Bad Influence

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Rita, who's the narrator and a charterer of this story. She is almost fifteen-year-old girl with bad attitude. When she and her best friend Meli lie to their parents about staying over their house like they always so but one day, one of Rita's family member had to go to hospital and they were trying to get a hold of Rita and she and her best friend had been caught attempting to sleep overnight with their boyfriends. Although nothing happened between the two girls and their boyfriends that night, their parents still believe the boys to be a "bad influence" on them. In order to keep her away from her boyfriend Rita's parents give her a choice of punishments. She can either spend the summer with her grandparents in Puerto Rico or she can go on a convent retreat for Catholic girls. Rita chooses to go to Puerto Rico so she can continue to go to her original school, however she really wishes she could stay in her hometown of Paterson, New Jersey. Normally, Rita sees her grandparents once a year for two weeks and spends most of her time in Puerto Rico on the beach with her cousins. This time, however, none of her cousins are on vacation at the same time. This time she will be alone with her grandparents When Rita arrives, she was not excited at all and when she got out of the plane in hot and humid Puerto Rico, she is greeted embarrassing, annoyingly gregarious and overwhelming by her relative and their friends; when she tries to calm herself in the car by practicing deep breathing, her grandmother assumes she's having an asthma attack and harangues her with asthma stories. As days went by, she would pretend to be sick in order to avoid her odd grandparents. As weeks go by, she finally figure what her grandparents do for living, if she didn't make the choice to go to Purto Rico, She would not know her grandparents 100%. Rita's grandfather helps people with cleaning out the house and getting rid of evil spirit. This girl she met, her name is Angela, without her, I think she would practialy beg her mother to take her back home or else. However, it did not end that way, she laughed because it was one of her best summer yet. I was surprised by the end of the story because I thought she would learn from her family and grow into a mature young lady, perhaps, it's probably the teens attitude to show off like that. I hope next time when she take the bad influence, I hope she cry on her knee and make her wake up before she continue this poor behavior.

"The Circuit"

I really enjoyed the stories in The Circuit I really like it because you can picture what's going on and can understand how the author felt at that moment base on my experience as well. This book shows the life of the author, Francisco Jimenez. Francisco's family crossed the border from Mexico into California for a better life. They became migrant farm workers, and in each chapter we see the family in a different place, doing a different type of farm work. Francisco struggles in school, as he never stays in one place long enough to really "settle in" "The Circuit", could stand alone as a short story I am so impressed with the spare language and the emotions Jimenez shares in his story. Francisco Jimenez is a young boy who lives with his family in a small pueblito in Mexico called El Rancho Blanco. The family dreams about living in a place where Papa will earn good money and they can live in a house with electricity and running water. Papa decides that his family will cross La Frontera, the border between Mexico and California, so the family can have a better life. The family finds the journey to California difficult. California is not what the family imagined. The family works all day in the strawberry fields. When strawberries are out of season, they must move and find work in cottons fields. In between work, Francisco Jimenez finds time to start being comfortable at school with the teacher that works with him alone during lunch time. The teacher told him he will teach him how to learn to play corridors, he was quite excited so he wanted to tell his parent the great news about that, as soon as he got home, he noticed boxes was neatly packed up. He knew he's moving again, corridors does not matter anymore. They will never stay where they can settle for awhile. I can understand how he feel expect that I am not immigrant. I moved places to places and it's hard to make friends and lose friends so at the end when we start moving, I felt like there's no point of trying to make friends or do anything that I want to do for my life. Whatever I do, I put it on hold. It was not easy to move places to places. Knowing that I’m not alone in this, he's not alone too. Thing will only get better when he becomes older and stay in school.  

"Rules of the Game"

“Rules of the Game” is about Chinese-American, Waverly Jong, explains how her mother taught her the art of invisible strength when she was six years old, constantly saying that it is a strategy for winning arguments, respect, and chess games, although she was unaware of the last one at the time she learned the art. Waverly Jong was narrates her own story. Who lived in San Francisco's Chinatown with her parents and two brothers, Vincent and Winston. The family lives on Waverly Place, Waverly Jong was named after this street. They are poor, the children do not think they were because they eat regularly and have plenty of fun playing in and out of the alleys and shops in the neighborhood. Through the years, Waverly's mother consistently gives her and her brothers nuggets of wisdom so that they can improve themselves and their situation, instead of allowing them to simply accept the poor confines of Chinatown. From my understanding, Chinese has high expectation in their children, they want them to get a nice, fancy job, or make money. Like for example, I’ve read a story about a girl who was living her mother's dream, it's called ''Two Kinds'' by Amy Tan, a battle of wills between the narrator, a young Chinese-American girl, and her mother, a Chinese immigrant. The narrator, Jing-mei, struggles to discover her own sense of identity in the face of her strong-willed mother's dream. ' her mother, believes in the American Dream. With hard work, she feels that Jing-Mei can be anything she wants to be in this great country. her does not want her daughter to ever suffer the kind of deprivation and tragedies that she had to endure in China. But the daughter has no passion to prove herself. She wants to take life as it comes. The mother believes that anything can be accomplished and she uses her daughter as her outlet to prove it. She continuously give her daughter numerous of tests and eventually forces her to take piano lessons, which becomes her mother's prime focus of her 'perfect daughter' determination. Related to this Chinese-American girl, her mother continue to tell wisdom statement to make them think what it means. The mother teaches her daughter the "secret of invisible strength" she compares the rules of a chess game to the rules that lead to success in life and she has a way where she stay calm, focus, and talked in her head “The wind leaves no trail” I saw a clear path, the traps to avoid. The wind blew stronger. “throw sand from the east to distract the knight came forward ready for the sacrifice. The wind hissed, louder and louder. “Blow, blow, blow. He cannot see. He is blind now. Make him lean away from the wind so he is easier to knock down.” this helped her win tournaments. As you noticed, they used “Wind” (in BOLD), it represented strength to win chess games. My opinion about this story is quite interesting how parent expect so much in such a young age children because of their culture and how much the tolerance they had in China. At the end of the story where it said “I closed my eyes and pondered my next move”, what will happen next? Will she continue to do the tournament or will she stop? Will she do it for fun and not for her mother?

A Gift of Laughter

A Gift of Laughter, I believe that this means that whatever a child do with such innocent thoughts really make the difference in how we (adults) need to realized that we, as we get older usually take things personal such as getting stress about money bill or else. Robbie has a flasback of his childhood because he knew that his child reminded him that he used to go through the same thing but the only madethe best out of the situation when it comes to his child. His child was excited to show his father about what he made for him but the father was busy talking about money issue with the mother and it upset the child. The father realized what he was doing so he looked back and knew how his son felt so he decided to see his son and comment the picture that he made for him. The son didn't think he means it so as soon he was trying to leave, the father decided to leave with him and take him to the store. I thought that was a sweet gesture because it makes a child realized that his father do understand him, went through the same thing he did and he does pay attention to him. I believe the tittle of this story is about how wonderful a gift of a child can be, a child that can make the difference in you, and a child who remind you that you only live once.