Today in class we shared books, reviews and biographies of the authors. Post summaries of the book reviews and author biographies here for your book. Talk about your expectations for the read and what you hope to take away from the experience.
Due: Tuesday/Wednesday, October 1-2, 2013
We also reviewed the next two essays and students got a handout and we looked at sample assignment sheets from Spring 2013.
I will have the assignment sheets posted by Wednesday. Remember, next week students will be working independently. I'd like everyone to identify their Social Entrepreneur so that October 15, I can approve him or her and you can start your research.
We also spent a bit on the They Say Assignment. We will continue tomorrow. Look at the syllabus, catch up on any They Say reading.
Due: Tuesday/Wednesday, October 1-2, 2013
We also reviewed the next two essays and students got a handout and we looked at sample assignment sheets from Spring 2013.
I will have the assignment sheets posted by Wednesday. Remember, next week students will be working independently. I'd like everyone to identify their Social Entrepreneur so that October 15, I can approve him or her and you can start your research.
We also spent a bit on the They Say Assignment. We will continue tomorrow. Look at the syllabus, catch up on any They Say reading.
posted by Professor Wanda's Posse at 9:59 AM
21 Comments:
Michael March
Professor Sabir
30 September 2013
English 1A 11am
Book Summary and Review
The book review for George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four was a positive one. At the time of the review, 1949, Orwell had written Animal Farm (a similar book) which had garnered some acclaim. Although, in this book, unlike Animal Farm, it much more serious and less satirical. The world in which Winston Smith inhabits is crushing to the spirit and it is immediately apparent.
There are only three “super states” left in the world: Eastasia, Eurasia, and oceania. England is known as “Airstrip one” and London is the capital. English has been transformed into a language called “Newspeak”, which sole purpose is to erase vocabulary year by year. So that in the end, no person will be able to conjure thoughts or concepts other then what the state has provided. A chilling prospect; to have your mind rendered useless.
An elite group or party, which makes up twenty-five percent of the population, controls the state and only a select few live free from slavery. Every single person is watched at all times. A screen that broadcasts propaganda is equipped in every home and it cannot be shut off. These screens also allow “Big Brother” to infiltrate the lives of its subjects and spy on them. Nobody is safe.
Although this book was written sometime ago, concepts and ideas in the book have appeared in the current day. Such as the TV screens that blast propaganda, which is used (although it’s a radio) in some communists country’s today. I have already read this work and I enjoyed it greatly. It has been a few years and I’m hoping to refresh my memory and just enjoy the world that Orwell vividly depicts. I picked this book because the setting in this book could one day become very real. The main character, Winston, is also in a position where virtually everything he does is considered against the law or rebellious. It was the most fitting book I could think of regarding the subject.
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Jacky Christie
Professor Sabir
English 1A, 10-10:50
J.D. Salinger Biographical Summary
J.D. Salinger was born on January 1st, 1919 in New York City. He was the younger sibling of two, and lead a childhood fairly hidden from his Jewish background. He wasn't the brightest in school, and was sent to military school in Pennsylvania by his parents at a young age. After graduating, he attended NYU for a year and then studied in Europe for some time. Once back in the states, he studied at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, and then eventually went back to New York for classes at Columbia UN, where he met Professor Whit Burnett. Burnett was the major influential figure who persuaded Salinger to create as a talented writer.
Once World War II hit, Salinger was drafted into the army for a short time, viewing part of the Normandy Invasion and the Battle of Bulge firsthand. He continued writing during his service, and eventually it ended in him being hospitalized after a nervous breakdown.
Salinger wound up in numerous relationships, once married to a little-known about women named Sylvia for just eight months, and then to Claire Douglas for a little more than a decade, two children. Salinger continued writing as soon has he returned home in 1946, and had officially published his first novel, The Cather in the Rye, in 1951. Catcher exploded in sales, putting forth a controversial plot that gained both many positive and negative reviews from credits. in 1972, Salinger ended up in a relationship with a Joyce Maynard, whom he lived with for 10 months. Following this, Salinger was in several different relationships. His last one was with a Colleen O'Neill, who he was married to up until his death in his home in Cornish- January 27,2010.
Bibliography
• A+E Television Networks, LLC. "J.D. Salinger Biography J.D. Salinger Biography - Facts, Birthday, Life Story - Biography.com ." bio. true story Famous Biographies & TV Shows - Biography.com . N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2013.
Ariana Yu
Professor Sabir
English 1A, 8:00-8:50AM
1 October 2013
Summary of Book Review and Author
The book review of “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin, was basically a brief summary of the main content of the book. It states some of the many of the characters that the readers will meet, the main character being Edna Pontellier. It gives some general background of the book—Edna is a very fortunate person who has an awesome husband and two children. She lives a wonderful life, especially for a woman in the 1890s, but she later decides she cannot stand being domesticated. She later falls in love with Robert, who eventually leaves to another country.
I expect to learn more about the social norms for women in the 1890s. They will probably be implied in the book, since Edna will be considered an outcast. I hope that I will admire Edna for whatever characteristics await me and that I can somehow model her in terms of the courage to step outside social conventions for women.
Kate Chopin was born in Missouri in 1850 to Eliza and Thomas O’Flaherty. She had four siblings, but they all died before they reached age twenty-five. At age five, Chopin attended The Sacred Heart Academy, a Catholic boarding school. Her father died two years later. Chopin grew up around smart, single, and independent women. Chopin won medals and was elected into the elite Children of Mary Society.
In 1870, Kate Chopin married Oscar Chopin, a wealthy cotton-grower. Oscar Chopin admired Kate’s independence and allowed her freedom. The couple had seven children before Kate was even twenty-eight. However, Oscar soon died and Kate was forced to raise the children herself. To support herself and her large family, she started the write, and was instantly successful.
Ryan Djafaripour
Professor Sabir
English 1A 8:00-8:50
30 September 2013
When I visited English Heritage’s Festival of History last month, I left with goodies. Among these was Wounds of Honour by Anthony Riches, the first in a new series of novels about Roman Britain called Empire. I must admit that there was a time when I treated novels about the Roman military with a little bit of distance but those days are no more and thank heavens for that – I would not have wanted to miss out on this.
About 180 AD, young nobleman Marcus Valerius Aquila arrives in Britannia to begin his military service but before he has time to draw breath he discovers that everything he has left behind him in Rome is gone. His family has fallen victim to the violent paranoia of Commodus and Marcus’ arrival in Britannia was actually his escape, unknown to him and planned by his father.
Allies of Marcus’ family hide the young soldier at the very edge of the empire, on Hadrian’s Wall, as a Centurion of the second Tungrian cohort, recruited from Gaul. But at this point cold facts are taken over by the spirit and courage of Marcus, not to mention his likeability. Almost immediately, Marcus finds himself facing a massive attack from the tribes to the north – an attack which has been fed by Roman intrigue. Risking everything for the sake of one of his men, Marcus wins over these tough fighting Gauls while also gaining the admiration of his Roman superiors. Yet, Marcus can never be too certain about who knows what about his true identity.
The plot and action of Wounds of Honour is superb. I had a lot of difficulty putting this book down. But the main reason for this immersion in the mud, stink and violence of the frontier, is Anthony Riches’ expert use of what is clearly a vast knowledge of the Roman military and of everyday details of a Roman soldier’s life. This novel is steeped in the kind of details that bring history to life. They’re not laboured and they’re not intrusive – they fit perfectly into this completely vivid and action-packed account of military life on a dangerous border. The battles are as edge of the seat as you could want, made richer and more intense by how well we have come to know and like (or hate) the men around Marcus.
It is clear from Wounds of Honour that Anthony Riches not only knows his stuff, he also thoroughly enjoys it. He sweeps the reader along with him, learning as they go. I’ve not been to Hadrian’s Wall for quite a few years but after reading this I am so keen to go back. Now I have in my mind the strange, local names of the forts, some perception of the men who patrolled the Wall, who had come from all parts of the empire, their lives and routine, and then there are the tribes beyond. If a novel makes me want to learn more about its subject then I’m grateful to it – Wounds of Honour does just that.
Works Cited
Atherton, Kate "For winters nights" Rev. of Wounds of Honor, by Anthony Riches. Forwinternights.wordpress.com. Forwinternights.wordpress.com, 2010. 4 August. 2011.
Biography:
Anthony Riches, (born 1961) is a British writer of historical fiction. As of 2013 he has released five books that follow the story of Marcus Valerius Aquila, the son of a murdered Roman senator who has escaped his father's killers and made a new life for himself as an officer with an auxiliary cohort in northern Britannia.
Riches was born in Derby, lived in Worthing, West Sussex from the age of seven and studied Military Studies at Manchester University's Faculty of Arts in the early 1980s. He now works as an ERP Programme Director, and has worked for Boots, Glaxo SmithKline, ReckittBenckiser and Barclays, and as a freelance contractor for a number of companies in the delivery of major Enterprise Resource Planning systems. Having written his first book, 'Wounds of Honour' in 1996 he did almost nothing with the manuscript until being motivated to submit it to agents in 2007.
Works Cited
"Anthony Riches" Wikipedia.Wikimedia Foundation, 2 Mar. 2010. Web. 18 Mar. 2010.
Michael Cunningham
Professor Sabir
English 1A 10-10:50
30 September 2013
Biography and Book Summary
Francisco Jiménez was born in 1943 in San Pedro, Tlaquepaque, Mexico, the second of two children in a family that would later number nine. Currently a professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Santa Clara University, Jiménez is author of The Circuit and Breaking Through, notable fictionalized memoirs about migrant worker life as seen through the eyes of a boy. Francisco was four years old when his family first migrated without papers to the San Joaquin Valley of California, hoping to leave behind forever their life of poverty. Instead of the good life they sought, the Jiménez family found years of backbreaking work as migrant workers -- living in tent camps, moving constantly to follow the harvest, and always trying to avoid "La Migra," the immigration authorities.
Young Francisco went to work in the fields at age six. Even though his schooling was sporadic because of the constant moves, he came to realize early that education would be his salvation. But the obstacles were formidable. In schools where only English was spoken, Jiménez remembers, "My first experience in school was very traumatic simply because I couldn't speak, and I couldn't communicate with the teacher, and I couldn't understand what she was saying... It scarred me for life." He failed the first grade, but Jiménez persisted, eventually becoming student body president of his high school and graduating with a 3.7 grade point average. Along the way there were many tough times, including the deportation of the entire family back to Mexico when they were finally discovered. A border patrol officer came to Jiménez's eighth-grade class and took him away. But the family was fortunate to find a way back, this time on a legal footing, when a Japanese sharecropper they had worked with agreed to sponsor them.
A literary epiphany came to Jiménez when he was a sophomore in high school. His English teacher thought he might like to read John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, after she was struck by an autobiographical assignment he turned in. "For the first time I was able to relate my life to something I was reading," recalls Jiménez. "The story of my family as migrant workers was part of the American story, just like the Joad family." The initial encounter with English-only classrooms and the connection with The Grapes of Wrath gave direction to much of Jiménez's later academic and professional career. With scholarships and loans, he was able to go to Santa Clara University, where he majored in Spanish. He went on to receive master's and doctoral degrees in Latin American literature from Columbia University, under a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. After teaching at Columbia briefly, Jiménez returned to Santa Clara University, where he became the Fay Boyle Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and Director of the Ethnic Studies Program.
In 1997, his fictionalized memoir, The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child, was published. "I wanted to chronicle part of my family's own history," says Jiménez, "but more important, to document the migrant experience of many, many families from the past and the present whose hard work helps to develop the economic power of our nation." The Riverbank Review commented, "Jiménez has taken us inside a way of life, in all its sweetness and all its sorrow. It is a valuable book for young people, both for its artistic values and for the issues it illuminates." Author Rudolfo Anaya called the stories "so realistic they choke the heart." The Circuit parallels the Jiménez family's odyssey from the hopeful time when they first crossed into America through their ignominious deportation back to Mexico. A sequel, Breaking Through, picks up the autobiographical story and follows the immigrant boy's high school years. Smithsonian observed that Jiménez's "page-turning narrative, devoid of sentimentality, is a substantial contribution to the literature of the memoir."
His books have received many honors. They have won the Americas Award, been Booklist Editors' Choice books, and been noted as a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. The Circuit also won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction, was named the American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, and received a Jane Addams Honor Book Award, in addition to several other awards. Breaking Through was named both a Smithsonian Notable Book for Children and Young Adults and one of the Notable Books for a Global Society. It also received the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Book Award and the William Allen White Children's and Young Adult Book Award, among others, and was chosen as a Silicon Valley Reads: One Book, One Community Reading Program book.
Anchoring Jiménez's significant academic and professional life is his position as the Fay Boyle Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and Director of the Ethnic Studies Program at Santa Clara University. He was chosen as U.S. Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education). He has served on various professional boards and commissions, including the California Council for the Humanities, Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities (WASC), the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the Santa Clara University Board of Trustees, and the Far West Lab for Educational Research and Development. As a member of a Delegate Assembly and of the Executive Committee on Chicano Literature of the Modern Language Association, Jiménez advocated the inclusion of Chicano literature as part of American literature. "Since then, many departments of English in the country now consider Chicano literature as part of American literature," says Jiménez, "and it's taught in the English departments just as African American literature, Asian American literature, and other ethnic literatures are taught in the English departments."
Francisco Jiménez has also written children's books. La Mariposa (published in both English and Spanish editions) won a Parent's Choice Recommended Award, made the Americas Commended List, and was a Smithsonian Notable Book for Children. The Christmas Gift/El Regalo de Navidad, an illustrated bilingual book for children, received a starred review in Publisher's Weekly, was selected as a Notable Children's Book by the American Library Association, was included on the Americas Commended List, and received the Cuffie Award fromPublisher's Weekly for "Best Treatment of a Social Issue."
Book Summary
Editorial On The Circuit (from the Horn Book Magazine – Sept/Oct. 1998)
"When Nancy Vasilakis, chair of the 1998 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards committee, called to tell me about the winners, there was something in her voice that told me that some drama was at hand (for a complete list of the winners, see p. 652). She named the picture book winners, honor books first, then the tip prize. Ditto for the nonfiction, and then she started in with the fiction. Honor book, When No One Was Watching, honor book, My Louisiana Sky. Both terrific choices, I thought. The Winner? The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child by Francisco Jimenez. I had never heard of it.
I should have, though. The book had already won the John and Patricia Beatty Award as well as the Americas Award; the tittle story had also been reprinted in a couple of YA short-story anthologies. But The Circuit was not submitted to the Horn Book for review-which makes sense, given that the book was published as an adult tittle, a trade paperback from the University of New Mexico Press.
This isn’t the first time and adult book garnered children’s-literature honors-think of Alan W. Eckert’s Incident at Hawk’s Hill-but The Circuit’s distinction lies in the fact that it is both a children’s and an adult book; it’s not and adult book that young people can enjoy nor a children’s book that can speak equally to adults. Jimenez’s twelve stories of incidents in the life of a child of migrant workers have a transparency that speaks to the adult’s desire for spare, clean writing and the young reader’s need for immediacy. Told from the point of view of Francisco, a little boy when the book begins, the stories contain not a single image that couldn’t come from a child: “Her head turned left and right a hundred times a second and her index finger moved from side to side as fast as a windshield wiper on a rainy day. ‘English, English, ‘she repeated.” As it evokes the life of Francisco’s family toiling through the fields of late-forties California, the book sees its landscape directly through the eyes and heart of a child, never filtered through adult hindsight or regret. These impulses will be added by the adult reader, who will also feel a healthy amount of anger at the conditions endured by the farm workers. Children, thought, will go from field to field with Francisco, hearing his stories as if from a friend. Both audiences will be enriched. R.S."
(Roger Sutten, Editor, Horn Book Magazine – Sept/Oct. 1998)
The Circuit : Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (from … Winter 1998/1999)
"The stories in this book build on each other beautifully. When I finished reading them I felt I knew not only Panchito, the narrator, but also a lot more about a day-to-day life of migrant workers in the United States. With Panchito, I experienced his brother’s illness, his search for a dry place to sleep, the kindness of a conductor on a train. I moved in his family’s old, carefully maintained car from place to place on the “circuit,” from strawberry picking to cotton picking to grape harvesting in the Southern states and into California. I went to school with him, when he was able to go, and agonized along with him as he struggled with English. I also became nervous when the authorities came through the camps looking for illegal immigrants. (His father has a green card, but his mother and sisters and brothers do not, and are all Mexican born.)
Without sentimentally or melodrama, but rather with the simple power and grace of a fine storyteller, Jimenez is able to convince us of the narrator’s authenticity, his good-heartedness, and the good-heartedness of his family. We like him immensely and do not feel pity for him because he does not seem to feel pity for himself. Yet as we contribute to read, we begin to feel a healthy discomfort. This book challenges us as readers, whether we are eleven or fifty, to think about how we, as a country and as citizens, treat those who work so hard to bring us food and clothing, and who often are hungry and cold themselves. Through this collection of stories, each of which can stand on its own, and altogether which create a portrait of a fine family and a sensitive young man, we glimpse the kind of life many children in this country lead. In The Circuit, Jimenez has taken us inside a way of life, in all its sweetness and all its sorrow. It is a valuable book for young people, both for its artistic value and for the issues it illuminates."
-Julie Landsman
Starred Reviews: Books for Youth (from the Booklist/December 1, 1997)
Grade 5 and up. Jimenez exquisite autobiographical short story “The Circuit” is widely anthologized. Now he has connected it with 11 more stories that are based on his experience as a child in a migrant farm worker family, from the time they leave Mexico to enter the U.S. “under the wire” through the years of moving from place to place, picking grapes, picking strawberries, thinning lettuce, topping carrots, always moving. Panchito’s dream is elemental: to stay in one place, to go to school without months of interruption. His joy is to return to a place that he recognizes. Each of these short stories builds quietly to a surprise that reveals the truth, and together the stories lead to the tearing climax. The characters aren’t idealized: though the family is warm, their bitter struggle creates anger and jealousy as well as love. They meet a migrant worker who had to leave his family behind in Mexico, but Panchito and his parents and his brothers and sisters are “all living at home,” together, even though they are “moving still”. Some teachers are kind; some classrooms and playgrounds are ugly. The simple words are both fact and poetry; the physicalness of the backbreaking work. (“When you get tired from squatting, you can pick on you knees”): the yearning for education, for place. Almost nothing has been written for young readers about this Chicano experience, except for Pat.Mora’s picture book about Rivera, Tomas and the Library Lady (1997), Ada Flor, Ada’s Gathering the Sun(1997), and a photo-essays, such as Beth Atkin’s Voices from the Fields(1993). Like Steinbeck’s classic Grapes of Wrath, Jimenez stories combine stark social realism with heartrending personal drama.
– Hazel Rochman
Kimberly Young
Professor Sabir
English 1A, 8:00-8:50am
1 October 2013
Summary of Book Review of Night
In the book review of Night by Elie Wiesel, Walter S. Zapotoczny describes Elie’s horrific experience as he comes to age through the hardships and sacrifices that he makes on his journey of survival. He is forced to be put into concentration camps, where he was separated from his mother and sister. Luckily, Elie wasn’t alone he was with his father. Elie and his dad work harder day by day to depict an image of being healthy and strong, so they wouldn’t be killed by the Gestapo. The time passed by only the fittest men were left and it became more difficult to remain their pride and faith. Many men become stripped of their faith and pride, Elie does not abandon his father instead, he tries to give his father everything he has. Elie’s father soon becomes terribly ill that he was unable to work; Elie provides him with half of his meals. After days of suffering, he father died and Elie continued to move on without his father. In this book, “[Elie] shows how such a life affected the people in the camps and how it changed many of them into something less than human”(Zapotoczny).
Summary of Autobiography of Night
Elie Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania. He had an interest in Jewish religious studies before he was relocated into the internment camps. At the age of fifteen,Wiesel and his family were forced to relocate into a Jewish internment camp. After a few years of pain and suffering, Wiesel survived the holocaust along with two of his sisters. He then decided take up journalism, where he wrote for the French and Israeli publication. While working with many colleagues, he was encouraged to write about his experiences during the Holocaust, in result Wiesel started a book, La Nuit. This book later became the bestselling book and translated into many different languages, Night. He also later wrote “Dawn (1961) and Day (1962), to form a trilogy that looked closely at humankind’s destructive treatment of one another” (Eliezer Wiesel 1). In addition, Wiesel also wrote the novels Town of Luck (1962), The Gates of the Forest (1966) and The Oath (1973), and such nonfiction works as Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters (1982) and the memoir All Rivers Run to the Sea (1995). He also became an international activist, who spoke out against injustices of how people were treated around the country, which leads him to winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He was also a professor at Boston University in Humanities and a Judaic professor at the University of New York.
Some expectations that i have for this book is that, i hope that it is a book that would be worth my time reading.
Briana Del Cid
Professor Sabir
English 1A 10-10:50
30 September 2013
Author Bio
Shannon was always a storyteller since she was young. Once she could speak, she made up stories and made her younger siblings perform her stories like plays until she learned how to write. At age 10, she began to write books, mostly fantasy stories where she was the heroine. She continued to write secretly for years while pursuing acting and earned a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Utah. Shannon was finally revealed her passion for writing when she received her Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. A few years and many rejections later, she published her first book, The Goose Girl, an ALA Teens' Top Ten and Josette Frank Award winner. Enna Burning, River Secrets, and Forest Born continue the award-winning Books of Bayern series. Newbery Honor winner Princess Academy is followed by New York Times best seller Princess Academy: Palace of Stone. She is currently writing a third book to complete the series. Book of a Thousand Days received a Cybils award and was featured on many best of the year lists. Her first book for adults, Austenland, spawned a movie which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, where the movie was purchased by Sony Pictures Classics. It can be seen in theaters nationwide. Shannon co-wrote the screenplay with director Jerusha Hess. A companion novel, Midnight in Austenland, is now in paperback. Her third book for adults, The Actor and the Housewife, was the City Weekly readers' choice winner for best novel of the year. She and her husband Dean Hale co-wrote the graphic novelsRapunzel's Revenge, an Al Roker's Book Club for Kids selection, and its sequel, Utah Book Award winner Calamity Jack. She now is a stay at home mom with her four children.
Book Review Summary
In “Book of a Thousand Days” by Shannon Hale, Dashti becomes a maid of Lady Saren at age 15. Dashti’s mistress disobeyed her father by refusing to marry the sinister Lord Khasar, a man that her father chose for her. Lady Saren’s punishment was a sentence of seven years in a tower along with food and her maid, Dashti. It turns out that Lady Saren only wants to marry Tegus Kahn, a young Lord in another kingdom. In the isolated tower the girls get visits from the young Lord and sometimes her father asking if she has changed her mind. Sticking to her gun, Lady Saren refuses to leave especially when she gets a visit from Lord Khasar which only scares her more.
With the food supply running low Dashti has only one choice, to escape their stone home. Mucker maid, Dashti is able to find a way out and drags out the hopeless Lady Saren. The two girls return to Lady Saren’s kingdom only to find rubble since Lord Khasar had lost his patience waiting for Lady Saren and destroyed her home. Even though all seemed lost Dashti still showed compassion towards her mistress and lead the two to the next kingdom to look for a new home.
During this journey of their, Dashti keeps journals of what happens in her point of view which is the journal you are reading. The path that they follow has many obstacles and dangers and it’s up to Dashti to keep her mistress safe. Hale‘s written is a tale based on an old Grimm’s fairy story. The book has a medieval Asian type of setting. Dashti is a noble heroine who gives with love and honor. The Mucker maid’s journal of their “thousand days” is filled with unexpected turns, heartbreaks and the joy of victories over the greatest of odds.
Patrick Yu
Professor Sabir
English 1A 11-11:50
1 October 2013
Book Review and Author Biography Summary
Eric Arthur Blair (known as George Orwell), was born in Motihari, Begal, India, in 1903. Orwell was interested and skill in writing from an early age. His first literary success came at 11 years old when one of his poems was published in a local newspaper. Orwell joined the India Imperial Police Force in 1922 due to insufficient funding for a university education. Five years later, he resigned to become a writer. His first major work was "Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), which was about the lives of the working class. The pseudonym "George Orwell" was printed to avoid embarrassment. He would later meet Eileen O'Shaughnessy, and married in 1936.
In 1937, Orwell traveled to Spain, during the war. He got shot, and he and his wife were indicted on treason charges. Orwell suffered from a number of diseases, including tuberculosis in 1938. He continued to support himself over the years through writing essays and reviews. His writings gave him a well-known reputation.
Orwell's most famous novels are "Animal Farm" and "Ninteen-Eighty-Four". The two novels were published a few years before his death. He died on January 21, 1950 from tuberculosis.
George Orwell’s “Nineteen-Eighty-Four” was Orwell’s prediction of the future. It takes place in a dystopian world that is run by the government. The lives of people are constantly watched by the government, or “Big Brother”. Anyone who is caught committing a “crime”, including thinking for yourself, would be arrested and killed. The people in this world like out their lives without any feelings or emotions. Their only purpose is to serve the government. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is curious as to why his life is like the way it is. He would later find another woman, Julia, who shares the same beliefs as him. Together, they rebel against the government and commit the biggest crime - plotting against the government.
I am excited about reading this book. This book is very popular and famous. Certain terms from the book, such as "Big Brother" are used in our vocabulary, and I would like to find out why it is.
Milin Khunkhun
Professor Sabir
English 1A (10-10:50)
1 October 2013
The Great Gatsby: Book Review and Author Summary
Book Review:
The novel's events are filtered through the consciousness of its narrator, Nick Carraway, a young Yale graduate, who is both a part of and separate from the world he describes. Upon moving to New York, he rents a house next door to the mansion of an eccentric millionaire (Jay Gatsby). Every Saturday, Gatsby throws a party at his mansion and all the great and the good of the young fashionable world come to marvel at his extravagance (as well as swap gossipy stories about their host who--it is suggested--has a murky past).
Despite his high-living, Gatsby is dissatisfied; and Nick finds out why. Long ago, Gatsby fell in love with a young girl, Daisy. Although she has always loved Gatsby, she is currently married to Tom Buchanan. Gatsby asks Nick to help him meet Daisy once more, and Nick finally agrees--arranging tea for Daisy at his house.
The two ex-lovers meet and soon rekindle their affair. Soon, Tom begins to suspect and challenges the two of them--also revealing something that the reader had already begun to suspect: that Gatsby's fortune was made through illegal gambling and bootlegging. Gatsby and Daisy drive back to New York. In the wake of the emotional confrontation, Daisy hits and kills a woman. Gatsby feels that his life would be nothing without Daisy, so he determines to take the blame.
George Wilson--who discovers that the car that killed his wife belongs to Gatsby--comes to Gatsby's house and shoots him. Nick arranges a funeral for his friend, and then decides to leave New York--saddened by the fatal events and disgusted by the easy way lived their lives.
F. Scott Fitzgerald paints a picture of a lifestyle and a decade that is both fascinating and horrific. In so doing, he captures a society and a set of young people; and he wrote them into myth. Fitzgerald was a part of that high-living lifestyle, but he was also a victim of it. He was one of the beautiful but he was also forever damned. In all its excitement--pulsating with life and tragedy--The Great Gatsby captures brilliantly the American dream in a time when it had
descended into decadence.
Work Cited:
Topham, James. "'The Great Gatsby' Review." Books & Literature Classics. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Oct. 2013. .
Author Summary:
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896. As a member of the Princeton Class of 1917, Fitzgerald neglected his studies for his literary apprenticeship.He wrote the scripts and lyrics for the Princeton Triangle Club musicals and was a contributor to the Princeton Tiger humor magazine and the Nassau Literary Magazine. In the fall-winter of 1919 Fitzgerald commenced his career as a writer of stories for the mass-circulation magazines. Working through agent Harold Ober, Fitzgerald interrupted work on his novels to write moneymaking popular fiction for the rest of his life. As he began to become a professional writer critics objected to Fitzgerald’s concern with love and success, his response was: “But, my God! it was my material, and it was all I had to deal with.” The chief theme of Fitzgerald’s work is aspirationòthe idealism he regarded as defining American character. The Fitzgeralds spent the winter of 1924-1925 in Rome, where he revised The Great Gatsby; they were en route to Paris when the novel was published in April. Due to his wifes sickness, F. Scott Fitzgerald became depressed and died believing himself a failure.
Work Cited:
"A Brief Life of Fitzgerald." University of South Carolina. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Oct. 2013. .
Christian Logan
Professor Sabir
English 1a 11-1150
2 October, 2013
Book review and Author Biography
The Parable of the Sower is a science fiction novel written by Octavia E. Butler. It takes place in in the year 2024 where America has become a dystopia. Society is now ruled by large trans-national corporations. The story is written through journal entries from the main character Laura Olamina who lives with her family in a walled-in community near Los Angeles. Communities like Larua’s have been built to defend against the roaming tribal gangs looking to loot and murder. Olamina suffers from “hyperempathy syndrome” which causes her to feel the pleasure and pain that others around her feel. She was born with this syndrome because while her mother was pregnant either, she was addicted to a drug called the “smart pill”. This syndrome makes her very vulnerable and is somewhat debilitating. After arsonists destroy her family’s community, she flees with two survivors and travels north away from the chaos, fighting off murderers, slavers, cannibals and dog packs along the way. She eventually starts a community of followers of her new religion called “Earthseed”. Her religion teaches that “god is change”. She started this religion in hopes that it will keep humanity alive.
Octavia E. Butler was born in 1947 in Pasadena, California. She was born an only child and lost her father at a very young age. She was raised by her mother and other relatives. Her mother worked as a maid to support their family. Butler grew up to attend Pasadena City College and later California State Los Angeles. She attended several writing courses and workshops throughout her life. At these workshops she worked with several other writers whose critiques and support helped shape Butler into the prominent science fiction writer she has come to be known as today. She has won numerous awards for her works. Butler passed away in 2006 from a head injury.
Samantha Gober
Professor Sabir
English 1A 8-8:50
2 October 2013
Book Review
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a party of moose hunters. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.
Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and , unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild.
I expect to learn new survival techniques in my reading. I also hope to understand his reasoning behind leaving everything he had behind to go out into the wilderness when he has so much going for him after graduating college. I believe this is going to be a very interesting book and I can't wait to learn more about the adventure this boy took!
Samantha Gober
Professor Sabir
English 1A 8-8:50
Born in 1954, Jon Krakauer grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, where his father introduced him to mountaineering as an eight-year-old. After graduating from Hampshire College in 1976, Krakauer divided his time between Colorado, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest, supporting himself primarily as a carpenter and commercial salmon fisherman. For the next two decades, however, his life revolved around climbing mountains.
In 1996 Krakauer climbed Mt. Everest, but a storm took the lives of four of the five teammates who reached the summit with him. An analysis of the calamity he wrote for Outside magazine received a National Magazine Award. The unsparingly forthright book he subsequently wrote about Everest, Into Thin Air, became a #1 New York Times bestseller and was translated into more than twenty-five languages. It was also Time magazine's Book of the Year, and was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.
In 1998, as a tribute to his companions lost on Everest, Krakauer established the Everest '96 Memorial Fund at the Boulder Community Foundation with earnings from Into Thin Air. As of 2012, the fund had donated more than $1.7 million to such charities as the American Himalayan Foundation, Educate the Children, Veterans Helping Veterans Now, the Access Fund, and the Boulder Valley Women's Health Center.
Krakauer's writing has been published by Outside, GQ, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Architectural Digest, Playboy, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Byliner.com. An article he wrote for Smithsonian about volcanology received the 1997 Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism. His 1996 book, Into the Wild, remained on the New York Times bestseller list for more than two years.
In 1999 Krakauer received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, intended "to honor writers of exceptional accomplishment." According to the Academy's citation, "Krakauer combines the tenacity and courage of the finest tradition of investigative journalism with the stylish subtlety and profound insight of the born writer. His account of an ascent of Mount Everest has led to a general reevaluation of climbing and of the commercialization of what was once a romantic, solitary sport; while his account of the life and death of Christopher McCandless, who died of starvation after challenging the Alaskan wilderness, delves even more deeply and disturbingly into the fascination of nature and the devastating effects of its lure on a young and curious mind."
In 2003, Krakauer published Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, about religious fundamentalism in the American West. While researching Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, published in 2009, Krakauer spent five months embedded with combat forces along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In 2011, he published Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way. All of his proceeds from this latter work have been donated to the Stop Girl Trafficking program at the American Himalayan Foundation.
Denise Burgara
Professor Sabir
English 1A 11-11:50
1 October 2013
Author Biography
Louis Fischer, was born in Philadelphia on 1896, he was a Jewish- American journalist. He studied at the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy he then became a school teacher. In 1917 he enlisted with the British Army's Jewish Legion. He went to Europe but did not take part in any military actions of the First World War. When he returned to the United States, Fischer worked for a news agency in New York. Louis Fischer wrote many books but one of his memorable biographies was of, Mahatma Gandhi, “His Life and Message to The World”. Gandhi was the man who led the fight for Indian Independence from British rule. Fischer knew Gandhi well and understood his unique strategy of passive resistance, which earned him the admiration of millions throughout the world.
Kaleb L. Beyene
Professor Wanda Sabir
English 1A 11-11:50
1 Oct 2013
Author's biography and Book review.
Ayn Rand born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum; was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, who later in her career became an essayist and untrained philosopher. She is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called "Objectivism." Born and educated in Russia, Rand moved to the United States in 1926. She had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel The Fountainhead, which was made into a film of the same title by King Vidor.
Among her great books I am so interested in the one she wrote in 1937 called Anthem. Rand herself prefaces Anthem by exhorting collectivists, those who believe in uniting individual labor efforts under the auspices of the single government for the good of the whole, to acknowledge that they are forcing individuals into slavery. She asserts that social goals have become commonplace in society, and that it should be obvious to all people that the world is headed toward a complete disintegration of the kind she portrays in Anthem. She wants those who advocate such goals to be honest about their intentions, and where their intentions may lead, so that in the future, when the world completely yields to the ideals of the collective, and people find themselves slaves, they will not be able to deny that they chose their own paths.
Rand also is careful to emphasize that in this, the American edition of the novel, she has not changed any of Anthem’s substance. She notes that she has only clarified the language and not changed the spirit of the novella. She claims the idea of objectivism has always been clear and does not need any further examination.
By her ideal society she created in this book, she tried to show us all this things together.
Alma Ramirez
Prof. Sabir
English 1A 8-8:50AM
Cyber Assignment of Book Report:
Summary of Author’s Bio and Book Review
Book Review Summary:
The book summaries I found for the book The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, mainly give the background for the book as well as a little bit of the commentators point of view. The Hunger Games is the first in the series by the author. It is described in most book reviews as a dystopia. I was not quite sure what exactly a dystopia was but now I know it is basically an exaggerated future of events that are going on today. The Hunger Games is about what happens in society after war, which leads to the creation of a new place called Panem, which was previously known as North America. Panem now consists of 12 districts that pay all their attention to the capitol. The capital oppresses its own districts by reminding them they are in charge of them by an event done every year which is called “The Hunger Games.” In these “games” two people from each district are selected to go on this war in order to kill each other. By doing this, it prevents the districts from any form of rebellion.
The main character in the book is the young Katniss Everdeen. In the book summary by The New York Times, she is described as “tough and resourceful, but kind and sentimental”. She is actually from the poorest district, and yet she is soon to be a symbol for rebellion against the government due to her following actions in the games.
Author Biography:
Suzanne Collins was born on August 10, 1962 in Hartford, Connecticut. She was born to a family of four children. One very important key to her life is her father, who was an Air Force Officer. In many interviews Collins explains how her father would always talk to her about war, and this really affected her. This is why she talks about dystopias in her works in order for young adults to have a bigger insight on the subject. In the biography by A&E Networks, Suzanne Collins states, "If we introduce kids to these ideas earlier, we could get a dialogue about war going earlier and possibly it would lead to more solutions”.
She is the author of a series called The Underland Chronicles, as well as series on The Hunger Games. She is also a writer for many shows in the channel NickJr, with one of these shows being Little Bear. Her education includes a bachelors in theater and telecommunication from Indiana University and a masters in dramatic writing from New York University. She currently lives back in Connecticut with her husband Cap Pryor, who is an actor, and their two children.
My expectations on the book is to find about more on Katniss. I actually already seen the movie and I am just getting started on the book. I usually read the books before watching the movie, since they usually skip important concepts, and I’m actually doing it backwards this time. I hope to find out more on how Katniss’s personality as well as to find out if there is more reasons to on why she is so rebellious and strong-willed. Despite this being a young adult novel, the concept of a dystopia society really captivates my attention and the theme of a strong government who just wants all the control doesn’t seem so unrealistic. I am looking forward to finish reading my book.
Works Cited:
Turner, Megan Whalen. "The Hunger Games." Publishers Weekly 3 Nov. 2008: 58. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 Oct. 2013. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA188847295&v=2.1&u=collalamedal&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w&asid=76517505a273a3d413385c8a4a6e5439
Green, John. “Scary New World.” The New York Times.The New York Times Company, 7 Nov 2008. Web. October 1, 2013. Web. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/books/review/Green-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Susan Gyemant
Professor Sabir
English 1A 11/1150
Book Review Assignment
2 October 2013
Positive Review
In her review of, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer and Sex Changed a Nation At War, author Shirley Showalter describes the protagonist as a young woman of relatively decent financial circumstances whose life was harshly dictated through two decades amidst “conflict and violence” (Showalter). Showalter declares the memoir an impactful and honest war story. She explains that Liberia’s late-90’s civil war broke out abruptly, destabilizing an otherwise average school girl’s life. Leymah Gbowee faced this reality.
The author’s recollection of the conditions found in Liberia, according to Gbowee, generate images of sheer chaos: crazed child-soldiers, astronomical populations in poverty, a ransacked state. Shirley Showalter addresses Gbowee’s dedication to her peace-seeking agenda, she joined a group called Women in Peace-building Network (who played a key role in ending the 14 year long battle). The women starred in an award-winning documentary called “Pray the Devil Back to Hell,” and it was featured as part of a series on PBS called “Women. War and Peace,” previously broadcasted in the fall of 2008.
Expectations
Articles in the Economist, and her appearances in the digital world suggest that Leymah Gbowee has maintained a steadfast role in activism. I am looking forward to giving this book a second chance. Two years ago I read Gbowee’s story and I feel that I was too critical in my numerous assumptions. Part of it was due to my forcing a controversial perspective that might generate a good essay. Another contributor was my judgmental nature as a mother critiquing another mother, a thing of the past now I should add. Two years now since I last visited this story, and interestingly, a whole decade has passed since the civil war finale. The time lapse since the wars end will undoubtedly offer plenty of new developments, so I will look forward to putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Ultimately though, I am humbled by the realization that someone’s life story should not be nitpicked simply for writings sake, but instead valued for its “honest” literary contribution (Showalter).
Works Cited
Showalter, Shirley H. "Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, And Sex Changed A
Nation At War." Christian Century 128.21 (2011): 48-49. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Oct. 2013.
Susan Gyemant
Professor Sabir
English 1A 11/1150
Author Bio
2 October 2013
Mighty Be Our Powers
LeymahGbowee, author of her memoir titled, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War, is a Liberian native. As a young adult, Gbowee lived through an era terrorized by two competing warlords. She would eventually take an active role in a grassroots peace-building movement and was recognized for her efforts in 2011 when she received the Nobel Peace Prize alongside current Liberian Head of State, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Tawakkol Karman from Yemen. In May of this year Gbowee spoke to an audience of Barnard Graduates, and in her speech she describes herself as a supporter of women, keeping with her activist role. However, she notes that from her experiences she realizes that women should use their voice and “step out of the shadows” (Barnard). Admitting that she herself has been guilty of holding back, but now finds inspiration to speak up and help other women do the same, she references a friends words to clarify her position when she says, “’good girls never make history’"(Sandberg). Apparently the good girls are the ones who remain in the shadows, and perhaps the bad girls are the game-changers.
Works Cited
Barnard College Columbus University.Transcript of Speech by Nobel Peace Prize Winner
Leymah Gbowee . BCCU, 2013. Web. 2 Oct. 2013.
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