Something I found intriguing in my first letter, Your First Line, was that it encouraged you to embrace complexity. Colum McCann likens writing your first line to, “being told to walk a tightrope. Go ahead, then, walk the tightrope! Relax yourself into the tension of the wire.” Often in writing it’s very easy to lose […]
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This week we read two textbook chapters, a PDF document, and a scroll painting. The first chapter, “Mount Kunlun, the Jade Mountain, and the Queen Mother of the West” talks about the symbolism behind each mountain and what it represents in Chinese culture. The Queen Mother of the West lived on Jade Mountain which incited […]
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This week, one of the letters I read was Grace Bedell to Abraham Lincoln and I honestly loved it so much. What struck me was how she doesn’t fully realize the depths of what it means to not have the ability to vote, she considers herself to have so much power. A belief she’s able […]
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This week we only read two things, a textbook chapter and a Tang Dynasty story. The chapter titled “Explaining the Extraordinary and the Creation of Fiction” talked about stories and fiction. Giving the many reasons why people would compile and record stories but I found the Buddhists reason for doing it very interesting. Essentially Buddhists […]
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February 15, 3020 Center City, Arcus To Myself, Sometimes, I can barely tell one day from the next. It’s like there’s a fog in my mind that just won’t lift and I don’t know why. Mom and Dad don’t know about this, imagine if they did? Their head son who’s supposed to one day take […]
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Can You Ever Forgive Me? Is just a circle of causes and effects. It all starts with Lee’s anger and frustration which can stem from her dissatisfaction with her career. She had a book on the New York Times bestseller list and yet no one knows who she is; her books are barely selling and […]
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This week we read/listened to a variety of sources that all talked about Buddhism or Buddhist hell. Chapter 17, titled, “Buddhist Hell: Overview and Structure” talked a lot about the ten kings and how karma was now playing into people’s beliefs about the afterlife. Now your actions while you were living decided the type of […]
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Surprisingly, throughout The Gift, Lily May Bell (who was renamed Mabel) was discussed in every single letter despite not actually writing any of her own letters. The only information the reader of her is from the letters of her adopted and biological parents and the afterword. She has such a strong presence in the work […]
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This week I read an article called Beyond The Terra-cotta Warriors and generally it was a main overview of what the terracotta warriors were but didn’t go into much detail. When looking further into the author of the article I found out that the author was a student at Vassar college, completing this article as […]
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During times of great turmoil, there’s an increased fervor to protect your loved ones which results in various forms of censorship. This leads to a forced attitude that portrays a false sense of security to the public. This concept, along with the forms of censorship, is shown to be universal even between warring countries like […]
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