American Born Chinese is interesting. Its about a Chinese guy Jin and he wants nothing to do with his Chinese culture. He wants to be a white kid. He starts at the school and the stereotyping begins, his teachers say that he’s from China but he’s really from San Francisco, the other Asian in his class he avoids because he doesn’t want to see even more Chinese. He has a crush on a girl in his school and he thinks that if he is more “white” she might like him, so he dyes his hair blonde, which looks weird from the pictures. He doesn’t want anything to do with his own culture which I find sad because our ethnic cultures are so important, especially to my family. My Mexican grandfather died when my dad was 9 years old, after that we completely lost our touch with our own culture. We have done our best to keep our culture in tact as much as possible with our given situation. I think that Jin is lucky that he has that part of him that I was I had. It makes me not like this book so much because of him rejecting that side of him. Danny, a white guy in the book, who cant be white if he has a full blooded Asian cousin,  has his cousin visit who is that stereotypical “Asian” he speaks differently, he has buck teeth, he peed in Danny’s friend’s drink. He’s overall just annoying. 

Then there is the monkey king who is working to be some type of God by obtaining all the levels of kung fu and mastering it. I really am having a hard time liking this book, I really cant say I am enjoying it at all really, and it is something I cant relate to. I think the whole thing is sad.

The last half of Brown Girl Dreaming was good. I can’t say I’m a fan of poem form writing but I think it went well with this book. I like how this book shows Jacqueline’s evolving throughout it. In the beginning she sees people marching and she doesn’t understand why they’re marching, to the end of the book her wanting to join the march and her marching outside her apartment building. Which I find this growth to be one of the most important parts of the book. The comparison to her knowledge about the marches is important because the color of her skin is going to justify how she lives her life especially in the era where black people were not allowed to a lot of things and they were legally segregated.  The color of her skin determines how she will be treated in society. Her family in the beginning does a fine job of telling her that she is not less than anyone else. They also protect her from the marches because of the dangers that go with them, until the end where is a little older and is very aware of what’s going on and the injustice that is around her. I find this extremely relatable. In my early stages of life I was very unaware of the racism that goes on currently, I grew up in a mostly black neighborhood, and majority of people I went to school with were black, I thought that when I was going to school I was getting the same education as every other person my age, and that it was the same for everyone, but like Jacqueline, as I got older I started to see what was really happening around me. Some of the problems that Jacqueline faces in the book are problems that still go on today, which makes this book extremely relevant

Reading the first half of Brown Girl Dreaming, I’m actually enjoying it. Brown Girl Dreaming is about an African American family living in the 1960s. The story is narrated by Jackie. Jackie in the beginning of the book is only a toddler but slowly growing up. She has two older siblings one sister and one brother: Dell, and Hope. She later gets a younger sibling, Roman, a little brother.

The story starts in Ohio, where Jackie is living with her two older siblings, and both her mother and father. After a little while Jackie’s parents split up and the three kids move with the mother down to South Carolina where the mother’s grandparents live.

The social dynamic in the south is different than the north. The north black people are treated with more equality, still not completely equal but more than the south. In the south they have to sit in the back of the bus, they have to say “yes sir” and “no sir” they are still forced to treat white people like they are more superior to themselves, and they are allowed to be disrespected and treated less than.

With all of that in mind, I really love how the family raises the three children. Even though living in the south is harder than living in the north, the family still makes sure that the children are being raised to know that they are equal and that they do matter in this society unlike how they are being treated. The grandmother works two jobs just to make sure that her family can eat. This family works so hard to provide and to make sure the children don’t go without.

This book can be compared to today’s society. When we read this book we are so angry that people are being treated like second class citizens and how it’s not fair, but even still today there is no equality between anyone of ethnicity and white people. Racism is still alive and well, as we can see on the new about Muslims. This is hard fact to swallow but the sooner we realize that it’s a problem the sooner we can address it and learn to make changes as a whole. Ignoring a problem will only create more problems.

Poor Piddy. After the milk carton incident, she gets her necklace ripped from her neck, and gets slapped on the back of the head. She then gets a message from Yaqui’s friend that she wants to fight her at a park at six. When Piddy doesn’t show up, Yaqui and her gang of friends find her and Yaqui attacks her, and not just attacks her but completely humiliates her. Yaqui manages to not only beat her up outside of her own home, but Piddy gets her bra and shirt ripped off, and is exposed to her neighborhood, and also the internet because Yaqui’s friend is recording it. This in particular angers me, because in a way it’s an invasion of privacy. To have your body exposed to the world without your consent is never okay obviously, but I have to imagine that it would be extremely traumatizing. It reminded me of this video that went viral all over the internet and it was a very similar fight in the book, where two young ladies get into a physical altercation that leads to one of girl’s breasts exposed, and people were commenting on the video laughing and thinking it was funny, it made me sick. It really made me upset that not only did it happen in the book, it happens in real life too. Piddy is forced to know that a lot of people have watched this video, and has to relive that moment over and over again because it’s now on online.

Something I can really relate to is Piddy lashing out on people. When I was in high school I had my car keyed twice, I had trash thrown on my car three times, one of those times at home, and I had a group of girls that hated me and I don’t think I ever talked to any of them once. When my car got keyed and trashed I started to lash out on people because I was so frustrated that people that I didn’t even know would do this, and didn’t like me for any particular reason. I felt I had to be mean to certain people and build walls up in order to cope with what was happening and being said about me, I was always really paranoid, which is how Piddy felt, even when it was all over. Looking back at it now I realize it was only one little part of my entire life, and I’m too old to really care about it now. Built up anger is hard to overcome when you feel you don’t have any real outlet. I really relate to Piddy in some ways.

I’m not sure how I feel about the ending of the book, the faculty gets an anonymous tip (Rob) that Piddy is being bullied, which she then admits to it, and then the ending is her going back to her old school and being accepted into the Science school. I’m not sure how realistic that is. From my experience if I was being bullied in school I wouldn’t be able to just transfer to a different school, especially in the middle of the year. Most kids find a way to deal with bullying instead of just transferring, the ending made the solution sound so simple, when that’s usually not the case.

 Eleanor and Park is about teenage love, and both characters in their “adolescent stage” in life. Eleanor through the entire book shows a level of maturity, she takes care of her younger siblings. She is very aware of the adult things that go on around her. Eleanor is forced to grow up faster than she has to. Her mother could be labeled neglectful as a parent. She puts Richie before any of the children. When Eleanor’s mother and Richie fight Eleanor makes sure the children are okay and alright, instead of really focusing is whether she’s okay first, which is what a parent would do. All of those situations forcing Eleanor to become more independent and more adult like sooner than her peers.

When Richie finds out that Eleanor and Park are a thing, and that Richie is the one writing in her book, she feels she has no other choice than to run away. As she makes plans to runway, she debates whether or not she should go back for her younger sibling, she takes a parental role in her younger siblings life.

Which goes back to the debate of what adolescents really is. She has matured faster than some of her peers because she had to. She had to grow up in order to survive.  The label “adolescent” is a social construct. There are so many different definitions of it, and what it actually means. People will say that Eleanor is not a adolescent because of how fast she had to mature and grow up. While others, because of her relationship with Park would say she is an adolescent.

Books written about adolescents are important in todays society because of all the different people who are or have gone through different situations in their lives, Young readers can read books about adolescents are relate to at least one scenario in the book whether it be: bullying, dating, school, family, etc.