Hadiyah's Blog

In  The White Boy Shuffle , Gunner initially lived in Santa Monica and went to an “all-white multicultural school”. They were always taught not to judge anyone based on the color of their skin, or just to be colorblind. The 3 rd  grade teacher, Ms. Cegeny, wore that shirt that went along with this colorblind ideology, but she seemed to pay special attention to all the non-white kids in the class, which doesn’t seem super colorblind. Just in general, the multicultural education they get seems to have good intentions but it’s sorta off and doesn’t really work. Gunner ended up being more whitewashed than multicultural which is super obvious from when he moves to Hillside. He really didn’t know anything about his own culture or I’m guessing any other cultures, even though he had a multicultural education. Up until 4 th  grade, I went to Southview Elementary in Jackson, Ohio which was a majority white town. I was the only muslim & brown kid there (other than my sister...

Sethe’s split-second decision to collect her children and go to the woodshed with the intent of killing them was looked down upon by the community as well as Paul D. At first, when reading the shocking scene, I thought “how could someone kill their own children?”, but the scene ended up giving me a lot of sympathy for Sethe. Because we’ve already gotten to know Sethe & what she’s been through, her actions make a lot of sense. It makes sense that she didn’t want her kids to be taken away from her and become slaves at Sweet Home. That’s exactly why she escaped. She didn’t escape because she hated it there, but because she couldn’t bear the thought of her kids suffering. The thought of “while the boys is small” is what pushed her to want to escape. Even then, her escape wasn’t easy, being pregnant with Denver & by herself, but what kept her going was bring milk to her child. Sethe is driven by motherly love. She didn’t kill her kids just because, but because she loved them and be...

In Richard Wright’s critique of Zora Neale Hurston’s  Their Eyes Were Watching God , he says that her book has no meaning. I think he’s just saying that without having carefully read the book. I think the main message is that a woman is allowed to follow her dreams and do whatever she wants. I think the book’s main message’s purpose is to empower women, shown by Phoebe’s reaction to Janie’s story at the end.  Janie’s first two marriages were terrible. In her first marriage with Logan, she married him for security. It didn’t matter if she found him attractive (which she didn’t) or if she loved or even liked him (she really didn’t). Here she wasn’t allowed to pursue her dream of love. She was forced to work and there was no romance in their marriage, and these made her really upset. Her second marriage was with Jody, who she did find attractive and at first, liked. She later hated him because of how controlling he was of her. He told her how to act, what to wear, what to do...

Janie and Jody get married and it seems like it’s all going to be okay, because Jody seems a lot better than Logan, but we quickly realize that this isn’t true. Jody starts to control Janie. He tells her how to act, what to where, etc. He doesn’t let her express herself. She’s forced to put on an act to maintain their reputation. Janie ends up feeling just as trapped as she did when she was with Logan. One of the things that really struck me was how Jody wanted Janie to just sorta stand there and look pretty, but at the same time he didn’t want her to look too pretty because he didn’t want guys to look at her. Honestly, I don’t understand how he expects her to walk this fine line, he has unrealistic expectations of Janie. Jody goes as far as to force Janie to wear a head rag to cover her long beautiful hair. Janie really hates this, shown by the fact that after Jody dies, she literally burns all of her head rags. Jody making Janie wear head rags made me rea...

In chapter 23 of  Invisible Man , the narrator finally realizes how terrible the Brotherhood is and he recognizes his invisibility. He talks about how the Brotherhood sacrifices the weak. He mentions how everybody has wanted to sacrifice him for “his good” but they were the ones that actually benefited. He also realizes that Jack is just like Norton and Emerson because they all tried to force their picture of reality onto him without giving any consideration to how he saw things. The narrator now realizes how he’s always being used or “kept running”, and now he’s noticed that no one has cared about how he really felt. He has realized that no one truly sees him, that he is in fact invisible.  During the narrator’s meeting with the committee and Hambro, we get more insight into how the Brotherhood views things. Their views end up sounding pretty disturbing. Hambro starts talking about sacrifice. They’re just going to have to sacrifice the narrator’s members because “the int...

In  Invisible Man  chapter 13, the narrator is walking along and passes by a window, and he wants to punch it.  “I passed on to a window decorated with switches of wiry false hair, ointments guaranteed to produce the miracle of whitening black skin. ‘You too can be truly beautiful,’ a sign proclaimed. ‘Win greater happiness with whiter complexion. Be outstanding in your social set.’ I hurried on, suppressing a savage urge to push my fist through the pane.” (262) Reading this made me feel very uncomfortable. This whole idea of people with darker skin needing to be whiter to really be pretty is disgusting. This isn’t an old idea either, and it’s still prevalent today. My family is from Pakistan and we visit there often, and the desire to have fair skin there is insane. One of the most famous brands in Pakistan is Fair & Lovely. They sell things like creams and face washes with the purpose of lightening your skin so that you are fair and lovely. Women will use fac...

In chapter 1 of  Invisible Man , the narrator takes part in a battle royal where he fights his classmates while blindfolded. Afterwards, they try to grab money off of an electrified rug. This entire scene felt very nightmarish and the oddest part about it was how the narrator seemed to accept all that was happening and only cared about the speech he had to give. We found it so odd that his only concern was his speech instead of the fact that he had to suffer through this nightmare of an event. Even while giving his speech, he’s so focused on making it perfect that he just casually swallows his blood. When discussing this chapter in class, I remembered a book that I read last year for 20 th Century Novel,  The Metamorphosis . The book opens with the main character, Gregor, waking up as a huge monstrous insect. The odd thing is that his main priority isn’t how to become human again, but instead how is he going to get to work? This book had a very nightmarish aspect to it be...