Post 2: "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan

The author of "Mother Tongue" describes how she grew up her entire life hearing her mother speak "broken" English and how used to it she was. It had gotten to a point where she spoke that same way and thought or felt that her mother's English was perfect/proper. Society made her realize that the English she was used to wasn't really understandable, or as she thought, proper. The author managed to bring back experiences and thoughts that I've personally had relating to my English and my family's English. I can actually relate to this a lot, as many people might already know. Although I have an accent, I feel like I speak somewhat properly. My English isn't broken, I just sound different. Ha ha! On the other hand though, my family's English can be considered broken but I can still understand them completely even when what they said makes no sense to any other person. I guess its because I know what they tried to say in Spanish and realize that they translated it in a way that doesn't make sense in English, but I completely get the idea of what they tried to say and many times correct them. I feel like the theme of the story is that people, including me, need to understand that not only our peers influence our way of expressing ourselves (talking), but our families have influence as well and it doesn't mean that our English is proper or perfect just because we're used to the way they talk.

Post 1: "Champion of the Wolrd" by Maya Angelou

The author of "Champion of the World" created a really vivid and detailed image of the moments lived by the African-American people. Even though the story is told from a little girl's perspective, she describes the anxiousness, nervousness, excitement, and hope that black people felt while listening to a boxing match, specially the ones that gathered at Uncle Willie's store. The boxer, Joe Louis, who was also black and viewed as a hero by all of them, was fighting a white man. The lost of this fight represented degradation to the African-American people. They felt that if he lost, the accusations of being "lower types of humans beings", and that even God himself hated them, were true. On the other hand, a victory would mean that they were the strongest in the world. From what I understood, the authors feels that if Joe Louis won, they were going to be more respected and that it would prove that white people weren't any superior to black people.