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Showing posts from November, 2023

Invisible Lives, Visible Stories

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In  Sweat , Lynn Nottage casts a spotlight on factory workers and the problems that come with it. Nottage talks about global events, with one notable example being the impact of NAFTA. NAFTA created free trade between Canada, USA, and Mexico which caused many people to lose their jobs because now they could be manufactured in different countries without tariffs when being exported. Before I read  Sweat  I didn't know about NAFTA or the effect it had on factory workers, but Nottage uses  Sweat  to publicize this problem. "You could wake up tomorrow and all your jobs are in Mexico, whatever, it’s this NAFTA bullshit" (Nottage). Even the characters in  Sweat  don't know much about NAFTA, which shows the unfamiliarity of this large change. Nottage also highlights the problems that arose between people and friends because of people being laid off. At Jessie's birthday party, Cynthia talks about how she got a promotion, and Tracey gets mad and jealous becaus...

Life isn't easy - "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes

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 I chose the poem "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes to talk about in this blog post.  Langston Hughes uses word choice and jargon to convey the theme that life isn't easy in this poem. First of all the narrator says her "life wasn't a crystal stair", comparing life to a crystal stair. The narrator, portrayed as a mother based on the title, explains to her son that life isn't straightforward and not always clear like a crystal. Then, she goes on to say that her stairs had "tacks", "splinters", "boards torn up" to further show the imperfect and unstable nature of life. Hughes uses these words to build his theme effectively and creates an informal and casual tone. Hughes maintains this style throughout the rest of the poem, through "a-climbin' on", "reachin' landin's", "turnin' corners" to further emphasize the hardships that come with life and that they just have to be overcome to...