Malcolm X and Sherman Alexie:


Before you read: I remember the first book I ever read by myself aloud was Green Eggs and Ham by: Dr. Seuss.  Other texts and events central to my learning to read would be in preschool, kindergarden and up we were given reading exercises. I can remember having small reading circles with the teacher and two or three other class mates and we would go though basic reading books. Also vocabulary was a major impact on learning to read. In grade school we would always have a list of vocab words to learn.

Summary: Malcolm X is about his time spent in prison, it is about his determination to learn to read and write, He checked books out continuously. he started with reading the dictionary he taught himself the dictionary. Alexie was about being discriminated in school because of his race. he to was determined to read and write. he carried a comic book with him which helped him learn to read by using the pictures.

Synthesis: Malcolm X and Alexie can relate to each other because they are both about the process of learning to read and write and how the were discriminated. They can also relate to McCloud because they thought of the way they saw themselves as one way but it would be different of how other people saw them. Also McCloud uses comics and Alexie uses comics.
Disclaimer: I had never heard of Malcolm X before this.

Response	Quotation
I can't imagine being Malcolms age, and not being able read words, reading is such a huge part in my everyday life.	"But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn't contain anywhere from one to nearly all of the words that might as well been in Chinese."
When I read this I wrote wow next to it in my book because this is completely unbelievable. It is completely inspiring to read about how Malcolm X taught him self to read, and it all started by copying the dictionary.  This shows his motivation and dedication to his education.	"Finally the dictionary's A section had filled a whole tablet- and I went on into the B's That was the way I started copying what eventually became the entire dictionary."
This quote shows the power of reading has over people and Malcolm in particular. To say that he felt more imprisoned when he wasn't in prison, and truly free while behind bars. He felt free because he had a new world. I think this could be true for anyone. Maybe not in a prison situation but life in general can get tough and books can provide and escape from reality into a fictional story.	"My reading books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up    to then, I never had been so truly free in my life."
I related to this quote because when I was younger and had a bed time I would like staying up late reading my chapter books with a little flashlight under the covers and my mom would always walk by so I would quickly hide the light and book and fake sleep, when I heard she was gone I would pull it back out to continue reading until I fell asleep.	"At one-hour intervals the night guards paced past every room. Each time I heard the approaching footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep. And as soon as the guard passed, I got back out of bed onto the foor area of that light glow, where I would read for another fifty-eight minutes -until the guard approached again."
This quote is so true. College is full of so many distracting things, school work, friends, activities that there is never time to just sit down and read for enjoyment.	"I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions."
When I was little I would carry around books, not to read because I could read them, just to carry around because I liked to carry them.	Sherman Alexie  "I can remember picking up my father's books before I could read. The words themselves were mostly foreign, but I still remember the exact moment when I first understood , with sudden clarity, the purpose of a paragraph."
I think it is really sad that Indian children were expected to be stupid. All children should be taught with the same expectations. Learning only makes society stronger, shutting out certain races only hurts society.	"We were Indian children who were expected to be stupid. Most lived up to those expectations inside the classroom but subverted them on the outside. They struggled with basic reading in school but could remember how to sing a few dozen powwow songs. "

Thoughts: I thought that both of these essays were eye opening. I couldn't believe that Malcolm X taught himself how to read by reading the dictionary. I think it is inspiring to think that he could do that. Alexie also was inspiring because he learned to read from a comic, and went through school being discriminated against but he turned out to be educated and now helps kids where he grew up learn to read as he once wished he could.  

Bell Hooks:

Before you read: An autobiography is someone writing about their own life story, or about things that have happened in their own life.  I think important parts of an autobiography would be: obstacles in life that you have over come, your favorite memories, and anything else you want the reader to know.

Summary: Bell Hooks, Writing Autobiography, is about her struggle to write her autobiography. Hooks discribes the challenges she faced when wanting to write.  First she didn't want to be the one to write about her families secrets, and she didn't like the idea of writing her story as a fictional story because then there was a disconnect from her personally.  She found that an autobiography has its limits, because it is from a limited perspective of the person writing the autobiography. Someone else at the exact same event may have a completely different account of what happend. In the end she found that writing her story allowed her to feel reconnected with her past but in a more secure way. Her audience in this article is someone that struggles with writing about personal experiences, or finding themselves inspired to write.

Synthesis: I would first connect Hooks to Allen, and the idea of the inspired writer. It seems like Hooks is struggling internally to be inspired to write her autobiography. I would also connect this to Dias, because Dias talks about his struggles to write when he sits down to write, but how he never stops trying, Hooks does the same thing and is rewarded in the end. Lastly I would compare hooks to Malcolm x because he talks about being free learning to read, just as hooks discribes being free when she finally writes her autobiography.

Response	Quotation
I picked this because it was an attention getter that really made me want to keep reading the article.	"To me, telling the story of my growing-up years was intimately connected with the longing to kill the self i was without really having to die."
I think everyone has thing in their past or present life that they would like to write about just to get it off of their chest, but when it comes time to write they are blocked because what ever it is they want to write about they are afraid to say it. This the the struggle that Hooks is going through and she discribes that in this quote.	"Yet I could not begin even though I had begun to confront some of the reasons I was blocked, as I am blocked just now in writing this piece because I am afraid to express in writing the experience that served as a catalyst for that block to move."
I liked this thought because when you read an autobiography, you get so carried away by what one person is telling as their personal story that you sometimes forget there are multiple versions of the same story.	"This fact was a constant reminder of the limitations of autobiography, of the extent to which autobiography is a very personal storytelling, a unique recounting of events not so much as they have happend but as we remember and invent them."
I had a similar experience, completely different subject as hooks but I kept a journal for a few months writing down events. and now when I read it as a story , the events don't look like single events but the read as a story that is continuously playing.	"It had not occurred to me that bring one's past, one's memories together in a complete narrative would allow one to view them from a different perspective, not as singular isolated events but as part of a continuum."
As Hooks states remembering was part of a cycle of reunion, I think writing and remembering events that were maybe painful in life are always a way to heal and feel better about yourself or as Hooks says feel whole again.	"Remembering was part of a cycle of reunion, a joining of fragments, "the bits and pieces of my heart" that the narrative made whole again."

AE5: I think I would but myself in the discourse community of a suburb, growing up in the perfect town, going to a giant high school, growing up with large leaps in technology, adapting to change, and living in a time where acceptance of individuals for who they are is a major part of life.

Thoughts:  This article was by far one of the most engaging for me. I thought I read more as a story than an article. I too have many things I would like to write about as a way of expressing or freeing my mind of things, but when sitting down to write about  these things nothing ever comes to mind. I put up walls as Hooks does because I don't want to see the words written.

Brandt reading response:

Before you read:  In my local community, reading is promoted in school, I remember in elementary school and middle school we always were given silent reading time. The local libraries usually have book clubs for the young children and contests over the summer to see who reads the the most. A good reader is someone who can read and understand what they have read.

Summary: Brandt's article is about literacy, and how literacy is important in todays society. She uses case study to argue that sponsorships are what drive literacy. She says that literacy rates should be higher than they are and is promoting higher literacy rates. She says that literacy is one of the greatest profits of the 20th century. The audience of this article is any one that is literact and wants to improve their literacy or learn more thoughts or ideas about literacy.

Synthesis: I think this article can sorta relate to porter, porter talks about the Discourse community and how in a discourse community you are writing for a specific group, its kinda like what the sponsors do. This could also relate to Allen because Allen talks about peoples reasons for writing, and how people learn to write, and this article is about how people are impacted by literacy. I think it could also relate to Dias, because he talks about what it takes to be a good writer and Brandt is talking about what it means to be good at reading and to be literate.

Response	Quotation
I think this is true, the 20th century is really based off of literacy,  schooling, shopping, advertisements  tv programs, etc.	"Literacy looms as one of the great engines of profit and competitive advantage in the 20th century."
Citizens use literacy for everything, social media sites, applying for a job, education,  and as the quote says your status is really based of your literacy, illiterate people are look down on .	" As ordinary citizens have been compelled into these economies, their reading and writing skills have grown sharply more central to the everyday trade of information and the goods as well as to the pursuit of  education, employment, civil rights, status."
I connected with this quote because while reading this article I too thought of how I learned to read and write, I thought about the different teachers I had and the activities we would always do in class to learn/ get excited about reading and writing.	"In the interviews, people explored in great detail their memories of learning to read and write across their lifetimes, focusing especially on the people, institutions , materials, and motivations involved."
I remember playing on recreational teams growing up that would have logos like that. Its a good way to promote them selves while sponsoring a team. We see these kinds of things all the time, sponsors for sporting events, ball parks, olympic games etc.	"Like little Leaguers who wear the logo of a local insurance agency on their uniforms, not out of the concern for enhancing the agency's image but as a means for getting to play ball, people throughout out history have acquired literacy pragmatically under the banner of others's causes

Meta Moment:  Brandt involves different types of literacies, how the effect us in life today, and how they are taught.  She talks about the sponsorships that influence the learning of reading and writing. She talked about the impact sponsorships have in improving literacy for some people.

Thoughts: I can relate to the article because it makes me think of the people that taught me reading and writing growing up.  I made me think of literacy in new ways.  I thought it was a lot of reading...

progress report:


Currently I am in a research phase. I have done some research but none of it is what I am looking for or it is what I  am looking for and I just don't know it yet. I plan to continue to read articles about the topic and see what comes from it.  I think after reading I need to just write. a "shitty first draft" just to get my thoughts on paper.  I think the workshop was nice,  I liked getting feed back from my partner about my concerns and I also like reading someone else's paper to make me feel like im on the same track is they are.  I think it would be helpful to get good feedback/ some direction from a teacher view to though, so that I could continue to move forward with ideas that are going to help me progress.

Dawkins:

"Before you read":   Talking to my friends about grammar rules at dinner, because they are also in english 1510, we discussed how rules of english language are not bendable, rules like punctuation, capitalization, fragments, independent and dependent clauses, sentence structure, coordinating conjunctions. We all learned one way of using the rules and that that was the only way it could be done.

Summary: This article is all about punctuation. Basically it says how the punctuation we have learned means nothing because it can be inter changeable with other punctuation. and its all in a writers good taste to pick the write punctuation based on the message they want to convey.  On page 144 it goes through different example of using different punctuation can mean the same thing in the same sentence.


Synthesis: This article is questioning punctuation much like Bryson questions english language itself. Both articles take rules that students have learned and teachers have taught for years and throw all the rules out the door.  Dawkins makes punctuation seem like is shouldn't be taught in the first place because it seems you can do pretty much what ever you want anyways. And Bryson talks about the english language being a free for all, how the language incorporates roots from all over.

Response	Quotation
Quirk et al. examined statistical data on the use of the comma to mark coordination and this was what he came up with. after reading the rest of this article I have to agree it seems like punctuation rules are tendencies that we always do because it is what we were taught and is what is comfortable to do.	"These results show we are dealing with tendencies which, while clear enough, are by no means rules"
After reading the examples on page 142 and using different punctuation in the same place in a sentence, I was questioning how to choose what to do. Ive never been great at punctuation to begin with, this makes me question it even more.	"The writer has choices, so there arises the question of how one goes about making these choices."
I feel like in middle school and high school teachers make punctuation seem to relate so heavily on grammar. they make it seem that the grammar of this sentence will determine the punctuation but after this article I dont think it does as much.	"As should be clear by now, learning to punctuate effectively requires only a little knowledge of grammer, much less than most english teachers will grant"
I have learned that punctuation doesn't have set rules and that only in certain circumstances are you limited to the punctuation you have to use.	"The notion that there is only one correct way of punctuating a given word pattern is true only in limited degree"

QD5: From reading Dawkins I learned that punctuations do not always mean anything, Dawkins uses random punctuation throughout his essay that adds voice, and identity to his piece. It also helps makes the point that punctuation does not always need to be structured.

MM: I think we are reading about punctuation is rhetorical rather than just explaining what it is because, dawkins says that punctuation is more tendencies that we are taught and that we stick to them because that is what is comfortable. It is more effective to talk about grammar as a rhetorical.

Thoughts:  I found myself wanting to keep reading just because this idea was so different than anything i have ever heard before but on the contrary i thought this article was really long. I did however like the examples it gave through out to help put and image to the concept.