Blog #19

Introduction

SDS (ranked by popularity)	Human vs Human	Human vs Non-Human	Human vs Nature	Absurdity	Gun Violence	Direct violence	Indirect Violence	Natural Disaster	No Violence	No victims or perpetrators of violence
#1 Panda	-	X	-	X	X	X	-	-	-
#2 Friars	X	-	-	X	-	X	-	-	-
#3 Nate	-	-	X	X	-	-	X	X	-
#4 Chess	-	-	-		-	-	-	-	X	X
#5 Friday	-	-	-	X	-	-	-	-	X	X

Violence is present in even the most innocuous forms of entertainment. We are introduced very early on to the concept of violence through cartoons and children’s story books. Fictional violence is normalized, and we are unfazed when a cartoon cat accidentally eats a bomb in the guise of a pie and explodes on the screen, or when an animated Disney character is hit on the head with a ten-ton hammer. So it’s not simply fictional violence that we accept, it is the caricature of it. So when we come across violence in jokes and stories, we are not disturbed nor are we disgusted when a bear eats a person whole in what is otherwise a gruesome image. And there are several forms of violence that we not only find acceptable, we find it to be funny. That said, I plan on examining what forms of violence are shown in shaggy dog stories, who is involved, and how that relates to the popularity of the story. What I believe to be revealed in the data is that the more absurd, comical, and graphic the violence is, the more popular it must be.

                Shaggy dog stories are one of the many forms of humor, often presented following a distinct pattern or ending with a sentence that is a play on words related to the story as well as a common phrase in culture. The success of these stories is often based on the familiarity of these phrases in order for them to be witty and clever. But a lot of the success, it would seem, also stems from the portrayal of violence within a shaggy dog story. And the success of the humor found in that violence is based on exactly who (or what) is the perpetrator of violence, and who the victim happens to be. There is a wide variety of types of violence that can be found in shaggy dog stories. And in most forms, they have an element of absurdity involved as well. The basic absurd forms of violence that I found are as follows: gun violence, “natural disaster” type violence, direct physical violence, indirect violence, as well as the element of absurdity that can be found within some if not all of these types. There is also a variety of victim-perpetrator relationships as well: animal vs. nature, human vs. nature, human vs. non-human and human vs. human.

                The element of absurdity in the set of shaggy dog stories is often set in violence, and that element of absurdity is often a large piece of the key to success. For example, the humanization of an animal falls under this element. And often, the perpetrators of the shaggy dog story are animals. An example of a situation where the perpetrator was non-human and the victims were human, is the Giant Panda shaggy dog story, a story that features gun violence. It was a story in which a panda with the ability to talk shoots several human patrons using a gun in a restaurant and leaves.  That sentence alone isn’t inherently humorous for most; in fact it’s rather morbid. However, within the frame of a shaggy dog story, it was incredibly successful in its delivery.

                Human vs. Human conflicts were also found to be popular. In the story about friars, the friars are attempting to raise money by selling flowers. Their business becomes so successful that the other flower shop resorts to hiring a hit man to beat the friars until they stop selling flowers. Again, we have direct physical violence that, in real life, would make headlines. And yet for some reason, most people really liked the story. They laughed and chuckled at it in class. I think the fact that it’s fictional makes it safe for people to laugh, but there is also the fact that the rival flower shop’s efforts to stop the friars were so over-the-top that it was comical.

                Shaggy dog stories sometimes make a joke of “natural disasters”, forms of violence in which neither human nor animal are involved in the perpetration of violence. In “ Nate the Snake”, another popular story, the element of violence comes not from a living thing, but a freak boulder on the verge of squashing the snake, who has taken it upon himself to guard a lever within a desert that has the ability to destroy the world if moved. In the end, the boulder does not push the lever, for the body of Nate the snake had run it off its course. Explaining the story plainly and without the pattern or build-up of a shaggy dog story, this tale isn't very funny. It is out of the ordinary, just as many shaggy dog stories are, and yet  if I told someone the story the way I just told it, I am almost positive they wouldn't so much as giggle. So there is more than just violence that a shaggy dog story needs for it to be successful. The comical exaggeration of violence works in cartoons due to the visual effects. In a shaggy dog story, it takes the entire rhythm of the story for it to work.

                I found that among these popular shaggy dog stories, it isn’t the element of violence alone that makes it a success. The forms of violence, in the real world, would be considered tragic.  But in the frame of the shaggy dog story, it is somehow entertaining and even hilarious to some people. Part of it is due to the unrealistic characters (i.e. talking animals) but even in conflicts among humans, where it might be plausible for it to happen in real life (even the smallest chance), the story was popular and received high scores from many of the people who read it. Absurdity is an important part of shaggy dog stories, and of many jokes in general, and a lot of that revolves around violence in some shape or form. But it isn’t simply violence that the success relies on. It’s the type of violence that we’re so accustomed to, that we grew up watching for years, it’s our common sense that stops us from finishing any of these stories and saying, “Wow that was horrific, what did I just read?” In the end, it is the caricature of violence that we appreciate, not violence in and of itself.

Blog #17

Interview Protocol (Draft)

Basics:

 - name, age, race, sex, gender, ethnicity, occupation, sexual orientation (if comfortable), religion

 - family: siblings? single parent? children? ages, income level, education levels


 - do you fluently speak any other languages other than English?



 - where did you grow up?

 - where did your parents/siblings grow up?


Background History (race/ethnicity/gender):


 - tell me about your family situation (income, culture......tbc)


 - what was it like being a Latin@ growing up in a community that does not have many Latin@s?

 - what was it like being a girl growing up in that same community?

 - was there ever a time or a moment in your life where you were ever "aware" of your race/ethnicity/gender?

 - can you recall a time where you felt ostracized for being a Latin@ or a cisfemale?

 - have you ever traveled to your parents' home country/countries? what was that experience like?

 - how would you compare the experience of going there to the experience of living here?

Background History (feminism):

 - how did you come to discover feminism?

 - what compelled you to the feminist movement?

 - was there any one person or people who encouraged your interest? were they the person/people who got you interested in the first place?

Current Thoughts:

 - do you feel as if your race/ethnicity has defined you in some way?

 - do you feel as if your gender has defined you in some way?

 - do you think life would be different if you weren't (insert race/ethnicity/gender here)

 - what value do you place on the role of feminism in society?

 - how important is feminism to you?

 - do you have any ideas as to why there is so much opposition to feminism?


 - how important is intersectionality in the success of feminism?

 - are you very involved in the feminist community?

 - how would you describe your experience being a part of this community? (positive? negative? both?)

 - is there anything you think could be better regarding the inclusion of other people? (trans*, queer, POC, WOC, etc..)

TO BE CONTINUED...

Blog #16

During a conference last week, Dr. Chandler and I went over how the short analysis projects are going to be graded, and when I started "grading" my own paper, I found a lot of points that were lacking and it was really helpful that we did that because along with smaller mistakes like forgetting to mention a few things in the introduction that I mentioned during the body of the paper, I realized that I should also make my research question clearer and more visible, plus I could add a chart that will further emphasize my points. I think the visual aid will help a lot with my conclusion in wrapping up my findings into a nice, neat image. I am also going to work on my conclusion to make it stronger.

Blog #15

Research Question: Is intersectionality essential to the success of feminism? And if it is, then why don't more feminists incorporate that intersectionality into their feminist ideologies?

My interviewee is a friend of mine who is a feminist herself and has, for a number of years, been involved in learning more about feminism and the institution of sexism. The kind of information I'm looking to get from her is some insight into the feminist community, as well as her personal experiences with racism, sexism, classism, etc. and how she fits into the matrix of intersectional feminism, being a lower-middle class, bisexual ciswoman of color. I want to get an idea of how she identifies herself and get a measure of the weight of its importance. And from that, I think that that, along with my research, can help me draw a few conclusions on whether intersectionality is important, and that information will help me to determine reasons why I don't see a better number of feminists including that idea into their theories, as well as what type of people they might be.

Blog #13 & #14

               

Violence is present in even the most innocuous forms of entertainment. We are introduced very early on to the concept of violence through cartoons and children’s story books. Fictional violence is normalized, and we are unfazed when a cartoon cat accidentally eats a bomb in the guise of a pie and explodes on the screen, or when an animated Disney character is hit on the head with a ten-ton hammer. So it’s not simply fictional violence that we accept, it is the caricature of it. So when we come across violence in jokes and stories, we are not disturbed nor are we disgusted when a bear eats a person whole in what is otherwise a gruesome image. That said, there are several forms of violence that we not only find acceptable, we find it to be funny.

                Shaggy dog stories are one of the many forms of humor, often presented following a distinct pattern or ending with a sentence that is a play on words related to the story as well as a common phrase in culture. The success of these stories is often based on the familiarity of these phrases in order for them to be witty and clever. But a lot of the success, it would seem, also stems from the portrayal of violence within a shaggy dog story. And the success of the humor found in that violence is based on exactly who (or what) is the perpetrator of violence, and who the victim happens to be. There is a wide variety of types of violence that can be found in shaggy dog stories. The ones I found are as follows: gun violence, “natural disaster” type violence, and indirect violence. There are also a variety of victim-perpetrator relationships as well: animal vs. nature, human vs. nature, human vs. non-human.

                The element of absurdity in the set of shaggy dog stories is often set in violence, and that element of absurdity is often a large piece of the key to success. For example, the humanization of an animal falls under this element. And often, the perpetrators of the shaggy dog story are animals. An example of a situation where the perpetrator was non-human and the victims were human, is the Giant Panda shaggy dog story. It was a story in which a panda with the ability to talk and use a gun shoots several human patrons in a restaurant and leaves.  That sentence alone isn’t inherently humorous for most; in fact it’s rather morbid. However, within the frame of a shaggy dog story, it was incredibly successful in its delivery.

                Human vs. Human conflicts were also found to be popular. In the story about friars, the friars are attempting to raise money by selling flowers. Their business becomes so successful that the other flower shop resorts to hiring a hit man to beat the friars until they stop selling flowers. Again, we have violence that, in real life, would make headlines. And yet for some reason, most people really liked the story. They laughed and chuckled at it. I think the fact that it’s fictional makes it safe for people to laugh, but there is also the fact that the rival flower shop’s efforts to stop the friars were so over-the-top that it was comical.

                Shaggy dog stories sometimes make a joke of “natural disasters”, forms of violence in which neither human nor animal are involved in the perpetration of violence. In “ Nate the Snake”, another popular story, the element of violence comes not from a living thing, but a freak boulder on the verge of squashing the snake, who has taken it upon himself to guard a lever within a desert that has the ability to destroy the world if moved. In the end, the boulder does not push the lever, for the body of Nate the snake had run it off its course. Explaining the story plainly and without the pattern or build-up of a shaggy dog story, this tale isn’t very funny. It is out of the ordinary, just as many shaggy dog stories are, and yet  if I told someone the story the way I just told it, I am almost positive they wouldn’t even giggle. So there is more than just violence that a shaggy dog story needs for it to be successful. The comical exaggeration of violence works in cartoons due to the visual effects. In a shaggy dog story, it takes the entire rhythm of the story for it to work.

                I found that among these popular shaggy dog stories, it isn’t the element of violence alone that makes it a success. The forms of violence, in the real world, would be considered tragic.  But in the frame of the shaggy dog story, it is somehow entertaining and even hilarious to some people. Part of it is due to the unrealistic characters (i.e. talking animals) but even in conflicts among humans, where it might be plausible for it to happen in real life (even the smallest chance), the story was popular and received high scores from many of the people who read it. Absurdity is an important part of shaggy dog stories, and of many jokes in general, and a lot of that revolves around violence in some shape or form. But it isn’t simply violence that the success relies on. It’s the type of violence that we’re so accustomed to, that we grew up watching for years, it’s our common sense that stops us from finishing any of these stories and saying, “Wow that was horrific, what did I just read?” In the end, it is the caricature of violence that we appreciate, not violence in and of itself.

Blog #12

I am going to examine the shaggy dog stories for my short analysis essay and I plan on asking and finding answers for the following questions: What types of violence are used in a "successful" shaggy dog story and why? I am going to do some examining for each shaggy dog story available on the blog that has some form of violence and take all the notes available from class and hopefully draw a conclusion. I will also consider the overall popularity of each story. Is the violence bloody? Or is it unrealistic, like a cartoon? And who is the victim here? What kind of character is the perpetrator? These are a few subquestions that will help me answer the main question.

Blog #10

I have yet to take out of the library or buy/rent most books for my topic but I am most definitely sticking with intersectional feminism and building a list of all of the sources that I'm planning on using. This is a long shot but my goal is to read the majority of the books but I'll probably end up just looking through them using the index to find what I need.

I was given even more sources after the meeting which is always a good thing, and then hopefully I can interview at least one woman in my family. The more I think about it the more I think that it's a good idea to pick someone from my family cus except for me, everyone was born and raised in a different country and so coming here, there's a good chance that they have a much more vivid recollection of the way they were treated and the behaviors of those around them. And being not only women but women of color I think I'll be able to get a lot of insight as to how this all relates back to intersectionality. Hopefully from that I'll be able to draw some conclusions about just how necessary the theory is in order for feminism to be a success. And I always have truckload of articles that I've already read through. All I need to do is take notes.

Fortunately for this project, my family is big and I have a number of subjects to choose from so hopefully I'll have at least one or two interviews for primary data and a whole load of secondary sources but I don't think more general collections of data like surveys would properly serve my purpose but I'm looking for very subjective answers and personal experiences that cannot be properly conveyed through questionnaires but I could be wrong. We'll see.

Blog #9 (incomplete)

Brian, Arlene, Jaylecia and I all took our time looking at the different drafts and their comments but when we discussed it we focused mostly on the narrative draft.

We agreed that a lot, if not most, of the comments were really lengthy and a lot of those comments were questions directed to the author as a way to give them direction for how they can improve their paper. For example, in comment LT3 the teacher is asking about how the author uses bullet points as a way to help them organize their writing. The teacher was asking if they used bullet points for the entire essay, what kind of information was in those bullet points, etc. But it didn't seem necessary to try to pull more information about the bullet points because the author had already gotten their point across: they use bullet points. Sometimes the comments try to ask questions too often and in my opinion if I were to keep getting comment after comment with like three questions in a single comment, I would just pick and choose which ones I would rather adhere to cus it's too much sometimes. It's great that the teacher is attempting to provide direction and that's what a lot of students want but maybe they need to cut back on asking soo many questions.

We also noted that in a lot of the comments, it starts off with the teacher pointing out what was good about the author's paper, followed by a criticism. This is likely a way to "soften the blow" so to speak. For example, in LT6, it says:

"Good - but again - discriminating among the different kinds of thinking you do would strengthen this."

So there is one commenting pattern goes like this (in a nutshell): Good comment, the "but", and then the critique.

The teacher also left some standalone "good comments" as well, highlighting areas of the paper that they thought were interesting, cool, etc. This is a good thing. Students like to hear that from teachers so they know what they should put into their next papers and also what they should keep and it's good that the teacher didn't just go "good, BUT..." for every single comment, they also thought to add some simple positive feedback as well.

Blog #8

1. Familiarize yourself with your topic

From Wikipedia:

Intersectionality is a sociological theory suggesting that—and seeking to examine how—various socially and culturally constructed categories of discrimination interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels, contributing to systematic social inequality. Intersectionality holds that the classical models of oppression within society, such as those based on race/ethnicity, gender, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, class, or disability do not act independently of one another; instead, these forms of oppression interrelate creating a system of oppression that reflects the "intersection" of multiple forms of discrimination.

From Intersektionalitet:

The concept of intersectionality point to the importance of having a multidimensional analysis of power structures. That is to take into account all the dimensions of power. To Civis that means to take into consideration all the social categories that power and oppression rest upon. Among others, these categories are: gender, class, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation etc.

From African-American Policy Forum:

Intersectionality is a concept that enables us to recognize the fact that perceived group membership can make people vulnerable to various forms of bias, yet because we are simultaneously members of many groups, our complex identities can shape the specific way we each experience that bias. For example, men and women can often experience racism differently, just as women of different races can experience sexism differently, and so on. As a result, an intersectional approach goes beyond conventional analysis in order to focus our attention on injuries that we otherwise might not recognize.

--

Intersectionality is a feminist theory pertaining to a matrix of oppression. Each and every indivual is affected by varying forms, levels and degrees of oppression that come with their identity. Different forms of oppression do not necessarily stand alone from each other. Rather, they interact with each other on different levels. Sex, gender, ability, race, class, wealth and weight are all examples of the categories with which we identify ourselves. And our identity can define our advantages and disadvantages in society. Many feminists appear to ignore that.

2. Identify a research question

Why is intersectionality is crucial to the success of the feminist movement and why is it so often ignored?

Why is Intersectionality so important?
Why is it being ignored and forgotten?
How does this affect Feminism as a whole?
What will happen if we do not address the inclusion of Intersectionality?

3. Decide what you need to know to answer your research question

What is intersectionality?
What are its origins?
Demographic of those who adhere to this theory and why
Demographic of those who do not adhere to this theory and why

4. Formulate a research plan that includes:

Purpose: To understand intersectional feminism and why some people don't include it into their feminist ideologies.

Detailed Thesis Statement:

Necessary Information:

List of Preliminary Sources:

Method of Information Gathering:

Blog #7

I have a lot of ideas of what it is I want to research. In my first blog post I mentioned that I had a growing interest with racism, intersectional feminism, ableism and so on. Growing up I was fortunate enough not to be exposed to as much racism as an Asian-American as other fellow Asian-Americans that I've come across. Either that or I was so ignorant that what they were doing was racist that I wasn't even phazed by it. So as much as I want my main focus to be about racism, I think I want to go for a topic that I have way more personal experience with, which is sexism, and to go with that, intersectional feminism. What it is, how it works, and why we need it in order for feminism to work and adhere to the issues of ALL women: White women, women of color, trans* women, cisgender women, able-bodied and disabled women.

Intersectionality is a sociological theory that some self-proclaimed feminists do not always incorporate into their ideologies. The idea is that different categories that people identify with- sex, gender, ethnicity, wealth, class, etc.- interact with each other on multiple levels simultaneously. Forms of privilege and oppression are not always independent of one another- rather, they interlap and affect individuals in different ways.

I'm thinking that the intersectionality theory is going to be my main focus but I also want to go into the absence of this theory and how it affects people. I mentioned in my first blog that I don't associate myself as a feminist and it's because of this very absence that I do so but I haven't stopped concerning myself with women's issues. One particular incident that stands out as the main reason for this is from a SlutWalk protest in 2011 where a White SlutWalk participant held up a sign featuring the "n" word. I don't know what was worse, the fact that she paraded around with this sign thinking it was okay and no one said anything until one black woman- an organizer of the protest I believe- told her to take it down, or the overwhelming responses that were DEFENDING this woman's use of a hateful racial slur. I want my research paper to observe and reflect the varying attitudes and beliefs of feminism and intersectionality more than anything.

--

My other option is to do a research paper on privilege. Male privilege, White privilege, thin privilege, able-bodied privilege, wealthy privilege, cisgender privilege, all of that.

Blog #5: Shaggy Dog Stories

Based on the conclusions we drew in class, I've made a prediction as to which of the new shaggy dog stories would be most popular and which would be least popular. From funniest to unfunniest:

1.) The String Story

The punchlines are the most important part of a joke. In the string story, its punchline was "I'm a frayed knot", a pun that should be easy to understand for most folks. Most people should be familiar with the common phrase, "Afraid not." Although it isn't really an idiom or anything like that, it's commonly used in daily language. An important aspect of a widely successful joke is that the punchline is something that is often reoccurring in daily life.

Furthermore, the absurdity that a string could be humanized to the point of presumably having a job (he's characterized as hard-working), is capable of talking, of being fatigued, and thirsts for a beer after a long day as well as being able to move at all is what is most intriguing. It creates a strange image in your head of a little piece of string hopping on and off the barstool, in and out the bar, down the street, and then asking a passersby to pick it (him? her? up and tying it into a knot so as not to rouse suspicion from all of the bartenders that have already rejected him. It's also funny considering the string seems to think that if it were a bow, that would somehow be more acceptable.

There's an element of magic realism throughout the story, most notably noted in the reactions of the bartenders when a string wants to ask for a beer. And the fact that "they don't serve strings" implies that there's more than one "living" string in this universe and they seem to get strings walking into the bar like that all the time.

There was a repetition that set the joke up as well, and the length is notably long, not too long but long enough and easy enough to read so that the audience doesn't lose interest, and is forced to invest their time into the reading or listening to said joke.

2.) The Gandhi Story

Sometimes short is good! Practically everyone knows about Gandhi and his story as well as what he looked like so even though it was short, the familiarity of the character can draw the attention of the audience more easily. There is no need for a longer story full of details because the backstory of Gandhi is so well-known amongst the general population.

The joke starts out normal enough, it could have even been a normal story, so the punchline was sort of unexpected. And the punchline itself referenced yet another popular "expression" from the film Mary Poppins. There are parodies and remakes of that movie all the time, and even if you don't remember any of the other songs, chances are you most certainly remember "Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious" and how that part of the song goes (I didn't even need to look up the spelling to know that it was spelled right, there was just a general knowledge of it in my head from sounding out the word using the melody-- it's similar to the Alphabet Song in that respect).

So here we have two well-known pieces of knowledge (Gandhi and that song from Mary Poppins) coming together in one joke. It's easy to understand, it's relatable, and you immediately get this image in your head of Gandhi mixed with the comical scenes and tunes from Mary Poppins.

3.) The Plate Story

In the plate story, it was a pun on the phrase "there's no place like home for the holidays". Even though the audience is most likely fully aware of the expression being used, and has to invest almost as much time and effort into the joke as the string story, the reason why I didn't rank it as funny as the first or second joke was because the story itself was rather boring. No absurdity, no strange image in your head, there is nothing in the story that somehow contrasts strangely with our normal daily life. Not to mention, I couldn't really relate much to the story in general. I don't even know what an upper plate is. I had to look it up on the internet. But it was still an alright joke because even if you didn't know what an upper plate was, the name itself gives you a good idea of what it could be, plus for me at least the imagery of that wasn't essential to the punchline. All I needed to know was that this guy had and upper plate and it was eroding. Maybe my lack of knowledge did somehow detract from the hilarity of the joke but I'm not too sure. Maybe this joke will only appeal to a certain crowd.. like people with upper plates. And dentists.


4.) The Bear Story

The reason why I ranked this the least funniest was because it was even more unrelatable than the third story, and at least in the third story I was more familiar with the punchline's expression being used. I had to read the last line a few times to understand what the story was referencing, and even when I DID figure out the reference, I still couldn't relate to the story. "Would you believe a lawyer who told you the check was in the mail" is not something I hear every day. I think it only relates to people who NEED lawyers or deal with lawyers in class, and I and most likely a lot of people in the younger generations don't need one. I feel like this joke better caters to a certain group (much like the chess joke in class). When I read the joke out loud, saying "Czechoslovakian" was a bit of a drag on the flow of the joke as well. This was a very biased conclusion but I just can't see how a majority of a group would find this joke funny considering the unfamiliarity of the punchline's expression.

A good point that I can think of though is that it had that element of absurdity (a bear swallowing a person whole?) but other than that there was no real element of shock that I could find. A person gets eaten by a bear and the sheriff shoots it. That is all.

Blog #4: Data Set 1 Analysis

Coding Format:
Emotion
Questions
Answers
[Silence]
Facts
Coincidences
Additional Commentary (Separate from Interviewee Answers)

Family
Age
School Reaction
How Lives Changed
Politicization

Headnotes:

Jaylecia lived in NYC when 9/11 happened. Her school was in the Bronx.
She was a freshman in high school and remembers the day well.
The administration didn't tell the students anything. School continued as normally as possible. But she describes the school as feeling full of panic.

The security guards shouted in the hallways, "We're at war! We're at war!"

Parents rushed to pull their children out of school for the day.
On the other hand, the panic didn't deter her health teacher from making an ill-advised joke about a plane crashing into a building, a joke that Jaylecia didn't understand the context of until she found out for herself what really happened.

She went home during fifth period when it was easy to skip school (it was a lunch period).
No one was home when she got there. Her parents were at work and her sister attended a different school that also didn't dismiss the students. She didn't go back to school once she learned what happened via television news broadcasts.

She said that 9/11 changed her. Before that day, she barely knew anything about politics and what it had to do with her but after the event, she became more aware of politics in the US and took it upon herself to pay attention to the political climate. She recalls how obsessed every news channel was afterwards, all you heard were the words "terrorism" and "Al Qaeda". She also recalls how everyone seemed united soon after the attacks but a few years later it was evident that there was a divide between people once again.
--

The Interview

Jaylecia was the interviewer and I was the one being interviewed.

Q: When and where were you born?
A: May 20th, 1992 in Newark Beth Israel.
Jaylecia: "Oh wow you're young." She herself is in her mid-twenties.

Q: Where did you grow up?
A: Maplewood, NJ.

Q: How old were you when 9/11 happened?
A: I was I think nine years old when it happened, in Tuscan Elementary School.

Q: Describe what you remember about 9/11 to the best of your ability.
A: I remember being dismissed from classes, I don't remember any announcement telling us what happened. My dad picked me up and tried to explain to me what was going on but in his broken English it was hard to understand what he was trying to tell me. It wasn't until I got home and turned on the television that I learned what happened. I remember crying for at least an hour. I still didn't really understand it but I knew that people died and that bothered me the most. Almost every channel stopped broadcasting shows in favor of a patriotic message that went out to those affected in the attacks.

My dad told me that he and my mom were on the highway when 9/11 happened. The highway they were on had a good view of NYC and traffic had completely halted because everyone was watching the World Trade Center fall. My grandfather eventually called and told them how it happened. My parents made a U-turn to pick me up from school.

Q: How did you feel about the event?
A: I still didn't really understand what happened but I was sad because I knew that people were dying.

Q: Do you know anyone personally involved?
A: I know some parents of my classmates volunteered to clear the rubble days after the event.

Q: How did you feel about the events that happened?
A: I still didn't pay much attention to the news but when I did it was always talking about terrorism and Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and those were always the three things I heard the most. But being a kid, I never felt truly impacted by what happened.

I never thought about it before, but in the years following 9/11 my dad installed a security gate in the driveway and my parents installed a home security system but I never linked their actions to 9/11 until just now.

Q: How do you feel about the event now?
A: I still feel sad about everyone involved in 9/11, especially those that died. But I also feel sympathy for the people who are Muslims or are mistaken as Muslims (Sikhs), pretty much those of Middle Eastern and Southern Asian descent who still have to face prejudice, discrimination and racism for things they didn't have any part of.

--

The Pattern

In both Jaylecia and my cases, the beginning of our stories started out with facts. Generally they began with the age and also locations (I was in Tuscan and she was in high school in the Bronx). These facts are followed by the school reaction to 9/11, and after that comes our reaction (emotions) of what happened mixed in with more facts. Sometimes the coding would overlap at certain parts. For the most part, there was a description of change towards the end of the interviews. The only difference is that mine ended with emotion and hers stopped at the change/politicization.

Conclusion

There was a chain of reactions. 9/11 was THE action. The first reaction was the school's. The second reaction was us. And from our reactions came out our emotions, as well as how much (or how little) life changed after the initial action. The pattern was basically like this:

Fact -> School Reaction -> Personal Reaction/Emotions -> Life Change

Blog #3: Oral History Data

Headnotes:

Jaylecia lived in NYC when 9/11 happened. Her school was in the Bronx.

She was a freshman in high school and remembers the day well.

The administration didn't tell the students anything. School continued as normally as possible. But she describes the school as feeling full of panic.

The security guards shouted in the hallways, "We're at war! We're at war!"

Parents rushed to pull their children out of school for the day.

On the other hand, the panic didn't deter her health teacher from making an ill-advised joke about a plane crashing into a building, a joke that Jaylecia didn't understand the context of until she found out for herself what really happened.

She went home during fifth period when it was easy to skip school (it was a lunch period).

No one was home when she got there. Her parents were at work and her sister attended a different school that also didn't dismiss the students. She didn't go back to school once she learned what happened via television news broadcasts.

She said that 9/11 changed her. Before that day, she barely knew anything about politics and what it had to do with her but after the event, she became more aware of politics in the US and took it upon herself to pay attention to the political climate. She recalls how obsessed every news channel was afterwards, all you heard were the words "terrorism" and "Al Qaeda". She also recalls how everyone seemed united soon after the attacks but a few years later it was evident that there was a divide between people once again.

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The Interview

Jaylecia was the interviewer and I was the one being interviewed.

Q: When and where were you born?
A: May 20th, 1992 in Newark Beth Israel.

Jaylecia: "Oh wow you're young." She herself is in her mid-twenties.

Q: Where did you grow up?
A: Maplewood, NJ.

Q: How old were you when 9/11 happened?
A: I was I think nine years old when it happened, in Tuscan Elementary School.

Q: Describe what you remember about 9/11 to the best of your ability.
A: I remember being dismissed from classes, I don't remember any announcement telling us what happened. My dad picked me up and tried to explain to me what was going on but in his broken English it was hard to understand what he was trying to tell me. It wasn't until I got home and turned on the television that I learned what happened. I remember crying for at least an hour. I still didn't really understand it but I knew that people died and that bothered me the most. Almost every channel stopped broadcasting shows in favor of a patriotic message that went out to those affected in the attacks.

My dad told me that he and my mom were on the highway when 9/11 happened. The highway they were on had a good view of NYC and traffic had completely halted because everyone was watching the World Trade Center fall. My grandfather eventually called and told them how it happened. My parents made a U-turn to pick me up from school.

Q: How did you feel about the event?
A: I still didn't really understand what happened but I was sad because I knew that people were dying.

Q: Do you know anyone personally involved?
A: I know some parents of my classmates volunteered to clear the rubble days after the event.

Q: How did you feel about the events that happened?
A: I still didn't pay much attention to the news but when I did it was always talking about terrorism and Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and those were always the three things I heard the most. But being a kid, I never felt truly impacted by what happened.

I never thought about it before, but in the years following 9/11 my dad installed a security gate in the driveway and my parents installed a home security system but I never linked their actions to 9/11 until just now.

Q: How do you feel about the event now?
A: I still feel sad about everyone involved in 9/11, especially those that died. But I also feel sympathy for the people who are Muslims or are mistaken as Muslims (Sikhs), pretty much those of Middle Eastern and Southern Asian descent who still have to face prejudice, discrimination and racism for things they didn't have any part of.

Blog #2: What IS Analysis?

My definition of analysis is the attempt to break something down and study every part of that subject. It's the dis-assembly of a certain thing, letting the pieces fall into disarray out of its package, questioning every piece and in the process, learning how to piece it back to its original self. In other words, it's examining every piece of a certain whole long enough to know it inside and out.

You're supposed to take a piece of that whole and ask yourself what it is, why it exists and how and when it got there in the first place. You sit down with this little nugget of information and you think about how it relates to the other pieces waiting to be discovered and learned about. And after all of your hours or days or weeks or months or years of peering intensely through a magnifying glass, maybe, MAYBE you can put that down and MAYBE you'll be able to say you understand that thing completely.

Maybe you'll take what you were originally working with but omit a few pieces here and there. Maybe you'll piece it back together so that it's better than it was before. Maybe you change a piece or two. And when you're done you'll have put together something that is no longer something that you started with. You added your own knowledge and insight into this thing that started out without any relation to you, but in your dissection you've taken something and made it into your own. Analysis is more than just analyzing something and then putting it on the shelf. You analyze in order to understand, and with that you turn it into something unique. Something that you share with other people who are also analyzing that same thing, and you compare results. Analysis doesn't end with the full comprehension of something. You take what you learned and reinvent it into something better and new.

Blog #1: Introduction

The number of topics that people like to research is too broad to fit into one blog entry. For that reason, it's really hard for me to answer a question that can be easily answered with the word "everything" (if you're feeling particularly lazy). But it's true, the range of topics is impossible to measure. In high school I had a classmate who did his thesis paper on the history of baseball helmets, and that is no joke. Ten months of research that this young man labored over yielded far past the ten-page-minimum for our thesis papers and, according to our history teacher, it was a stunning feat. If I tried hard enough I could write a full book about socks or napkins. In any case, it would be useless to attempt to list even the categories of possible research topics. It's just not going to happen.

As for what I personally like to research and write about, I have been gaining a steady interest in feminism (though I do not label myself as a feminist for my own reasons) as well as racism. I also have an interest in activism against able-ism and fat-shaming, as well as LGBTQ rights and I include privileges into my writings as well (i.e. male privilege, able-bodied privilege, etc). I'm pretty new to all of these concepts as far as "blogging activism" goes so I'm not yet confident enough in my voice or my knowledge to play a fully active part in that part of the internet but part of the reason why I'm an English major is so I'll have the skills to contribute to that activism.