Sharaai's blog

So with Thrusday’s Silence class came along some “prayer” and when Anne was talking about the activity we were going to do, I could not help but begin to feel a little anxious. And if I can recall correctly, I remember mentioning that in class. Anywho, I just want to reflect on why exactly I felt that way. I think a lot of it has to do with my apprehensions with religion. and I don’t think that these apprehensions really have to do with the idea of religion versus an actual type of religion. The class activity went better than I expected, even though I found myself asking a lot of questions during the praying section and not necessarily having/getting any answers…

“Finally it’s my turn and I want the best education I can have”

In thinking about Bryn Mawr’s campus, it becomes obvious that many small communities exist within our walled community. Communities consisting of students of color, international students or students from the same area. An important community within Bryn Mawr is the Katharine E. McBride Scholars Program or McBride Scholars for short. They are women, twenty four or older, who did not complete their college education after high school for one reason or another. Bryn Mawr looks for non-traditionally aged students that exemplify intelligence, talent and achievement. These traits may be displayed through volunteer work, their jobs or some form of formal study. What separates McBride scholars from many traditionally aged students are their life experiences. Many of the women have family commitments such as children and aging parents or full time jobs. Some have put their education on a hiatus due to financial reasons or simply because of life and the tribulations it can bring along.

Mode of address is a concept based out of film and media studies, it is a way for filmmakers to think about who their audience is going to be, a form of analysis on the power relations between the audience and the subject of the film (Ellsworth, 1997, p. 1). It allows for the filmmaker to think about ideas of class, gender sexuality, race and much more while working on their product. This process allows for them to frame their stories so that the viewer can relate or interpret it in a way that plays off of the filmmaker’s assumptions. As analytical readers, we contemplate what the author is trying to tell us and what they want us to take out of their stories. As readers, we can take this concept of mode of address and analyze why we think characters make their decisions and what the author would like us to take out of it. We can interpret their choices, the relationships they are part of or the neighborhood they live in to figure them out. Through this process we, as readers, would be exploring Gayle Jones’ mode of address in context to Eva. We would be thinking about Eva’s choices, what they mean to her and what Jones could also mean by them.

This is the image I used in my summary. It is a photograph by Jacob Riis, taken in 1890, that I feel exmplifies Howard Zehr's ideas of looking at crime/criminals with a bigger frame in mind. This photos purpose was to show that enviroment was a cause of crime and not biology.

Reading about niches really got me thinking about my own personal niches, other's niches and specifically what the women at the Cannery do while they are there to make their niches.

When I think about my own niche and about it's relationship to Bryn Mawr, I realize that if I had not found my niches within the BMC community, in many locations, that my experiences here would not have been so fulfilled and satisfying. But my discovery of niches does not feel comparable to those in the reading. I feel that they are found coming from different reasoning but I also feel like they can be compared because people find niches for the same general reasons.

In connection to Doing Life, I wonder if those in the book found their own self-discovery as a niche. I say this because alot of the people in the book talk about how they have changed as people and how they have realized their mistakes that brought them to where they are. Have they found niches within their own minds that have allowed them to escape and reflect?

With Christine Sun Kim’s visit to our class, her silly but thoughtful activity, and our visit to the “What Can a Body Do?” exhibit at Haverford, the idea of silence and sound in respect to members of the Deaf community, ASL and those that can hear have continuously popped into my head. I have always found myself intrigued by signing and how beautifully it flows and how much can be said in simple signs. Along with signing come the facial expressions that make up most of the grammar in ASL and the sounds made during conversation. But when it comes to those that hear, silence is often something we fear; a part of our life that we choose to push away but crave at other moments. Ideas of sound and silence are both topics that link themselves with her visit and our class as a whole.

Being able to experience Kim’s art first hand and welcoming her into our classroom, I couldn’t help but feel like connecting it all to our class’ conversations about silence or our approaches to silence. I feel like they are similar journeys. Not to say that our journey is anything compared to hers  but that we have also been struggling to figure out where we belong in an environment filled with silence and what that means for us as a whole class and individually. As Kim said to us and as it says in the “What Can A Body Do?”  gallery pamphlet, her art is her own way of taking “ownership” of sound. As we have been constantly discussing, silence is an element that we may have not directly considered or consciously considered.

After writing my paper, I looked up some images of 2Pac with his quotes and I found this. I really like and wanted to share.

2Pac - Trapped

"There should be a class on drugs. There should be a class on sex education, a real sex education class. Not just pictures and diaphrams and unlogical terms and things like that. There should be a drug class, there should be sex education, there should be a class on scams, there should be a class on religious cult, there should be a class on police brutality, there should be a class on aparthy, there should be on racism in america, there should be a class on why people are hungry, but there not, there’s class on gym, you know, physical education, let’s learn volleyball. because one day…you know…there’s classes like algebra where I’ve yet to go to a store and gone xy+2 and give me my change back thank you. I think you can let me out, I’ve lived alone by myself. And the things that helped me were the things I learned from my mother, from the streets." --Tupac (Age 17).

It passed my mind to post for class today, but I am stll going to go for it.

I am posting pictures that I found when I googled Overbrook High School. I worked there for a semester, helping students in "Algebra II" classes, though they were teaching basic algebra and geometry skills. It was such an eye opening experience for me. One event I can clearly remember is when one of the students was bragging about "just getting out" and returning to school. During this one class period, he repeatedly emphasized the fact that he was locked  up and that he'd been through the system. It was such a surreal moment.

To add to this, when Jody gave us the ed newspaper in class today, the graducation rate for Overbrook was incredibly low and their college admission rate even lower. How does my isolated story relate to Overbrook's really low gradution and college track rates?

This is a video that Dan and I watched together while reading though Right To Be Hostile. It's a "Crazy prison riot".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LWbxSZ2Nxw

We invite you to consider what this does to people's perceptions of prisoners? And contemplate what goes through our mind when we see a headline that includes the words "prison riot".