Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Last Year Reflection

0 comments Posted by Ale'ah Bashir-Baaqee at 9:41 AM

This freshman year has been really crazy I have learned a lot about Drama and writing in general. I remember when I first came to ASTI and I was so excited for English because we weren’t learning about Shakespeare. We also started learning about debates and it was all good. And then we started. We started it on blogger, and I was juiced. I had never seen a blog or at the least made one.  My first blog experience in all I think was OK. Personally I don’t’ like blogs, because I don’t like typing what I can say. I’m a voice person and I in blogs the emotion and personality I bring to my voice I cannot bring to my writing. Plus I have to type what I can say in like 2 minutes I think it is an extremely boring waste of time.
But to say the lease my first couple of blogs was okay I guess. This is a direct quote from my first reflexive Essay

”During my first Quarter of writing my blog posts received responses affected how I look at things in general. Over a course of one Quarter I've written seventeen blog posts. Some blog posts have been very controversial others which have been boring, others very lazily written, and some which just make me angry to see the response posts. My first blog posts where just assignments, but as I progressed I seemed to be starting very controversial debates a lot of which were on the topic of race. After a couple of those debates, I slowed down on my writing and just put boring stuff on blogger I knew people wouldn't read.”

I feel the same now as I did before. I looked at blogger statistics and my most controversial posts were the most interesting posts. This includes Swagga style Part 1 and Part 2, and is the N-WORD okay! I personally liked these views. I still believe that no matter what people say my writing is still the bomb. But the big issue I started having with my blog is that; I got tired of the stupid comments people wrote. I feel like writing is not my best subject so when I put something up on blog just to put there doesn’t mean you go ahead and write really rude comments. Now if we were talking about this in person them Hey I could go ahead and reply all I want in the meanest ways. But unfortunately I can’t put that emotion in my writing. If you haven’t noticed already my writing is not the best. I strongly dislike Google docs so I don’t’ really like writing on there. I’ve realized that when I don’t’ go ahead and edit my work it sounds really choppy. Like when I said:

“Maybe it’s because I'm black but do inter racial fashions annoy you? Sometimes I say this because ever since the sagging pants era started in person other than a black that was saggin hid pants, always had some negative comment coming from them, But when Black guys start dressing like white guys with skinny jeans and skate boards no one says anything. WHY IS THAT?”

I don’t can’t tell how many errors I see right here. I feel like if I would have edited and re-written my words, it wouldn’t’ have sounded so bad. So once again If I could say them instead of type them things would have been better. But unfortunately I can’t do that.
              
After My whole big explosion on blogger over some stupid pointless blog posts I stopped writing comments like that. Instead I‘ve been doing a lot of boring basic writing, doing it just to get the homework done kind of blog posts. I looked at my blog posts and at then end of my blog posts that I wrote in the first semester like a dummy I continuously wrote “Please give me your feedback”. What the H*** was I thinking. Why would I ask for peoples comments?  When deep down I don’t’ really even care what they thought. I think that maybe I just wanted to get the quick word limit down or I just wanted to have an ending but now that I know I’m never putting that ever again.
               
Also I feel like blogger is a place for people to go ahead and say their feelings with ought doing it in person. There was like no emotion going on at all, I saw a lot of blogs were people who never otherwise would have the guts to say something to your face used blogger at their release plate to go off on you. But that’s not me I do not argue over the internet I do it in person, so I didn’t like that aspect of it.

My favorite Posts by far are Oakland is Hella bomb! And Police Officers. The majority of my grammar and spelling in my posts are really bad. But I don’t know what it was but I had some pretty good grammar. I have to say that I absolutely love my posts. I felt really bad about the Police one though because later I found out that Melissa Ma’s dad was a police and I felt sad that I trashed talked police. Honestly I hope I didn’t hurt her feelings because she is such a nice girl but if I did I apologize Melissa Ma (and that should mean a lot because I don’t apologize very often.)
              
So now I’m coming to the end of my writing and the thing is I only have one more posts left on blog this one and I only have this one to talk about in my last writing.  Oakland is Hella Bomb! That was my favorite posts. I got so many reply’s to that one because I trashed talked Alameda but who’s gives a f*** I had so many Oakland people back me up on that one. I felt so proud when I wrote that posts. I didn’t see not one grammar issues (maybe there is one but still I ain’t seen it). So to end off English Ciao! and writing blogs has been a new expierence.

 

Friday, May 6, 2011

Final Post

0 comments Posted by Ale'ah Bashir-Baaqee at 6:58 AM

Harlem on Lock
  1. Pick a character that interested you and write about them in depth. You can also analyze a relationship between two different characters.
Harlem on Lock is a fictional book written by Karen Williams. The name Harlem on Lock explains the book perfectly; Harlem is the name of the main character. This book portrays Harlem struggles and finding the perfect dad and man to love her. She does this while going from the projects to a beautiful upscale life after the death of her heroin addicted mother and her heroin addicted father who raped her. A drug dealer name chief saves her but then makes her his sex prisoner basically, and throughout the book Harlem has to try and leave while getting her real man back , and still finding out about her two fathers. Pick a character that interested you and write about them in depth. You can also analyze a relationship between two different characters. Obliviously now by reading I'm going to talk about the main Character Harlem and her four different male relationships. I'm going to compare:
- Stuckey (Real father) vs. Uncle Earl (fake father for eighteen years)
- Savior (Neighborhood Crush) vs. Chief (Abusive drug dealer)
Savior is the man who grew up next to Harlem in the LA project he, one day after he realizes that Harlem didn’t have a Christmas she ends up going shopping with her neighborhood crush Savior who's a couple years older than her. Then savior takes her to a swap me and said to her "I'm getting out out of here real son. Maybe somewhere like Colorado. Build a life out there. How bout it, Harlem? Would you leave with me?" then she says yes (Page-39). The relationship between theses two characters is on and off but basically it’s much better than her and chief.
When Harlem gets home one day her dad hits and her and someone jumps her dad which then causes her mom to take them to the hospital so then Harlem has to do a stripper job but then savior comes and saves her from that too. Then Aja the mom dies of a drug overdose than her dad to make money takes her virginity so she can start prostituting out of her house. This time around Savior can't save Harlem because he got arrested but she doesn’t know that so. The prostituting leads to chief the head drug roller taking care of Harlem for a whole year but that comes with a price, of being his girl but that comes with pain.
Chief is a horrible drug dealer that at first teaches Harlem that you can still be fine and rich. He takes her in after raping. But then after a while of chief being nice he loses it and starts to make crazy sex tapes, raping her in front of friends, and even once at her birthday party she didn’t want to sleep with chiefs friend so he drown her in the pool in front of everybody. Who was this hero to save her Savior was.
The difference between Savior and Chief when it comes to Harlem is that Chief is the real hero he doesn’t beat Harlem in to making her do things. Chief has a serious control problem and when the major drug dealer that was before him goes to jail for 20 years and comes out he even tries to put Harlem in harm’s way. The way he treats her is not like her man, but after being brought up in the projects and never having anything when she met chief all of that changed for good. She was blinded by all the shopping he could do for her, she couldn’t look past that. But the thing is Savior could have got her all of that. But when he’s arrested and know one know what happened Harlem begins to think that Savior is like her parents, bad people that leave her every time the tough gets going, and then he comes out of jail and he saves her again and again and again, like a true savior.
Now Harlem has her dad Earl who raped her as a teenager and her real dad stuckey a major drug dealer who she doesn’t find out about until later on when she is trying to overcome chief. As a child Earl was very mean to her no matter the grades no matter what she did he wasn’t satisfied. Once when Harlem was little she moved earls hand from his face so he wasn’t mad and he said “You ever touch me again ill slap you silly”, and ever since then Harlem knew that her and earl would never have that father daughter relationship. Harlem met Stuckey when he was just getting out of jail and he came to visit chief, he demanded that chief give back the land of drug property that was his territory to sell. But he didn’t.
When Earl rapped Harlem she didn’t like him in the end when he went to rehab did a good job got left and then went to the hospital and was in a comma, Harlem went to go speak to him. Earl had asked about her and wanted to go see her badly. When she finally went she said her words and a couple days later when he died Harlem felt OK she wasn’t stressed or anything, but she wasn’t sad for his death. This shows that she can get over a dramatic event and move on and live her life to the fullest with savior by her side.
When Stuckey died in the shootout with Chief she was sad, she honestly loved him as a father even though the lifespan of time spent with Harlem between Earl and Stuckey is the same Stuckey had as much lasting effect. Stuckey offered Harlem a chance to give him a second chance and really raise him, but it didn’t happen and she was sad that she said No. That was one of her only things that she regretted doing.
So to analyze all four of Harlem’s relationship I can say even though she may start off bad, she ends of in a good note.

 

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