Final Blog for Literature Circle

For Literature Circle, I read The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria. I will be responding to Marina Nikolic's book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, to whom I was paired with in the Liturature Circle discussion group on the 3rd meeting. 

Whereas The Post-American World talks about the current status of nations that are up against the U.S., The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells a story of how Henrietta Lacks, supposedly an African-American woman who had her cells stolen by white doctors, during a cervical cancer operation. When our groups met up to discuss the key ideas of both our books, we found there were very little to nil information we could connect to each others' book. However with the very little information, our group found a connection, which involved challenging the status quo.

In The Post-American World, author Fareed Zakaria talks about and focuses on the "rise of everyone else". A lot of what Zakaria talks about focuses on how the world is advancing; countries utilizing ideas and influences to increase a country's status for the better. Some of the key players that are up against the U.S. are China, Japan, India, France, Germany, and many more. Again, Zakaria mentions how the U.S.'s stance is still higher than that of other nations, which makes the U.S. still a superpower. He talks about how if America does not continue to improve its status, then other rising nations will soon snag the throne of being the international superpower, an interesting yet fearful thing to think about. According to Zakaria, "Ever since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., the U.S. has walked the world like a colossus, unrivaled and unchecked. This had its benefits, but it made Washington arrogant, careless, and lazy" (Zakaria, 219). Just as we discussed in our group, some American's being patriotic and all, doesn't want to admit the fact that the U.S. is slowly coming to a decline. The truth is, what's happening in today's world - the rise of other countries - challenges the status quo because of the fact that some Americans are just too used to what they think of what things used to be, which to them still applies today.

The status quo is also challenged in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, given the fact that doctors stole her cells for their own benefits, which changed Henrietta Lacks life forever. As Marina talks about in her blog post, this event made such an impact to Skloot (the author), it got her to write the book and her finding information on the whereabouts of Lacks to write her book. Sadly, Lack's unfortunate experience brought us to have new medical findings; at the same time challenging the status quo, yet showing sign of an adjacent possible.

Through the connections made, I can conclude by saying that challenging the status quo brought, or shows hints of changing the things around us all together.

Zakaria, Fareed. The Post-American World. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009. 219. Print. 

Image's origin - http://www.nicholashind.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/changes.jpg

Captured Thought: Visualizing Millions of Thoughts All At Once

There's the old saying that a picture has a million stories alone. Sadly, some cannot capture the arrow in the FedEx logo or see through optical allusions. The thing is, even the most simplest things can have a profound meaning, with endless possibilities. So now if you're wondering what "Now I got it!" moment I've captured in my head, let me introduce you to Mr. E.E. Cummings.

In class, reading Mr. Cummings poems seemed redundant and meaningless, so meaningless in fact I literally wanted to tear my packet of poems and feed them to live eels! Going past the philistine moment I've had, Mr. Allen opened one of my eyes to allow the myself and the class to envision something greater, yet complex. When we were going through the "1(a...(a leaf falls on loneliness)" poem, he talked about how when the poem is written vertically, as he claimed Mr. Cummings insisted on doing, he talks about how the poem was formed, in accordance to the shape with words and symbols. Apparently the falling leaf falls according to the smooth curvature of the words and symbols. Then I opened both my eyes to welcome the limitless ideas that stormed into my brain, happily envisioning what E.E. Cummings could've thought of writing the poem. I envisioned a tree with an empty spot, showing that the leaf fell out. I also saw the meaning in accordance to the words, loneliness; like having a leaf fall inside you.

So that concludes my "Now I got it!" moment. I started off mad, if not furious and with a despise consisting of great intensity. I realized what vertical listening was from last semester, an adjacent possible for this activity we've conducted in class. It's like playing a guitar, you never know what tone, rhythm, or chaos you're gonna orchestrate once you start composing and playing.

Image's origin - http://www.recyclethis.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/guitar_strings.jpg