What I find so horrible in all instances is the loneliness and seclusion many of these refugees face when they go into the detention center and all basically prisoners. The story of the Khadija, the teenage girl in the center with her whole family, really exemplified how sick and controlling this centers, or rather people, can be. They're escorted to and from school, making them look like either rich kids with bodyguards, as Khadija points outs, or some high-profile criminal. Yet, what was even more astounding was the evident means that the people in charge of the detention center took to deprive the refugees from accessing information and arming themselves with knowledge. They blocked off so many sites to them, including sites containing human rights information, so it was very clear that they knew they were violating them and are exploiting the vulnerability of these people.

I can see how this example of being vegan can be somewhat contradictory. Personally, I can't see what the bigger picture is in relation to the potato and the being vegan, but I can the irony. It seems almost impossible to escape the cruelness of not being vegan, which includes the act of killing and slaughtering, because the vegan still "kills", or rather chops, vegetables and other living things to eat. This "cruelness", so to speak, seems inevitable and part of our nature, in a way.

This is an important point to take note of when looking at indigenous, or in this case, aboriginal cultures. A lot of cultures rely on the oral tradition of passing down customs, culture, and vital information. This contrasts to much of Western cultures, namely modern Western cultures, that rather rely on written media to relay information. Each way of transferring information is valid in itself, but neither is the most valid or more valid. The oral way, however, seems to me to focus inherently more on the people since they are the ones transferring the information, and therefore there's a human element in the telling, which is lost in written works. It's this vital human aspect that I think many colonizers either ignored or took advantage of in imposing their culture and suppressing others to verge of extinction.

First of all, for a short story, I admire how much suspense it built from the beginning. From the beginning there's this sort of mystery, all be it seeming small and insignificant, but I like how this twist makes me look back at the previous descriptions of the father in a whole new light. The referencing of the scar once again emphasizes this shift in character for the father, as Ka put it perfectly, from being the hunted to the hunter.

This sentence really rings with the notion of Neo-colonialism and extending the idea of enslavement and slavery into modern today practice under the guise of lawfulness and job training. Basically, those in power have kept their power by trading chattel slavery for wage slavery, where they give critics the illusion of choice and social mobility, while keeping conditions only they can control in a way that essentially gives them no choice but to be servants and go along with the job training.

I love how Kincaid takes a sentiment often shared among older folks and fits it to her interpretation of it, comparing the two. Ultimately, the rich people long for the "old" Antigua when Whites were dominant and subjugated Blacks one way or another, and Kincaid longs for the "old" Antigua before foreign influence and invasion. This kind of compares to Americans, especially white Americans, longing for the "good ol' days," or rather their "good ol' days," which depends on how old you're going back.

This sentence is really profound if it's taken entirely out of its context with the bedbugs: he found nothing in his bed or in his life, as mentioned before during class? And, were the bedbugs, who can endure quite a lot (making them perhaps even more annoying than cockroaches, in my opinion), an analogy to something else in life? Some annoying, blood-sucking thing that can't be done away with in even the most hostile environments?

This is a really astounding aspect noted from Julius himself. Throughout all our classroom discussions, we've mentioned Julius' solitude and inability to form meaningful and sustained relationships of any kind, and this little "party trick," as Julius describes, really lays to rest any doubts about the former discussions. It really takes skill and habit to have this type of almost deceitful interaction, where he doesn't want to come across as rude or timid but still finds a way to remain distant and isolate himself. And the way that he describes this as a "trick" blinds him to the problem that it can be, especially if this "party trick" is used on an intimate and long-time mentor and friend of Julius.

This conversation was very insightful into seeing Julius' philosophies on certain subjects and shows how his character slowly builds up. For instance, he mentioned briefly during his flight with the elderly lady on the airplane that he had always been and always will be atheist, and this little fact he dropped very subtly we can understand these moment of dialogue he has. As I've said before, this is really a novel where you have to read between the lines to really know the protagonist.

This is a very powerful revelation and self-reflection the narrator makes to themself. They describe perfectly that feeling of guilt for not noticing the suffering of people, especially people who we say on a daily basis and interact with, but we don't actually know them. The narrator, as do many other people, blame themselves for not noticing the world around, and there really isn't any way to deal with this because, just as the narrator said, an act of consolation would just be an example of false intimacy.

These lines resonate clearly with an idea brought by Yael earlier about how big cities, especially Manhattan, can have an immense sense of solitude despite having large masses of people in one small space. Everyone is so entrenched into their own worlds and they're protective of them that they forget to open up once in a while.

This is a very good summary of the feeling one experiences from walking through New York City's streets: you can easily go from the high-end shops with tall, luxury buildings, to a more modest neighborhood with housing projects and small, run-down parks. They each have their own air to them giving them a unique feeling, but you can't really tell where that airs stops and begins. And it's this seamless transition of energies and environments that make walks in NYC so intriguing and, honestly, so relaxing and thought-provoking that you often just keep walking without realizing how far you've walked.

I think I see what role Gloria Gresham plays in this piece: she's the personification of some sort of Dr. Dan Kerry's conscious. I think she's sort of the voice in the back of his head, which might explain the sudden mood swings portrayed and the fact that a professional as himself would've entertained her for that long. Also in this paragraph, the last sentences are very resonant with immigrants and people who leave their home countries in search of better lives: What about the people, their families and their friends they left? Did they not deserve the opportunity, and maybe even sometimes luck, that you got to get where you are? Are you selfish for wanting to leave that part of history behind instead of fighting for a better life and improving it? I think these questions are really interesting one's to be asked,

This is an interesting turn in the play. The woman, who can kind of be considered the patient (although she has no appointment with the doctor or supposed illness to be treated) takes the role of the psychiatrist in her calm demeanor and wise advice; and previously Dr. Kerry sort of takes the role of the mentally unstable patient, in losing his patience with the woman, by being paranoid and rash in his physical movements. This play definitely is taking a whirlwind of a ride in the interactions between the two characters.

This ending is odd but has a cathartic resolution. We see the oppressed taking their condition into their own hands. They are waking up from the oppressed trance they've endured and that's something powerful. But the ending with Margaret is vague but can be inferred to be sad. In a way, she was a sort of martyr, entering a life of suffering to awaken and help free her people.

I can clearly see now Maru is so manipulative and power-drive, or rather power-desperate. He gets his sister to do his doings just to get to Margaret, a girl I'm pretty certain he has no feelings for. Perhaps desire, but only because Moleka desired her and she has supposedly sparked a change in him.

Also, she has a different way of handling things that has a balance to it. In this event with the goats, she can easily be misclassified as complacent and docile, but she also knows when and is perfectly capable of standing up for herself. She knows how to choose her battles.

I feel this paragraph hits at the essence of what makes Margaret such an interesting and unique character. Besides her origins and identity, the way she navigates the world acknowledging the burden she has to live and still come out triumphant in her own way is really astounding. I guess the first sentence really sets her apart: her heart is so peaceful. Everyone has they're own internal conflicts and obstacles, even people who come off as strong and joyous, like Dikeledi. What makes Margaret so unique is that final phrase: she believes and accepts that things will grow inside her, and that she herself will grow as a person, slowly with time, but surely. She has no doubt about this change and is patient. This is what giver her that vigor to move forward and put up with all the prejudice and mistreatments.

This idea of having gods inside someone I think sums up not just the two "kings", Moleka and Maru, but really anyone. That everyone has their own kingdom inside them and, like a kingdom, a multitude of complexities and features. There's conflict within kingdoms, accords, mysteries, entire worlds, which is a very thought provoking and deep analogy to the behavior of each individual.

(informal) This is truly an inspiring and empowering line. This girl, who belongs to the most detested group of people in Botswana by arbitrary, social rules, is thinking, at least, that she is not who they say she is. She is human like everyone else and is worthy of respect. In fact, she even turns their argument against them: she's not low or filthy, but rather they are for their indecency of treating her the way they do.

This is truly remarkable and interesting. Margret Cadmore, the missionary woman who took this girl in, is 'experimenting', so to speak, with this girl. She's trying to prove that Bushmen aren't genetically an inferior race as everyone treats on a social and scientific basis. There is still some sense of separation between the women and the girl, presumably because of this race issue or simply the difference in blood, but she's being treated fairly, in a way, and achieving things seen as remarkable for a 'Bushmen' herself.

I guess you can see, as in many colonial situations, a discontent form the locals with missionaries, who would often arrive preaching and spreading their religion as true colonizer, but their ideology would entrench itself deep within the few believers it acquired that any questioning of them was seen almost as blasphemous. But, with relation to what this line says, missionaries were just as bad as some ruthless colonizers and understood that they were perfectly fine in invading spaces that weren't theirs, but they sure didn't like the opposite happening; and, of course, they imposed systems of justifying their actions.

This is a very interesting line, and debatable point. I think this also sets a rule for our characters: if they're benevolent, then they'll be an open book; if they're not so benevolent, then we'll have to search closely for any rags or skeletons they may have.

(informal) This has a similar aspect to the previous reading on how Surajaddin saw his wife's corpse in a similar fashion. Perhaps this was just a coincidence or a common (gruesome) practice of killing women, or people in general? Could there be a meaning behind this if it weren't coincidental?

I feel that this line sets a crucial foundation for the rest of the poem: what was previously mentioned, regarding the neighbors telling you to flee, and what is to come all are seen from a listener's perspective and have a similar distance to the one that fairy tales and bed-times satires have. This is to say that they're remote from the narrator and that they don't fully feel or comprehend the immediate events, they just listen and feel the repercussions. This plays perfectly into how the author feels as if their mother and relatives have passed on their trauma from the Partition of India to them, but the author didn't experience or live through the tragedies; they just heard stories of them.