Blog #6

I was shocked about the Westboro Church people.  I cannot believe they protest about Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered at soldier’s funerals.  The Westboro Church made nasty signs about Fags and they came up with chants and songs to protest.  Everyone that seen them made rude comments towards them because people find this wrong on how they are protesting.  I understand they have the Right of Freedom Speech, but I think they can protest in a different way.  I also liked the video about the gender roles and stereotypes.  The part that stood out for me with gender roles was when the boys were driving the Ford trucks and the little girl playing with her kitchen set.  I think these gender roles are still in effect today because you normally do not see boys playing with dolls, but sometimes you see girls playing with matchbox cars.

I feel that Jeanette’s mother pushed her away from her life because she disagrees that her daughter is a lesbian.  Her mother is very religious and thinks her daughter should be with a man.  Jeanette wants to explore her sexual identity, but she still loves God.  Jeanette’s church also disagrees on what she is doing.  The church told her that she can no longer teach her bible study group anymore.  Jeanette’s mother also kicks her out of the house.  Jeanette has to start a new life all over because she is different and wants to be with women.

I find this very odd because Jeanette came from a very religious family who believed in God.  Jeanette’s mother taught her the bible.  I think her mother did not expect her to like women because she was supposed to do missionary work.  This goes to show that anyone no matter what religious background they have they can be gay or lesbian.  These people want to explore their sexual identity and they want to come out into the world, but they cannot do this because people will judge them because they are different.

Blog #5

The Bluest Eye and American Born Chinese have characters that are similar to one another.  For example, The Bluest Eye character named Pecola wanted to be beautiful and she wanted to have blue eyes.  In American Born Chinese Jin Wang wanted to be beautiful and to be white.  He did not want to be Chinese.  Both of these characters were teenagers and they both wanted to fit in with society.

One of the themes in The Bluest Eye is discrimination because at school the teachers and the students treated Pecola differently.  Everyone did not want to associate with her because they thought she was ugly.  She was an outcast in her school.   Another example of discrimination in The Bluest Eye is when Maureen, Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola started to argue with one another.  They started calling each other bad names.

Discrimination is also in American Born Chinese because Monkey King was not allowed to go inside the dinner party because he was a monkey and he did not have shoes on.   Another example of discrimination in American Born Chinese is when Jin Wang was introduced to his new classroom.  His teacher could not pronounce his name correctly.  Also he did not have any friends until Wei-Chen came to his school.  The people at his school would make fun of him because he was a different race than the other people.

Each of these texts relate to power and privilege because it showed that the whites had power over the blacks and Chinese.  Both of these characters Pecola and Jin Wang wanted to be able to fit in with their society.

Blog 4-Unit 2

Our class was assigned to watch two videos.  The two videos are "A Class Divided" and "Mirrors of Privilege."  I thought both of these videos were very interesting and different.  The first video "A Class Divided" was about a teacher in Iowa who wanted to show racism in her classroom.  She told her students that we have the blues eyes on the one side and the brown eyes on the other side.  The first day she did this exercise she told  the students that the blue eyes are better than the brown eyes.  The students turned into being hateful, nasty, and discriminated the other students.  The next day she changed the roles.  The students reacted in the same way as the other group did.  She created a classroom in a society.  These students grew up not to discriminate against the other people because they experience on what it was like to be discriminated.  She did the same exercise with adults.  She was more harder on the adults, so they could feel what is was like to be discriminated.  At the end of the video she mention about using the exercise with teachers and administrative staff.  I would have to agree with this statement because I think it would benefit the teachers and the administrative staff.  Also, I know if the teachers would do this exercise they would have to be very careful not to damage their students.  Overall, I really enjoyed watching this video.

The second video we had to watch was "Mirrors of Privilege."  This video was about people telling their testimonies about racism.  The testimony that affected me the most was in part three.  A teacher yelled at an African American student because she was not listening and she talked back to him.  He felt horrible for screaming and swearing at her in front of his students. I cannot believe that the teacher lost his temper.  This video was very powerful to me because I'm going for elementary education and the one thing that I do not want to do is lose my temper on the students.  If a teacher yells at a student in front of all the other students that has an effect on his or her self-esteem.

The Book Thief

In the very beginning of The Book Thief the reader meets a shy little girl named Liesel.  She is struggling with the fact that her brother just died.  Her mom decides to send her away to live with the Hubermanns.  When she gets to the Hubermann’s house she refused to get out of the car.  She is sad and upset that her mom sent her away and at that time she did not know why.  She feels abandonment from her mother.  Rosa Hubermann was yelling at her to get out, so Hans walked over to her and got her out of the car.  The reader can sense that she is going to be closer to Hans than Rosa.

Another conflict that Liesel struggled with was that she wanted to fit in at school with the rest of her peers.  She could not do this because she does not know how to read or write.  So Hans decides that he is going to teach her every night on how to read and write.  She looked up to Hans as being a father figure towards her considering she grew up without a father.  Hans gain Liesel’s love and trust.  Liesel started to take more responsibility when Rosa gave her the job to pick up the washing from the rich people.

Liesel does not like that fact something happen to her mother considering her mother was not writing back any letters to her.  Her foster parents would not tell her the truth on what happen to her mother.  Liesel figured it out what happen to her mother when she went to Hitler’s birthday celebration.  She told Hans that she blames Hitler for her mother’s disappearance.  Hans slapped her across the face for saying that.  She realizes that she cannot speak badly about Hitler.  She has to ‘Heil Hitler.’

A Jew showed up at the house named Max.  Hans told Liesel that she had to keep a secret about Max living with them.  I think that is a lot of responsibility for a young girl to keep a secret.  She was not allowed to tell anyone about Max.  Hans told her if she would tell anyone her foster parents and Max would be taken away from her.

I really liked this character because she is a very strong girl considering everything she went through.  It amazes me how quickly she learned how to read and write by Hans writing the alphabet and the words down.

Blog 2-Maus Theme

While I was reading Maus I noticed that Vladik treats Mala and Anja very differently. Vladik got married to Anja. Her family was very wealthy. He took care of her and protected her. He treated her with respect. As the novel progresses, he would get very emotional when he talks about his first wife, Anja. I think, after she passed away he felt alone and missed her greatly. Vladik took it really hard when he saw Artie's “Prisoner on the Hell Planet”. This was Artie’s short comic about how his mother committed suicide.


He got married to his second wife who is Mala. He claims Mala is only after his money. He told Artie that he had to change his will so many different times. He's always yelling and arguing with her because he feels she is always doing something wrong. Mala is getting sick and tired of him because she feels that she cannot do anything right. He does not treat her with respect and he seems very unhappy when he is living with Mala. He is always complaining to Artie about Mala but Artie does not want to hear about it anymore.

When I was reading I looked at the words and images together. I learned to pay more attention to the visual, sound, gestural interpretation, and spatial features that Spiegelman used in Maus. I started to think more and look at the images and words and started to guess on what is going to happen next.

About me

My name is Kaitlyn Slothour.  I'm a junior at Shippensburg University.  I'm majoring in Elementary Education with a minor in reading.  I like to play tennis and volleyball.  I love hanging out with my friends and family.  I'm interested in reading different types of graphic novels.  Most of these novels that we are going to be reading I never heard of them.  The last book I read was Dead and Gone by Charline Harris.  Cultural diversity is learning about different societies and cultures in the world.  I'm hoping to learn and read about different societies and cultures.  My thoughts about cultural diversity is that people are more willing to accept other people's style of living.  There seems to be a greater amount of different races now living in the United States.