Casa: A Partail Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood

These cuentos in Cofer’s memoir are about women. Mainly because she is a female and she spent time with the older women who gossiped and told cuentos. An example would be how her grandmother talked about men how they could leave someone at the altar and have different families on the island and no one would know. Also her Mama’s view on men’s view of marriage was the price to pay to have children. They talked about how a man whose name would practically change every time the story. The important thing was that she Maria let love get the best of her.

I think the equivalent to these cuentos might be a man marries a woman Maria. Rafael loses all his possessions and his children. Maybe even Jose became a slave to the woman he married to scare men into believing that woman are after valuables. A grandfather would probably tell this or some younger men who are married. They probably would be playing cards around a table or dominos, drinking, and smoking being men. Young boys would be influenced by cuentos. Like Cofer she listened to her Mama, because she idolized her as a child and soaked up the main information about the stories.

Sister Flowers

A memorable childhood memory I have is during a summer when I was in the third grade. My friends and I were very bored and wanted money to buy these toys called bionicles. We decided to make a lemonade/ kool-aid stand.  So my friend Blake took a table from his house. I gathered cups and ingredients. We made a huge poster with seventy five cent lemonade and several other posters to lead to the lemonade stand. A post lady always stopped by and bought lemonade. Some days she gave us ten dollars.  We added two more people to our small business, David and Jason. This way we had a longer time to make money and we ran shifts.  But we raised the price to a dollar twenty five, since we had four peopleWe did this for several weeks making tons of money to a kid’s eye.

 When we bought the toys we were so happy Blake bought the red Bionicle, I bought the white Bionicle it had a snowboard thing. These toys had a turning knob to move the arms. They made comics and video’s of these toys, Blake and I became more consumed in this Lego toy for a long time they created monsters and mini Bionicles have battles against. Blake and I were excited when Bionicle monsters came out during the fall because we always argued who would win against whom. When leaves started to fall we created a yard care work to raise more money. Blake and I were hooked on making money. We always thought of ideas to make more money like selling gum or pencils. It makes me laugh to think what we did to get money scam kids or create a business.

Task Two Subjects

What makes him/her interesting and unique? He's my father and what he sacrificed to raise me.

What sort of questions would you ask and why? If he wished he would had completed highschool or would like to get his GED or maybe go to college

What sort of problems do you think may arise for Task Two?  I think creating a conclusion and Thesis

What do you anticipate? Why?  I anticipate to find out what my father's view on education.

Task One Evaluation

What is the thesis for your paper? how the divorce affected my social life and expressing my emotions.

List the main points you make in your paper. The doctor i went to, my mother's friend, and my father/new family

What was the most helpful advice you received from your peer evaluation? I create many Run on sentences

What was the most helpful information you received in class for your paper? Add more information to my introduction paragraph.

How many drafts of this paper do you think you wrote and how/when did you write them? For example, did you compose at the keyboard, did you write lots of notes to yourself, did you pre-write or outline, did you write in small chunks of time or sit down and produce an entire draft at one sitting? I think I wrote 2 drafts,I composed on the laptop and thought of things to include and typed it.

What would you do differently with this paper to make it more effectively, or what did you try to do that you just don’t think you got a good handle on? I think I could had added more explanation

What are most pleased with about this paper? I am most pleased about that I wrote about my parents divorce

On Becoming a Chicano

My identity is somewhat complicated I am Mexican, Caucasian,and Italian. Some struggles I dealt with is denying  that I am Mexican because where i live there are not really any ethnicity. I remember going into a small town in Iowa during the summer I was very tan and dark wearing a gold necklace at the time and having my ears pierced at the time I received many strange looks in the gas station the clerk was watching every movement I made as if  would steal something.
I think the experiences Rodriguez and myself  had some similarity, but I did not ever learn Spanish because my grandmother on my mom's side discouraged using the language like it was some type of blight. I sometimes wish I grew up with learning Spanish because whenever I go into some place with Mexicans and they talk in Spanish I feel out of place because I can't respond back. But I'm sure I'm not the only person that feels out of place when someone walks into a room with people they don't know everyone judges one another by looks,race, or sex.I think this happens because of our instincts to protect yourself.

How It Feels to Be Colored Me

There was a boy I knew, his name was Patrick he and I were friends, rode bikes and played together. Patrick lived in a yellow house with brown trim, his mother had many plants in front of the house, Patrick was very tall for his age long limbs pale white skin, and bleach blond hair that looked like snow, freckles on his cheeks and a  big smile with shiny braces. He liked to run and exercise allot always jogging around the neighborhood with his father in a blue sleeveless shirt, with white-silver shorts with a blinding gold necklace and diamond earrings. Sometimes his dog would run with him I don't know what type of dog it was but had white and brown fur and stood around a person's hip with pointed ears like something was going to sneak up on him.
I think these images gelled in my head because I was always outside and would see him routinely run around the neighborhood  and his hair was so much different from anyone I had seen at that age, also it could had been  how I was paranoid about his dog. I really couldn't tell you why I remember these details about Patrick.

Ideas for task one

I think I might write about when my parents divorced it was a very tramatic experience for me although I had block many memories of it out. I don't know how exactly how I would write it with not very many memories kept and blocked out of my mind is the problem. I anticipate alot of searching within myself the feelings I had and so forth. I dont have much questions for task one.

Rite of passage

I had few elderly person's of importance to me. But those few have made me into the person I am to day. My grandmother and grandfather on my Dad's side have always been there for helping raising me and my sister when my father was working and my young mother needed assistance handling two children.My grandpa had a beard that I could never forget and a scary tone in his voice when he was upset by something, my grandma has these crutches to help her walk and is very sympathetic and emotional. I have always respected them, you can watch t.v shows with them and joke around and you can go to them for support.

I remember moving from California to Missouri writing a note on a little piece of paper at the age of 7 telling my grandmother how much I missed her. She and my grandfather moved out to Missouri  I remember staying the night at their house my grandfather picking out movies or us watching football, In the mornings my grandpa and grandma would make breakfast them coffee and toast or ego waffles , for me chocolate milk and ego's. Now they recently moved to Atlanta where my unlce lives, it was a very emotional move but we are always in contact texting or phone call's, Facebook, and skype.

My Letter of Introduction

My name is Chris Reid, I graduated from Kearney High School. Not very many people have heard of Kearney it is not the biggest of town's, ever since we won state in football and basketball it put the town on the map of Missouri. I did not live in Kearney for my whole life I was born in Riverside, California. We moved to Missouri was around the age of 7 or 8. I Grew up most of my life in Excelsior springs where I went to school for most of my student career until my sophomore year, where I started school at Kearney High.
   
More personal matters of myself. My parents got a divorce around the 6th or 7th grade. It was a very hard thing for me to handle at that age and stopped talking to most of my childhood best friends. Me and my oldest sibling went through therapy but not sure if that helped me. Later on in life My father met my stepmother around the 8th grade and now I have two younger siblings who are 4 and 2. I am very grateful for having them, my mother met my stepfather around the same time as my dad and step mom. My mother had a child I am also very grateful for having him he's 2. Although I don't get to see him as much as I would like, I cherish the time we have together. All of my family is proud I am going to college and I am really looking for to learning and experiencing college