In Gloria Anzaldua's article, "Tlilli Tlapalli: The Path of the Red and Black Ink," she starts by giving her background as child.  She would stay up late at night, reading under her covers.  She tried to hide this from her mother, but sharing a bed with her sister, she was threatened.  Her sister told her that if she would not read her a story every night that she would tell mother she reads under the covers.  One story soon turned into two stories a night.  Gloria explains that you could coax any Mexican into telling a story just by nudging them.  Gloria tells the reader how writing makes her cope with things easier.  If she does not write for a period of time it sickens her, yet she finds herself getting caught up in seventeen hours straight of writing.  She uses writing as a symbol or a way to explain things in her every day schedule.  Some societies accept art differently, or the way of writing.  In saying this, she is speaking of the Western and tribal cultures.  She reconstructs ideas through writing, making them as images or 'scenes'.  Gloria says this heals her, and makes her have great joy.  Sometimes she will shut herself out from everything, put headphones on, cover her eyes, and just connect the images in her head to writing or soundtracks.  To write or be a writer, Gloria believes a person must trust and believe in themselves as a speaker.  A lack of belief in the creative self is a lack of belief in the total self.  Images, words, and stories must arise from the human body to be transformed into different ways of writing.

COMPARE
     I would compare Gloria's article with the video we were shown towards the beginning of the semester called, "Beyond the Red Ink".  While they may have similar titles, that is not why I would choose the two.  The video we had watched not only explained the way a paper could be graded, but the meaning behind the words.  When a teacher grades a paper, they might be using red ink.  The red ink is not what is important, but the words behind the ink.  Gloria's article goes into agreeing with this, because behind the red and black ink comes images, stories, personal experiences.  Once the ink is written on the paper, there is meaning behind the words.  It is up to the reader to figure out the puzzle of what the words mean, and how they affect them in a positive or negative way.  When grading a paper it could be the positive or negative depending on how well the paper is written.  When reading a story it depends on how passionate the writer feels about what he or she has written.

QUESTION
      I understood her article, and what she meant by her use of examples.  I did have one question, and that is what did the different languages in her writing mean?  I wish they would have been translated, and I could know more of her ideas.  I understand that is her language and culture, but to reach out to everyone it should have been translated or expressed where everyone could understand it.


OPINION
     Overall, I enjoyed reading this article, because she used a personal experience.  I appreciate when a writer uses a personal experience when expressing their ideas.  It gives their reading background information.  It could also help to show why the feel so strongly to write what they are writing about.  Towards the end, I was kind of thrown off as to why she talks about a pregnant woman being up all night.  I then came to terms that she used that as an example to express how writing could keep her up all night, just like an unborn child could keep a pregnant woman awake.  She used very useful examples to help me understand her reading, and gain a little of knowledge from it as well.

VIEWPOINT
The Laugh of Medusa
Helene Cixous

     Overall, I hated this reading.  I understand she is talking for a woman's perspective, but I found her to be sexist.  I barely understood it, and I find it hard to believe she even knows what she is writing about.

     My question would have to be, Does she think women are not able to voice their opinion? I think man and woman are just as nervous as each other.  I also believe, that men and women both express their points in giving it their all (their body, as she says in her writing) if they are passionate about what they are speaking of.

     In David L Wallace and Jonathan Alexander's article, "Queer Rhetorical Agency: Questioning Narratives of Heteronormativity" they explain how some English teachers may not be prepared to teach about the LGBT community.  They also talk about how homosexuals are placed into a discourse community, and that it may be different from other communities.  They can be ridiculed by the public, and it might be harder to understand their kinds of writing.  In their article they help the reader to understand how writings may be different from a homosexual's point of view.  It may be harder for a teacher to explain and teach this to a class, because it is not as widely studied as other compositions in English.  They use different scholars and their articles that we have read from in the past to help explain their reasoning. 

     I would compare this Malinowitz article, "Queer Texts, Queer Contexts," because she also talks about the lesbian, gay, bisexual community.  She talks about how they were also treated differently by other discourse communities. 

     I found this article to be interesting, because not many people talk about the LGBT community.  Some people may find this a little awkward to talk about in a matter of if someone else were to get offended.  This reading felt a little longer than usual, but it had a good point of reading.  I agree that teachers should make a little more of an effort to help students learn more about this type of discourse community.  It would make classrooms a little more easy going with the subject, and this way children could learn about this at a younger age.  It is everywhere in today's society, and keeps growing as the years go on.  Children might as well become more educated at a younger age, because it is something they will see no matter what as they grow older.  It could also help a child who might have mixed feelings to realize that it is alright to feel certain ways, and they are not alone.

     In Lisa Delpit's article, "The Politics of Teaching Literature Discourse," she explains the racism and the ability of a person to adopt different discourse communities.  She was reading Gee's article and was concerned by two major ideas.  She thought it was odd that just because the way a person has been brought up they are put into a specific discourse community.  This is because of their background.  She also found it hard that a group of people or an individual might be required to become part of a different discourse community.  This would cause that person to be forced to share their values and beliefs.  She notices this is mainly for the women and minorities, which play into the racism role.  Many women in older days were expected to fall into the discourse of what their husbands believed true, whether they agreed with the idea or not.  She brings up Bell Hooks, (which she did not capitalize in the book) and how she was one of the only blacks in her class, yet would write in her manner of speaking.  Her teacher and colleagues agree with this, and liked it, telling her to write more like this.  Overall, she does not so much agree with Gee when she analyzed his work.  She feels this makes it so that people can not as easily educate poor children or children of color.  Teaching should not be exciting for the teacher, and want to teach any child no matter what race or how rich or poor they may be.

     In Geneva Smitherman's article, "God Don't Never Change":Black English from a Black Perspective, she explains basically what it is like to be black with a 'black english background.'  This is not widely accepted, and she talks about how other people expect everyone to write the same way as the 'white english.'  There are a lot of grammatical and punctuation errors in her writing if you follow the way I was taught in English class.  She makes a statement on page 192 of a boy turning in his paper about his thoughts on the Vietnam War.  His grammar is not what would be expected of the English teacher, and is handed back to him.  Geneva finds this horrific, because she said the teacher is not teaching what is at hand.  The grammar should not be the first thing noticed, but the thoughts of the boy, and how he feels within his writing.  He is expressing his feelings through his own 'voice' even if it is grammatically incorrect.  He writes the way he speaks.  At the end of her article she explains what is expected of 'speaking proper.'  A rich man could be singing one thing about God, yet a poor man could be singing another in the same tone of voice, yet they both mean something completely different in the way they speak.

     Out of the two articles, I personally like Geneva's article the most.  I liked it, because I was reading someone speaking through a different voice, even if it might not be correct punctuation or grammar in my eyes.  Everyone is different when they speak or write, and she owns up to her writing.  It makes me realize the teachers in her writing seems almost racist, because she tells the college student to redo his paper, because of his grammar.  This is the way he speaks on a normal basis, being this is the way he writes.  He is still expressing his thoughts and feelings as well as all the other students, just in different spelling, and sentence structure.

                This past weekend I had a very odd learning experience that I had not expected to happen.  I decided to go home this weekend to spend time with friends and family I had not seen in a while.  I got home around Friday afternoon, and did not plan on leaving until Tuesday evening, since I do not have any classes until Wednesday. 

                On Saturday night, my boyfriend and I got invited to our friend Brandon’s house for a party with some old friends.  We spent time with our families through the day, and decided to drive to Brandon’s house around eight in the evening.  The party was in a field by his pound in the back of his house.  About twenty people showed up before nine.  As the party was getting started, Brandon brought out his Razor (to explain in detail, this is like a miniature jeep with a roll cage, that can be used for riding in the woods during hunting season or for recreational activity).  I had rode in a Razor before, but never with Brandon.  I had assumed he knew how to drive it carefully, and asked if he would take me a ride on it through the field.  As soon as we had gotten into the Razor, he started to speed up a hill.  I did not have time to put on my seatbelt, because I had no clue we would be going so fast.  As soon as we got to the top of hill, we seen a few deer run across the front of us.  I yelled for Brandon to slow down, and instead of slowing down he made the sharpest turn possible.  If there would not have been a small ditch in the ground, we would have been fine.  There ended up being a ditch, and he had turned to sudden, causing the 1,000lb Razor to flip on my side!  As soon as the Razor started to flip, I realized that we were falling to my side, and I had no seatbelt.  I started to panic, because I was not sure if I was going to fly out or not.  I pushed upwards on the roof as hard as possible, and slunk down into the seat.  As soon as the car slammed to the ground, I could not hold my body any longer, and fell to the ground onto the roll bar.  I had fallen on my back, and seen Brandon above me.  Brandon fell straight on top of my chest, causing me to lose my breath, and it became very hard for me to breathe.  He crawled out, and I slowly made my way out behind him.  Not until I got up and tried to walk did I realize how injured I actually was.  Since we were over the hill, nobody had actually seen us flip, and had no clue what happened.  I had to walk back for help, and finally everyone had realized what happened.  A few of the other guys helped flip the Razor back over, and tried to restart it.  My boyfriend Cory had to rush me to the emergency room, because it started to become harder for me to breathe, and I was unable to breathe in or move my neck.  It was a rough ride to the ER.  As soon as we got there the hospital did everything wrong they could possibly do.  They did not put me in a neck brace until an hour later, which should have been done right away.  The guy putting my IV in did not wear gloves, until I had thrown a fit about how unsanitary this was, and failed to keep my IV in the first time, collapsing my vein.  He tried a second time in a place he was later yelled at for trying, because it is not a good place, and the third time someone else was asked to come in and give me the IV.  I was given many different types of pain medicine, mainly Morphene.  I had to get a few X-rays done, and spend most of my night in the hospital. 

                I was finally released about six hours later, and learned my lesson to always wear a seatbelt no matter what kind of riding device I am in!  I also learned to always stay aware of what is going on in the hospital, because not everyone is sanitary and knows what they are doing. 

***This actually IS a true story, and did happen to me this past Veteran’s Day weekend.  Everything in the story is true, without any dramatization.

     In Victor Villanueva's article, "Memoria Is a Friend of Ours: On the Discourses of Color," he aims towards students towards the end of his article.  He talks about racism and the discourse community of different races throughout America.  He is Puerto Rican, and he talks about his mother having an Italian name, yet he doesn't give his mother's name.  He explains different stories and writings about different individuals and their race, and how it might not have been accepted.  He explains that each different race is almost like a discourse community.  Even though these discourse communities might not all share the same goals, they are individuals that are looked at in the same aspect.

     I would compare this article with John Berger's article about women self-surveying themselves or men doing this to the women.  I would compare these two, because men surveying women could almost be considered sexist, because they are judging the woman by her looks and they way they think she acts, rather than by her personally.  In Victor's writing he explains that people could also judge someone by their heritage, color of their skin, or ethnic background.  He explains that these people are placed into a discourse community, sometimes without even realizing they are part of it just because of their physical appearance.  This could be classified as racist, and plays a kind of similar role as being sexist.

     I found this article kind of hard to follow, because the way it was written.  I found it hard to decipher when he was telling his own personal view, to when he was talking about a writing someone else had previously.  I did like the part when he talks about what he told his kids to do.  He tells them to talk to their grandfather, and get every bit of information out of him that they can about his heritage.  He does this, because he does not want it to be lost, and anyone forget about their history.  He tells them to ask about his father, his childhood, the army, etc.  He tells them to also ask their grandmother, which is his mother.  He makes it clear that it will not be as hard to get her talking about it, because she loves to talk. 

     In Paul Heilker and Melanie Yergeau's article, "Autism and Rhetoric," they talk about autism, and how it is defined by people today.  They make it clear that some people are not even sure what autism is, or if it should be labeled as an illness, disease, or disability.  Doctors are still unaware of what even causes autism.  In the article Heilker shows his personal experience with autism, because his son is autistic.  Melanie also has a very personal experience, because SHE is autistic.  She explains how even being autistic she can prove scholars wrong, because she can still read and write in some of the same manners as others do everyday.  She even proves this by the article her and Paul have written together. 

COMPARE
     I would compare this article with the last article we had read, being Elizabeth Wardles, "Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces."  I would compare it to this one, because they both discuss the identity of an individual.  The also show the authority a person can have on their own way of reading or writing, and how they comprehend things.  Also, people who may be autistic could be learning to write in new workplaces everyday.  It might be a struggle for them more than others, making it a harder task and they need to keep learning. 

     I personally liked reading this article.  I found it very interesting, because both Paul and Melanie have their own share of personal experiences within the topic they wrote about.  I found it easy to keep reading, because you can tell how passionate they both are on the topic, because it touches them in different ways.  I have a younger cousin who is autistic, and I see him struggle with some things that others might be able to learn very quickly.  He is a very smart little boy, but I understand the struggle of being autistic, especially at his young age.  I am glad that there are articles written about things like autism and reading/writing.  It's something we face everyday, because it is around us all the time, even if we want to accept it or not.