Tattoos Essay #1

Sean Jenkins

English 102

Tattoos Essay #1

            It is easier to forgive than to forget, but forgiveness can be one of the toughest things for a person to comprehend.

            In the book Tattoos on the Heart, a man referred to as Father G worked to try and create a group with the intent of helping gang members in Los Angeles, California. Father G has to work with gang members that often times have had very tough lives, and he has to look the other way when he learns about some of their actions. Father G had to work with a young man named Ramiro. However, Father G realizes that in order to help Ramiro find work that he’d need to get rid of the crude tattoo that he had on his forehead. “We began tattoo removal because of a guy named Ramiro. A gang member fresh out of prison, with a long record, had Fuck the World tattooed on his forehead, completely filling the space there.” (page 7) Father G eventually decided to give Ramiro a job at Homeboy Bakery and started the to remove the tattoos from not only Ramiro but from many other gang members that he worked with. Father G had to be able to forgive the gang members for what their tattoos might have meant in order to help them find work. This showed that Father G had a lot of courage. As a result of this, Ramiro was able to almost forget a strong memory that he had and forgive himself for doing it.

            Lula was another one of the young gang members that Father G had worked with and had to forgive them for their previous actions. Lula had ADD or attention deficit disorder and seemed to be very happy when he received a report card, which had failing grades in all classes. Father G was able to forgive Lula for his failing report card and in return praised him for having zero absences. Father G treated Lula almost as if he were a straight A and was always trying to support Lula and lift his spirit. “Lula, nice goin’ Mijo, you didn’t miss a day, I’m thinking a lot a good it did ya-you didn’t miss a day.” (page 50) Lula was always so grateful to hear the words Father G had to say to him. This shows how well Father G was able to forgive Lula for his previous actions and turn it around and work with him and praise him for the work they were doing together. Lula’s struggle since he was a small child never allowed him to view happiness of gratitude so it was sometimes hard for him to recognize what Father G was trying to do. Because habits are so hard to break, Father G had to show Lula that he needed to be grateful for the little things that he had in his life and enjoy every moment. Father G believed that the more you were able to focus on positive events and enjoy them, that you would be able to forgive yourself for your prior actions.

            Because Father G was able to forgive the young gang members that he worked with actions, it made it much easier for him to try and encourage them that they had a better life on the outside rather than in prison. By working with these troubled young men, he was able to show them that they needed to forgive the people that they might be angry at, but most importantly themselves. They needed to do this in order to enjoy their new lives that Father G was helping them shape. Forgiveness is not always an easy task for people, but it can be the most rewarding in the end.

Sherman Alexie Novel Final Essay

How might a person stay afloat while being metaphorically drowned by their surroundings? This is a problem that Junior, the protagonist in the novel The Absolutely True Diaries of a Part-Time Indian, faces throughout his life. Junior is able to overcome this problem by looking at things from a different perspective. Throughout his first year in high school, Junior is thrown challenges that he has to overcome in order to fulfill his goal. Junior’s goal is to become his own person and break off from his Indian tribe without disappointing them. However, everything Junior does ends up disappointing someone, whether it be his tribe or the new people he has met outside the tribe. Junior always feels that no matter what he does that he will fail. Junior eventually realizes that everything is beautiful if you just look at it from a different perspective. A story he is told about a horse allows him to come to grips with what he wants to do in his life and achieve more than what is expected. Junior allows himself to achieve more by grasping his generosity because he realizes that whatever he does will affect others around him and he benefits from this by looking at his experiences from a different perspective.

Junior is able to look at the story about the horse from a different perspective and relate it back to his own life. The story involves a “stupid horse” that drowns in a lake near the reservation called Turtle Lake. Junior sees the lake as the reservation that he is living in and he relates the horse to himself. This symbolizes how Junior feels about his life on the reservation. He feels that he is being drowned by his life on the reservation and that he isn’t able to fulfill what he is capable of. He realizes that if he stays on the reservation, he won’t be able to fulfill his dreams of becoming his own person and breaking away from his tribe. At one point, Junior’s geometry teacher, Mr. P, pays a visit to him and expresses to him that if he were to just leave the reservation that he’d be much better off. He explained to Junior that his sister (Junior’s) was the same way. She had much more to offer than what was expected of her on the reservation but was never able to realize it because she lived on the reservation her whole life. She never even gave herself a chance to live up to what she was capable of because she never chased an opportunity to. Mr. P makes Junior realize that the only thing that kids on the reservation are learning is how to fail. Eventually Junior realizes that if he was to stay on the reservation that he would be walking away from his own dreams. Mr. P told him during their conversation “You are going to find more and more hope the farther and farther you walk away from this sad, sad, sad reservation.” (43)

As the story of the “stupid horse” continues, it begins to relate to Junior’s life more and more. In the story, the horse eventually winds up washing up on the shore of a lake nearby Turtle Lake called Benjamin Lake. The horse reappearing relates to Junior because it symbolizes his decision to transfer to Reardan High School and make a new life for himself. Reardan is a primarily white high school off of the reservation, however transferring to the new school gives Junior the chance to succeed and fulfill his dreams. By going to the new school, Junior is able to get away from the life that had been drowning him back at the reservation. This relates to the horse washing up on the shore and leaving the lake that had drowned him behind. Junior was able to take the first step towards fulfilling his dreams because he was able to look at his life from a different perspective and realizing that his life at the reservation wasn’t giving him what he wanted.

Many of the Indians in Junior’s tribe felt that him leaving the reservation to go to a new school, a new school full of white people, was a joke and they shunned him for it. This relates back to the story of the “stupid horse” because after the horse washed up on the shore, some people on the reservation burned its corpse. “A bunch of guys threw the dead horse into the back of the truck, drove it to the dump, and burned it.” (223) The Indians on Junior’s reservation couldn’t handle the fact that he had broken off of their way of living and that he was becoming his own person. The Indians in the story had burned the horse because they felt that what it had done was wrong, and the Indians in Junior’s reservation were doing the exact same thing to him. His mother had told him before he transferred to Reardan that he would be treated like a traitor for what he was about to do. This is exactly what happened on Halloween that year. While trying to collect money for the poor with a friend he made at Reardan, he was jumped by a group of Indian boys. Junior realized that they had only doing that to “remind me that I was a traitor.” (79) Later, when Junior’s new school plays his old school in basketball the Indians on the reservation continue to punish him by chanting “Ar-nold sucks, Ar-nold sucks, Ar-nold sucks!” (143) when he takes the court. This is a strange experience for Junior because Arnold is his birth name, however everyone on the reservation always called him Junior. This makes Junior really realize that he was no longer welcome on the reservation and no longer belonged to the tribe. The reservation had removed him from their lives just like the Indians in the story had done with the “stupid horse”.

Even though Junior’s tribe had removed him from their lives, he still felt that he owed it to himself to fulfill his dreams and by doing that he was going make them believe that he was doing the right thing. This is similar to the “stupid horse” story because soon after the Indians had burned horse, the lake that it had drowned in caught fire and eventually the corpse of the original horse washed up on the shore once again. This symbolizes that no matter what the Indians in Junior’s tribe might do to him that he will never give up and that he will keep coming back and prove to them that he was doing nothing wrong. He wasn’t going to allow the tribe “burning” him to keep him from fulfilling his dreams, so he continued to attend Reardan and thrive.

Eventually, the story of the “stupid horse” ends when the Indians on the reservation decide to just leave it alone until it just rotted away. This relates to how the Indians in Junior’s tribe eventually felt about him. Junior was going to become his own person and break away from them no matter what they did to him. Junior’s ability to look at the experiences he had from a different perspective allowed him to stay headstrong on his quest to fulfill his dreams. He allowed himself to be all right with what his fellow Indians had said and done to him because he knew what he was doing was right. He realized that the only reason that they had shunned him was because they were all afraid to do what he had done. “I wept because I was the only one who was brave and crazy enough to leave the rez.” (217) Junior was going to accomplish his goal because he was had enough courage to go out and chase them.

 The story of the “stupid horse” basically summarizes Junior’s life. The story relates to all of the experience he had in his first year of high school. Junior was able to live up to his potential because he didn’t follow the paths of his peers. He knew that he needed to break of from the norm and live his own life and become his own person. The story of the “stupid horse” is about a horse that was drowned in a river and kept coming back to torture the people that had insulted him. This is just what Junior did by breaking off of the reservation and showing them just what he could accomplish by not allowing himself to be confined by what they thought was right. Junior eventually was “set free” by the people that had shunned him, just like the “stupid horse”. Two outcasts that did what was considered wrong, in order to do what they knew was right.

Convincing a young person to read Alexie's novel

The novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, is about a boy named Junior and his life on and off an Indian rez (reservation). To me, many young people today would be able to relate to Junior. He often finds himself just trying to fit in with his peers, but still feels like an outsider. I find that many young people these days sometimes have a tough time trying to fit in with the groups around them and often are left out. Junior would appeal to these kinds of people because he explains how he gets around being left out. Junior likes to play sports, which is a great way to get to know people that are your teammates. In the book, Junior moves to a new school and has to recreate new friendships with people. He does this by talking to people and learning things about them and finding a connection between himself and that person. I feel that young people that are struggling to fit in could learn from what Junior does and apply it to their own lives. There are also many other things that Junior does to appeal to young people.

Throughout the book Junior likes to talk about things like masturbation and girls. He is a young guy going through puberty and this is relatable to all young people that may be going through puberty as well. He talks about masturbation like it is an Olympic sport, which is very comical and enjoyable to read. This could appeal to a young person who might have some worries about experimenting with such things. Also, Junior likes to talk about girls and how he handles interacting with them. At his new school where he really doesn't fit in, he manages to find himself a girlfriend (Penelope). The way that he approaches Penelope and handles his interactions with her could give young people some idea on how to interact with someone of the opposite sex. There are many things throughout the book that Junior does that can be related to mostly by younger people which makes this book a good read for them.

Sample Papers Response

I read sample paper 1, and I felt that this paper was very interesting. I found it enjoyable to read because of how well the writer was able to relate a quote from the book back to the book itself. I felt that the writer was able to describe the story and used enough quotes so that the reader could get some context as to where the writer was coming from. This to me made this paper much more understandable and related, which made it much easier to read/follow. In my opinion, this paper was very convincing because the writer was able to relate the story about the "stupid horse" back to the book, and they were able to do so with a strong use of quality quotes. The writers use of quotes emphasized how the "stupid horse" related to the book and made their points much more understandable. Also, because of the writers well thought out and explained topic sentences, the paper was very easy to read and comprehend.

Native Americans Current State of Affairs in US

When English settlers first came the the US, in order to create a new life for themselves, they needed to find a place to live. In order to do that, they needed to push out some of the Native American tribes that were already occupying these places. This began a conflict between Native Americans and US citizens that still exists today, but is getting better. The US is constantly engaging in agreements with Native American tribes that will make their lives better. For example;

Native American tribal governments are an integral part of the political fabric of the United States. As the Supreme Court of the United States determined in its 1831 decision in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. (5 Peters) 1, tribal governments are not "states" in a constitutional sense, nor are they "foreign states," at least for purposes of Article III original jurisdiction. Instead, they are "domestic dependent nations," with many sovereign powers retained from the pre-contact period. As tribal governments have grown in political and economic power, the Supreme Court, the United States Congress, the federal executive, and the tribes have engaged in an increasingly important discussion to determine the scope of their powers. States, municipalities and individual citizens have all contributed to this conversation. The result is a legal regime of fascinating complexity. More than 500 tribal governments are recognized by the United States government. Some have large membership bases and control vast domains. The Navajo, for example, comprise a population of more than 225,000 and govern lands totaling in excess of 15 million acres spread over three Southwestern states. The largest tribe in terms of membership is the Cherokee Nation, which has more than 300,000 citizens. Most tribes, however, have fewer than 1000 members. Approximately 40% of all federally recognized tribes are village groups in Alaska. The smallest tribal reservation is smaller than 100 acres. The state with the largest Indian population is California, with Oklahoma a close second. Alaska is the state with the highest percentage of Native Americans residing within its borders.

Tribal economic, political and cultural development has also been encouraged by federal Indian education legislation. The most important of these statutes, the Indian Education Act of 1972, established the Office of Indian Education and the National Advisory Council on Indian Education and made federal funds available for Native American educational initiatives at all grade levels. (Lindsey G. Robertson, June 2001; http://thorpe.ou.edu/guide/robertson.html)