Strength in Before We Were Free

Hello, reader! Today, I would like to connect a book I am reading for my Social Studies class called Before We Were Free, to a newly launched, viral music video by Katy Perry. First of all, this particular book is a pretty good book in my opinion. It had a kind of slow beginning, and slow patches, but I feel that it is really coming together now that I am approaching the climax of the story. This story is about a 12 year old girl, Anita de la Torre, and her family living in the Dominican Republic during the time of a dictatorship (1960’s).  Anita lives a pretty good and stable life until people from her family start fleeing from the Dominican Republic to the United States. As the book progresses, you later learn that she was always thought to believe that their dictator, El Jefe (The Boss), is a good person until she gets other strong opinions from her political activist uncle, Tio Toni, parents, and  neighboring diplomats, The Washburns. Before We Were Free captures the essence of secrecy, an unstable government, and point of view from a child’s perceptive.

There is one part of the book were Lucinda, Anita’s sister, receives flowers from El Jefe. This is a terrible thing because El Jefe has a dirty reputation in the Dominican Republic for taking pretty teenage girls and making them whatever he wants because he is a dictator. What he does with them was not straight forward in the book, but it makes you believe that he rapes them. Obviously, it was something as atrocious as that based on the family’s reactions. Anita is so upset, confused, cautious of men now considering the previous incident. She says that she wants to cut her hair, change into men’s clothes, and change her identity to become as equal and respected as a man is there. This connects to the music video, Part of Me by Katy Perry because the video revolves around becoming equal, showing that she has integrity, strength (physically and mentally), perseverance, and courage by joining the army after her boyfriend or fiancé cheats on her. In the video, she does cut her hair, changes into masculine clothes, and covers any feminine parts of her body like how Anita wants to. Katy, in the video, becomes this “Joan of Arc” character that Anita strives to be and describes throughout the book.
I feel that this is an important topic to share to the female sex especially and I am glad that both of these pieces of media or communications are famous and respected. Thanks for reading!

Part of Me by Katy Perry

My Perspective on Let America Be America Again

Hello, reader! Today, I’d like to share my opinion and evaluate a poem and time we learned about in our English class. It’s called Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes. Previously in English, we have been looking at his poems and studied the rhyme scheme, figurative language, and finally evaluated it. When I was looking at it closely, I found some lines very interesting. The way he puts his point across fascinates me. Actually this whole conflict that took place in the US appeals to me! That is why I decided to write about it.

I think that one of the things I like the most is learning about is how the people of this time reacted to all the events that surrounded them. At first I had this idea that all the African Americans hated what the White people for what they had done to them all those years, becoming more aggressive and wary of them. But by reading the lines, “But opportunity is real, and life is free.” and “Must bring back our mighty dream.” He doesn’t seem aggressive or wary at all. In fact, you could look at it as if he’s being positive to working together and reaching their final destination of equality. I feel like this is a very bold and wise way of thinking.  Now, I do understand that some people did believe violence and hatred towards other races was right but Langston Hughes and others easy to idolize at the time were very courageous and smart because they knew that the way others treated them was not right to repeat. In many cases that I’ve seen recently like in the movie The Help, the character Abilene had a very respectful poise to negative comments and same goes to Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Langston Hughes. By realizing this, it makes me feel proud of these role models. That they could make positive decisions even though nasty events and words came their way. 

After I’d thought and thought about this piece of writing, I wondered how I would react if I was put in their position. Now that I think of it, I think I would just be as nasty as they were to me since they would put me in such misery and rage. It’s just remarkable what these people did.

Thanks for reading!