Journal on "Barbie Doll"

Two lines that really helped me understand the meaning of the poem would have to be when Marge Piercy wrote, “Doesn’t she look pretty? everyone said. / Consummation at last.” Basically, these lines are showing how once this girl cut off her nose and legs, she was given a new, beautiful nose and her missing legs were covered when she was placed in her casket; And by consummation, it is not meaning the term of the word that means finally sealing love with sexual intercourse, but the point at which something is complete or finalized. By just this use of the word, it can mean a lot. I take it as how these people at her wake are looking at her and finally believing that she IS pretty, so all of their tormenting did good things for her. And this is the problem with society. Children will make fun of their classmates and peers for not being perfect. Almost everyone goes through this, I know I did when I was younger. I can connect this to my life because I still remember being in fifth grade and this kid named Jack would always make fun of me because I had big legs, and everyone else had little skinny legs. I was a young, fit athlete, and having big legs was just in my genetic makeup. This is what people don’t understand! So this line really hit home because with this girl’s new nose and legs, she was finally complete. Even though, all of these people shouldn’t have been worrying about what her body looked like in the first place. A girl is more than just her body. Also, it truly disgusts me that everyone would even be okay with her having this putty nose that looked completely different from her normal nose that she had previously. A wake is meant for people to remember the passed as who they were, not what they wanted them to be. I can connect this to my life because when my Uncle Pete died, he was wearing a brand new red Polo hat in his casket, and everyone freaked out because he is known for wearing his beat up, light blue Polo hat. So, his mother went home and got the blue hat for him to be laid to rest with. In this poem, it really shows me that all of these people that tormented her didn’t care at all abut her past and who she really was. All they cared about was her appearance, which is the meaning of this poem. These two lines really define the tone as well, because this is a disturbing message, and it is disturbing that these people would think that she is prettier dead with this better nose, than alive with her big nose.

Journal on "A Song in the Front Yard"

Two lines that I really believe depict the true meaning of this poem would have to be, “Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows. / A girl gets sick of a rose.” By the first line mentioned, it is referring to the backyard of the poem, which has to do with all of the African Americans that this girl wants to hang out with hang out together. But, this girl’s mother doesn’t allow her to hang out in the “backyard”, and this is definitely because of the time period. These children aren’t any different from her, but in this time period, white people believed that African American people were bad people, and had no sense of direction in their lives, and they all would wind up doing bad things. So the denotation of “weeds” is obviously a troublesome plant that can ruin your nicely tended yard. But, the connotation that I have of “weeds” in this poems is how white people feel that African American people ruin neighborhoods and nice little girls. This little girl’s mother believes that she is a nicely brought up girl, and doesn’t want her to be ruined by the “weeds”. By the second line mentioned, it’s showing the longing tone of this poem. Obviously this girl doesn’t mean that she is literally sick of a flower; She is sick of having to stay away from the African American children, because she doesn’t think they are as bad as people make them out to be. She wants to be friends with them and do fun things with all of them. But, because of the time period, she is not allowed to. So, the denotation of this line a girl getting sick f seeing or smelling a certain flower. But, my connotation of this line is that a little girl who has never been allowed to play with African American children is sick of all of the stereotypes on these kids that seem like they’d be really good playmates. This definitely helped shape my understand because I can see how this little girl is “sick” of things being this way, and she longs for things to be different.

Midterm Research Essay on “’We Are All the Same People’? The (A)Politics of the Body in Sherman Alexie’s Flight,” by Kerry Boland

Part I - Summary

In the article, “’We Are All the Same People’? The (A)Politics of the Body in Sherman Alexie’s Flight,” the author, Kerry Boland, digs deep into the novel and offers the idea to readers that there are huge points to the story that may have been missed if you were to read over the story once. For example, if a reader read it for just the story aspect of it, and not actually dive deep into the novel as (s)he did, then there are major ideas that Boland believes are very important, that the reader probably missed; although, Sherman Alexie may not have intended for these ideas to be taken how Kerry Boland took them, they can still be interpreted in the ways (s)he describes. The idea that Kerry Boland is trying to get across is that multicultural America doesn’t recognize the difference between “minority” groups, including American Indians, which includes Zits. Multicultural also holds a lot of control over indigenous people; not by law, but by influence.

Boland wants people to understand that Flight is full of double meanings, and not ones that are in favor of Indigenous people. For example, Boland believes that Alexie starting off the novel by writing “Call me Zits,” has a huge double meaning. She believes that Alexie’s intention was just to set the mood for the novel by having the main character, Zits’, be so embarrassed by his acne, that he literally refers to himself as Zits, and wants other to refer to him that way as well. But, Boland believes that this can be portrayed as more than it was meant to be. Boland states that having acne makes the face appear red, which directly relates to a derogatory insult for Indigenous people.

Also, the message that Boland states is the novels’ “most overt message”, or most easily observable message, has to do with how Zits’ “flights” through time actually teach him, in the long run, that violence does not improve a situation for anyone, regardless of their culture or their reasoning. But, Boland argues that Flight should not be viewed strictly as a piece that shows the violence that Indigenous people endured, because Boland believes that it did quite the opposite. There were parts of Zits’ transformations that showed the violence that was shown to American Indians; like Hank and Art killing a hostage Indian boy, the American Indian boy who had his throat cut by a white soldier, etc. But, Kerry Boland believes that this novel equalizes the amount of violence performed on both ends, when (s)he believes that that is not the case, so it should not be portrayed that way. I think that Boland believes that when a story is written by an “Indian writer”, the story should be meant to show justice to American Indians, and Flight just doesn’t do that for him/her.

Lastly, Boland makes a point on how the adoption of Zits by Officer Dave’s brother is an act of violence towards Zits’ Indigenous culture, because he was adopted to a white family against his will, thus being taken out of culture and placed into a family which will probably never teach him about his culture. (Word Count: 530)

Part II – Analysis

            To begin, Sherman Alexie starts off Flight from the point of view of Zits, and Alexie writes, “Call me Zits. Everybody calls me Zits. That’s not my real name, of course. My real name isn’t important.” (Alexie 1) When I first read through this novel, I thought of this as Zits making light of his acne, although no one would be happy with a face full of acne, he’s come to the conclusion that there’s nothing he can do about it. On page 21, Alexie writes, “And, yeah, I’d love to buy that stuff, but it costs fifty bucks a jar. These days, you see a kid with bad acne, and you know he’s poor.” Since Zits has been through 21 foster families, and has no real mom or dad, no one has been willing to buy him anything to help fix his acne, so in his situation, he’s decided to look it right in the face and let the world know that he doesn’t care, even though deep down he probably does. Anyways, although I thought that him calling himself Zits was just a small piece of his character, Boland brings up a good point about his self-given name and his acne having a double meaning. Boland writes, “it … tells readers that Zits’ face is red, signaling the derogatory name for Indigenous Americans.” (Boland 71) I think this is a good point, and I do agree that if I looked deeper into the text the first time, and if I knew about this derogatory term of American Indians being “red faced”, then I would definitely see this double meaning.

But, Boland writes, “Acne marks the narrator’s Indian ancestry at the same time as the name Zits obscures his connection to any particular history.” (Boland 71) Boland is saying that whilst giving himself the name Zits, he is denying himself from having a name that relates him to his Indian ancestry. While I agree that this is a good point, I do believe that there isn’t any strong evidence to support this claim. For example, Alexie writes that Zits’ says, “’Michael,’ I say. ‘My real name is Michael. Please, call me Michael.’” (Alexie 181) This shows that Zits birth-given name is a common name amongst all cultures, especially American. So, if Zits’ given name was something Native American, then I would more so agree with what Boland is saying, but since his name is Michael, I do believe that Boland’s claim was a bit weak. But, I do think that this relates to Boland’s thesis, because Zits was given the name Michael, which is in no way an Indian name, so his mother must have been influenced by multicultural America whilst naming her son, even though he was 50% American Indian.

Another instance that supports Boland’s thesis is at the end of the novel when Zits gets adopted into Robert’s home as a hopefully permanent child. Boland writes about how at the end of the novel, Zits/Michael states that he is finally happy because he has a home, but this shouldn’t distract us from the fact that he was once irritated from being moved from white family to white family. This whole novel basically had to do with the fact that Zits was trying to find his identity, but isn’t it ironic that he winds up in a white home when he had so longed for an Indian home with a nice Indian father? On page 8 and page 9, Alexie writes, “There’s this law called the Indian Child Welfare Act that’s supposed to protect half-breed orphans like me. … But I’m not an official Indian. My Indian daddy gave me his looks, but he was never legally established as my father. Since I’m not a legal Indian, the government can put me wherever they want.” Initially, this annoyed Zits that he can be placed wherever the government pleases, and it annoyed him more that they constantly made terrible choices. Boland argues that the adoption of Zits into a white home is an act of violence against Zits’ Indigenous background, and I totally agree. For his whole life, Zits’ was always upset about the fact that his father left him, and he was upset by the fact that the only thing he knew about Indians was what he learned on TV, which is essentially inaccurate. What bothers me about this ending is that, sure, he is initially happy, but I can imagine that he probably still has a hole inside of him that can only be filled by learning about what tribe he’s from and a little about his own culture. When he transformed into the American Indian boy with the slit throat, Alexie writes, “And I realize this is my father. My father. Well, okay, he’s the father of the kid whose body I’m inside at the moment. But as long as I’m this kid, this man is my father. And since I never knew my real Indian father, I feel like I’m going to explode. I want to hug this guy forever and forever.” (Alexie 64) Zits is talking about how thrilled he is to finally have an Indian father, which makes me wonder if he’ll remain happy living with a white family. And, he was so quick to love his new father when he was the American Indian boy, then what is there to make me believe that he wasn’t just eager to love his new adoptive white mother? Therefore, I do agree with Boland’s thesis in saying that adopting Zits into a white family is an act of violence to his Indigenous background, and I can connect his/her idea to one of my own original ideas when in one of the first transformations, Zits became the American Indian boy that had no voice.

Also, after he is adopted into his new home, his new adoptive mother offers Zits some cream in order to help to clear his skin, which overjoys Zits, which causes him to ask her to call him Michael. I think this relates to Boland’s thesis about multicultural America having a strong influential control on minority groups because of the fact that he is ridding his face of the acne, which he believes he got from his father, who is American Indian. Alexie writes, “I wonder if being Indian causes acne. My father was an Indian. For this or that tribe. From this or that reservation. I never knew him, but I have a photograph of his acne-blasted face. I’ve inherited his ruined complexion and black hair and big Indian nose.” (Alexie 4) Once his new white adoptive mother clears his face of his acne, and he is being called Michael, he basically has no Indian culture at all.

Overall, I feel like this scholar’s essay helped me understand Flight in ways that I never would have initially thought about. I did struggle with this essay a lot, but after rereading it several times, I finally understood what Kerry Boland was saying. She has lots of great points in this essay, and I’m very happy that I got the chance to read it. There was not a single point that Boland brought up that I thought about during my first read-through of the novel, so that causes me to think that his/her essay was very enriching. There are several times, that I completely agree and can relate to Kerry Boland’s thesis, but I also do think that there are some points she makes that could use stronger support. (Word Count: 1227)