Knowledge is Power

Literacy is highly important for liveration because it gives people power. Without knowledge, those who are unfortunate will be controlled by those who abuse the power of knowledge. To me, literacy is important because it opens new doors for the future, and that is liberating because I no longer have to depend on others that know things I know as well.

The power of literacy enlightens people and gives them better, more-structured perspectives of certain things, and, if they are bound to other people due to their ignorance, literacy liberates them by giving them the knowledge of freedom and the courage to fight for their beliefs. In the Narrative of Frederick Douglass, slaves are illiterate and are forced to remain that way because of the fear slaveholders have that they might rebel, as Mr. Auld told his wife, "if you give a nigger...A nigger should know nothing...there would be no keeping him...to his master." (34) Douglass realizes the strength of this power and seeks to treasure and increase it, as stated in quote, "It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled...I now understand what had beem to me a most...to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man...I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom." (34) He sought to continue learning no matter what, because to gain more knowledge meant to get closer to freedom, as he said in his realization, "Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with hope...to learn to read." (35)

Literacy has freed me because it has taught me how to find the path to better opportunities. I came to this country five years ago, and I knew nothing about it; I could not speak English, had no idea what the school environment was like, and I knew no one to help me understand. So I took English lessons for a year and six months, and I learned to read English, speak it, write it, and of course, understand it, quickly.

Speaking English and learning new things helped me communicate with others. It helped me understant my lessins in school, and it made my life better. Learning as much as possible throughout my life has opened my eyes and given me interest to learn even more, making me a better person for the future.

American Slavery

The different narratives of all those slaves expands the knowledge of American slavery because they are personal experiences those people share with the world, and tell them things that they didn’t know before. Those slaves narrate new things one has not seen elsewhere. It shows how slaves were brutally treated, discriminated, forced to work hard at a young age, illiterate, etc.

In the narrative of Charity Anderson, she describes how she remembers “seeing slaves torn up by dogs and whipped unmercifully.” Slaves that didn’t obey or do poorly in their chores would be beaten and/or fed to dogs as punishment. The whippings would be so hard that most slaves would be left cruelly deformed.

Other slaves were purchased by their masters like objects in a store, as it happened to Walter Calloway. By the time Walter was ten years old, he was forced to do a grown man’s work. Most slave children are forced to work in arduous chores of the fields and outdoors from a young age, and if they did not do as asked, they would be punished just like adult slaves.

Emma Crocket learned to read a bit of printing after the emancipation, but she never learned how to read handwriting. Slaveholders weren’t allowed to educate a slave because society feared that as soon as slaves learned enough, they’d rebel against them, for most of what held them prisoners to slavery was ignorance. If a slaveholder was caught educating a slave, they’d be persecuted by the law and arrested.

Tempe H. Durham describes how female slaves and their white mistresses spun, wove, and dyed cloth on the plantation, along with more women work. Back then, neither slave nor white women were counted with importance, and they were left to do woman work. However, since female slaves were even lower than the regular women, they would be discriminated and forced to do men’s work and arduous work equally.

Clayton Holbert mentions how slaves had to wave their own clothes, butcher their own meat, and make their own maple sugar. Slaves weren’t given shoes, and small children wore the same clothes regardless of the gender. Slaveholders wouldn’t facilitate the slaves’ necessities at all.

Some slaves would be freed, but then they would unfortunately be recaptured by slave dealers and sold back into slavery. Other slaves would be made to join the Union Army during the Civil War, as Holbert’s father, brother, and uncle did.

Some slaveholders would be nice at times, like Joseph Holmes’ mistress, who did not allow her slaves to be mistreated. She raised slaves for the market, so she considered it poor business to mistreat them. It was probably nothing but convenience, but at least she gave her slaves a break.

Ben Horry talks about the poor diet slaves had. They were not fed constantly, and when they were, they were given bad food in really small quantities. He also shows how white people didn’t allow any ‘inappropriate behavior’ in slaves by talking about the punishment his father received for intemperate drinking.

Other slaves were left with absolutely nothing after slavery’s end, like Fountain Hughes and his family. He tells the reader how he and his brother had to sneak into a white family’s livery at night in order to leave the cold. He also mentions how slaves were sold at auctions like objects.

Proud Composition

The composition I believe I'm most proud of is the assignment we were asked to do a while ago. It's in the blog named, 'Amiga Soledad,' from the Humanities' Blogs.

I'm proud of this assignment because I talk about a song I really like, and I kind of translate it to English and tell people what it basically says and what it means. I think I did a good work with it. What I believe I did well is expressing what the song meant because I was specific and gave lots of details, and even used my own imagination to include some little things in the meaning. What I could have done better is study it a little deeper to find more hidden things in the song, like metaphors, I wasn't able to find any metaphors, or 'complex things,' things that require a lot of reviewing to be able to catch and understand.

Humanities Poems

Those poor children that were so innocent one say, they never thought the very breath of their dreams would be torn to a stop. Many of them were separated from their pleading mothers, and stripped from their culture. Their black, heavy long hair, which symbolized their traditions, was cut short, leaving a sorrowful void to fill their hearts alone. The iron horses brought these children to a strange land they didn't know. The only thing these children found to do was cry and be unheard, be ignored and forced to follow the stranger's orders. They decided to submit their freedom and quietly mourn for their slaughtered happiness, while a few others still did not realize their will and spirit meant to be broken, and rebelled against the cruel fate that bestowed upon them, only succumbing to hopelessness and despair in the corner they found secret from the cold, white prisons. Their spirit was a living heart that beat with endless hope. Some of their spirits died and found out the horrible truth, while others crawled from the darkness, and struggled to keep their fading hearts beating with some fallen, distant dream.

An Unreachable Dream

One thing that is a very controversial issue is how many immigrants die for taking all kinds of different, dangerous options to get across the border illegally. Most importantly, something that many have not dared to consider is who to blame. Many people have not thought about who the responsible for this problem is; many have not dared to give it that much of importance. According to the article written by Evelyn Nieves, Illegal Immigrant Death-Rate Rises Sharply in Barren Areas, about 52 migrants have died since October 1, and this is only in El Centro sector. A million deaths of both legal and illegal immigrants were reported between October 8 and March 9, along with 265, 000 arrests. The ways these people are dying everyday are inhuman; heatstroke, dehydration, drugs, car-crashes, suffocation, drowning, electrocution, etc.

There are many responsible factors for all this. The main would be the crime rates and violence that's lurking in the immigrants' home country. Another greatly responsible party would be the government in Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, and other Southern countries. These are factors we should worry about because a country with both terrible safety and a horrible government and economic status are a great problem that leads to the other problem of illegal immigration. One thing leads to the other, you see.

The majority of these people try to come to the United States either to work or escape the violence back in their homes, or sometimes even both. They try their hardest to arrive at a better place where opportunities are available, and where they can obtain enough money to sustain their families, which are left behind in their homeland, prone to the danger back there. But the sad truth is that most of the illegal immigrants that try to cross the border don't make it, leaving their beloved families to mourn and forever wonder why their relatives left if they would only die in the way.

The responsible for this pain and suffering should stop causing this. All od the crime and violence that has nestled on their countries should leave for the better, and the government of Mexico and other Southern countries should start acting like what it is; the listeners and helpers of their people. Because the government of Mexico and the rest of those countries from which immigrants escape should worry about their people first than anything else; that's what they for the job for.

Again, the reason why immigrants leave hazardously in the first place is to leave the poverty and danger in their homes. If the government wasn't so selfish and collaborated by providing its people a safe, economic, and healthy place to live in, they could prevent all of this tragedy from happening, because immigrants would live happily and proudly in their countries. They would be satisfied with their homeland, they'd never have to debate whether risking their lives to look for a better life or staying behind to die in poverty and fear.

We should be concerned about these issues because immigrants are people, like us. They have families they love and they leave them behind, suffering every second of the wretched journey to at least try to get somewhere better. They're afraid of danger and the uprising violence, just like us, it's only natural they want a better life.

It's terrible they never make it to the opportunities they're so eagerly seeking and that everything is left much worse, for their effort and pain was all in vain and now the families they wanted to save are all alone. All thanks to those people that call themselves 'the people's gorvernment,' and their fake promises to make their country all better, to make it a satisfactory place for their people.

Age & Weapons Test

My class was assigned to take two tests; the Age Test, and one of our choice. I decided to take the Weapons Test because I wanted to see just how opposed I was to weapons, even though I already know. The Age Test was to see if I preferred either old or young people.

When I finished with the test, it told me my analysis gave no information about my automatic preference. I'm guessing my result wasn't informative enough; too neutral. Because, I really don't prefer young people over old people, or viceversa. Sure, I kinda feel uncomfortable among old or adult people, but that's just because of the difference of ages.

But I also feel shy with young people because I'm timid. So clearly, that states I prefer no ages. The only age I'm comfortable with is babies, and infants, because in some ways, they're so much easier to deal with. You don't have to worry about having the right topics of conversation with them, or about not looking too nerd, or too anti-social, or too boring, etc.

It was the same with the Weapons test. It wasn't informative enough. I don't understand why they related weapons to White or Black people.

I don't wanna say that they did it because of racism because that would be kind of immature, and maybe it would even start another discussion like the one I witnessed (thankfully, I was absolutely no part in it) in my class yesterday, and truly, I'm not in the mood for that. But, I just don't understand why they'd do that. And, I don't agree with what they told me, that my results weren't enough to give me an accurate result.

I think it was because they didn't ask too many questions about what we thought about the subject, they just went ahead and asked us to place pictures in their right category, asking us about our race, religion, and how we felt about old/young people and how we considered weapons were related to Black/White people. I didn't like how they kept asking these personal questions, like religion and ethnicity. I don't think that has anything to do.

I'm not sure why the teacher told us to do this, but she must have her reasons and I'll respect them. I just didn't really see a point on the tests.

Icon Project

What I learned about the Icon Project was more information about John Lennon, and how to relate myself better to other people. I also learned other things about my classmates, like who their idols were or are, and why. I learned new things about myself, things that are similar to other people.

My statement didn't evolve so much, because it was actually pretty good. the only changes I did were the title, and some sentence errors. I feel anything else about the statement was great, and I'm glad the people that looked it over liked it.

It felt really good to do this project because it was a person I could easily relate myself to. I really liked this project, I hope we do something similar to this in the future. By the way, sorry, the picture came out on the wrong side, just, tilt your head so you can read it. ^^;

War is Over, so Give Peace a Chance

I never really saw anything interesting or special about John Lennon. Well, when I was little, anyway. All I knew about him was that he was part of the Beatles, a band that ruled in my house, a band I grew up listening to. But as I grew older, I began to be more interested in John Lennon in particular, because my parents told me about his achievements and what he stood for.

Then I researched him by myself and realized on my own how big he became and how inspiring his beliefs were. I was very impressed as I learned everything I found out. Almost immediately after he left the Beatles in 1969, he started to sing songs of peace, songs that told the world about the hope there was for war to be over and how everyone should be treated as an equal. He wanted peace, equality between men and women, racial equality, economic equality, no borders, etc.

Sadly, he was killed in 1980 for stating this. Many people didn’t want him to change the world for the better, so they took him out of the way. John Lennon stood for many meaningful things, and the impact he had upon the world shook it all so much that up until this day, he and his ideals are still remembered. He was and is still so inspiring, he makes me wish I had been there; that I had been at every single one of his concerts in person, that I had gotten to sing “Give Peace a Chance” and "Happy Christmas/War is Over" with him and all those people.

He makes me wish he was still alive. But then again, it doesn’t affect me so much that he’s dead, because he’s still alive in our hearts and minds. Millions of people still feel so strong about his opinions. He is still supported even after all these years.

John Lennon was a great idol, and you can see very easily why; some people who disagreed with him wanted him gone because of the threat the impact he had on people with his positive, revolutionary ideas was, so they had him killed, but not even that worked. It’s as if by killing Lennon, they unleashed his strength and his influence a thousand times more. I really admire him because he wasn't afraid of expressing what he thought around the world at all, and I think the connection between him and me is that I also support his ideals, and I'd be willing to sing about them in front of millions too. Maybe even give up my life as well, as long as people see the meaning of what I stood for and support it as well, so that the hope never dies.

Amiga Soledad

'Tranquilo triste corazón,
no llores más por mí,
estaré bien

En la frontera en la que estoy
puedo morir o revivir,
huir de ti.

He vuelto a mí y no sé quien soy
por no tener, no tengo ni mi ser.

La gente es lo que no ves detrás de la verdad hay algo más.

Soledad, compañera de esperar soledad,
como podría cambiar
de mis sueños el final.

Todo amor es un dolor
nos llega sin pedir
ni un solo beso

La vida pasa frente a mí
mis amigos ya no están
hay que seguir

A quién hablar sola y frente a mí?
Sin un espejo a quien mentir

La gente es lo que no ves
detrás de la verdad hay algo más.

Soledad, compañera de esperar soledad,
como podría cambiar
de mis sueños el final.

Soledad, compañera de esperar soledad,
como podría cambiar
de mis sueños el final.

No me queda otro disfraz
ni alma que vestir
no soy yo y tú quien serás?'

The symbolisms used in here....Well, in the beginning, she's telling her heart not to cry for her anymore. I think her heart is actually someone she's telling not to worry about her anymore. In the second verse, the way I see it is that wherever she is, whatever happens to her, no one really cares, but she doesn't care either, as long as she can run away from this person, because...Because the other person's concern is something she doesn't deserve and she feels totally guilty for it. (Okay, I'm throwing my own ideas here...) In that place, she's all alone, she has nothing, not even herself, the people around her are all strangers, she seeks something else, answers to her troubled life. All she has is her friend loneliness.

I don't really see any metaphors in this. The meaning of this song...She feels trapped in herself. Trapped in whatever istakes she has committed that have led her to being alone, with no friends, no family, not even a mirror to look and and lie to even herself. She can't scream out loud her sorrow, her loneliness, her sadness, she has decided to leave her mistakes and the damage they have caused behind to leave to an unknown, painful place, in which she has no way of covering her grief, yet nobody cares to see it even when it's so obvious.