Charlotte’s Blog

     This week when reading the Kendi excerpt, Kendi recounts a speech he gave filled with internalized oppression. Generally, when people think of internalized oppression it refers to negative beliefs about oneself. However, Kendi was describing negative thoughts about people of his own race, excluding himself. Despite the fact that he was living proof not all African-American youths prize athletic ability over intelligence, he still believed these racist stereotypes about his own people. Another example of this type of type of internalized oppression, is the idea of the “pick me girl”.      The “pick me girl” is an expression coined by social media that describes women who seek to put down other women in order to make themselves more desirable to men. Similarly to Kendi, they distance themselves from other females and further perpetuate sexist stereotypes. They are often known to describe themselves as “quirky”, or say things like “I’m not like other girl...

  Today in class we began discussing binary opposites in literature. I thought it would be interesting to see if I could discover any opposites in my silent reading book. In my book,   The Glass Castle,   by Jeanette Walls, two binary opposites are Jeanette and her mom, Rose. Throughout the book, her mom is shown to have a strong belief in a set of morals that she never deviates from. For example, she believed that material objects are unnecessary and that the opinion of others doesn’t matter. Jeanette, who was raised to have the same beliefs, quickly loses these morals once she moves away from her parents. When she sees her mother dumpster diving on the way to a fancy party she “slid down in the seat and asked the driver to turn around and take {her} home to Park Avenue”(Walls 1). This quote illustrates how she has become obsessed with how people perceive her, even hiding to not be compared to her impoverished mother. This is completely opposite to her mother’s beliefs a...

     This week during silent book club I started a new book called The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. This book is an autobiography about the authors life and experiences. The first chapter tells the story of her earliest memory, severely burning her hand when making hotdogs and being forced to go to the hospital for the injury. Just like Walls, my earliest memory was rather negative. I was forced to sit in the cafeteria at day care, trying to finish the extra large sandwich my dad packed. This caused me to miss nap time, which at the time was very upsetting. I found it interesting that the author’s earliest memory and mine were negative/traumatic experiences.       After doing some research, I found a study by Pennsylvania University that suggests “unpleasant memories create more of a lasting impact on the human mind”. So why is this? Painful experiences are necessary for growth, through traumatic experiences we learn more about the world and ourselv...

     Earlier this week we were asked to come up with some ways the fictional world in   1984   is similar to present day. One of the main similarities I found was that we are constantly being monitored by technology. In   1984 , citizens are spied on 24/7 through cameras and microphones hidden in their homes, workplaces, and any public areas. This system is almost the same as what’s used today, except for the fact we willingly carry the recording devices in our pockets.        Along with the constant monitoring comes a lack of privacy. Every time you search something up or go someplace new, google and other big companies file away the information to use later. Famously, Facebook was fined around 5 billion dollars when caught selling users data illegally. However, through the use of incredibly long terms of agreements that no one actually reads anyway, it continues to mine our data every time we enter the app. The idea that what we do on ...