10th post

The myth that I chose is a famous myth from the bible my mom used to tell me. The myth is called the "Judgement of Solomon". The myth goes as follows, two women lived in the same house with each one of the women having their own child. One of the moms accidentally smothered her son. After she saw her son died, she try to switch between the two and pin it on the other mom that her son actually died. So each women claimed that the alive baby was theirs. So they went with the case to King Solomon. After many hours of deliberation, King Solomon called for his sword and said he was cutting the baby in half and giving a half of the baby to both mothers. The real mother cried out, "No, don't kill him. Give the baby to her." While the fake mother said,"Cut it in half." King Solomon was wise and knew that the real mother would be the one who would give up her baby, so it will live. He gave the baby to the real mother. This story is trying to explain to a person how to identify the truth and have good judgement. King Solomon was very wise to pull that move. I always loved hearing this story because it was so clever yet so simple.

The Woman Warrior and The Female Individual and the Empire

In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston describes her parent's memories from when they lived in China. From her paren't's description, her community has a primitive idea of the way women are treated. In the community she describes, women were treated as a useless, afterthought and can have a little impact on society. Although, in many more modern thinking societies, women have been able to have a huge impact on development and there are many important women figures throughout history. After experiencing many frustrations with the perception of how women are treated in China, Kingston decided to rewrite the tale of Mulan and give it a more feministic empowerment compared to the previous different versions of Mulan. We all know "Mulan" has become a successful Disney movie adaptation. In her rewrite of Mulan, she gives Mulan the title of leader of her whole army. What surprised me while reading this, was that Mulan gave up her power to become a housewife because her parents in law asked her to. This pretty much was the complete opposite idea I thought Kingston was trying to express. Instead, of giving a fitting empowering ending that marks the importance and strength of women  in society, the ending that was given was very boring and very narrow minded.

Graphic Journeys

In Graphic Journeys: Graphic Novels' Representations of Immigrant Experiences, Michael D. Boatright talks about the controversial issues of immigrant status in the United States and he's trying to spread the fact that this is an opportunity for teachers to add a new subject into their curriculum. Boatright believes that the best way in teaching the importance of immigrants is through graphic novels because it allows characters to engage in dialogue. The three texts he uses for his literary analysis are The Arrival, The Four Immigrants Manga: A Japanese Experience in San Francisco, and American Born Chinese. Boatright believes that because of the combination of illustration and words, it gives a certain perspective in the representation of immigrants. He often uses the term "critical literacy". Which he describes as one persons ability of figuring out the meaning of an illustration or story without being explicitly told what it is about. When Boatright talks about The Arrival, he complains that the main character is a white person and that was able to assimilate easily to American culture because of his skin color. The main idea of this whole article by Boatright, is to give evidence on how significant graphic novels can be in teaching about immigrant status. I agree with Boatright that the issue of immigration is very important and a very delicate subject. I also agree with him that the topic of immigration should be visited by education systems and be taught in schools. There are many laws that try to put the immigrants down, but instead of trying to keep them down wouldn't a country be able to be more efficient if it gave an equal opportunity to everyone?

Make up: Trickster Tales

The two stories we read in the "Trickster Tales" were "Raven the Trickster" and "The Wolf and the Mink". Both these stories main plots are the deception and trickery of the raven and the wolf, in both of their respective stories. The wolf plays with the hungry mink's mind that he has already eaten the fish by putting the fish bones inside the mink's mouth while he is a sleep. The raven causes mischiefs and lies in his respective story. To tell you the truth, I am used to these types of stories ending with some sort of justice, but that wasn't the case in either story. So I was surprised. Both these animals used trickery to get them out of trouble. This is similar to humans. When humans are in an apprehensive situation they feel the need to lie, or try to scheme their way out of the situation instead of telling the truth.  lying and tricking works in the moment, but, from my experience, it always finds a way to come back to you and affect you. There is a simple saying that reminds me of this, "What goes around, comes around."

Graphic Memoirs Come of Age

In the beginning of Graphic Memoirs Come of Age by William Bradley, he first gets into the history of the transition of comic books to the more sophisticated term graphic novels. Bradley talks about the classic comics Superman and Batman, but he does not categorize these comics as graphic novels. Even though, they are directed to an older audience and have multiple story lines and volumes in their series. Bradley then shifts his focus to what he proclaims is more of an academia comic and he refers to the term as "graphic memoir". Throughout his essay, he compares the differences and intentions of both of Alison Bechdel's graphic memoirs the Fun Home and Are You My Mother. He tries to refute the label of graphic memoir that was given to both of Alison Bechdel's works. He believes that its more in the direction of an essayistic memoir. He argues that Bechdel doesn't give enough input about her life to make it a memoir. He criticizes the critics for trying to decide which of Bechdel's works were better. The reason for this is because he is claiming that the critics are missing the whole point of what Bechdel is trying to promote. Even though they are labeled as the same type of story (graphic memoir), Bradley is trying to say that they are completely different types of stories. Many critics argued that Fun Home was better than Are You My Mother. He believes that both stories are good, but cannot be compared. Its like comparing apples and oranges. Both of Bechdel works serve for different purposes.

Sandman

 When we were assigned to read the comic book Sandman, I was very surprised. The reason for this is because I always perceived comic books to be directed to little kids. For example, all of the X-men and Superman comics, to my knowledge, are mostly read by young teens. Anyways, when I first started reading Sandman I was very confused. This was the first comic book I have ever read so I didn't have any background on how to read it. When reading The Sand/wo/man: The Unstable Worlds of Gender in Neil Gaiman's Sandman Series, it finally cleared up the smoke that was going on in my head because it helped me understand what Neil Gaiman was trying to present in his comic. What Booth and Brisbane are trying to portray in this essay is the importance of gender roles and how both sexes are supposed to act. They are saying that if you are a man you are expected to act a certain way. In my experience, men are supposed to be aggressive, hot headed, physical, athletic and boorish. Women are expected to be more thoughtful, gentle, loving and emotional. Society puts the label on us on what we are the second we are born. "The idea that reproductive organs should be the basic distinction... Consequently, biological distinctions between male and female become instrumental in the classification and delineation of difference..."(24). This quote, from the critical text, is trying to say that we only define ourselves because of our organs. But can there be a different way to distinguish whether we are male or female? This is one of the most controversial social issues in society today. There is the whole issue with transgender and what label are they. As a society, we love to label things and since its not part of the norm we have problems with the whole transgender issue. In my opinion, its whatever you feel like inside makes you what you are. If you are a male, but inside you feel like you are a female, then you have to go with your feelings and not care about what other people think. Its all about making yourself happy and the only way to accomplish that is to be satisfied with who you are.     

American Indian Legends and Folktales

The first thing that caught my eye about the Native American legends was in the beginning the author started out by explaining the significance of geography for these stories. Meaning, that the myths and folktales could have different meanings depending on the different areas and tribal groups. For example the tribe in the tale When Grizzlies Walked Upright, they never killed grizzlies and were deemed as a symbolic animal in their tribe. While in the tale How The People Got Arrowheads, the tribe telling this story is describing the Obsidian Old Man killing the bear. Thus, showing that bears weren't considered as a symbolic figure in the tribes culture. According to the author, Erodes, the message the Native Americans were trying to send through these stories was to depict the world that humans are living in and to show their concern and thoughts about the present time.

After reading the introduction, it seemed like the Native Americans would tell these stories in order to preserve their identity and not assimilate to the up and coming white European settler society. On page 4, a modern day Sioux tribe representative uses the term "white-manized" about his native language. By saying that, he is describing that his whole culture is slowly starting to assimilate but what is helping to preserve the identity are these American Indian folktales. These myths help preserve the language, cultural belief and daily practices. In todays world, it is really hard to preserve your cultural identity and without these stories, people would be fully assimilated into society with no idea about their history and cultural background.

The Three Wishes

When I first read "The Three Wishes" by Ricardo E. Alegria, I had a hard time figuring out the morals of his short stories. To me, the stories just seemed very random and pointless. Aesop's fables were succinct and had a clear point. Finding the moral was very easy in Aesop's fables. When I read Sara Lastrai's "Juan Bobo: A Folkloric Information System" the moral of the Juan Bobo story became very clear to me. Before I read Sara Lastrai's essay, I thought the moral of the story was about being a good son and paying attention. It then became clear to me that these stories aren't meant directly to the person, but more to express how the culture is about according to Sara Lastrai. So the Juan Bobo story is directed to the people that always get blamed. The story is talking about scapegoating and how it helps people feel more superior than you. Another story that represents the whole idea of scapegoating is "The Witches Skin". In the story, the witch didn't cause any harm to any of the people, but was still blamed for everything. The story is describing the witch as a horrible person, thus giving that perception that she is evil just because she is a witch. At the end, she dies a horrible event and it is celebrated by the people of the town. This just shows,  the whole idea of scapegoating. The witch and Bobo never caused any harm to the people as a whole, but the stories were describing them as the main problem of the society.

Living Folklore

In the Living Folklore, Martha Sims is focusing on misconceptions about what folklore is and its purpose to the reader. The way she does this is by looking at different genres and focusing on the different concepts it is trying to provide. Martha Sims refutes the idea of folklore being just an untrue, entertaining children's tale. She is trying to expand the basic readers perspective about folklore by explaining it as a day to day thing, that is involved in our personal lives. For example, she gives the idea of superstition as a type of folklore. We all have this lucky shirt or lucky underwear that we wear to specific events. Why do we do this? Why do we believe in an object that will give us good luck? The reason is because it gives us confidence. It makes us feel good about ourselves. When Martha Sims stated that folklore creates tradition, I had to think about it. She was stating that tradition helps to build identity. It then hit me, and I completely agree with her. For example, people who watch WWE. Wrestling is the best example of folklore in the real world. The story lines are fake and the moves that they do aren't real. Even though people know its fake, its one of the most watched entertainment series on cable and every WWE event has a sold out crowd. So why do people go? They go because they like it, its their identity, their passion. So I agree with Sims, about her whole idea of folklore. Before reading this text, I have never really thought about folklore as something more than a fake tale. This text broadened my horizons and taught me that the most simplistic things can be further interpreted.

Aesop fables and role in society

I enjoyed reading the fables and I found them amusing as I was reading each one. Fables are stories that teach a moral. I agree with Edward Clayton, that fables are important to human society. Fables are targeted for young children, so by exposing these allegorical stories to children, they learn at a young age to differentiate between right and wrong. In addition, these fables teach children important life lessons that will help shape them to the type of person they will become. As I was reading the fables, I was able to reflect to myself on the morals they taught.  This opened my eyes and actually taught me that fables not only is a tool of explanation, but can also be used as a tool of self reflection and I never really thought about that. According to Edward Clayton, fables had an important role in ancient Greece. He explains that the lower class society in ancient Greece would slander the government by using fables. By using the method of fables, the government wouldn't know the slander upon them from the lower class. In addition, Aristotle believed that humans and animals are linked in some parts of the soul. Fables try to show that human and animal characteristics are similar. The point of reading the fables for humans is to be able to reflect on the moral that they have learned and apply it.