Bad Boy blog

Summary

So far in the book a boy named Walter Dean Myers who lives in Harlem.  Has a twist of family from biological parent's to adopted parents.  To his father marrying one woman then to another.  Also being a negro boy and going to a school with whites and other blacks he's more of a student who is feared and teachers despise of him.  He comes home with bad marks and in conduct "Needs Improvement".  Another thing Walter faces is the Wicked Witch.  Also he has trouble speaking fluently.  Walter who is the author of this book wrote this as a memoir of his childhood.

Note and Notice (signpost)

While reading Bad Boy I noticed something different from Walter.  In school he would beat up a boy if they offended Walter.  Walter would mostly read comic books and sometimes disobeyed his mother by asking for money and buys comics or icy pops, punch boys if they made fun of Walter.  He kept getting in trouble in school.  Until one day when they all had to write a poem he read his aloud.  Mrs.Conway complimented on his story she liked it very much until a kid named Sidney Aronofsky said he was pretty sure Walter didn't make it.  Walter was angry that he punched Sidney in the face and Mrs.Conway yelling Walter she was getting tired of his acts.  He was told to not participate in any class events like reading out loud until he brought his mother with him.  While being in the back he was reading a comic book and was caught and Mrs.Conway gave him a novel called East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon, he started to like it.  I asked myself why he would like such a book when he's more into comics?  I was more into the book, he said he kept a secret from everyone else that he loves reading books and writing poetry.  He said he loved how reading books was like entering a different language not like entering a different world.  This would be Contrast and Contradiction because he went from being tough and reading comics into books and writing poems when all the boys are tough and into fighting than writing poems and reading.

- X.S.

Sweatshop assessment

In the article "Fight for fair treatment of workers: Don't buy Nike" is that workers in the Nike sweatshops are being abused.  If a worker did a mistake they were either slapped, hit with shoes, kicked and being forced to stand under the hot sun.  They are also being payed $1.25 a day.  Nike can also have a profit from athletes.  For example Lebron James made a supportive deal to Nike worth $90 million.  Tiger woods also a deal worth $100 million.  What I think of this issue is unacceptable.  Abusing your employees and getting huge profits from famous athletes like Lebron and Woods is violating human rights.  Nike isn't giving a second thought on their workers but they're trying to make a big profit.  Of course there are other sweatshops like that, but disrespecting your workers is more like controlling their lives.  What I found most upsetting is that if they wanted to buy hygiene they had to give up paying for food because they're payed $1.25 a day  I didn't know it was that complicated for them to live like this.

In the poem "The Sweatshop poem" the argument is that workers in SweatShops workers sometimes considered themselves slaves.  One piece of evidence is "My self is destroyed I become a machine" this shows that this person thinks that they have become a machine from working in long hours.  Second piece of evidence is "I lose my mind, forget who I am" showing that they get so focus on work and they don't even remember who they really they are only having work in their minds.  Reading the sweatshop poem was different from reading the article is by the point of view.  In the article the only point of view is a report or journalist.  In The Sweatshop it has a worker's perspective of how they feel while working their point of view.  This form of reading affected my understanding of the poem by seeing how even though workers are living a complicated life they write poems to express themselves.  Or have some else write ir for them, or show the public how sweatshops take care of them.