Reflection Posts:

1. Writing a first draft in any essay is a somewhat challenging task. For me, once my brain gets flowing its like a flash flooding river. The true problem is how to get it there. My neutral writing position is that between a 5 month drought and a wildfire. I can’t think of any ideas and thus my brain goes into overdrive(wildfire) and starts rushing and trying anything to find one tiny idea to write about. Because of that, the hardest and most timely part of the essay was writing and defining my thesis. As soon as I had put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard on that I took off. I am a very weird writer compared to many. Most I have met like researching first, then writing. I am a staunch contrarian to that. I will write a paragraph, then decide that I need to look something up. That leads me down a rabbit hole and boom, I have a new source. That is one of the reasons I currently have 7 sources, and am planning to expand that. I think that might be the reason why page counts don’t stress me out as much as other people. I know I will be able to extend an essay to or around the page limit when needed.  In this reading James Baldwin said one of the greatest immediate impact quotes I have read in months. “He was defeated long before he died because, at the bottom of his heart, he really
   believed what white people said about him.” As someone who was in a 95% white school I could not comprehend and praise that statement any more. The second you start to believe what others believe of you is the second you start to drown. Even worst, when you are sometimes looked at as an outcast or different because of some aspect you have held since birth and will hold until the reaper decides it is time for you to go.
2. When reading “The Open Boat” I was struck with an immediate sense of dread. One sentence stood out from the very first reading. “Yet, the belly of this boat dissolves you, precipitates you into a nonworld from which you cry out.” This one sentence perfectly describes Joadson (Morgan Freeman’s character) feeling as he is going into the Amistad with Roger Baldwin in search of evidence. As soon as he steps foot on the deck of the ship, the music, and with it the mood of the scene, changes to a more eerie vibe. We can hear drums that would be often played in African culture. These are accompanied by a wind pipe. Their purpose is to show how he feels connected to his former self. As he was a slave born in a plantation, he might not have been in one of these ships. Despite that, he feels the evil that rots inside ships like these. As he delves deeper into the ship he finds more and more traces of previous men and women on the ship. To accompany that, the drums increase their tempo. He then encounters a labyrinth of chains. Here, a chorus of deep sounding notes is introduced into the scene. These symbolize the men that used to be held here. The many men who perished on this very ship. He was now in the belly of the ship, and it was about to swallow him into the abyss. Mere moments later he trips on these chains and finds himself engulfed in darkness. Thankfully Baldwin was there to light the lamp again. With the lighting of the lamp, Joadson is now pulled out of the abyss. He is then pulled out of the ship by Baldwin. He has now left the ship, yet he was clearly impacted by the ghosts that haunt the Amistad’s past. The feeling of the abyss, of the void, inside a ship like that is undoubtedly strong enough to pull and sink any man or woman who steps in it. 
3. In Black Butler episode 13, Ciel and Sebastian go to the East End, or “the Indian part of town”. Here they encounter a group of impoverished Indians who try to rob them. Ciel decided to come here to search for who might be committing the recent spree of murders in London. The mere fact that he immediately goes to look for an Indian after the murder speaks volumes of the Indian oppression in London. They are sectioned into the East End. An impoverished and crime stricken part of London. Something that is interesting but might go over some people’s heads is that they are talking the same language as Ciel. In the original anime that would be Japanese, for us watching the English Dub it would be English. They are immigrants, born in India, that later came to England. Their native tongue is Indian. What I am saying is that they were forced to learn English by their colonizers. Now they are here, talking to an English upperclassmen in his native tongue. I am not saying that this was done on purpose by A-1 Pictures and others that worked on the anime. I just feel that it is a “neat” coincidence.One major action caught my attention in Behemoth, Bully, Thief, that being the surgery to “be able to speak better English”. There is no proof that it, in any way, helps the user to speak English. Despite this, parents force their children to have this surgery. That is absurd to me. Not in a thousand years would I think something like that is at all necessary. This is a great example of the coloniality of the English language.

Podcast Reflection:

In this podcast I discussed a bit about my unique relationship with language. I go into some of my past and why I know two languages. Then talk about my struggles with one and my overall happiness with my status and relationship with language. I found it very refreshing to do something like a short form podcast. Talking is something so deeply ingrained in my blood that it comes totally naturally to talk for minutes on end. I feel that I could have talked more, but it would have most likely turned into a lot of gibberish.

Peer Review Form:

Diagnostic Essay:

Paper Proposal:

Final Essay First Draft:

Final Essay Second Draft: