"Between the pool and the Gardenias"

Edwidge Danticat's narrative essay, "Between the pool and the Gardenias," (1996) explores a dangerous realm of originality. She paints a picture of a traumatic character, lost in her own misery. I'm unsure of his purpose, i was engulfed in the characters uncertainty myself. Danticat's created a place a of confusion, a place where most of his readers frequent, somewhere to get lost.

I am indeed confused and shocked. The story had so many things going on with little to not enough clarity that left me puzzled. The main character, the mother with miscarriages seemed as if she had died along with her kids. Which took her somewhere she saw vaguely allowing us to visualize her being unstable or lost. So my confusion was merely a reflection of the story itself.

"Mother Tongue"

 In Amy Tan's narrative essay, "Mother Tongue"(1990), Tan informs her readers that English is not just a language. English is a plethora of languages under within the English confinements of language. In the passage she's reaching out to Asian Americans, declaring you can do whatever you put your mind to do rather than excel in the stereotypical "math and science." In order to make her point she uses real experiences to paint a vivd picture.

Considering that English is my native language I would have to agree with Amy Tan. I feel she vividly gave her readers insight on what she had experienced with the language. Although it is very ironic that she was an Asian American that decided to practice in the field of language she opened my eyes to the different types of English there is. Before reading this passage I never thought that many people could speak the same language but make it sound so differently.  

 The message that was received through this text was that there is not only one type of English, and that the people in our society should not try to fit in to the stereotypical frame of what certain people from certain cultures should be. For example in this essay Amy Tan stated " And perhaps they (other Asian American's) also have teachers who are steering them away form writing and into math and science, which is what happened to me." "Fortunately, happen to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumption made about me. I became an English major my first year in college, after being enrolled as pre-med." These quotes from the text show that instead of taking the typical Asian American road into a career that is math or science related, she decided to break the stereotype and become a Successful English writer and Author.

"Salvation"

In  Langston Hughes essay "Salvation" (1940) Langston claims to have been saved from sin at the age of thirteen but not saved as he thought he would be. Hughes was supposed to attend revival and on the last day he was supposed to see Jesus and be saved from sin, the only problem was that he didn’t see Jesus. He approached the alter anyway and he felt guilty because of this action, the author stands up and joins the other children in order to make the people in the church happy. I feel this essay was intended to reach out to anybody that felt pressured to do something they knew was wrong, and I felt the author just wanted to inform others of what really happened to clear his guilty conscience.

I do not agree with author on the fact that he does not believe in Jesus. I feel that Hughes was misled and really expected someone of magnificent quality to appear and was disappointed when he didn’t. If his aunt would have vividly explained what she meant by Jesus appearing he may have felt differently about what happened. I also feel that he is using his own guilt to make himself be presented as the victim. He had a choice whether or not to stand up or stay seated. If he knew it was wrong he should have stayed seated and told the congregation that he was not ready yet. I'm sure there wouldn't have been as much confusion as he thought there would be.

Do I believe that Langston believes that there is really not a god, or was he just a child with a vivid imagination? I believe that Langston did truly believe in god, I don't think that he would have cried over not seeing him if he did not believe in God. I also believe that Langston was just a child that had a vivid imagination, an imagination that swallowed the description of God walking into his life when he was saved. As "Young Lambs" all of the children that were there to be saved could only think that God was going to walk bust through the doors of the church, because they weren't given a proper explanation.