Animals For People

What I read: For this blog post, I've started reading a new book. I'm really enjoying the graphic memoir Maus by Art Spiegelman. I've wanted to read this book for a long time because I had heard of it before and knew basically what it was about.

At the beginning, we see that instead of people, the characters are portrayed as animals.  For example, the Jews are shown as mice, the Germans are portrayed as cats, and the Poles are pigs.  The author Art and his family are mice in this book.  Art's father, Vladek, is a survivor of the Holocaust and the book is mostly the story that Vladek tells to Art about that period in his life.

Vladek's story begins before the start of World War II.  Vladek is a Polish Jew who lives in Sosnowiec in Poland.  Vladek tells his son Art how he met Art's mother, Anja, who is also Polish Jewish.  By the time Vladek tells this story to Art, Anja is already dead.

Vladek works all sorts of odd jobs, especially selling and trading goods.  Anja is from a much richer family than Vladek.  Still, Anja's family likes and accepts Vladek as a new member of their family.  For a while, Vladek and Anja are happy and doing well financially.  They marry and have a son called Richieu.  But things start to get hard.  After Anja has Richieu, she starts feels depressed and even suicidal.  Vladek tries to help her. 

At the same time, there are rumors about what's going on in Germany, especially with the German Jews living under Hitler. This is happening in the late 1930s.  In 1939, Hitler's army invades Poland and Vladek, who has already enlisted in Poland's military, gets called to the front to fight. Poland loses the battle quickly and Vladek is taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans.  There is one very intense moment during the battle when Vladek shoots and kills a cat (a German soldier).  While he is a prisoner of war, Vladek and the other Jews and treated much worse than the non-Jewish Polish POWs.

What I thought about:  When I started reading this book, I already understood the representation of animals. In the animal world cats chase mice.  This is just like the Germans in the book chasing the Jews.  Even though I haven't seen any Americans yet, I already know that the Americans will be represented as dogs because dogs chase cats.  Historically, we know that the Americans beat the Germans in two world wars, so it makes sense that they are shown as dogs. Also, we know that in Nazi Germany, Hitler talked about Jews as if they were rats. He even had anti-Jewish propaganda that portrayed Jews as rats. 

As I read, I realized that Vladek is a really interesting character to think about.  In the book, he tells his son Art about his story in a harsh way.  We also see Vladek being harsh with Art when Art is a little boy.  But when I found out a bit about Vladek's life, I felt like I understood why he's the way he is.  For example, in the picture below, Vladek is already an old man telling the story of his life to his son.  But we can see a glimpse of his left arm in the last frame. On his arm is a number tattoo from when he was in a camp.  This is a constant reminder of what Vladek went through and what he survived.  It's impossible for him to put those memories completely behind him.  His tattoo is a constant reminder of his past.

What I conclude: While there are two books in this series, it's the same story that continues from one to the other.  Therefore, I will be reading and blogging about both books as if they were one. It's all one story, but they were just published as two different books.

I'm really excited to read this book.  So far, it's met my expectations, which were very high.  For me, this book is hard yet interesting because I am Jewish.  Reading about the Holocaust can get me emotional sometimes but some books are worth it to read, and this is one of those.  The mixture of words and pictures make it look realistic despite the fact that the characters are animals instead of people.  I think I'm going to love this series.

Vladek as a mouse and Vladek as a man

The Love that IT Never Had

What I read: This week I finally finished reading A Wrinkle in Time.  Meg's father Mr. Murray tries to tesser away from IT.  He isn't so successful.  He does tesser away from IT, but he doesn't get to earth and Meg gets frozen by the Black Thing.

Suddenly Mr. Murray, Meg, and Calvin realize that they are on a planet inhabited by furry beasts with tentacles. Instead of attacking, the three beasts take Meg to cure her and help her get unfrozen.  One of these beasts becomes Aunt Beast.  She is the one who takes care of Meg while she recovers.  She does this even though she has no eyes and can't see Meg.





Fortunately the three Mrs. are on that same planet as Meg, Mr. Murray, and Calvin.  When they realize that Charles Wallace is not with them, they say that the only way to save him is for Meg to go back to Camazotz alone to rescue him from IT.  She goes back and rescues him by realizing that the only thing that she has that IT doesn't have is love.  She saves her brother with love.

At the end they all return home to Earth and reunite with the rest of their family.  to get home they wrinkle in time so that it doesn't seem like any time has passed to Meg's mother.

What I thought about:  While I was reading this book, I thought a lot about good and evil.  I thought about representations of evil, and this was especially true the week that I looked for images of evil online and came across the GIF from Fantasia's "A Night on Bald Mountain."  It's hard to think about how to represent evil in words and in pictures and I think that Madeleine L'Engle and Disney both did it well.

Another impotrant idea that I thought about was how important it is to be unique.  It's also equally important to accept your uniquness.  Meg has trouble doing this until the end of the book when she is happy to be different.  She has to go to Camazotz, though, to appreciate that it's okay to be different.  It can be hard to feel this way sometimes, but it's important to accept yourself for who you are and for all your differences.  

The last thing I thought about was the triumph of love.  In the end, Meg beats IT because she is human and is able to love.  That makes her more powerful than a super advanced brain like IT.  This is a theme that we can find in many books, movies, and stories.  I think that this one is well done and it made me like the book a lot.

What I conclude:  I liked how this book combined sci-fi and drama.  For example, tessering through time and space is one of the main sci-fi themes.  The dramatic parts are the emotional relationships between the characters.  I especially liked the relationship between Meg and Calvin because they are both dorky and intelligent.  They make a cute couple.

I recommend this book for people who like science fiction and would like to read a classic.  This book is considered a classic and has been read by many generations of children and adults since it was first published in 1963.  I also recommend this book for youngsters younger than me.  Although some of the ideas in it are complicated, they are easy to understand because the author does such a good job explaining it.

ITs Sameness

What I read: Calvin O'Keefe thinks he can handle things on his own.  He decides to go into a building called CENTRAL Central Intelligence Building, and he wants to go alone.  Meg and Charles Wallace don't agree and go with him.  Once inside, they find that every person inside is exactly the same.

There is one person who is different though, and that is the man with red eyes.  Meg tells the man that she and her brother want their father back.  As Meg tells him this, the man doesn't understand why they want their father to return home.  They eat a dinner, but all the food tastes like sand to Charles Wallace, who can't taste it unless he opens his mind to IT, which he won't do at this point.

But later, Charles Wallace seems to give in to IT.  IT has a rhythmic beating that is almost impossible to resist.  Meg tries really hard to think of other things, but IT is slowly starting to control her.  By the end of the chapter, Calvin says that they all need to tesser to escape IT and the entire building.

Meg sort of loses consciousness and when she wakes up again she can't move because she is frozen.  While Meg is frozen she hears Calvin and her father talking about how Mr. Murray ended up at Camazotz.  He explains that one of his colleagues tried to tesser from Earth to Mars.  But after he tried they couldn't tell if he was alive or not.  So Meg's father was the second to try to tesser and her ended up at Camazotz.

Meg tries to make a sound and let them know that she can hear them.  They finally realize that Meg can hear them and she starts asking where her brother Charles Wallace is.  When she finds out that they left him behind on Camazotz, she is really sad and angry about it.  Then Mr. Murray tells his daughter that "all things work together for good for them that love God" (190).


What I thought about:  I was really struck by the quote above and when I looked it up, I found out that it comes from the Holy Bible.  In the Bible, there is a quote from Romans that says, "All things work togther to those who love God."  This is interesting to me because this probably shows that Madeleine L'Engle was a religious woman.  Even if she wasn't really religious she at least knew a lot about the Bible, at least enough to put this in her own book.  This surprises me because it looks like Madeleine L'Engle is trying to put religious content in a book that is supposed to science fiction.  Most people think that science and religion have to be at opposite ends but this author seems to be into both, or at least she knows about both.  It makes me wonder how many other people are into both science and religion even though most people think they don't mix.

The other issue that I thought about a lot is how scary it would be to have something else controlling your mind.  It made me think about brain washing and how hard it would be to not be brain washed if someone was doing that to you.  

It made me think about the movie Star Wars when Anakin Skywalker gets brainwashed and turned into Darth Vader.  He turns to the dark side because of this, and it's a lot like Meg and Charles Wallace trying to resist IT, but having a hard time do it.

What I conclude: Reading these chapters I have to think about how hard it would be to face the problems that Meg and her family are facing.  If I was in this situation I might give up to IT and not be able to resist.  I think that this is what makes these characters unique in their own ways,

The other thing I realized is that no matter how tough you were, this situation would be so hard to deal with.  Meg is sure that she is right to go back for Charles Wallace, and it is hard to do the best for your loved ones but then also save yourself.  It seems like that's what Mr. Murray is doing in these chapters when he leaves his son behind.  Meg feels this is wrong but she isn't the one who gets to make the decision because she is still young.  When she talks to her father about it, he says that he is only human and that he makes mistakes too.

Wrinkling

What I read:
The three Mrs. take Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace to another planet called Uriel.  Once they arrive, Meg believes that they have traveled through another dimension.  The three Mrs. explain that they have wrinkled in time.  This is explained by using the drawing of the ant below.  In the book, there is the concept that if an ant walks on a string from one end to the other, it might take 10 seconds.  But if a person folds the string into two parts, the ant can now walk across in less than one second.  This is the 5th Dimension in the book.

We also find out about a mysterious black shadow that is fighting against the stars and planets, especially when stars die.  It turns out that Meg's father is being held behind the black shadow, which is described as pure evil.  Meg and Charles Wallace find out that they will have to fight the Black Thing to save their father and return home with him.



In the last chapter I read the children meet an upbeat woman called The Happy Medium.  She can show them the earth and what's happening there, but she doesn't want to look at something so melancholy.  The children wrinkle in time again and end up on a planet where Meg and Charles Wallace's father is supposed to be held.  There they have to separate from the three Mrs.  Each Mrs. gives each child a gift so that they can be successful in rescuing Mr. Murry.  They leave the three Mrs. and go into a really weird town where all everything is synchronized and no one seems like a real person.   


What I thought about:
The way that evil is being represented in this book is amazing.  Making dark things look evil and bad is always interesting to me.  It must be hard for authors to describe with words what evil would look like if we could see it, and I think that Madeleine L'Engle did an outstanding job of describing what evil is in this book.

The concept of having a 5th Dimension (tessering or wrinkling through time) is also really fascinating.  L'Engle describes this concept of science fiction with pictures, like the one of the ant shown above.  I think that this is extremely well done in the book because it's such a complicated theme but it's so easy to understand.  It's hard to describe this in words, but with the pictures it's all clear.  I love this idea of wrinkling through time in the 5th Dimension and wish that this were possible.

What I conclude:
At this point I'm about half way through the book.  I always liked science fiction and I'm not surprised that I'm really enjoying this book.  Probably talking about the dimensions is not my favorite science fiction theme, but this book is well written all the same.

At first I thought that the three Mrs. were witches because they seemed so magical.  But in these chapters that I read, we find out that Mrs. Whatsit was actually a star who gave up her star life to fight the Black Thing and saved much of the Milky Way galaxy by doing so.  This to me seems much cooler than being a witch.  Being a former star seems much more magical and strange.  I like the idea that now she can take a human form, but that's still a star.

The Three Mrs.

What I read:
For this new blog post, I've started reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.  I've heard that it's a classic science fiction novel.

Meg, the main character, is a 13-year old girl that lives with her mom and her three brothers.  Two of her brothers are twins and their names are Sandy and Dennys. They are 10 years old.  They also have a youngest brother called Charles Wallace who is strange yet very smart.  He is only five years old.  They have a father, but he is missing at the start of the book.  Other people think that the father is dead, but Meg and her mother don't believe it.

At the beginning of the story, Meg, her mother, and Charles Wallace meet and old woman called Mrs. Whatsit.  When Mrs. Whatsit arrives at their house, she talks about a "tesseract" that is in existence, which makes Meg's mother have a strong reaction.

Soon Meg and Charles Wallace leave the house and meet Mrs. Who in a cabin that is supposed to be haunted.  Mrs. Who speaks different languages, one of which is Latin.  At this point, they have already picked up another companion, which is a slightly older boy named Calvin.  Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin meet one last "Mrs. W" who is Mrs. Which.  She seems to have the ability to appear out of thin air.  All three of the Mrs. Ws are strange in one way or another.

What I thought about:
I certainly wonder what a "tesseract" is.  It mentions in the book that Meg's father was working on something about a tesseract when he disappeared.  I think that this tesseract is going to be an important part of the story.

Everybody in the story thinks that Meg and her family are crazy and weird because they don't believe that the father is dead.  This got me thinking about how hard it is to deal with something when no one else believes you.  It would be hard enough to deal with the disappearance of a loved one, but even worse to deal with people around you treating you like you are insane.

What I conclude:
This book sounds really interesting already.  Normally I'm a fan of science fiction movies, but not novels.  I'm excited to have the chance to read one of my favorite genres for this assignment.  I've also been curious about this book for a long time.  I can't wait to get to the end of this book to find out what happens.

The Ups and Downs of Life in the South African Hood

What I read:  Trevor Noah talks about how when hip-hop from the U.S. came to South Africa it was cool to be from "the Hood."

He started hanging out there and sold pirated CDs.  He and his friends were constantly making and spending money, so they never really got ahead.  He writes, "Hustling is to work what surfing the internet is to reading. If you add up how much you read in a year on the internet - tweet, Facebook posts, lists- you've read the equivalent of a shit ton of book, but in fact you've read no books in a year.  When I look back on it, that's what hustling was.  It's maximal effort put into minimal gain.  It's a hamster wheel.  If I'd put all that energy into studying I'd have earned an MBA.  Instead I was majoring in hustling, something no university would give me a degree for" (Loc 3071).

At one point Trevor is sent to jail for driving a "stolen" car.  The car is not really stolen, it's just unregistered.  Because of this mix-up, though, Trevor gets arrested and spends a week in jail awaiting his trial.  At first he's very scared, then he gets a little comfortable there, and finally he is terrified that the will be sentenced to a longer time in prison.  His mother comes to his rescue.  

In the last chapter of the book, Trevor tells the terrifying story of how his mom got shot in the head by his stepdad.  Miraculously she survived the shooting.  Trevor talks about how his stepdad Abel was abusive to him and to his mother for years before she left him. Some time after she left him, he got a gun and attacked her for not reason.  He even shot her in front of their two sons.

What I thought about:
I thought the chapter about hustling in the hood was really interesting.  Trevor and his friends became like experts in what they did, but because it was petty crime there's no respect from anyone else.  People who study to become professionals get respect from their communities, but Trevor and his buddies were "professionals" at small crimes like pirating CDS.  No one is going to think that's great, though.  It's not a way that they can ever move ahead in their world.

I also thought a lot about domestic abuse when I read these chapters.  I have heard that it's almost more dangerous for a woman after she leaves an abusive husband or boyfriend than it is when she is still with him.  That's what happened to Trevor's mother and it's really frightening to think about.  In the book, that's when it seems like it's finally safe for her, but that's when Abel comes after her and tries to kill her.  It's really sad and scary.  It makes me think about all of the women in the world that are in a situation like this or that have been (Take Rihanna for example).  I hope all these women can be helped before it's too late.


What I conclude:  I learned a lot about apartheid from reading this book.  I also learned a lot about how South Africa was after apartheid ended.  Even though it had so many sad parts, it made me laugh a lot.  Some of the highlights were when he burned down that white person's house and when his friend named Hitler danced at a Jewish school.  While reading it felt like listening to his voice and it felt like a story being told rather than some really heavy factual book.  I really liked that about the book.  I totally recommend this book to anyone who likes Trevor Noah and wants to learn more about his life.  I also recommend it to anyone who is interested in finding out more about South Africa during apartheid. 

Everybody's Buddy Nobody's Friend

What I Read: While reading, I found out that when Trevor was in middle school he didn't have any friends but he was known throughout his new school. He explains how he would be the first one to reach the tuck shop (cafeteria). Because he was known in the school, other kids started asking him to buy their lunch for them. He could run faster than anyone else and he could line up first to get food, so that made him popular in a way.  But he still wasn't really a part of any group.

In these chapters Trevor tells a story about how he stole chocolates filled with alcohol.  He did this with his friend Teddy.  Teddy is one of Trevor's first best friends, and he is black.  He is the son of a maid who lives in Trevor's neighborhood.  Trevor and Teddy spend most of their time together.  One night, they get caught stealing the chocolates.  They go separate ways as they run away from the cops and we realize that Trevor escapes while Teddy gets arrested.  Soon the police contact the school authorities about the robbery and Trevor gets called in for questioning.  The police show Trevor a black and white tape of what happened that night.

On the tape it looks like Trevor is white next to Teddy, who is black.  The camera captures Trevor's skin tone as white even if he only has light skin.  "These people have been so f**ked by their own construct of race that they could not see that the white person they were looking for is sitting right in front of them" (Noah, Location 2237).



Trevor also talks about romance issues he's had during his adolescence.  His first crush is a "coloured" girl and her name is Maylene.  Trevor and Maylene became a couple for Valentine's Day, but Maylene breaks up with him to stay with a handsome white boy.  Next, Trevor falls in love with Zaheera, but nothing ever happens because she moves away to the United States and Trevor never had the guts to tell her.  Despite the fact that Zaheera liked him too.

Last, Trevor talks about getting a date for senior prom.  He takes a girl called Babiki who is the most beautiful girl he's ever seen.  They have been going out for two months, but they have never spent time together alone.  He takes he to the dance and she refuses to get out of his car.  He figures out that she does not speak English.  She only speaks Pedi.  Trevor speaks many langauages but not Pedi.  He can't talk to her.  They are in a terrible situation and Trevor realizes that in all this month he's never really tried to talk to her.  

What I Thought About:  While reading these chapters I found out that after apartheid ended, South Africa had 11 official languages.  These aren't even all the languages, it's just the most common ones.  Trevor describes how common it is to not understand what other people are saying and how you get used to figuring out the gist of a conversation without really speaking that language.  He says that in his head, all conversations get remembered in English, although they are spoken in different languages.  This is something that I totally understand.  For example, even though I know that I had a conversation with a friend in Spanish, it comes back to me in English when I think about it later.  I'm not sure why I do that, but it just happens.  The same seems to happen to Trevor, too.

The other issue from what I read that I thought about is the racism that so many people don't even know they have.  When Trevor and his friend were caught on camera shoplifting, they didn't even know that it was Trevor who was the "white" person on the tape because they couldn't figure out that he would look like that on video.  As you can tell from the picture, Trevor has sort of light skin.  Because of this, the camera captured him as white.  It seems incredible to me though, that the people looking for the boy in the video couldn't figure out that Trevor was that boy.

What I Conclude: I've always known that people were racist. When I was in 4th grade, a boy on the bus told me that I'm a white person who just paints herself black.  He said that because I'm much lighter than my dad.  I was hurt, but I wasn't that surprised because I know that people are often racist and really ignorant about racism.  

Still, though, some of the stories from this part of the book still shocked me.  Like Trevor says in the book, he couldn't believe that people were so colorblind because of racism.  I couldn't believe it either.  It all sort of reminds me of when Mattel released the "Oreo Fun Barbie" and it somehow didn't occur to anyone that the black version of the doll would be really offensive to a lot of people.

Luckily, SNL was thinking more about the way that people perceive things when they put together this video.  Some people might find this offensive, but others think it's really funny.  Either way, it shows how even when people try to be sensitive about racism, they sometimes still do racist things.

I also really relate to the parts about language because I speak two languages too.  It makes me sad to think about how Babiki felt because she speaks a language that is one of the 11 main languages of the country, but isn't spoken a lot.  That would be so hard.  I'm so lucky to speak more than one language from the time that I was born.