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Class 05

Good morning, all! We’ve made it through the stop-and-start part of our semester, and just at the right time. Wednesday we’ll have peer editing for Essay 1. A week from Wednesday, Sept 29, your first formal essay will be due.

Today, we’re spending time looking at some of the shorter assignments you’ve done with sources to prepare for Essay 1. These are the library assignment (where you were to practice summary and citation) and the blog post #2 (where you were to practice response and opinion writing). These are important skills and they take practice.

After we talk about summary and response, we’ll do some brainstorming about what goes into an effective first paragraph. From there, we’ll start thinking about all the sources and evidence we’ve compiled. How do we organize this under the argument we’re making: “I’ve decided to read X because Y…”

Racial Justice

All the writers share the genre memoirs, but every story is uniq in its own way.

Meredith Talusan is the writer of Fairest, she’s a trans woman originally from Philippines that struggles with Albinism, she talked about her struggles both with her self and people.she also gives an advice to surround ourself with people that support us and know us.

Jaquira Diaz is the writer of Ordinary Girls, describe he life with her relation ships with her mom and her grandma “Mercy”, she describe the struggle of being a girl of color with her grandma that shamed her daughters for marrying black race. She said that her book is survival and performance of pain on paper, describing the generation trauma.

Kiese Laymon is the writer of Heavy, describe the racism, and how awe was tired form living in injustice over and over, he said that white folks make sure that many of them( black folks) don’t survive.A story of racial difference that print the pain of the writer on papers.

All in all, all the books share the struggling part, every story shine in its own way, reach the heart in a different way.

Racial Justice Reads

What I expect from the book that I will read which is “Ordinary Girls” is to in some way connect with not only the author, but the book, and understand it. When I read “La Otra” by Jaquira Diaz, I was able to connect with her because of the Spanish terms she used. Hearing an author say some of the terms or phrases you heard growing up and still hear, feels like you’re at home and safe, it feels like you’re reading something meant for you. I hope to connect to “Ordinary Girls” the same way I did with “La Otra.” As I watched this video, I noticed that each author has their own stories and their own struggles. They’ve all been through so much to get to where they are now, and listening to they’re powerful words in their book makes you want to know, what caused them to write about that? Why? When Jaquira Diaz read a page from Ordinary Girls, I was able to reminisce and remember when I was growing up and since I have curly hair, it would be referred as “bad hair” since it’s usually big and thick. These authors have the gift of impacting so many peoples lives in many good ways. They each have a different background, Meredith being an albino filipino transgender women, Kiese being a black man, and Jaquira being a Puerto Rican woman. In other words, people will be able to relate to them, one way or the other.

Racial Justice Reads

In Fairest, one quote that stood out to me was ¨ Pregnant women were therefore advised not to spend too much time in the sun for fear that their baby would be born a sunchild ¨. I’m not sure if I’m interpreting this correctly, but I made the assumption that the term sunchild is another word for albinism. It seems that it is a part of Talusan´s culture to care deeply about one’s appearance. The simple fact that myths like this exist and are passed down from generation to generation shows that Talusan would face obstacles regarding her looks for the rest of her life. This may give reason to why she doesn’t want her book cover to have anything to do with her looks. She says in ¨The Cover of My Face¨What’s more, one of the greatest luxuries of being an author is that I can separate myself from my physical presence¨(Talusan). Her appearance has been such a huge part of how others perceive her therefore being an author finally gives her the chance to exist outside of her looks and escape the famous myths she’d heard about albinism. In ¨Ordinary Girls¨ one quote that stood out to me was ¨It wasnt the haircut she said chuckling, it was my bad hair. Your fathers fault. Your father and his black family¨ (Diaz). Jaquira seems to be someone whose family plays a large part in her identity. In this moment, her grandmother inflicts negativity on her by making her think her fathers black traits are not beautiful. Even in ¨La Otra¨, she says I knew that these were things meant for girls, and that I was supposed to like them. But I had no interest in my mother’s curtains, or her tubes of red lipstick, or her dresses, or the dolls Grandma Mercy and Titi Sandy sent from Miami¨ (Diaz). Jaquira determines a lot of her identity, what she does like, and what she does not like based on different ideas presented to her by her family.  I predict that the theme of self hatred and confusion will show up a lot in this book.One moment that stood out to me from Kiese Laymon’s excerpt of ¨Heavy¨ is the part of the book where his grandmother is wanting him to be sympathetic toward white people during the Rodney King riots. He expresses ¨ I wanted to fairly fight white folk and I wanted to knock them out¨(Laymon). In this moment, he is so hurt that he has become insensitive to White people all in all. This may stem from when he was much younger and he experienced his grandmother working for a white family. He says in ¨Quick Feet¨, ¨Stealing their food felt like the only way to make the rotten feeling in my belly go away¨(Laymon).He wanted so badly for that white family to feel pain and suffering because that was all he knew and he was jealous that he had never seen white people struggle. For this reason, he did not feel pity for white people during the riots because he figured it was what they rightfully deserved. I expect this book to talk a lot about the little things that tell a profound story about the difference between white and blacks living in America. I expect for it to be filled with the author coming to sudden realizations of just how much inequality really exists.

Laymon, Kiese.¨ Quick feet: When Counting to Ten Isn’t Enough ¨. VQRonline. (2018).https://www.vqronline.org/memoir-articles/2018/10/quick-feet 

Racial Justice Reads

Throughout the video “Racial Justice Reads”, we are given excerpts of the books Fairest, Ordinary Girls, and Heavy by their respected authors.  All of the excerpts give insight and a taste of what each respected book would bring to the table. Something that stuck to me was the excerpt for Ordinary Girls, in which Jaquira Díaz, reads from the first chapter. The excerpt depicts the time Jaquira Díaz’s hair was cut short by the hands of her grandmother, Mercy, due to her having “bad hair” (9:22). The way Mercy treated Jaquira Díaz pissed me off and when Mercy blamed her bad hair on Jaquira Díaz’s father and his black family made me realize how lucky I am, coming from a Hispanic family I’ve never experienced. The book review I chose helped me gain further insight into Ordinary Girls and what Jaquira Díaz would go into later on in life. The reason I’m choosing to read Ordinary Girls is mostly because of my Hispanic background, I know ill be able to relate to this book because of it. When reading “La Otra” I already felt myself relating to Jaquira Díaz as my expectation and interest grew. I want to read about her uprising in a Hispanic household with a white mother, did she struggle to balance being Hispanic and American? Did her grandmother accept her later on in life? Something I’m expecting is to know how did Jaquira Díaz find her footing with her family and life in general, how did she overcome and figure who she is as a person, how did she grow?

Racial Justice Reads: Thoughts and post

  • I like how Meredith Talusan is praised by her grandmother in the prologue, but I don’t understand why the grandmother refers to herself as, “Not dark and ugly like me,” when comparing herself to her granddaughter.
  • I don’t like how Mercy treated Jaquira Díaz as less than because of her physical appearance, especially blaming her and her father for her looks.
  • I like that Kiese spoke about issues he wanted to overcome in his passage, specifically about wanting to take back what white people owed the black community, as well as wanting to fight them and not lose to them ever again.
  • I hadn’t ever thought about literary lineage before, so its interesting to hear the responses from the three authors about how it related to them.

My reactions are informed by my previewing actives due to the nature of their relationship towards the authors, and their pieces of writing. Such as the library assignment, which instructed me to write about a summary I chose, which relates to a book I decided to choose, and I picked Fairest. I feel like my reaction to Meredith Talusan’s prologue is filled with confusion, followed by questions regarding skin color, and I believe that reading Fairest will give me a better idea of what the author is trying to say. After I read, “La Otra,” “The Cover of my Face,” and “Quick Feet,” I found myself annotating to each text, hoping to discover more about the issues described in each story. These stories definitely gave me a better idea of what to expect from the book I chose, especially since I have no prior knowledge to go off of. Based on what I said so far, I expect this book to be filled with stories, pain, sorrow, dreams, and accomplishments.

I feel like these discussions and previewing readings set me up for more than I bargained for, which is great since I’m hoping to learn more about myself, whilst also understanding someone else’s experiences.

Racial Justice Reads: Kiese Laymon, Jaquira Díaz, Meredith Talusan. Dir. RC. Perf. Kiese Laymon, Jaquira Díaz, Meredith Talusan. Racial Justice Reads: Kiese Laymon, Jaquira Díaz, Meredith Talusan. Race Forward, 17 July 2020. Web. 18 Sept. 2021. <https://youtu.be/D4BQuha4jA4>.

Racial Justice Reads Post

The authors Keise Laymon, Jaquira Diaz, and Meredith Talusan from Real Justice Reads all created memoirs about a critiqued childhood that has made them into the authors and people they are today. For example Meredith spoke on how at birth she was a boy and transitioned into a women at adulthood, not only that but she was albino so she struggled with her vision so she had problem’s with her vision. In addition in the video she quotes¨ My grandmother assured me that i was meant for a better future than her and her ancestors¨. This shows that her grandmother knew she was destined to become great even despite her differences. Jaquira Diaz struggled with accepting herself as a child because of her grandmother was always criticizing her for her African american features like her hair. Her grandmother made sure she knew she wont ever be like her or her mother. Diaz grandmother mercy would tell her things like ¨ It is your fathers fault, and your black family, and her mothers fault for marrying a negro(African american).¨Laymon already grew up being a black kid in america so he went threw all the violence and hatred that was in society. ¨I only been alive for 17 years and I was already tired of paying for white folks feelings with a generic smile and a manufactured excellence they could not give one fuck about.¨ He claims he felt like he was in battle with white folks because he felt like they stole from him and the black culture. The readings of ¨La Otra,¨ The Cover of my face,¨and¨Quick Feet¨ are similar to these memoirs because they all speak on the struggles they went through in society and to become a writer. The memoir I would choose is ordinary girls because her story by far is most understandable and relatable because she represents a Hispanic setting. What im expecting from when I read ¨Ordinary girls¨is reading about what Diaz had to pull herself out her family struggles and the place she called home.

Racial Justice Reads: Notes and Reactions.

During the racial justice reads i’m hearing the cultural struggles with each author and their writing of their books (memoirs). Starting with Meredith Talusan with him being a transgender and his living in the philippines to live in america. On to Jaquira Diaz, she has a lot of quotes that i can relate to in the book. For example when her grandmother is doing her hair and having curly hair would be a struggle because when my grandmother would do my hair with a comb it would get stuck and i’d cry because i’m tender headed. My reaction towards the the read of “ordinary girls” it seems like her grandmother is kind of a racist in the sense of her criticizing Jaquira’s hair because she’s half black because her father. Honestly I choose “Ordinary Girls” to read and do the first essay on in because of her story as a hispanic and half black girl in New York to learn and relate to jaquira.

Racial Justice Reads

Without a doubt these three authors had their clear point of how they wanted to create their books and show us a little bit about their childhood, and how they lived life. Every excerpt that these actors read, I loved, because they are strong quotes that show their feelings and pain when they were writing it. Two of the quotes that stood out to me the most were from author Kiese Laymon, and author Meredith Talusan. The quote from author Kiese is, ” I didn’t want to teach white people not to steal. I didn’t want to teach white people to treat us with respect. He wanted to fight white people fair and square and he wanted to knock them out.” This quote shows us that he wanted to treat white people the same way they treated black people. He wanted to pay them back in the same coin because he was getting tired of paying for white people’s feelings with a smile of kindness when they don’t give a fuck. He wanted to fight back, and get everything that was stolen from them, everything that was taken from him as if they didn’t deserve it.


The second excerpt that caught my attention was Meredith’s, which said, “My grandmother assured me that I was destined for a better future than her, and our ancestors, farmers who had tilled the land in the fields surrounding our village for generations. This is because you are beautiful, and not dark and ugly like me.” This quote from the book Fairest, the book I am going to read, I really liked it because the grandmother tries to tell her that she will have a good future because she is beautiful and was born as an albino girl, who will be identified as white, who will be very successful in the United States, because she is not a dark woman like her grandmother, who is discriminated against by all racists just because her skin color is dark.

In conclusion, these 3 authors read us a fragment of the most striking quotes from their books, they read it to motivate us to read it, and to give us a clear idea of what it is about, and how they were treated by life and the people around them. These books, as well as the 3 readings called, “La Otra,” “The Cover of my Face,” and “Quick Feet.”, have very serious themes and based on real facts, they show refreshing ideas about how the actors writes his personal problems and with society. In reading “The Cover of my Face,” Meredith describes how she was treated as a trans woman, how cruel life was, and how many people made her unable to loving herself or identifying with who she really was. I hope to gain new insights as I read this book, and hope that Meredith has learned to be herself, and that she has learned to avoid the bad comments that affect her.

The Excellent Benefits of Reading Memoirs - BYRON CONNER

That benefit is: Understand the lives of others and know how to listen to others perfectly.

Racial Justice Reads Post

During the video of “Racial Justice Reads” I noticed the differences between all the authors and their different ways of expressing their stories. Meredith Talusan talks about his transition from a male to a female. Meredith Talusan also talks about her life before transitioning and growing up in the Philippines. Jaquira Diaz talks about how when she was younger her white grandmother named Mercy would cut her hair because she had “bad hair”. One citation I found was “Our white grandmother Mercy, hated that my hair was a tangle of dry frizzy curls like my father’s bad hairs she called it.” Mercy didn’t appreciate her hair due to her fathers genes and was very racist towards her. Kiese Laymon talks about how growing up he would be taught to survive around white folks and the struggles black people have been through and are still going through. The preview readings “La Otra,” “The Cover of my Face,” and “Quick Feet” all show small parts of the reading and cover a majority of the central ideas being portrayed. For example, “La Otra” has information about Jaquira Diaz’s life growing up in New York and being Puerto Rican. Some things I might expect from the book that I might read is how the author talks about their experiences and the ways it impacted their lives. Some expectations I’m looking forward to is learning new things about the author’s perspective and the way they try to relate to the audience or grab the audience’s attention.