Nardos Yosef

Anlicker

English 1102

26 September 2016

Enrique’s Journey and the Significance it has to Other Immigrants Journeys

            Last week, our class began reading Enrique’s Journey. This book is written by Sonia Nazario, and explores the journey taken by the author and a young man named Enrique who lives in Honduras. Enrique and his little sister were abandoned by his mom, Lourdes, when he was young so she could try to make money in America. She worked hard to feed and provide clothes for her two children. He grows up with some relatives and has a rough turn in his life as he grows older. He becomes involved with drugs because he believes that his mom has abandoned him and he is all alone. He also gets involved with a woman and ends up having a baby. His family tries to help and fix his drug problems but no one can change the fact that Enrique feels abandoned. Everything is not well with his mother either. She realizes that America is not easy to find a job in. After Enrique gets kicked out of his aunt’s house because he steals her jewelry, he decides that he needs to return to his mom in America. He will take the illegal route and ride trains in order to get to America and reach his mother. The first seven times he was severely beaten and robbed. It was not until his eighth attempt that he becomes successful in this dangerous journey. Enrique’s mother Lourdes pays a smuggler to bring him to her, but when he finally arrives, their reunion is not what they expected. Enrique has to begin work immediately.

            Enrique believed that as soon as he reunited with his mother, all his problems would fade away. This is not what happens-he only has resentment and sadness for his mother. He goes back to abusing drugs and alcohol. He also has to continue working in order to send money back to his girlfriend and baby and continue saving up in order to pay for a smuggler to bring his girlfriend and baby to America. His dreams of a perfect reality in America were broken after arriving and having to work hard jobs and not connecting with his mother the way he thought he would.

            This book was very important in educating people about the reality of immigration. No matter what your stance on this topic, this book definitely evokes emotion from any reader. It is hard not to see what a painful and hard journey immigration is, and how the dream of America is way greater than the reality of it. It is not easy to immigrate here or find a place to fit. Immigrating to America brought many problems to the different families in this book. Nazario highlighted the pain and suffering many endure to have the opportunity to help their children succeed. It is important for people who may not have an understanding on who immigrants are or why they immigrate to America to know the different sides. 

Nardos Yosef

6 September 2016

Anlicker

English 1102

               The article assigned for us to read this week was by Zadie Smith called ‘Fences: A Brexit Diary’. I think it is important for the reader to know what Brexit is before they read this article. Brexit is an abbreviation for “British Exit” which is when the British citizens attempted to vote to leave the European Union. This action is not legally binding but the EU will have to let the British remove themselves from the operation. At first glance while I was reading these definitions, I thought this was a wild decision. What is Europe without Great Britain?

               The article begins with the author describing the town of North West London and the local primary school. The school is described a beautiful Victorian building that was well known for its diversity of all different types of students from different races and religions. She says that there was a change that she noticed-the wooden veil had gone up. The wooden veil was a sort of wall that separated the school from the outside. I did not know what she meant by that, but she continued to describe it as a sort of wall that separated it from everything else.  

               She transitions from the topic of the school to when she found out that the British voted for the Brexit, and compares her emotions from when the school shut down to now when England began separating itself from Europe. This metaphor helps portray what she felt when this happens-the reader can relate to her turmoil. She is also utilizing the rhetorical strategy of pathos which appeals to the emotion of readers in order to help them see her side of the argument.

Zadie Smith questions some of the possible reasons for Britain deciding to isolate themselves from the rest of Europe. Some possible reasons she states are immigration, inequality, a class war, or maybe even a European Union bureaucracy. She also puts into perspective how this affects other countries in Europe such as Northern Ireland or Scotland. She continues to accuse Great Britain of being a self-satisfying country who will throw away a union of many, many European countries that has been going on for hundreds of years for selfish reasons.

She finishes the article with more anecdotes from earlier in her life and continues to rightfully criticize Britain for their history in shaming the poor and having class separations. She tells the reader how she visited France after the vote. She finished the essay in a way that makes the reader think-she says that whether we continue to create disasters is up to “us” (Europeans) as a whole.  This speaks volumes and unites Europe as a whole in order to fix the continent of Europe.

After reading this, I agree with the author. This Brexit could possibly cause a domino effect in these European countries. Smaller countries may decide to follow in the steps of Britain and ruin the alliance that many parts of Britain have contributed to throughout many centuries.

Nardos Yosef

1 September 2016

Anlicker

English 1102

In the essay 'Reflections on Exile' by Edward Said, his main thesis throughout the essay was the fact that exile and the lack of companionship or acceptance by other people was being romanticized throughout all of history and even art and literature. He uses references to pathos and ethos in the essay to relate to the audience in terms of emotion and authority. He also uses anecdotes to tell the story of different people who have been through exile and exclusion.

He begins by arguing that exile may have caused major issues in tradition, family, and geography. He explains that a 'poet in exile' is one of the most unique experiences, and explains that being in exile is not a choice but instead something that you are born into. He tells the story of a man named Faiz Ahmed Faiz who was estranged from most of his peers. He also discusses James Joyce who ‘chose’ to live in exile because of an artistic devotion. This makes a lot of sense because most people have a common understanding of the ‘starving artist’ or an artist that suffers for his work. It is a crazy thought that exile can promote ones standing and apparently also kill a person like Yanko Goorall.

I also believe that Said is trying to elaborate that rejection to groups of people or a single person can ultimately be harmful and is not beneficial regardless of the representation in history, art, or literature. He mentions the groups of people and countries, such as the Palestinians and Jews and the conflicts that they have. He believes that the exclusion of groups of people might be used as a defense mechanism, but can cause more harm than good. When they want to reverse the effects of exile, it is much harder. They have to ‘revive an ancient language’ and found new national foundations in order to restore the country at least somewhat back to its original place.

He continues on to say that the pathos of exile is in the 'loss of contact with solidity' and the 'satisfaction of earth' which, to me, means that the emotional or relatability of exile to other people is the loss of connection with other people or ‘solidity’. While this is a weird concept, Said continues and makes the statement that people who live in exile hate non-exiles because of the fact that they belong while they do not. 

In conclusion, I believe Said makes valid points throughout the whole essay. He highlights the main issues in society regarding exile and exclusion of certain groups of people and the harm that it causes. He even uses rhetorical strategies to show the issues and to make his arguments clear. His main thesis remains evident throughout the whole piece-exile is not a good thing, and to make it seem so is not the truth.