I was assigned 8 bites to do a presentation with my group. I was really hoping it wouldn’t be a complex piece like some of the other works in that collection, and it wasn’t. I found 8 bites to be relatively easy to understand, at least the main points, and the nuances needed more analyzing but after calling with my group mates and discussing some of the key things in the text, I felt pretty good about my understanding and ability to lead a discussion on 8 bites. It was interesting to see what my groupmates thought was significant to raise as a question compared to the points that I thought were key moments. Nobody was incorrect but it was nice to see that some parts that I didn’t give much thought about, were actually much deeper. I thought my group led the discussion well, it was a plight scene in the class with half the people that usually talked missing, however we still managed to get a good discussion and we got to provide more of our input to help get the discussion moving. I started the discussion by asking the class to give a quick summary of the reading to get people refreshed on the story. That in itself caused a discussion which I was not expecting but nonetheless grateful. I then asked the question that I thought was most significant and after a discussion of that question, which I also contributed to, everyone else in our group was able to ask their questions as well. I think I could have provided a more specific follow-up question to my original question that made people think about the points that i wanted to raise but i didn’t because the discussion was going well anyways. Even then I think I should have mentioned it. I took this reading the most seriously compared to others in the collection which helped me with the in class essay if I chose to use 8 bites as one of my stories used for evidence.

I didn’t use 8 bites on my in class essay, I chose the husband stitch instead because the prompt about how marriage/relationship affected the narrative came easier to me and the husband stitch provides many answers to this prompt. I already knew some of the key moments in the husband stitch that I could use for my in-class essays so I looked through the book and noted them down. I reread the book briefly before planning out my essay during my gap periods. I just used a google doc, I knew that the 5-6 paragraph essay with an intro, 3-4 body, and a conclusion would be easiest for me so I structured my essay in that manner. I wrote my introduction fully, trying to use a hook and thesis statement. Then I listed my 4 main points and bullet pointed out some key things I wanted to mention about those points as well as the evidence supporting my argument and why it supports it. I didn’t write anything about my conclusion, and my conclusion in the essay was also lacking which I hope to improve in the future. I had plans for the conclusion to relate the theme to society and give examples but I didn’t have time. I think the reason I was barely on time was because the outline felt like a double edged sword; it was helpful to help me remember my main points but I kept getting stuck trying to write my essay exactly as outlined. My ideas would be more streamlined and quicker to write if I hadn’t done that. I hope to improve my pace and quality of writing in the future. 

I was thinking about the topic I would choose for my op ed on my train ride back home after I knew I had to write one. I thought about the opinions that I held most strongly and began thinking about my political views and beliefs. In light of the recent political climate, I decided to write about my opinions on “Trump’s Gaza” and his imperialistic plans surrounding the region. I knew I had prior knowledge about this topic and I felt really strong about it so it was the perfect topic.

I wrote it all in one sitting during a long gap I had between classes. I had already read a few articles about the topic because I was invested in it even before the Op Ed so I decided to bookmark those articles and write it down for my citation in the Op Ed. I wasn’t really sure how strictly I had to follow any citation norms for the Op Ed so for my first draft I just used quotation marks without even citing the articles explicitly. After receiving feedback from peers, I decided to make it clear where I was getting my information from for a few of my citations.

As for the structure, I kinda just followed an essay format with an introduction that provides a thesis statement, supporting body paragraphs and a conclusion. In hindsight I feel like a different more unconventional structure may have gotten my point across better so if I had more time, this is definitely something I would experiment with.

I like my line of reasoning, I believe I had very strong points supporting my argument about why Trumps plans for Gaza only serves to benefit the rich imperialistic investors that greed for the land and how it would be devastating for the Palestinian who are trying to gain a foothold in their own land even after relentless attacks. What I would and should have expanded on is how the opinions of zionists and the president pushes a false narrative and shapes a dangerous belief for common people that justifies the atrocities happening in Gaza. I regret not including a section talking about this because my Op Ed is meant for regular people and targeted to a broader audience that may have mixed views about be Israeli Palestinian conflict. If I had more time, I would take more time to analyze my rhetorical situation and change my framework for my ideal audience. The purpose of my op Ed was not only to inform but also change the minds of people who may have initially thought otherwise. This relates to more then just an Op Ed but any rhetorical work that I have to do in the future. I think planning out my writing and thinking about rhetorical situation before I start writing would better my writing and make it more persuasive.

I feel like I know the answer to this question but I want to expand my thoughts and be clear on it. The presence is obviously metaphorical. The story portrays it as a physical blob of flesh with no eyes or limbs or senses, just a blob. It is clearly a reference to the part of herself that the narrator cut off during her surgery. I was wondering what the point of the flesh was in the story and it slowly got clearer towards the end. The presence represents more than just a physical thing, it is a metaphor to the part of the narrator that she can’t quite erase, no matter how hard she tries. And she does try very hard to erase it by beating it, kicking it, gnawing parts of it out and throwing it against the wall, yet the presence is ever so resilient, still treating the narrator kindly.

The presence is symbolic for the self hatred and shame that the narrator faces even after the surgery, I’d argue even more so after the surgery. And this never ending standard of always trying to look a certain way, eating less and less to fit into society’s unfair expectations of proper body image never leaves the narrator, even after the surgery. It doesn’t leave even after her death and realization of where she went wrong because the narrator herself mentions that the presence will live on even after her death. The presence represents the never ending self doubt the narrator underwent due to her efforts in maintaining the looks. It’s significant also due to the time at which it formed. It only formed after the surgery, which leads me to believe that her feelings of self doubt and hatred became stronger after the surgery that’s supposedly supposed to fix everything in her life. She herself referred to her body as more honest before the surgery. In conclusion, I think the author implements the presence to highlight the narrator’s feelings about her body, her past self, and her scumming to society’s expectations. 

I was curious as to what kind of surgery the narrator went through exactly. She mentions bariatric surgery resting to weight loss which when I searched it up, gave me this image. It just made me think about the extreme that the narrator went through to fit a certain body image caused by the negativity surrounding her, especially in terms of how a woman should look.

One of my first thoughts while reading “Mothers” was why Machado chose to create the the story between two women rather than a heterosexual couple. I personally think the author chose this dynamic to challenge traditional gender norms regarding motherhood. In almost all stories about the struggles of motherhood, the power imbalance in the relationship if often due to assigned gender traits. Like the man being dominant and abusive, or absent while the mother is left to endure the abuse for the child’s sake. However this piece challenges that structure. By making the story about two women, the author makes the readers really focus on the aspects of motherhood instead of the gender dynamics. It also shows how the abuse on mothers doesn’t necessarily have to be physical, as you may expect in a toxic heterosexual relationship, because the relationship between Bad and the narrator was insanely abusive but more so on a emotional scale. 

It was also very significant that the roles are almost reversed in this case as Bad, the dominant and manipulative partner was the one that bore the child, yet the narrator was forced to raise it. I think the author purposefully chose Bad to be the one that got pregnant to highlight how sometimes the responsibility of a mother doesn’t necessarily fall to the person that bore it. In fact we see Bad using the fact that she got pregnant to push the child away and excuse herself from having to raise it, instead guilt tripping the narrator into assuming all responsibility. This sheds light to the fact that sometimes motherhood is forced onto a woman, that it may be so unexpected yet the mother is expected to raise it without protest. It also challenges the stereotype that caring traits inherently come to mothers, because we clearly see Bad avoiding all responsibility while the narrator tries her best to raise the child even though she has reservations on weather the child is even hers. 

By creating a non traditional gender dynamic in her story, Machado portrays the deeper complexity of motherhood by making the readers question their preconceived notions on what a mother is, who the role is assigned to, which helps the readers see how a mother deals with the power imbalances and the emotional trauma of raising a child.

This picture portrays the traditional nuclear family dynamic with the mother cooking while the father comes home from work. This often represents the idealized version of motherhood and its nature. I chose this picture because it contrasts with the nuanced idea of motherhood portrayed by Machado’s work.

I ask this question not with the belief that she should have told her husband but just out of curiosity as to why she might not have. But even before that I was wondering if even she knew the consequences of undoing the ribbon. I believe she did know, based on the seriousness of her demands that her husband absolutely not undo the ribbon; however this is up for debate. For this blog post, let’s assume that she did know. If she did, why didn’t she tell him of such grave consequences. My first thought was that she was testing him. She was testing his love and respect for her autonomy. She was familiar with the lack of autonomy that women had with their bodies and wanted to see if the man she loved was different; if he respected her enough to not even ask, not even plead, just respect her boundaries. He clearly failed the test, if it was a test, and wore her down with relentless questioning but I think she had just hoped that he would respect her wishes and chose not to tell him.

My secondary thought was, would her husband believe her? Even if she were to tell him the horrific consequences of undoing the ribbon, there is no way for the husband to know unless the ribbon is untied. Would he stop being persistent about the ribbon? Would he believe her? I am not sure if he would. He might believe her and stop questioning the ribbon. But for how long? He wasn’t always as persistent in knowing about the ribbon until later into marriage, perhaps this pattern would just repeat after she tells him. Or he might blow off such unexpected consequence as an attempt for the narrator  to retain her autonomy through lies.

I think in the end, the husband failed the test, why didn’t she tell him is probably the wrong question. She shouldn’t need to tell him why. The question should be, why didn’t he respect her wishes? Which the author answer through her work. It’s because of the societal patterns in undermining women’s rights, it’s because her husband saw her as more of a possession than an equal partner. He had a choice and his desire for possession of his wife caused a tragic phenomenon.

I enjoyed writing an essay on one of my communities for this assignment. I start my essay by talking about my reaction of the reading from Casey Plett, which was easy because I had already accidentally written a blog post on “on community” by Plett. I took some of the ideas and thoughts that I wrote about in my blog post and integrated that into my essay. Even in the blog post I talked about DRUM, so I knew that for my essay, I wanted to focus on DRUM as it is the largest community that I am closely part of, and even while I was reading Plett’s work, I was thinking about DRUM and the similarities in the nuances about community Plett described and DRUM. I jotted down some ideas that I wanted to talk about in my essay on the train ride home when I found out I was gonna be writing an essay on community. I was really inspired by the way Plett described the spectrum of different types of people in the same community, I don’t exactly remember how it went but I know it was very frank and felt like a rant. I knew I wanted something like that in my essay and came up with the part in my essay where I talked about conservative Muslims and liberal queers fighting for their interests using DRUM.

The instructions for the essay was pretty straightforward, and while I didn’t answer all of the questions that were prompted to help us write the essay, I did really lean into some of them. I answered what actions my community take the most and how it divides us but also displays our strengths. Another major part of my essay was how I would define DRUM and the nuances within the DRUM community regarding people’s ideology. Thinking about these questions really helped me write the bulk of the essay. I knew I wanted to put my definition of community at the beginning of my essay, but when I initially wrote out my definition of community as a group or gathering where people share common interests or backgrounds, I felt like the definition would contradict with the nuances that I would talk about regarding DRUM. That got me thinking weather DRUM was even a community, I thought maybe I should write about the fact that DRUM isn’t a community. I scrapped that idea; something didn’t sit right with that thought, I have been part of DRUM long enough to know that it is a community. That’s when i decided to change my definition of community as not only a gathering of people that have similar interests or ideas, but also a safe space where people can express their wants and needs. In this way, I could still call DRUM a community. The rest of the essay came pretty easily to me on my train ride home and back to school. I wrote out my essay in Word while in the train and proof read it before submitting it on bright-space. I did not make very many edits on my essay for re-revision, particularly because I don’t do well with revisions without having a second person look at my work but I did what I felt was necessary to improve flow and better my ideas.

This is a photo of DRUM advocating for community safety act in front of city hall. I wanted to highlight a photo that just shows DRUM and the different types of people in it fighting for what matters to them. I believe this is an old photo, I don’t have any new ones of actions I was a part of but it still just shows what DRUM stands for and so I chose it.

For our assigned reading “Ghostland” by Colin Dickey, the quote that stood out to me most was “We typically think of ghost stories in terms of the remnants of a terrible tragedy, a past we cannot escape, or a justice unavenged. Why, then, in such a place that should be so haunted by the legacy of such terrible injustice…, should there be nothing but white ghosts?” For me, this quote summarized the central idea of the chapter. Shockoe Bottom is a place with a dark history filled with tragic antebellum tales, yet the stories told in the bars, the landmark shown to tourists, or the town folklore reflects absolutely nothing of its racist past. The author expands on his experiences stating there are tons of storys about the “mysterious death of that blacksmith” or the “fabled prostitute that haunts the town” but nothing about the tortured slaves in the many homes or stories about the slave graveyard in Shockoe bottom.

I liked the quote because it identifies the main point of the chapter; however there are things I would also nitpick on. I believe it’s important to know about the past tragedies and history of a place, but that learning should’t be forced. What I mean is that, it is good to have places that show tribute to the victims of the dark past for those interested or willing to learn about it, but it shouldn’t be forced, I don’t think that the whole town’s ambiance and characteristics be that it was once a slave trading ground. I don’t necessarily believe that the town’s ghost stories or folklore should reflect the tragedies of the past, it should be stories that are funny or light-hearted because the town isn’t reflective of its past anymore so why bring everyone down by repeating tragic tales of the past. This doesn’t mean that you should whitewash everything about the past but it’s obvious that people usually are looking for tragic slave stories when they want to have fun in a town.

 

This picture came out a bit more blurry than I had hoped but it shows the interior of Thomas Jefferson’s estate in Monticello VA. The book briefly mentioned how the room reflected nothing of the hundreds if slaves that Jefferson owned. I wanted to see for myself and I was shocked at how popular it was. It has over 10,000 ratings on google maps, I was surprised that people would pay to see an artifact of the past that only partly portrayed Jefferson’s character. 

As I read part of “on community,” by Casey Plett, the quote that stood out to me the most is “Somewhere along the line…, the word community to attain semantic satiation for me—the phenomenon in which a word is repeated so often it loses its meaning…” This quote stood out to me because I think it’s the perfect way to describe the overused word, “community.” 

It made me think about the communities that I am part of and weather or not they are actually my community or if I have just labeled them as such because defining something as community is easier then actually trying to figure out what it means to you. While in the thought process of trying to figure out whether I was defining my social groups correctly as “community”,  I searched up the dictionary definition of community and realized that it’s fine if I label all the groups I am part of as community. I think the word is inherently bound to feel semantic band cause its definition is so broad. The Oxford dictionary definition is “group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.” That definition describes so many groups I am a part of, and while I may not value all those different groups equally, they are still by definition a community where I share similar attitudes or interests with other people. 

Casey Plett also goes into detail about the subdivisions amongst the people in the communities she’s part of, like the trans community, and she talks about the nuances in the trans community with regards to people’s attitudes and behavior towards people of the same community. I can also relate with this; I feel like there’s always subdivisions in every community that I’m a part of but I think that’s natural. Its hard to find people that are so similar that subdivisions don’t form in larger communities, it’s bound to happen. 

The image above is the logo for one of my communities that perfectly describes what a community is for me. It’s called DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving), and it’s a grassroots organization that focuses on helping and seeking political advocacy for working class Desis, south Asian and indocarribean folks. This best describes what a community is for me because everyone in DRUM shares the same goal of advocacy and safe space for south Asian and indocaribbean people but within DRUM there’s all sorts of people that are different in their own ways and diverge into sub-communities but it’s still a unified community.

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