Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Undiscovered Pride Essay Example For Students

Undiscovered Pride Essay Amy Tan achieved the epitome of short and sweet in her essay â€Å"Fish Cheeks†, where she teaches us the great lesson to be proud of our heritage. Fourteen year old Amy Tan tells us how she is reluctant and nervous to have her crush Robert, the minister’s son, over for Christmas Eve dinner, because it’s not the traditional American one he is used to. Amy’s mother has devised an exotic menu consisting of prawns, rock cod, tofu, dried fungus, and squid (p. 117, par. 3). Amy’s relatives are loud and noisy, displaying their different forms of manners, by burping to show their delight in the food (p. 117, par. 6). As the night comes to an end, Amy’s mother presents her with an early gift, a tweed mini skirt. She can see Amy is embarrassed by her culture, and tells her to be proud she is different. Amy’s only shame is to have shame (p. 117, par. 8). From my own experiences, I am a true believer in not only being proud of my heritage, but knowledgeable. I was adopted at two days old to an Irish father, and a Dutch and French mother. We will write a custom essay on Undiscovered Pride specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now I am 85% Mexican and 15% Navajo. I never knew my real mother or father or surprisingly enough, my seven half brothers and sisters. No one ever educated me on my culture or heritage. I struggled through middle school and high school to fit in. White people called me Hispanic, whereas â€Å"knowledgeable† Hispanics called me â€Å"white girl†. I always wished someone would teach me about my heritage. To me it wasn’t enough to say I was proud. I had to fully learn my culture, and then still be proud. I could never stand the Italians kids in my town. Throwing one’s hair into a poof, being called â€Å"Bella†, eating pasta on Sunday’s, and wearing a jacket that said Italia may make it seem like you’re proud, but are you truly knowledgeable? The only reason my Hispanic friends made fun of me was because I was indeed not knowledgeable. I didn’t speak the language, know any songs, the food, the dances, the holidays, or the customs for certain occasions. My friends used to ask, â€Å"How are you proud when you don’t know what you’re proud of? † That is when I reached out. I read books, asked my friends for information, read articles, and researched online. Now I am proud, but for a reason. I could say I’m proud to Mexican, Russian, French, or German, but it’s not enough. That is why I am such a strong believer in being proud of our heritage. All though Tan was naà ¯ve in her younger years, I was too. When you don’t have a reason to be different, you just want to fit in. Now with age, we’ve both come to realize how important it is to be proud of our differences. I envy Amy that she had her parents to turn to whereas I did not. In reality, it made me stronger and strive to learn more. If it’s something you really care about, you will go out of your way to learn about it. For example, I want to work with wolves, major in zoology to be exact. I know nothing of science, in fact, it’s my worst subject. Wolves are something I’m highly passionate about, and I’m willing to go out of my way to major in my worst subject and zoology to learn about them. Coming full circle, this is why I believe saying you’re proud, â€Å"accepting† your differences, or just merely not being ashamed is not enough. You need to be educated, then proud.

Monday, April 13, 2020

Authors Preview - Owl Publications

Author's Preview - Owl PublicationsOne of the leading online journals for students seeking a graduate degree in English, The Owl Publication, has just published a new article by Mary Ann Ames, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who publishes and hosts a popular academic site on the topic of creative writing. I have read it now and am interested in discussing it with others who may be interested in it.The article, 'The Owl's Footprints: A Novel Review,' by Mary Ann Ames, is a brief and readable review of Peter Quillin's Owl's Footprint, which was published by Owl Publishing in October 2020. That novel was in some ways more successful than his first novel, A Foreign Affair, in which he won the Award for Excellence in Writing in the Science Fiction and Fantasy category in the 2020 World Fantasy Convention. In addition to reviewing the book, Ames also briefly mentions the characteristics of great works of creative writing.Quillin's book is about the intrigue and history of a young woman who arrives at the back door of her grandparents' house. She has lost her family, and her love of home is her only remaining way of communicating with those she loves. She is an orphan, and she and her best friend are siblings. This is a book about hope and friendship and family and what makes the difference between living life and dying alone.Ames gives her readers a brief summary of the plot, the key characters, and the setting of the story. It is a good summary of the plot, but of little interest to the more academically inclined or interested in the literary elements of the book. The story, which is set in northern California, is complicated by all the issues that are only slightly hinted at in the article. We are not given a sense of why or how the couple was abandoned by their parents, who never returned.The Owl publicationreview of Quillin's Owl's Footprint gives only a cursory overview of the more important elements of the book. There is no indic ation that the author read the novel before publishing it, as Ames does not give a brief review of the book itself. The author is too busy writing a review of his own work. He is very quick to bemoan that the book is about time and place, but he does not make it clear that the author may have focused more on the plot than the deeper aspects of the characters.The Owl publication review of Quillin's Owl's Footprint is a must-read for Owl readers. It was clearly written by a professional academic and fan of fiction. As a lover of books of fiction, I look forward to reading more reviews of fiction, as well as of poetry and memoirs. The Owl publication review of Quillin's Owl's Footprint is a must-read for Owl readers.Other reviewers of Owl's publications may consider it worthy of a try. However, if you are looking for a summary of this book in your efforts to earn a master's degree in creative writing, this review may not meet your needs.If you are a student looking for an academic revi ew of a work of fiction, consider an Owl publication review of Quillin's Owl's Footprint. If you are a professional writer who enjoys speculative fiction, you may find this review of Quillin's work interesting, but you will probably not want to read it again.