First Response to "Our Secret"

What are we? Are we just a group of cells that work together? Are we just an accumulation of the experience that we have? This essay discuses these questions in a very interesting way. The author does a great job of comparing and contrasting different things to get the point across.

Though out the essay he author takes breaks in the essay to discuss the process of cellular reproduction and how life is created on the cellular leave. Also she talks abut the history of missiles and how they came about. This is a very interesting contrast between the two. One the one hand you have life, pure and innocent. On the other you have something that ends life. One is beyond our replication and the other is created by us. I think that this is a very interesting point. As she talks about different peoples lives and her own she shows that people tend to be violent. This is contrast though out the essay with the reproduction of the cell. The continual renewal and growth is beautifully contrasted with the constant creation of bigger and better killing machines.

As the author talks about two men that did horrible things, she does a great job of showing their humanity. She does that by weaving her own life with the lives of the men she talks about. She shows that their feelings are feelings that everyone has. This helps the reader feel that theses men are not evil, but just humans that where caught up in their circumstances. By doing this she does not excuse anything that they did. She doesn't in any way condone what was done, but she does help the reader see that they are human.

First Response to "Ways of Seeing" and all those other ones

I thought that idea of paintings losing their meaning as reproductions are made of the original was a new idea for me. I like how Berger used the pictures to get his point across to the reader. I think that this help to support his point that, "Seeing comes before words."

I like how Berger talks about the difference from what paintings used to do to what they do now. He does a good job of showing that reproductions of paintings has taken the meaning and feeling out of pictures. It has made original paintings only special because they are original and not because of what they show. I like how he points out that most of these paintings are only special now because of the value that the market puts on them and not because of what they portray.

First Response to "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"

My heart broke as I read the words of this essay. The hardships and trials that this young girl went though should not have been endured by anyone. She paints a horrifing picture of the condition of a young slave girl. It is a essay full of emotion.

As I read the essay I found the grandmother very interesting. She had suffered so much, yet thought it all she had kept a positive attitude. When she is talking to her son in jail I feel that it almost the first time that she has ever showed anyone in her family that at one point she didn't have a positive attitude. She talks about her lack of faith at the time. I wanted to know more about her story and how she had come to the place that she was at with her attitude.

Though out the essay I thought it was interesting how the author would stop the story to but in qualifying sentences. She would explain something horrible that was done to her and then say that it wasn't but in there to blame the person that had done it. I think that she did this so that the reader wouldn't feel bad. The audience was for people in the north, who mostly where white. If they felt that she was saying that white people where evil I think they would have felt that she was attacking them, but by putting in these qualifying sentences she calms the reader, makes them feel like they aren't being attacked.

I think the hardest part for me to read was the battle she had within herself over her baby. She didn't want the baby to have to live a life as a slave. She wished for him to die, knowing that it would be an easier way for the baby. Yet, as soon as the baby is on his death bed she wants nothing but for the baby to live. I could not imagine being in that position knowing that the baby has a horrible future, but loving it more then anything and wanting it to live. To me that would kill me to go though.

The Demon Within

“Stop, you can’t pull that off,” he screams in my ear, “there is no way that anyone wants to read that story, no one care, they will just think that you are stupid.” I labor to the voice yelling at me the whole way. I can not get a break from the screeching as I write. It is a constant strain on my body as a labor to get the words on the page, fighting, striving, to conquer the voice.

There are two parts to me the demon that screams and the soul that whispers. They both must have what they want, but they both want to destroy the other. One can not live while the other is still within me. This internal struggle battles on within me, at times one is overpowering the other, usually the demon is in control, but every now and then the soul is allowed to whisper with in me.

As I read Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” I thought of how my soul was oppressed, or made a slave to my demon. In making this comparison I want in no way to be little the struggle that the slaves went though or there suffering. I only mean to speak of how my soul struggles to write while my demon tells him he cannot.

My soul struggles to write, to be “involved in work [my] soul must have.” It struggles to live, to breath, but it must have more. To breathe is not enough it must create, it must paint a picture with its words, a picture that invokes life within those that read it. My soul, just like Walker’s mother, is radiant, but only when it is involved in the work that it must have.

My demon wants to stop me, wants to make me little more then a shell. It does not want the shine of my soul to escape; it does not want it to be seen in-between the lines. It wants it to die, to disappear and never come back. It battles as I write to make my hands stop, to make the words halt, to make me double think every letter that is put on the page. Yelling, screaming, it tries to drive me crazy, to make me forget the word that must go down.

I battle on; not knowing what will come next, not thinking about the ending only knowing that the words must come out. The battle rages on as the worlds spill onto the page. My demon tries to strangle my soul, tries to snuff out the light that keeps him alive. I must not let this happen; I cannot let the demon win. Then there will be nothing left of me. I will be empty, no more then a shell taking up space. Like a lobster shell after it molts.

How can I go on with this pounding in my head? The demon demands that I stop, but I cannot, I will not let it win. I must nourish the flam within my soul. I must make it more radiant, more vibrant then it ever has been before, I must let my soul win. For if my soul wins I win. I become more then an empty shell floating in the sea, I become someone, I become me.

Will this battle ever end, will this war ever cease. I do not know, I can only hope that as I put these words on this page that my soul will gain strength to overcome the demon that enslaves him. That my soul will gain the power to break the bounds that entangle him and to shine freely though the worlds it puts in my mind. I can only continue to struggle to put the words on paper, to set the words free to do what they must. I can only let my soul breath and create. To do the work it must to survive.

First Response to "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens"

I really enjoyed this essay. It was heart breaking to think of all the women who were unable to express themselves. It is a part of slavery that I had never thought of before, a part that, in this essay, almost seems the hardest part to bear.

As I read the essay I started to think of my own personal "slave masters" that kept me from pouring out the thoughts and feelings in my mind. I started to think about what kept me from spilling my creative juices all over the page and making a master peace. I think that for me what puts a halt to my writing in the person critique in my head. It is always telling me that it isn't right. That it is stupid and no one cares. It makes me second guess myself at every turn, stopping me from writing what I feel. To me this essay made me think of my own demons stopping me from writing and expressing myself.

First Response to "Stranger in the Village"

As the boat slowly approached the beach we came to a stop. The boat could go no farther, the water was to shallow, we would be walking the rest of the way to Turtle Island. We where excited to see the turtles and other animals at this small island. We got there and started looking at the baby turtles to the full grown turtles. We were amazed by their size and their strength. As we were taken to the different turtles we here following behind a group of Koreans. We thought nothing of this, we were in a foreign land after all, we expected to see other people. But, to them we here the big news. More impressive then the eighty-year-old turtle were my wife and me. They wanted pictures with us and to talk to us. They wanted to know everything about us. They completely forgot that there were sea turtles all around.

Now I know that this is nothing compared to what James Baldwin has gone though his whole life, but as I was treated as an animal in a zoo to see I knew what it felt like, on a small scale, to be looked at different. It is weird to be the odd ones out, the people that don't quite fit in. With this experience I could relate a little to how James Baldwin felt when he was new to the village.

As he talked about the children running around yelling Neger it made me think of when I walking down a dirt road in Indonesia and the children coming home from school yelled, "Hello, what's your name?" This being the little English they knew.

Yes, to some small degree I know what Baldwin felt like going to little village in Switzerland, but as the essay goes on he talks about the struggle for all African-Americans to find their identity in a foreign land. This I don't understand. I can't imagine trying to make a new life for myself and my family in Indonesia, were I am not in the majority. I can't imagine having everything taken from me and sold. This is horrible and something that I can't fathom even in my worst nightmares.

I love how Baldwin talks about the struggle for these strangers in the village called America to find a new identity. To become more then just visitors, but to become part of the village. It is a struggle that effects both the African-Americans and the European-Americans. He does a great job of showing the evolution of this relationship. Of the changes that have taken place to bring the relationship where it is. I think that he does a great job of showing how even though their ancestors have been her longer then mine, African-Americans still feel the the strangers in the village.

First Response to "How to Tame a Wild Tongue"

I can see the child wiggling on the dentist seat as the dentist tries to work on her teeth. Struggling to keep the tongue out of the way, while the child wonders in bewilderment, "What I am supposed to do to control my tongue."


I never thought of language as an identity. To me it was just a way to communicate to others, not something that defined who you are. As I read of the young girl speaking in Spanish at recess I could see her bewilderment at the punishment, just like the child in the dentists office. Wondering what they had done wrong and what they could do to change something that had its own life within them.


Anzaldua talks about the people she grew up with and their struggle to find an identity for themselves. This struggle was making them isolated from everyone around them. They didn't speak proper Spanish so the Mexicans disowned them and they couldn't speak proper English so the Americans disowned them too. This left them lost and forgotten. They where no one. they where nothing. They were stuck in the middle and clammed by neither side.

Anzaldua struggle to own her language, her identity. This was not an easy struggle. She fought for it again and again, always trying to break free of the bonds that both sides had put on her.

I think that this struggle is going on though out the writing, the Spanish is fighting with the English to gain control of the essay. Yet, Anzaldua makes them work together, complimenting and strengthening one another. Just as she believes that by accepting each other all sides can be strengthened.

First Responce to "Entering the Serpent"

The evolution of religion is a very interesting thing. In this essay the authour does a great job of showing how the religaon has evolved from what the Aztecs started with to what the "white man" had now. I think that she did a great job of showing the differences and how people think differenty now because of those.


I think that swithing back and forth between laungues, though it confused me, was a great way to have a feel of the old world and new world in the essay. It showed the change in a was that I don't think words could have done alone.

She starts the essay with a memory from her childhood, a memory that shows the belief of her mother and that generation. At the time, just like kids today, she probably thought that this was a stupid belief and could not understand why her mother would belive such a thing. Yet, as she looks at the changes in the religain of her area over time she also saw some similaritys that helped her understand her mother's beliefs more.

When the beliefs begain in the Aztec religian they where balanced between men and women. They where peaceful, and wanted somthing better for all people. Over time this was perverted into a war driven religian that said they must speard their idea to everyone, even if it ment by force. This is a very interesting opservation. I think that this is true for alomost all religains. When they are in the early stages of evolution they usually have a period of war. We can see it in Chritianity and we can see it now in the Muslum faith. But, just as Christianity did, the realigian of Mexico countiuned to evolve and became peaceful again.

At this point I would think that the authour would be happy for the religion, but it seems that se still feels that it is missing its roots. She can see that some have made it though, but that the heart is gone.

I think that though out the essay she is trying to find a resoan tha ther mother believed what she did and at the end of the essay I think she did. She talks about how other people view people that are different and how these people that are outcast often find more of themselves then others. Then she finds a meaning behind the stories that are told, like the story that her mother told her, they are to protect, to improve, and to help people be better.

This was an interesting essay on Gloria's journy with religian and her struggle to find what worked for her.

First Response to "The Education of Henry Adams"

I have to say that this was, hands down, the hardest thing I have ever read. As I read this my head was swimming, trying to make sense of what I was reading. I felt like I was just tossed into the deep end of the pool with out first being taught how to swim, waving my arms and screaming just to stay afloat. I screamed and shouted the whole time I read this trying to make sense of what was going on and trying no to feel like a complete moron.

As I read this essay I kept coming back to the idea of inertia. Inertia is ,"a property of matter, by which matter tends, when at rest, to remain so, and , when in motion, to move on in a straight line."(pg. 52.) As I read this definition, I struggled, as Henry Adams did, to see how this fit in with what was going on around him. What did inertia have to do with women's rights? How did what was going in in Russia deal with the idea of inertia. Then slowly I began to see that inertia can apply to more then just matter. It can apply to ideas and ways of living.

When Adams first goes to school at Harvard he feels that it is pointless. He had found in his life, up to that point, that school teaching would profit him little, if anything, but that others and life where the real teachers. That what others thought of you was really what mattered, not what you got on your report card. The inertia of this though pushed him though Harvard with little book learning, because it told him to keep moving in the direction that he already knew, but it caused him to make friends and to influence people.

As Adams grew older he found that not only his thoughts were being challenged but that the thoughts of the world where being challenged. As just as mass likes to stay at rest when it is, so do thoughts like to stay the way they are. As he traveled he began to open his mind to knew ideas. The inertia of his youth was slowly starting to change in some areas. His travels abroad slowly begain to change the direction that his inertia was moving.

As he came home he soon found that though his point of view had changed, America had remained unmoved. Its inertia was stubbornly moving in the same way it was when he left. One big issue that he sees trying to break this inertia was the struggle for women's rights. He saw that women where starting to emerge, but that the inertia of America was forcing them to stay were they where. Unable to change he say that the struggle to find a new identity caused the women to loose there old identity, even if they didn't want to. He sees that struggle to show others that, even though it is hard, things can change.

I think that this was a hard to understand essay that talks about change in a person and in a nation. And how it is not easy and that it takes lots of work to even move an opinion an little.