Literary Contest Reflection

Are you telling me you entered a literary contest?

            A few weeks ago, for our Advanced English class, the professor asked us to enter a local literary contest in our university. We had to compete in one (or more) of three categories: essay, short story and poetry. As for myself, I chose to write poetry because it usually comes to me and is easier to write about. Anyways, in our classroom almost everyone belongs to an engineering major so we were not really expecting any winners because well, engineers are not best known for writing poems (or whatever). We submitted our works on time and practically forgot about the assignment. It was not until some weeks later that we received the news that three of our classmates won something in the literary contest and we had to go to the awards ceremony. The winners were Neythan, Luis and Angel, all three of them in the category of poetry, two of them engineering students.

            I have to admit, the awards ceremony was more than I expected. It even had a cool host, who received my most sincere applause. He did a wonderful job and actually made me laugh. Also, the ceremony was dedicated to Mark Weakander, a former colleague of some of the professors that hosted the contest and there we listened to some of the guy’s poems and, at least for what I saw and heard of him, I believe he was quite an extraordinary human being. Somehow, how they spoke of this person woke up the writer that lived inside me and made me like it a little more. Anyways, it was great to be able to see our classmates get their prizes and I definitely cannot argue about the food that we were given after the ceremony.

            Last, but not least, and going back to the poem, the fact that this poem was intended to be entered in a contest, made me work harder for it. Anyways, although I was being competitive, I still enjoyed writing my poem because I realized how beautiful it was when the muse came to me and how words flowed so easily. Obviously I cannot ignore the parts that I could spend a half hour writing nothing at all (no, I was not procrastinating), but at the end let’s say it was worth it. In conclusion, entering the literary contest was not that bad. Somehow, this is a new experience that can help us in our future lives and expands our knowledge so it can be a little more universal. After all, as Albert Einstein said: “Once you stop learning, you start dying”.

"The 60's": Mini-series Reflection

Part II

            Well dear reader, as I promised in the last entry, and now that you have a background on the story, I will be going deeper in the types of discrimination seen throughout the mini-series “The 60’s”.

            The first and most noticeable type of discrimination seen in the series is racial discrimination. The 60’s were a time of traumatic changes in the Civil Rights movement, starting when President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act into law in the year 1960. As we see in the series, the Taylor family was involved in this movement too and they were the organizers of many pacific protests that consisted in marches, sit-ins, etc. They, along with other people had to face the police many times and were attacked and injured most of them. In the end, the family father was murdered by the police and that is what led the son to eventually follow his steps and try to make a difference as his father tried to.

            Another type of discrimination seen in the mini-series is political/ ideological discrimination. Most Americans in the 60’s blindly believed in the government’s choices and supported the war because they believed that they were serving the country and fighting for freedom. One of these people that shared this thought was the head of the Herlihys family: the father. As William, the middle son of the Herlihys, joins political movements, his father rejects him for not following his way of thinking and expresses he is ashamed of him. This is another factor that brings separation to the family.

            Last, but not least, we see discrimination against women. In these series we are presented with three strong in their own way women: the Herlihys mom, Katie and Sarah. All of them did great things to defend their family and their beliefs. For example, it is truly admirable how Sarah spoke her mind in front of so many men at the protests and was able to bring a real message. Also, I love how we were able to see Katie’s development and how she worked so hard for her son and in the end she did a great job.

            These are only three types of discrimination seen in the mini-series. If we go deeper into the story we can get some other types, but these three are what I believe that are the major and most important seen. 

"The 60's": Mini-series reflection

Part I

The mini-series named “The 60’s” after the years the story takes place in, has a compilation of the stories of the members from two different families: the Herlihys and the Taylors. Each family belongs to a different world, even though they are part of the same country and the same era.

For example, the first family we are presented are the Herlihys. This is an European-American family, in which the father is a veteran and the mother is a housewife. The couple procreated three kids: Brian, William and Katie, who are raised according to the society standards but, as they grow up, each of them takes a different path in their lives: Brian becomes a Marine just like his dad, Katie gets pregnant at a young age and later on, because of the baby’s father, becomes a hippie, while William, the middle child becomes a political activist, which his father totally disapproves. This family lives the typical American life, and therefore, they do not suffer discrimination the way the other family in this story does.

The second family that we meet in the story are the Taylors. This is an African-American family, in which the father is a minister involved in the Civil Rights movement. In my opinion, this family is the one who suffers the most because the 1960’s is a traumatic time where a lot of changes were happening and there was a lot of hate against black people because of all the people that disapproved the fact that things were changing and soon, they would be considered as equals with all their rights. The family’s father is shot by the police and this happening is what gives a spin to the son’s life, who decides to join the Black Panthers to look for a change for African-American citizens.

This is just a brief summary of the series “The 60’s”; in the next entry I will be going deeper in the types of discrimination seen throughout the mini-series and how it affected the lives of the characters I mentioned before.

"Trifles" Reflection

To kill, or not to kill…

The first time I read “Trifles” I has in twelfth grade in high school and I really liked the story because I found it a little funny somehow. The fact is that even though Mrs. Wright was the one that killed her husband, each of the ladies in the story sort of blame themselves for what happened. Another thing I find interesting and ironic is the fact that the men in the story where saying that there was nothing useful their wives could do and that they worry about non important things, they were the ones that solved the case by themselves and at the end, decided to do nothing about it. Also, this is a story full of metaphors and I found that very interesting because it dares you to think a little when you are reading and that is always good in a story.

From this story, we can learn to never underestimate the power of women. I totally know that the women in the story were very annoying and even chauvinist until some point because of the society they were living in. They found the evidence by accident, but anyways, that is something that cannot be taken credit off because, after all, they did solved the case.

Before finishing this entry, I should say that I felt sorry for Mrs. Wright even though she killed her husband. She used to be a happy girl that sang at the choir and all but everything changed when she married John Wright. The loneliness made her the way she was and the fact that she did not have any kids. Her life was probably a prison and one day she just couldn’t take it anymore and did what she did. I do not excuse under any circumstance what she did, but I do understand her and, as I said, feel sorry for her. 

Our Discrimination Related Assignment

The skit…

          So, for our Advanced English class we had to do this small dramatizations in which we had to include and develop a type of discrimination in the theme of the play. My group and I decided to go with the most cliché of them: racial discrimination, but in a somewhat different way. Our story was set in the Dallas- Fort Worth airport at a TSA checkpoint. The protagonist was Esteban Julio Ricardo Montoya de la Rosa Ramírez and he was a Mexican guy going on a business travel. There at the TSA he confronts a racist officer and is later saved by a random stranger passing by. We got the idea for Esteban’s character from The Suite Life of Zack & Cody in which there is a Peruvian guy with the same name who works at the hotel where Zack and Cody live.

          Also, we had to include a related poem inside the lines of the play. We used the poem “I rise” by Maya Angelou. It was a great poem but in the beginning it gave us a hard time figuring out how to include it in a smooth way so it would fit perfectly with the play. At the end, and after a lot of work we were able to do this and it came out all right.

          In the beginning, this assignment was a pain and I cannot say that the experience was completely good, since we did not have that much time or motivation to do the play. In my opinion, if I were going to say something good about the assignment is that it helped me see better the situations of discrimination, since I was seeing them live in front of me, even more than if I only read about them in class. Anyways, at the end the work was not that bad, since it was a rewarding experience to see that the final product turned out all right.