In Odessa, Texas, only one thing matters. Not college, or politics, or work, but high school football. In the book Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, A Dream by H.G. Bissinger, the town of Odessa is placed under a microscope as the reader gets to experience the intersection of sport, race, and gender in a small Texas town. “Football stood at the very core of what the town was about, not on the outskirts, not on the periphery. It had nothing to do with entertainment and everything to do with how people felt about themselves.”…
The book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand starts off with a twelve year old boy who’s name is Louise Zamperini who lives in Torrance, California. It is 1929 and he is awoken in the night by a loud sound. He rushes to his back yard and sees a Graf Zeppelin a German dirigible plane. Louie as any child would was amazed by the Graf Zeppelin astounded Louie was not the best child, he was known as a thief. If anything went missing in anyone’s house in Torrance they knew whose door to knock on.…
The three-time U.S. track and field Olympian, Gail Devers once stated, “Sometimes we fall, sometimes we stumble, but we can’t stay down. We can’t allow life to beat us down. Everything happens for a reason, and it builds character in us, and it tells us what we are about and how strong we really are when we didn’t think we could be that strong.” In the nonfiction book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, the courageous Louis Zamperini emulated with Devers words when, even in times of hopelessness and doubt, he survived a World War II bomber plane crash into the great Pacific, where he was left and considered dead for 47 days. To say the least, Louie’s resilient and courageous personality kept him alive and sane throughout the dire situations…
On December 6, 2016, there were several English 489 students who presented their undergraduate research in the Foley classroom for faculty and students to witness their hard work. One of the presenters was Shauntell Whitehurst-Joyner who presented "If you told me a Story like This, I probably Wouldn't Believe It Either": The Dismissal of Slavery in Octavia Butler's Kindred. In order to enhance her argument that the book exhibited dismissal of slavery, she incorporated the trauma theory supported by Cathy Caruth, the concept of repetition compulsion supported by Sigmund Freud, and the concept of white guilt supported by James Baldwin. Whitehurst Joyner discussed how trauma theory originally came from the Greek definition of the womb referring…
I am a student at Coldwater High School. I recently read Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger in my Honors 11 English Class and I recommend you read it too. This book displays the pride, defeats, and brotherhood of a football team. This book is a thrilling book about Permian High School football team.…
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand is an understatement of a WWII survival story. There are hundreds of horrific survival stories shared from brave veterans, choosing to relive the worst moments of their entire lives just so we can understand history. Unbroken, however, is on another scale of horrific. This book is about a man named Louis Zamperini, an Olympic track star from Southern California whose race to the gold medal was cut short by one of the worst war experiences ever told. His WWII story is spine tingling, inspiring, and downright depressing.…
Paragraph 1, Introduction Ellie's Story is about a search and rescue dog named Ellie. Ellie's Story is by W. Bruce Cameron, who also wrote the novel A Dog's Purpose, Bailey's story, Molly's story, Max's Story, and many other books all based off of A Dog's Purpose. A Dog's Purpose even had a movie made about it. EllIe's story didn't have many main characters. Some of the characters consist of Jakob, Ellie's first partner, Maya, Ellie's second partner, Ellie herself, Albert, Maya’s husband, Wally, and Belinda.…
In the dramatic, but sadly realistic book Wintergirls, Laurie Halse Anderson tells the story of Lia, an anorexic teenager, after her closest friend Cassie mysteriously dies in a motel room. This engrossing book is suspenseful and breath-taking as Lia and her family take on many challenges and obstacles. More specifically, Wintergirls deals with real world problems such as children actually not eating and cutting themselves because they believe it cures their pain when they don’t even feel safe in their own bodies. This story of the challenges and responses in young teeenagers provides a frequently disturbing but important look into these real-life challenges that kids may go through. I found this story to be extremely sad and a bit disturbing,…
Dan Brooks’ use of metaphors and similes were also great. The word choice was well done and as a result it all transitioned smoothly and went together very nicely. The word choice was even more interesting to me because it was big element when it came to bcf causing the nostalgia…
Fledging is a science fiction story published in 2005 by Octavia E. Butler, an African American female writer. The story opens with the protagonist who seems to be a ten year old girl, Shori. Injured and confused, Shori wakes up in a cave unaware of who she is and how she got there. She sets out on a mission to understand her history and her identity discovering that she is a type of vampire, Ina, whose family has been murdered due to her family’s successful experiment. As a result, Shori discovers that she is part of the family’s genetic experiment that was engineered to improve the Ina lifestyle.…
Critical Reading Response Kindred 4. The way I see it, being complicit is the same as knowing about it and doing nothing to stop it. White women were just as involved as Black slaves that knew of the sexual exploitation, set aside the fact that they were slaves and could not do much in abolishing this issue but they were still complicit. I agree because Dana was discreet with helping Rufus get Alice so in the end she was involved. Since the beginning Dana knew of what Rufus has become with trying to rape Alice.…
Do you Believe in Werewolves? Well, the people of 1600s Bamberg, Germany did. The Werewolf of Bamberg: A Hangman’s Daughter Tale is the fifth of the six, soon to be seven, books of the novel series A Hangman’s Daughter by Oliver Potzsch. Potzsch gets his inspiration for the series from the history of his ancestors on his mother’s side.…
Girl Interrupted has many signs of psychological disorders and aspects. This book was written as an autobiography of Susanna Kaysen’s life and her experiences in a mental ward. She talks about her personal experiences and those of her fellow patients. The book describes her struggle to recover from her diagnosis, and how some of her fellow patients coped with their own personal diagnosis. In reading this book a reader is can distinctly see several different aspects of psychological effects and disorders.…
Personal response of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon This coming-of-age film is about an isolated, high school senior named Greg, who tries to blend through crowds and makes parodies of classic films with his friend Earl. Greg’s mum forces him to befriend a girl named Rachel who has been diagnosed with stage 4 leukemia. The film overall is not about cancer but explores the main themes of friendship and life itself. One of the huge themes presented in this film is the authentic friendship between Greg and Rachel, and it’s goes against cliches because they do not fall in love and love relationships are very common in films.…
Killer is the third in the series Pretty Little Liars. It was written by Sara Shepard, and was published by HarperTeen on June 30th, 2009. This book can be classified as a mystery, drama, crime-fiction, or suspense book. It contains a total of 321 nail-biting pages. This is the third book I have read in the series out of 16 in all.…