. Even though Will's singing was horrible, the fact that they both had a good time doing this formed a strong connection between them.

All of these three times that music has connected characters in the book, whether it was a deep connection or just a silly coincidence, it brought them together for the better. Music allowed Will and Ronnie's relationship to grow, and it also allowed Ronnie and her father to bond through the piano. I think that music is a really great connection in this book, as subtle as it may be.

The Last Song- Connection

In The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks, I can really connect to the main character, Ronnie. She goes through so much in this bok that it's hard not to relate some part of her life back to my own. Throughout the book, she makes mistakes, she learns, and she forgives. I think that there are many examples of times when I connect to her.

When Ronnie first meets Will, who turns out to be the love of her life, she is extremely cautious. Even though she thinks that he's kind of cute, and acted nicely, she doesn't react that way back to him: "' Are you okay?' he panted. 'I'm fine', she snapped." She obviously doesn't really want anything to do with him. When I meet new people, even though I'm reasonably friendly, I try to figure out what kind of a personality they have. I like to know whether they like the same things as me, and what kind of person they are. I think that instead of loving Will full-on from the start, Ronnie tried to figure out if he was really the guy she thought he was.

However, I can also connect to Ronnnie because of the fact that she plays an instrument, a connection on a more surfaced level. Ronnie had been playing the piano since a very little age, and she was a child prodigy. She loved playing the piano, and it was her life. I have been playing the piano since I was four years old, and I really like it. Music really intertwines with Ronnie's life, as well as mine. We both have a strong passion for playing, and have continued to for many years. These are both connections that I have found between me and the main charcter.

Hey guys!

So in this blog I'll be writing responses and posts on book that I'm currently reading. Hope you like it!