"Sold": A brilliant piece of work.

This book of verse written by Patricia McCormick is by far my favorite book we've read. It reminded me a great deal of the movie Slumdog Millionaire and the documentary, Born into Brothels. Although I have never been to India after seeing the movie,Slumdog Millionaire,  I often found myself wondering how and if these things were true and could actually happen in the world. I know it sounds ignorant, but it is so horrible, it is hard to picture it. After seeing the documentary, Born into Brothels, my eyes opened quite a bit. I was also able to connect to this book through my sister's experience in India. She went there for a year of her high school career and told us about her real life experience with what I've only seen in these movies. She spoke to the truth of these movies and how it affected her. I found the message this book had about sex trafficking to be extremely powerful and it once again taught me something new about the world outside of Saint Paul, MN.

This book, written entirely in verse, told a tragic story in such a beautiful way. Even in the midst of her torture, Lakshmi draws the audience in with her pain written out so beautifully. One vignette in particular titled, "A City Girl" speaks to her experience in an extremely powerful way: " I see my face reflected in a sliver glass on the wall. Another Lakshmi looks back at me. She has black-rimmed tiger eyes, a mouth red as pomegranate, and flowing hair like the tiny gold-pants woman in the TV" (101). 

There is another moment in the book that uses such an eerie metaphor is the vignette titled "Remote Control." This verse compares Lakshmi's experience at night, when the men come in, to the operations of a remote control and a TV: "Sometimes, I pretend that what goes on at night when the customers are here is not something that is happening to me. I pretend it is a TV show that I am watching from far, far away" (157). I thought this was so interesting because she uses this method of pretending as a coping mechanism and yet, it acted as such a well written metaphor.I found the remote control and television metaphor to be very eerie because these are things she did not have or need in her hometown, yet here she is relying on them to survive: to cope. 

This book of verse did a very good job of telling a story that needed to be told in order to inform its audience of sex trafficking. I think it was important that this book told a story in a nontraditional manner because it helped inform the audience in such a way that they could view the problem in a different light, perhaps making it more relatable. 

"Joyful Noise"

As I read "Joyful Noise," I returned to my childhood a little bit, but it wasn't really my childhood actually, it was just a childhood. This book of poems has the potential to be sweet and innocent, however, I found it to be irrelevant to my interests. Part of my indifference comes from the fact that I think this book is inappropriate for adolescents, its poems seem to speak to a much younger crowd. 


Although I find this book to be inappropriate for adolescents, I find this book to have a great deal of merit. The theme that resonates with me is that there is an abundance of life all around us and it is important to pay attention to even the smallest bit of life. This book definitely exemplified the use of free verse in poetry, additionally, the poems that used rhyme did so very well. I found that the free verse poems paired next to one another worked well, but only when read with a person out loud. It worked well because it was extremely musical. It provided harmony, which poetry usually cannot intentionally do. 


One poem in particular stuck out to me was, "The Moth's Serenade." I liked this poem because it was very dramatic with words such as "plight." This poem also showed a very deep relationship between the insect and the light, the light is the insects lifeline, this also proves to be very dramatic. In particular, the first stanza includes an excellent simile: "I drink your light like nectar. This simile creates a deep imagery of this insect depending on the light so deeply. 


Overall, although this book would definitely not be my first choice, I found its poems to be relaxing and musical, which is exactly what should occur in poetry. 

A Response to "Looking For Alaska" by John Green

This book had the theme of "Life is too short." However, what stuck with me and was interesting about this theme being applied in this book, was that the characters did not really take too much for granted. They lived in the moment and embraced their rebelliousness as a way of being apart of a community. 

I really appreciated the way John Green created the culture of this boarding school. Having absolutely no experience with boarding school personally, I found that it was similar to college except that these kids, even though they were put into adult situations and dealt with adult problems, were still very young and left to deal with these problems without the help of their parents. 

The most memorable part of this book was the narrator, Pudge. I loved how vulnerable his character was. He went to Culver Creek without having any friends or really having the confidence to make new friends. The second he gets to Culver Creek, he gets a nickname, which seems to be a necessity for the entrance into any sort of social circle. He immediately falls into the norms of the group, smoking, drinking, eating bufriedos. He then becomes completely infatuated with Alaska and her library, her beauty and all of her baggage. His character comes to Culver Creek with a bunch of "last words" but that seems to be pretty much it, he leaves at the end of the school year with a sense of belonging because he allowed himself to be vulnerable. Somehow, although his friends influenced him to do things that go against what the dominant adults of the novel expect and some social norms we as readers experience, the audience is left with a comfortable feeling that these "adult" experiences have shaped this young man. He now has a better understanding of himself and the world, which he now belongs: Culver Creek. 

I found that again and again, these kids were thinking, feeling and acting like adults, even in the midst of all their "pranking." In particular, when they shared their best/worst day stories. I found Pudge's reflections on Alaska's worst day to be beyond his years by far: "when she cried and told me that she fucked everything up, I knew what she meant now. And when she said she failed everyone, I knew whom she meant. It was the everything and everyone of her life, and so I could not help but imagine it: I imagined a scrawny eight-year-old with dirty fingernails, looking down at her mother convulsing. So she sat down with her dead-or-maybe-not-mother, who I imagine was not breathing by then but wasn't cold either. And in the time between dying and death a little Alaska sat with her mother in silence. And then through the silence and my drunkenness, I caught a glimpse of how she might have been. She must have come to feel so powerless...there comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow-that, in short, we are all going" (Green 120). 

Although a lengthy passage, I think it illustrates the fact that young adults can often have the mature thoughts of an adult. He made connections and took in a story about death, he reflected on it in an incredibly mature way. This passage, illustrates what this novel has to offer for young adults, a sense of respect for what they have to offer in the real world. An affirmation that yes, you can be taken seriously and yes your issues are worth hearing and they are important.