Reflection for "Castro's Last Battle" by Jon Lee Anderson

Families around the world slowly keep on falling apart. The families are still together but as generations go, they connect less. Families before would always be together and they would connect with things better because that was one of the many traditions in the past. The women and the daughters would cook and clean together and the men and their sons would hunt together. Now the children in the families are more apart. They have their own lives out of the house and they start to use that one more than the life in the house. Some families, according to how they were raised to be, don’t interact through out the day; the family members spend it doing their own things. By doing this, they families grow apart and when they need help from someone, they can’t trust their family to help. Other families are the opposite; they trust each other and spend most of their time together. These families are the ones that stick together and are the ones that are more alike to the ones that they had in the past. These families are all different and there are positive and negative things about bout of them. One type trusts each other and they can lean on each others shoulder for help, but the other is able to make mistakes on their own and learn from them.

In this article, the Castro family first doesn’t trust each other and later they do. When they do not trust each other, Fidel Castro orders a secretary for Raul Castro to help him do things right. They also do not talk to each other a lot. The family is so big that they don’t remember what job the other is in. Also in the news reports, they did not know exactly how many children and ex-wives he has had. I think this means that he didn’t tell anybody about them because he doesn’t care about them that much. In another part of the article, they say that Fidel Castro expected that, when he dies, his brother, Raul, would continue after him. Here it means that Fidel trusted his brother, along with other people, would be able to continue doing is job right. At the end of the article it talked about a baseball game in the end. At the baseball game a few of the family members were their. This shows me that they cared about Fidel that they went to the baseball game to watch. Also some of the family members had a job there.

In my family, I think that we would use both types of family’s. We all stick together and we trust each other. When we are stuck in a problem we always know that we have each other to go to for help, but we also know that we can try to resolve it alone. We feel as if we can try to be independent but we remember that we can trust the other person and be able to ask them for help. I think that this type of family is good because we all are able to make mistakes and learn from them but we are also able to ask each other for help. In our family we also know how to keep our own secrets. We each trust each other but still it is always good to have secrets and that is how we are.

Reflections for "Camp Justice" by Jeffrey Toobin

Discussions are what people use to change things and to get peoples ideas on how to change something. They discus about the situation and give their ideas to it so that the final solution is one that the greater amount of people agree on. Also it is a way for everybody to know that it was a fair decision. Changing things is always a hard thing to do and asking other peoples opinions to help them is what most people do. They talk with each other to finalize the situation and to come to an agreement. Getting to that agreement is also something that is hard. Obviously many people have their own ideas about something and they all want it to go their way so not many people let the other person win with the discussion. What people do is try to include everyone’s thought in the agreement but that is also very hard to do. This is why discussions can sometimes go on for a long period of time according to the importance of the situation.

In “Camp Justice”, Political parties are trying to get to an agreement about were they are going to put the prisoners of Guantanamo after they close it. In Guantanamo, they have many areas like Camp X-ray and Camp Delta. In these places they have different Camps were they keep different type of people. Some are the ones that carry useful information, others are “High Value” to them, and some are dangerous and so on. All these Camps have a very bad environment in which they do not treat the prisoners how it is expected in the US. They think that since the Camps are not in the US, they can treat them how they want. In the camps there are many prisoners that people thought it was at best to keep them their, they are many. This is why the question is: What will they do with all the prisoners once they decide to close Guantanamo? This question is a very hard one to answer and that is why the government is trying to make answers with discussions. I think that it is a very hard matter to discuss because many people have many different ideas about it. It is something that might be very important to discuss and very hard to include everyone’s ideas. One idea that was used was to use a national-security court. At the end they still do not have an answer to the question after all the discussions that they have. So one question I have is: When will they finally have the solution to this problem?

Discussion is something that also is present in my family a lot. Something that we do to try to keep the family more united (it works) is by resolving problems as a family. This involves discussions with all of us and finding a solution all together. This is something that we have been using in our family as long as I can remember so it is something that everyone is used to. If I could, I would even tell other people about our method and show them how useful it is to discuss all together. Not only does this keep us united, but it also help us remember that whenever we have a problem, we can talk to anybody from the family and be able to trust the family. This shows that discussions aren’t just useful to use in the government but also in families and everything else; it helps reach good solutions by listening to everyone’s ideas and in the end find the correct solution.

Reflection for "Out of the darkness" by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz

Reading an interview of an author can tall you a lot about them and how they write. When I read about her life and learned about some of the violence in her life like her husband going to war, I thought that I new why she wrote suck a shocking story. When a writer writes, they some times, not intestinally, put some of their life in the story. Then when people read the stories that this author wrote, they can tell that he might have been hurt through out his/her life. A story can sometimes be read psychologically.

At the end of the interview she asks the questions. “What does war do to families? And what does war actually do to the common person, to the human being? I think that war hurts families very strongly. Anything that happens in a family that is strong, it will affect the family emotionally either in a negative or a positive way. And what war does to the human being is worse. The violence in the war is so strong that it can stay with you forever. It hurts you a lot emotionally to see that and it is something that is best for people not to see. It can stay with a human being for a life time and it is very hard to get through.

I, thankfully, never had to go through something that hurts someone that much. I have heard of a friend that had to go through something alike to war. It is something that separated her from her family and she will never be able to forget. I can not relate to this author because I am very different from her. I can though notice that she had a good life but with a few complications in it. Thoughts complications would always find their way out and made the best in her life.

Reflection for "The Night Bus" by Ada Udechukwu

Trust for me is something very powerful. It is hard to gain someone’s trust and to keep it might be harder for some people. Trust is being able to communicate with a person naturally; not having to be worried about what you do or say. Trust is being able to just talk to someone knowing that they will listen and not tell anybody else. It is hard to get the trust from somebody and keeping it is something that is nice to do. Some people even trust people with their lives. When you lose some ones trust, it hurts both people. It might be like losing a very close friend of yours because you will never be able to look or talk to the same. It is something that is strong and powerful in people and that it think it is great to have.

In the story “The Night Bus”, trust is shown. At first Uloma trusted Monye to tell her how to keep the money safe. The together were hiding the money and keeping each other safe from the robbers. Then finally when they sit together in the seats, they get close. In that part, Uloma trusted him with her body. Monye was the guy that she had decided that it was alright for to be close together. Then when he grabs the gun from her bag, she is thinking that everything would be alright because he is getting up to save her. He makes her believe this because he wanted to take advantage of her. Later on two robbers come in the bus and they rob Uloma. She is scared out of her mind but still does what the robbers tell her to do. Later they start to rape her. I think it was horrifying to find out that the man raping her was her boyfriend. She trusted him with her body and he took that trust away by taking advantage of her. She was stuck because she didn’t know if she should trust this person that she felt like she barley new. This was something disturbing to find out because he took the trust in the worst way possible.

In my family trust is also a very strong thing. Everyone knows already that we can trust each other and we always do. We can trust the other person with our life and we always did that. When trust is broken in our family, it is something horrible. It is like lying to your loved ones. Breaking the trust of someone to me is like breaking their heart. You will never be thought of or spoken of the same. Once trust is broken, you are a different person. Having trust in our family is one of the most important things that runs through it. This is why I was shocked in the story. It makes my think like that is the worst thing that could happen. I also have to remember that trust is broken a lot in life and that I have to be ready to take it.

Reflection for "The Lost Children" by Margaret Talbot

Getting punished for something that you did is a good why to learn. If someone does something wrong, like a child, they need to learn how to do it the right way. A method that parents use on their children is by punishing them by sending them to their room. This is a method that many people around the world are using and have been using for a long time. Choosing what punishment to give however is the hard part of it. You have to choose what they right punishment is for each ‘crime’.

Since this way of learning and teaching has been used for a long time, I think that it is a good one. What I do not agree with about this is how people choose the right punishment to give. A long time ago people used slavery and beating people as the right punishment for almost everything. They thought that beating people, hitting them and threatening them was teaching them how act right. After a while people realized that this was not the right way to punish and people started to use different ways, jail. Jail was what taught them to behave for a while and then it let people out. As I grew up, I learned what I was not allowed to do and what I was a allowed to do by punishments. The usual punishment for my family was getting sent to their room. This is what would be called a good punishment for what they did. A bad punishment would be hitting the child. This is a crime now but people still do it. In very few families parents get very mad at their children and hit them. This is a very bad punishment and people should know this by common sense.

In the story I thought that it was good that Hutto’s environment was changed. I did not think that it was a good place for children to grow up in and live in. Children are meant to be free and be able to run around. In this place they were not allowed to do this. Also I felt that children are innocent, they still don’t know about the troubles in the world. In Hutto they were experiencing how cruel the world is. They are learning about the bad things that happen to people in the world and they shouldn’t have to go through that when they are so small. When they made the changes in Hutto, it was good that they were putting the effort of making it a better place but I do not think that they should have closed it at the end. I do agree that it was not a good place for children but the parents should have been kept their as ‘punishment’. The place had three meals a day, clean beds, open doors to their cells and more. It was a much better place then the other prisons. I disagree with the story when it says at the end “sometimes children have to suffer for their parents sins.” I think that the children shouldn’t have to suffer. The children follow were their parents go but have no say in what is happening. They should be able to be with their parents if they wanted to but they shouldn’t have to suffer because of them.

Reflection for "The Countertraffickers" By William Finnegan

Violence is shown in this story a lot coming from the people that were taken as prostitutes. The girls in this story have to go through a lot of hard times in their lives and one of them was prostitution. This is something that leaves a Permanente emotional scar. This type of experience, however, might make the weak, stronger. Going through hard experiences always helps you get through another experience that is to come. Very hard experiences are not meant to be the ones to keep you from going on in your life and prostitution is one of them. This is an experience that is very hard on people and it shouldn’t be an experience that people are worried about.

I’ve never had to go through any type of violent experience and I am thankful for that. Violent experiences that people have to go through are blackmail and threats with knives and guns. I can relate to this story more than other men might because I am a girl just like them. I know what they feel like when they are taken. I do not know exactly what they are going through but I will never be able to know exactly what they are going through.

In the story the girls are taken and made believe that they are going to have a good paying job. When they realize that they can make money for their children, they accept the job. Later they notice that they were tricked and they are taken to be prostitutes. They suffer a lot in this because the women’s body is shown to a lot of people. They are also beaten and they can do nothing about it. Once of the girls in the story tried to escape their owners. Even though their plan did not work, they later tried again to escape. I really liked this because I showed that they were strong and that they will fight for who they are and try to escape. What I didn’t like and surprised me was that once the girls were able to escape with the help of other people, they wanted to go back. They saw how hard life was with no money, food or shelter and they thought it would be easier in the prostitution home. They wanted to go back and risk dieing. Some of them respected their owners even though the owners didn’t respect them. The ones that respected the owners wanted to go back to them and not leave them. What I think they meant in the story when they said at the end “some things can not be fixed” is that they can finally escape but emotionally they will never be the same. They will be better because they don’t have to go through that life again. What will never be the same is the permanent emotional scars.

Reflection for "Struggles" by Philip Gourevitch

In struggles I noticed that just like “The Rebellion Within” they also used violence as the answer. What I think will happen if this continues to happen is that more and more people will start to you violence as the answer. When one person wins with violence then the other people will believe that violence does help. Because of this, everyone will start to use it. If at least one group of people starts to use peace and show the world how good it will be with peace, then more people will use peace as the answer. Peace will get nobody hurt and it will make people live their lives happier.

Something that shocked me in the story was when they talked about who was the people that were beaten. It said that the foreigners were all beaten and they were forced out of their homes. Even though they think that by doing this everything will get better it does not mean that it is not rude. They try to take the foreigners out of their country for being different. Some people don’t respect the people that are different to them and I do not think this is right. Also it said that they would beat the people that looked like foreigners. They would look at the people and decide if they were foreigners or not. If they thought that they were foreigners then they would beat them. Innocent people would get beaten and the mob would be racist against the people.

Everyone has to fight through struggles in their life and war isn’t one of them. Everyone has a different life and different problems to fight through in their life and other useless things are in their way. People start to get worried about looking like a foreigner in a different place or they get worried about people killing other people for no reason. These are not the problems that people are supposed to have stopping them from doing other things. People should be able to get through their life without having, as a main problem, useless things. These things can be one little thing to think about but not what ruins a persons life.

Reflection on "The Rebellion Within" by Lawrence Wright

I did not like this story because of all the revenge that it had. I noticed that in all the cases all the people like Zawahiri asked Imam, always wanted to have more control or make sure that other people know who they are. Since they wanted this, all they did was rebel against other people or find revenge. A lot of the times, however they tried to rebel or find revenge and they did not succeed. Even though this happened, they did not learn from there mistakes and they continued doing the same as before.

I do not understand the point of rebelling. If you lost a war or anything then that is were it is supposed to end; you are not supposed to add on to the discussion. If you rebel or take revenge on the situation, it is just adding on to it and asking for more. When this happens you may or may not get what you want but you get nothing except pride. In the story they never tried to take peace instead of rebelling. If they had tried to take peace, the ending might have been a little better that it was with rebellion. Taking a peace also shows that you did not give up but you still want it to stop. This way nobody wins and nobody loses.

I did not like this story but it still shows a lot that happens in the world. In the world there is a lot of rebelling and revenge going on and even though some people do not want to face it, it does happen a lot. I said that I did not like the story because of that and maybe I thought that because it is showing me how people really are in the world. It has gone around so much that I probably do it without even noticing it. Everyone around us always wants some revenge and we have grown so used to it that we don’t notice it anymore. This story can show people and make them think about our world a little more.

Reflection on "Communion" by Uwem Akpan

I thought this story a confusing but good one because of how the boys acted in the different situations and the different environments. When the boys were in the street, witch was there “home”, they were disrespectful and they were trying to steal money from the main character. Later when they were in the church, they were still disrespectful but they tried to copy what the other people did. Once they got into the line to have there communion, they were respectful to the other people and they did the right thing. In each of the environments that they were in, they acted how they thought it was appropriate. Even though they didn’t have any manors, they tried to act right. They were raised to get money to live from people from the street and that is what they did to the main character. They did not know that what they were doing was wrong. What I think was very good of them to do, however, was that when they realized that they did something wrong when they took the umbrella, they gave it back to the owner at the end.

Many people act differently in the different environments. They act differently when they are in the park and in a stranger’s house without even realizing it. When someone is in there house, they act how they were raised. Then when someone is in the park, they have fun and they can run around everywhere. Sometimes, however, someone can mistake these two places and act as if they were in the park, in there house. I think that this is what happened too the children once they entered the church. As people grow, they start to mistake these two things a lot less. When someone is young, they start to learn how they should act in each place and they start to experiment the places. Once they learn about every place, they know how to act in the places.

Since the boys in the story got confused about how to act in the places, I got confused if they had good or bad intentions. When the boys gave back the umbrella to the character, I noticed that this was a good intention. But, in the beginning of the story, the character explained how they kids picked pockets and stole. This showed me that when they stole there were just trying to be able to live. When they steal I did not notice if they were doing it because they were raised that way or it was because they had to do it to live. Because of these two parts, I did not know of the boys on the street were doing things with good or bad intentions. I liked this story because to fully understand it, you had to think about it.

Reflection on "Marie Micheline" by Edwidge Danticat

I really liked the story “Marie Micheline”. This story is a personal history story and it is a very interesting one to read and learn. It is a story that can teach you things about these people and how they lived. It does not, however, teach it to you like it would in a history book; it teaches it like a story. It is a good story to read and I liked it because it taught me a little about these people. After I finished reading I thought to myself, do all these people have lives like Marie Micheline? Do they all have this relationship with there family? Do they all act this way against pregnancies? I think that these questions could be answered with another story like this about these people. By reading another story about these people, I would have been able to read about two different families, not one.

Marie Micheline’s life was a very hard one. She went through many complications in her short life and I think that this happened because of the family she lived with. I think that your life changes if you do not live with your real parents. She called her uncle her dad but this was not true. Her real mother and father did not raise her and they passed away a long time ago. Because of this, she was raised by a family that wasn’t really hers and she wasn’t loved like a daughter; she was loved like a niece. The difference in these two is how you are treated. The parents would always love there daughter more without knowing it. I think that if she had living parents, then she would have made better decisions and been able to have gotten more help.

This story really shocked me. What shocked me were all of the decisions that Marie had to take and what she was going through. Her experiences where harsh and they made me think about other people that might have gone through the same decisions. Marie Micheline was a girl that always tried to think about other people before herself. She put other people before her. She mainly thought about her children first though. For example, when she was hurt and her uncle came to help her, the first thing she thought about was her little girl. Also she died thinking of her children. When she was going to close the door to hide away from the solders and be able to live, she thought about her children wanting to come in and finding the door locked. When she thought of them she got so scared that she was frightened to death. She died trying to save her children when she could have saved herself. Her intentions towards the situation really astonished me because it showed how the most important thing in her life, her children, was more important to her than her life itself.

Reflection on "Crabs" by Edwidge Danticat

This story to me was very upsetting. In his religion it is known that you would pray for food when you didn’t have it. His family was all suffering of starvation just like him. When his uncle taught him and his cousins that they had to pray, they did it to be able to get food and live. After they started to pray, they noticed that there prayers were working because they got more food. The little boy said that he was praying for hope but also because of terror. I think that he shouldn’t be praying for terror; he should only pray for hope. I believe that prayers only work if they are with hope. As he prayed more, he was getting more food witch taught him that praying do work. I thought it very upsetting when he was praying a lot and he stops praying when he gets food that he is allergic to. I think that the food was only supposed to teach him that he doesn’t always get what he wants. What it really taught him was that praying doesn’t work. Because of this, he stopped praying ever again. This is the wrong solution that he took. His prayers have worked before and only because they don’t work once; it doesn’t mean that he should stop. By never praying again he is betraying his family because he is not trying to help himself or his family live. This story is teaching people to give up on what they believe in. It should teach that following what you believe will help you get through your life.