Memories

I remember what it felt like to move to Indiana. My family and I were coming from South Carolina because my uncle had died and we went to his funeral. The car ride took forever because my mom was driving and I was ready to get out the car and stretch my legs from the cramped space I had in the backseat of the truck. I started thinking about my friends back home and how much I would miss them, but surprisingly I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry. That kind of shocked me because I hadn’t shed one tear. Not when I first heard the news of our moving, or when I said goodbye to my bestfriend. I just felt…the same. I missed everyone and everything about Memphis, for the most part, and had no desire to move to freezing cold Indiana, but I just didn’t feel anything. I never really understood why I felt that way, my behavior was almost too comfortable and too natural; to leave people and places that I grew up with and not have any remote sign of emotion showing. I always thought that was kind of scary.

Carlos Fuentes

The Carlos Fuentes essay used alot of personal stories and his own point of view to express his thoughts about the Latin american culture, language, and the influence of Latin American writers. He showed his readers what he thought about Mexico and how he wasn't raised in its culture, but knew about it only through movies and books; his imagination. But it wasn't until he lived there that he finally got an understanding of what it culture was all about. Through his persona he concludes that the emersion of several cultures, languages and traditions helped him become a writer because without this emersion traditoins would never be formed; therefore a culture could never exist.

I Could Tell You Stories

Affter reading the short story/essay and having today's discussion in class, i feel like i understand the text a lot better than i did before. What i got from it was that when individuals experience or witness something they have an urge, an inhuman urge that may go beyond the human nature, to tell someone of what has occured to them. They express what they have experienced by telling the story. But, the story may not always be able to fulfill the actual experience of the individual because sometimes one cannot truely convey what they are feeling through stories. The experience which the story is being told about, is always better understood by the person who is physically there to comprehend all the elements involved and see them in action. The first hand experience allows the witness to see whats actually happening, but when the event is retold the second hand experience is picturing the story in their mind. They can imagine what it was like, but they can never know because you can't make up the truth by comprehending it from your own interpretation. It's not about your interpretation, it's about what actually happened. Like the woman in the story who "could tell you stories", but couldn't because the story that needed telling was "too big, too much, too something, for her to place in the small shrine that the story is". (Patricia 20)

What I think about AP English

Over the past week what i have observed of this class that i particularly like, is the fact that our crititcal thinking discussions are awesome. They really make me think and analyze themes from the book that I would never have picked up before. It's also nice to hear how different people interpret the same passage in a different way. It's just cool to see how different minds think about certain things and the way they perceive them. Every time I walk out of that class room I feel like i actually learned something new that I enjoy. The short stories we have been asked to read are also well written pieces that aren't painfully boring to read.
Our whole class is funny and intellligent so i think we as a class have gotten off to a great start with congruency within the classroom.