Under a Sea of Thoughts

I think we can all agree that Fa Mu Lan was the coolest mom ever. I mean the lady literally carried her kid into battle in a sling, slicing and dicing bad guys whilst leading an army of fierce Chinese warriors to instigate a revolution to overthrow the emperor of China. In kindergarten, how many of you could bring in for show and tell the legendary Sky Sword physically controlled by the force of will of your mother? Yeah, didn't think so. Now obviously this was just a legend, and it is not humanly possible to jump 20 feet in the air, but in a way, Fa Mu Lan can exist as long as people believe in her cause. While there are physical words tattooed onto the Woman Warrior's back, people like Maxine Kingston, who have "many words - 'chink' words and 'gook' words too" (53), use these words to propel them to fight for what they believe is right. After thousands of years, a new figure of strength for women has recently emerged in theaters in the form of Wo

"The mistreatment of Native Americans has gone on for too long, has been overlooked, and must be stopped" - Said any remotely decent person with basic human morals ever. What these people rarely ever do, however, is stop and invest just a little bit more time and dig just a little bit deeper to see that their concerns for Indians are as full of compassion and empathy as the vacuum of outer space. It is fake news to say that natives are being treated any better than they have been ever since Columbus found the Americas. If everyone knows that America is pushing natives further into a corner and recognizes that this is extremely morally wrong, why has the status quo of Trump's America, when during his 100 days resumed the unfinished construction of a 1200 mile corporate pipeline straight through the heart of a sacred native american lake, remained the exact same as that of Jackson's America, when he directly rejected protective legislation of Native Americans and proce

Within our sea of existence, we look back at the rippled waters of history, look at the current boat we sit upon, and look forward to the endless horizon. Memorials serve as a way to honor the past, be grateful for the present, and look forward to the future. This week in class we discussed the many roles of memorials in remembering the fallen soldiers of costly wars. How memorials are presented have huge and lasting impacts on individual loved ones as well as the whole nation. For example, cenotaphs serve as a linear account of time, presenting events in chronological order without anachronisms. On the other hand, a memorial in the form of a book, such as Tim O'Brien's "The Things they Carried", can use nonlinear narratives and take liberty in presenting its accounts of war. Both serve as mediums to reminisce the past, but both have their fair share of advantages and disadvantages. Cenotaphs are unique artifacts in that they commemorate the bodies of soldiers who