Colors

Both a Christian and a dog are stuck in a river. You have the ability to save one of the two—one will drown and one will be saved.

Whose life would you save from drowning, the Christian or the dog?

Personally, I would save the dog’s life. Knowing that there is one less Christian in this world would bring me exceedingly great joy.

Probably the dog, they taste better.

Not even.

What was the object that you acquired when playing video game that gave most joy, sense of accomplishment or just made you feel like a powerful character.

When you get the blade and the full body armor in Prototype.

When my father died I was sad and depressed. My brother, my mother and I put on a DVD of Praise and worship.(Bill Gaither Homecoming) We stood in front of the TV and sang along. It was not long before the presence of God was felt and the Balm of Gilead healed our wounded and sad spirits.
We were filled with joy and a peace came into our hearts.

We still mourned for our father, but I will always remember the way God ministered to us at this time of loss.

I also read Romans 8 and Psalm 23….they are a great comfort.

To the person who misquoted Psalm 137:9….this is a prophecy of the fall of Jerusalem and the 70 year captivity in Babylon……those who captured the city took away many as slaves and eunuchs and the babies were dashed against the walls. This was not condoning this action but warning the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

When a believer goes to his eternal reward and to be in Heaven with Christ forever, shouldn’t that be something to celebrate joyously?

Why then, don’t we see more celebration and joy at Christian funerals? Why are they still full of grief and mourning?

While there is sorrow at the loss, shouldn’t there be much more joy at the fact that a fellow believer - friend and family member - is in the glorious presence of God?

As a rule, you don’t see this sort of joy at Christian funerals. Why not?

People who mourn at a funeral are mourning more for themselves than for the person who died.
A sense of this person will no longer be around to live, love, and laugh with.

I was very sad when my Grandmother died. I was not sad for her going to a better place, more sad for me that I would not have her here on Earth.

Cinn =)

Newsboys - Joy

You give me joy thats unspeakable
And I like it, I like it yeah
Your love for me irresistible
I can’t fight it, I can’t fight it

If life is water, I was dry as the Tucson dirt
If it’s a gamble, I’d already lost my shirt
If it’s a journey, I was dazed without a clue
I flipped a "U" back to the first love I ever knew

CHORUS
You give me joy that’s unspeakable
And I like it, and I like it yeah
Your love for me is irresistible
I can’t fight it, I can’t fight it yeah
You carried the cross and took my shame
I believe it, I believe it yeah
You shine your light of amazing grace
I receive it, I receive it yeah

If life’s a battle, the invasion is complete
If it’s a rhythm, I have found the perfect beat
If it’s a renaissance, I’ve got a new birthday
The world don’t give it
And the world can’t take it away

You give me joy that’s unspeakable
And I like it, and I like it yeah
Your love for me is irresistible
I can’t fight it, I can’t fight it yeah
You carried the cross and took my shame
I believe it, I believe it yeah
You shine your light of amazing grace
I receive it, I receive it yeah

Bowed and broken, everything’s new
All that I need, you’re like water to seed
And how your love, rights everything wrong
In my weakness
You’re ever stronger, you’re pulling me back
Where I belong

You give me joy that’s unspeakable
And I like it, and I like it yeah
Your love for me is irresistible
I can’t fight it, I can’t fight it yeah
You carried the cross and took my shame
I believe it, I believe it yeah
You shine your light of amazing grace
I receive it, I receive it yeah

The poem was first published in 1973. http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/60th/37kogawaindex.shtml
http://www.answers.com/topic/obasan-novel-9

I need to choose a fiction book from the list given to us by next year’s teacher.

NOTE: We need to choose a novel in which such a character plays a significant role and show how that character’s alienation reveals the surrounding society’s assumptions and moral values.

Here’s the list of authors we’re able to pick from.

Chinua Achebe
Kingsley Amis
Rudolfo Anaya
Margaret Atwood
Jane Austen
James Baldwin
Saul Bellow
Charlotte Bronte
Emily Bronte
Raymond Carver
Willa Cather
Sandra Cisneros
John Cheever
Kate Chopin
Colette
Joseph Conrad
Stephen Crane
Anita Desai
Charles Dickens
George Elliot
Ralph Ellison
Louise Erdrick
William Faulkner
Henry Fielding
F. Scott Fitzgeral
Ford Madox Ford
E. M. Forster
Thomas Hardy
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Ernest Hemingway
Zora Neale Hurston
Kazuo Ishiguro
Henry James
James Joyce
Maxine Hong Kingston
Joy Kogawa
Margaret Laurence
D. H. Lawrence
Bernard Malamud
Katherine Mansfield
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Bobbie Ann Mason
Carson McCullers
Herman Melville
Toni Morrison
Bharati Mukherjee
Vladimir Nabokov
Flannery O’ Connor
Cynthia Ozick
Katherine Anne Porter
Jean Rhys
Jonathan Swift
Leo Tolstoy
Mark Twain
John Updike [lolololol]
Luisa Valenzuela
Alice Walker
Evelyn Waugh
Eudora Welty
Edith Wharton
John Edgar Widerman
Virginia Woolf
Richard Wright
I was thinking about reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald*
Any good suggestions?

The problem with Gatsby is that he is a rather distant figure in the novel. It’s told through the viewpoint of another character, plus alienation isn’t a major theme of the novel.

Ralph Ellison - The Invisible Man - if you are looking for alienation from society, this is it in black and white (literally).
Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D’Ubervilles. A clear case of a charcter being ostracized from society and actually ostracizing herself due to moral values.
Carson McCullers - Heart is a Lonely Hunter. You can pick one of the many characters who are lonely and alienated - the tomboy, the deaf/mute gay guy, the doctor, etc.

I have a list of books that I can choose from for my outside source reading - I am looking for a book that has between 100-200 pages (or less) and is a good book.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare (83, 99, 03, 05, 09)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (80, 85, 04, 05, 06, 09, 10)
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (87, 09)
Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw (79, 96, 04, 07, 09)
Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw (81)
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (03, 06)
Master Harold…and the Boys by Athol Fugard (03, 08, 09)
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (94, 99, 00, 02, 07, 10)
M. Butterfly by David Henry Wang (95)
Medea by Euripides (82, 92, 95, 01, 03)
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers (97, 08)
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (09)
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (85, 91, 95, 02, 03)
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (78, 89)
Middlemarch by George Eliot (95, 04, 05, 07)
Middle Passage by V. S. Naipaul (06)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare (06)
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (90, 92, 04)
The Misanthrope by Moliere (08)
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West (89)
Moby Dick by Herman Melville (76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 89, 94, 96, 01, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 09)
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (76, 77, 86, 87, 95, 09)
Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao (00, 03)
The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie (07)
Mother Courage and Her Children by Berthold Brecht (85, 87, 06)
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (94, 97, 04, 05, 07)
Mrs. Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw (87, 90, 95, 02, 09)
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (97)
Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot (76, 80, 85, 95, 07)
"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning (85)
My Antonia by Willa Cather (03, 08, 10)
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok (03)
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (09, 10)
Native Son by Richard Wright (79, 82, 85, 87, 95, 01, 04, 09)
Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee (99, 03, 05, 07, 08)
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (09, 10)
1984 by George Orwell (87, 94, 05, 09)
No Exit by John Paul Sartre (86)
No-No Boy by John Okada (95)
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevski (89)
Obasan by Joy Kogawa (94, 95, 04, 05, 06, 07, 10)
The Octopus by Frank Norris (09)
The Odyssey by Homer (86, 06, 10)
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (77, 85, 88, 00, 03, 04)
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (01)
Old School by Tobia Wolff (08)
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (09)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (05, 10)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (89, 04)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (01)
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (06)
The Optimist’s Daughter by D. H. Lawrence (94)
The Orestia by Aeschylus (90)
Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf (04)
Othello by William Shakespeare (79, 85, 88, 92, 95, 03. 04, 07)
The Other by Thomas Tryon (10)
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (90)
Our Town by Thornton Wilder (86, 97, 09)
Out of Africa by Isaak Dinesen (06)
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (01)
Pamela by Samuel Richardson (86)
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster (71, 77, 78, 88, 91, 92, 07, 09)
Paradise Lost by John Milton (85, 86, 10)
Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen (06)
Père Goriot by Honore de Balzac (02)
Persuasion by Jane Austen (90, 05, 07)
Phaedre by Jean Racine (92, 03)
The Piano Lesson by August Wilson (96, 99, 07, 08, 10)
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (02)
The Plague by Albert Camus (02, 09)
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov (97)
Pocho by Jose Antonio Villarreal (02, 08)
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (10)
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James ( 88, 92, 96, 03, 05, 07)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (76, 77, 80, 86, 88, 96, 99, 04, 05, 08, 09, 10)
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (95)
Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall (96)
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (09)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (83, 88, 92, 97, 08)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (90, 08)
Push by Sapphire (07)
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (03, 05, 08)

i’ve only read a few and heard of a few.

never read monkey bridge but sounds interesting (since i’m vietnamese american just like the author…) it’s natural though since people want to learn more about their background and similar things they went too. so only choose that if you can relate and if you find it interesting.

Moby Dick is good. it’s a classic books so you can find lots of notes on google.

M. Butterfly by David Henry Wang (95) !!!! recently read book. i would choose that out of all the other ones i’ve read. it’s based on real life events of Bernard Bouriscot. rather creepy. it’s a good read. it’s a play so it reads really fast. you can analyze it. it switches gender role. helps you think about gender and race.

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. good. but kinda hard to analyze. my teacher analyzed it for the class. lol

STAY AWAY from The Odyessy (sp?) my sis read it . really long. boring. it’s in poem format i believe. but it gets tiring after a whiel

Of Mice and Men. nvr read it but lots of people said it was good and interesting.

Oliver Twist by Charles Dicken. LOVE! it’s about an orphan boy and he discovers long-lost relatives and who his real mother is. rather touching. but the front cover annoyed me. i recommend it as 2nd choice after M. Butterfly

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (89, 04)–> my friend said it was good. and another friend said she wants to read it. but they’re the intellectual type

one flew over the……… well i heard it has lots of bad words in it and it can be confusing (nvr read it though) but all my friends who read it said it was good.

Pride and Prejudice………..um i read it a few years back. couple of pages. never finished. but my other friend eagerly devoured the book! she was immersed in it! so you can choose that. it’s a classic and well known book.

my pick? i would recommend M. Butterfly and/or Oliver Twist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i don’t think m butterf…. is all that long . less than 100 pgs. at least the one i got is less than 100 pgs

what are the metaphors and theme in this poem?

Day of the Bride by Joy Kogawa

The day of the bride dawns
Through layers of white plaster skin
And multi-sashed kimono
Head made huge by lacquered hair-
She is swept ashore in her glass bottle
White and tight as a folded paper message
Eyes hidden in a swirl of green boughs.
She moves like a mannequin
Manoeuvered by centuries ofceremony
Under the weight of speech and incantation
A wail ofpriests and watching families
Beside rows of low tables
With small triangles of paper
Congratulatory slits of squid and curls of seaweed.
Then kneeling at the bend of a fresh memory
She is discarded by her heavy day
And is plunged into the twentieth century
Tiny apartment daily stream
As a barely visible
Folded paper speck

thanks

this is a hard one …

the (kinda weird) metaphor is that the kimono-bound, elaborate made-up bride (her face covered in white make-up like a geisha)
is compared to a message in a bottle, a mysterious sheet of paper "folded white and tight" and swept ashore (by the activity of the traditional japanese wedding)

this sheet of paper (drifted in) is then almost overshadowed by all the elaborate origami on the tables of the guests at the reception …

and then after the hoopla and ceremony is all over .. the woman is discarded into her now-married life … ignored like "a barely visible folded paper speck" …

In other words, right before the wedding, she is framed like an elaborate and mysterious message in a bottle, a mysterious swathed and hidden creature of white skin and mystery …

but then AFTER the wedding, she becomes just a wadded up and discarded sheet of paper …

‘cuz (I guess) Japanese guys are fuckers.