Avinash Basu Week 3 SS1

I once tried a social experiment by inviting members of the Indian Student Association and the Chinese Student Association to a party to see if they would mingle. After all we're both from the same continent and probably have more in common with each other than we did with western standards.
They did not mix.
America is touted as a melting pot where all cultures come together to mingle but in my experience I find that people of different ethnic groups tend to rigidly stay within their own groups.
I suppose its easier to stick together than to jump a vast cultural divide.
Me being an Indian and American and a straight outta India Indian; don't mind this too much as I would never belong anywhere anyway so I just flit from ethnic group to ethnic group, comfortable but never settled.

I want to say kindness should be a universal trait regardless of culture but how that kindness manifests is the tricky part.
What is kindness in one culture is rude in another.
My solution is to help regardless and keep people's feelings in mind but never sacrificing the end goal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDzP_xTJthY

Avinash Basu Week 5 SS1

I was born with an umbilical cord around my neck. The doctors told my mom that either she could live or I could live. She chose me. I cannot fathom why. I think I'd rather she live without me than for me to live without her. I'm never going to know what its like to lose a child I've nurtured in my own body. Or maybe I will if biological gender becomes a choice or whatever but outside the realm of science fantasy; I'm not going to know. And with that lack of knowledge I cannot understand why she would want me to live without her. I didnt even cry the first couple of times the doctor slapped me. I clearly do not want to be in this world. And yet she cared for me so much. 

That's what motherhood means to me. The ability to care for something outside of yourself like it is a part of yourself.

I remember never being able to sleep until my mother sang me to sleep with a lullaby.

Reading the articles; I realize my mother's experiences as a woman and as a colored woman shaped my worldview through her parenting.
All of her worldview transferred over to me.

I don't have a very high opinion of the male figures in my life because I see my own flaws in them but I always say if I have any goodness at all its because of my mother.

You know, its so easy for me to write paragraphs and paragraphs about misery but I can barely even organize my thoughts to talk about my mother I love so much because I'm both so grateful to her for bringing me into this world and holding my hand and so resentful because I am supposed to be the reflection of such an amazing woman that I don't know how I'm supposed to live upto that.
I miss my mom and I just want her to know that she's the greatest mother.

All my life I've been raised around women.
Nuns in an ashram, all my mother friends; all of them taught me the strength of womanhood and the glorious capacity to enact change that mothers have.
A father can pay the bills but they don't carry the family like a mother does.

"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9dSYgd5Elk"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj2laJVGZAA

Jiaxiong Li Week 6 S1

Ping Wang has hit us with another raging poem about her experience with meeting His Holiness. In the case of context, I would assume the figure she is speaking about is the Pope of the Catholic Church because that is the only person that I know that is referred to as "his holiness." There is also another chance that his holiness is a figurative character which is used to symbolize a source of re-liberation and hope for the author. This symbol of hope and tomorrow is important for W.P. because she is suffering in a dark time against people that throw her down to "the bottom of the snake pit." She uses a lot and I mean a lot of anaphora in this poem as a rhetorical device and it really shows her strength in will that she will not give up because she continuously repeats certain phrases. I enjoyed finding subtle metaphors that connect to her feelings and what she trying to express. P.W. is a cool poet.

Works Cited:

P W. My Kintsuki. UC Davis Canvas Discovery. https://canvas.ucdavis.edu/courses/392140/files/folder/Weekly Readings/Week6?preview=6353503. Accessed August 4, 2019.

Squad S. No, Cold Calling Isn't Diving Into a Snake Pit! Cold Call Coach. https://coldcallcoach.net/no-cold-calling-isnt-diving-snake-pit/. Published July 26, 2019. Accessed August 4, 2019.