"The Importance of Work"

The article dealing with "The Catcher in the Rye" made alot of points about banning the book and why it should be banned in schools and from libraries. To me I thought all of this was rediculous and blown out of porportion because there is nothing wrong with the book.
To begin I am not a big reader and reading is not something that I enjoy doing. However, "The Catcher in the Rye" was actually not a bad book and I didn't mind reading it for school. It was one of the more interesting books of the year. If it was banned from schools then we would most likely be stuck reading another boring book that I would have no interest in and in turn learn and take nothing from. By providing schools with interesting books, kids will read more and learn more as I did.
Also I think the reasons for banning it were blown out of porpotion. It was mostly the language and realism of the book that made certain people want to ban it. I believe that the people tryin to ban it for these reasons were ill informed about the real importance of the book and what this language showed. Anyone can talk to a group of parents and show profanity in a book being read by their kids and say that this needs to be banned. Most parents will also agree and try to ban it to protect their kids, but this is before they are informed about how the language is being used. If the parents were to read the book themselves I believe that many opinions would be changed.
The majority of kids reading "The Catcher in the Rye" are young adults. They are mostly 17 and 18 year old seniors in high school and are at the point where they can maturely read a book like this one. The profanity is used to show the readers about innocence. For example it talked about the "fuck yous" sketched on the walls of the schools, but this wasn't thrown in for no reason. We found out the Holden wanted to protect his sister from learning what the word meant because she was young and still had here innocence and innocence is a big theme of the book.
Finally it was said that the realism of the book could set a bad role model for kids. I don't thing that Holden is a role model in any sense, especially for seniors in high school. All the things that Holden does that are bad are shown as bad things so we would learn from his mistakes if anything. His flunking from schools leave him with a bad life that most kids would not want to have so he isn't teaching us to flunk out of school.
All of the reasons described in the article about why the book should be banned are rediculous and blown out of porportion. Anyone wanting to ban this book is either ill informed about the true content or just doesn't understand what the young audience is learning from the book. I can vouch as a young reader and say that I learned alot from it and it should continue to be read. In my mind there is nothing that says Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" should be banned.

Color Rap (Final).mp3


Color Rap

[Chorus]
Some people are blue, some people are white
Some people are black like the color of the night
Some people are silver, some people are brown
Some people are gold like the color of a crown
Some people are purple, some people are yellow
Sittin around like a cowardly fellow
Some people are red, some people are green
I hope you get the message I’ma show you what I mean

[Verse 1]
Now sometimes I’m blue and sometimes I’m red
When I’m blue I’m calm
When I’m red it’s on
Cause this is when I’m angry
I’m showin my aggression
But it ain’t very often it isn’t my obsession

Most the time I’m yellow
Not in a coward way
I’m the life of the party
I’m like it err day
And I’m hot like the sunshine
Slow down when you passin
Just like a hazard sign
I don’t wanna see you crashin
Yellow’s for return
We see it more and more
On the backs of cars
Helpin soldiers home from war
My brothers a marine
So I know what this mean
And he’ll have the same fear
When I do the same next year

Yellow means happiness
Yellow means joy
This has been my style
Since I was a little boy
Now you know what I’m like
I’ll be yellow all my life
And when I get older
Hope I find a yellow wife!!

[Chorus]

[Verse 2]
On the other hand I’m gray
I like to help people
I’m reliable as night and day
I’m intelligent mature
And most the time secure
This is the good
It’s all good in the hood

But sometimes it’s bad
When I’m bored
When I’m sad
These are things that gray can be
They’re not good
They’re the negatives of me
I don’t like them cuz they’re bad
But there’s gotta be some … bad
For good to be had

[Chorus]

Beat - Young Jeezy - Air Forces

In my barn, hanging on the wall is a snowmobile bumper. It’s black metal with red stripes on the sides and the word Polaris in white. It used to be straight in the front and curved at the ends to take on the shape of the front of the machine. It no longer has this shape. Now the front curves in about a foot and takes on a shape that is similar to the outside of a tree. This is because a tree is what I crashed the snowmobile into that the bumper belonged to. Also much of the front of the bumper has scuffed and chipped paint.
My family has four snowmobiles. Snowmobiling was always one of my favorite things to do when it snowed and had been until one night. I was riding with my brother and his friend on the old train tracks like we usually do. I knew all of the trails because we’ve ridden them plenty of times. My brother was leading, I was in the middle, and my brothers’ friend was in the back. We weren’t flying through the trails on this particular night, but we were moving along at a good pace. The next thing I remembered, I was sliding face down through the snow, trying to catch my breath while snow was being shoved into my mouth. I finally came to a stop, got up, and looked behind me only to see my sled slammed up against a tree. I ran back to it and didn’t know what to do. My brother and his friend were both back by the sled, and at this point, asking if I was ok and what happened. I said I was fine, but had no idea what happened. I just sort of got thrown from my snowmobile and went sliding through the snow. Well I called my dad to bring the trailer and we towed the sled to the road. We also found out that there was a log under the snow that I clipped with my ski and this is what threw me from the sled. After thinking about the crash and the speed that my sled hit the tree at, it may actually have been a life saving factor that I was thrown off. If not, I most likely would’ve gone head first into the tree at around 50 or 60 mph and even wearing a helmet I could’ve been seriously injured or killed.
After putting a lot of thought into these possibilities I decided to rethink my decisions and I realized that everyone that has ever tried to warn kids about dangers in life is absolutely right. We as teenagers are not invincible. We always think that we can do anything we want and that nothing is going to happen to us, but really it can. We are just as likely to get killed as a 90 year old man. This was the point in my life that I decided I need to change.
Every day as I walk out to my truck I can see into the barn where that mangled bumper hangs. This is a great reminder to me of how lucky I was and how I want to stay. When I think about that I decide that when I’m going out somewhere I should leave a little early so I don’t have to drive real fast. If I am late it’s better to be five or ten minutes late than to get in an accident. I know that this may sound corny to the readers because I sound like an after school special. This is what all of our teachers and parents tell us every day of our lives and how to be safe and all. I’m not saying this in a corny way, but after the close experience I had I feel that life is more precious and I don’t want it ending before I’m ready.
This experience hasn’t changed my personality in any ways. I’m still the same person I’ve always been. I enjoy riding snowmobiles still and I ride quads and like speed and having fun. I like joking around and doing seemingly stupid things. I just try my best to do this in a safer manner. I’ve gotten older and a little more experienced and I know my limitations so I hold myself to them. I have just as much fun as I did before the accident. I’m just a safer individual.
The snowmobile bumper hanging in my barn is a symbol of how lucky I was that one night of my life and how precious life is. The accident did nothing to me physically, but it changed the way I think about things. It hasn’t changed me completely, but I feel that I am a safer person. I still have just as much fun as I always have and my personality is exactly the same. Life is just a little more meaningful and I would like to stay here as long as I can.

Book Review

The Color of Water
By James McBride
291 pages. Riverhead Books. $14.00

As a child, James McBride grew up blind to his background as well as his mothers Ruth’s. He grew up as a black child in Harlem with a white mother. When he finally realized that she was different, she would tell him to mind his own business as a way of protecting him. The Color of Water, by James McBride, is an autobiographical memoir about his life and a tribute to the life of his mother.

This memoir takes place in two different time periods as well as settings. The reader is switched from Ruth’s life to James’s life as often as the chapters switch. McBride does a great job of making the story flow even while switching the point of view of the book every chapter. Most of Ruth’s life as a kid takes place in Suffolk, Virginia. This is a little town down south where she grew up and her family ran a store. The reader is given a vivid picture of the town, the store, and the family without hundreds of lines of straight description. The same can be said for James’s chapters in the book. He grew up in Harlem, New York with his mother and sisters and brothers. The reader again gets a good sense of what the city is like and what James is going through considering his family’s situation.

James McBride is the author as well as the Narrator of the book. He spends most of his time looking for racial and religious identity so he can figure out who he is as a person. His mother won’t tell him so when he is old enough, he visits the town that his mother grew up in to try and learn. He seems as though he cannot be satisfied in life until he learns of his past as well as his mothers past.

Ruth McBride is James’s mother. She grew up in a very Jewish southern family. Her parents believed strongly in their religion and even forced her at some points to follow their beliefs. Her father was a very racist man, but even growing up in this southern family Ruth had different morals. She grew up to marry a black man and change her religion, however, religion was still a major part of her life.

Tateh is Ruth’s father. He started his family’s store in Suffolk. This is where he raised Ruth and where she spent most of her time. He would force Ruth to work long hours in the store and she had little time for anything else. Also Tateh took every chance he could get to cheat the black man. He would purposely charge them extra on all their purchases just because he hated them. Finally, he would force his religious beliefs on Ruth to the point that she couldn’t even enter a church for school graduation.

The Color of Water weaves back and forth between the lives of James and Ruth. The reader learns about both of their lives and their struggles and successes in these lives. James gets involved with drugs and we see what comes of this. Also Ruth gets involved with prostitution, but finds her way out. Also we see how a poor family is able to accomplish so much and how Ruth is able to put all of her children through school. This is a colorful memoir discussing the themes of race, religion, and self-motivation, that is a great read for anybody interested. I would highly recommend this book to anyone.

The Color of Water

“The community put such a premium on success. And you had no excuse to blame racism or discrimination as a reason why you couldn’t succeed.” Ed Smith

I believe that this quote best describes the section of the memoir that I am currently reading. I just recently finished a part of the book dealing with the schooling of James and his siblings and we find out here that mommy believed very strongly in success in school. It wasn’t so much the community that put a premium on success, it was mommy. She made it so that her children could succeed. However, it was hard for her children because they were black, but she sent them to predominantly Jewish schools, which in turn made them the token black students. This quote is really showing that regardless of the racism or discrimination an individual or group of people receives, the community’s focus on success is what leads people to succeed.

In The Color of Water, this is not the case. It is quite the opposite of this quote. Although the students, especially James are succeeding in school, they are being knocked back because of racism. If it wasn’t for them being as smart as they are, they would not be doing well in school and this would be strictly based on racism and discrimination. We can see how this happens through the teachers in the chapter, School. “…despite the racist attitudes of many of our teachers, who were happy to knock our 95 test scores down to 85’s and 80’s over the most trivial mistakes.” (McBride, 89) This goes directly against the quote and even though mommy has put such a premium on success, racism and discrimination is a big reason why these kids could not succeed.