Paulos's World Lit Blog

  In the first setting of the small fishing village of Yeongdo near Busan, Korea, Sunja was born. The area was extremely poor due to corrupt rulers and Japanese thieves after Japan annexed Korea. Because of how poor they were, Yangjin is forced to open a boarding school, which Sunja helps out with. The fishing aspect of the village is why Sunja meets Hansu, a fish broker, and eventually becomes pregnant with his child. The village is also where Sunja meets Isak, Sunja’s husband. Sunja grew up in the village until she got married. In Yeongdo, Sunja was given some freedom and was able to express herself and did not truly recognize the discrimination that Koreans faced. She was able to depend on her mother and her community and was treated with kindness and respected. Then, she moved to Osaka, Japan with Isak to live with Isak’s brother, Yoseb, and Isak’s brother’s wife, Kyunghee. In Osaka, Koreans were treated poorly and discriminated against by the Japanese, and Koreans could not ev...

  So far in the novel, Hansu seems to be a manipulator, who is untrustworthy, as can be seen by the fact he did not tell Sunja about his marriage and other life, and by the fact his job as a fish broker has been tied to being an untrustworthy and evil person as he works with the colonial government. Also, he is over 30 years old trying to be with Sunja who is 16 years old. This also plays into my negative view of Hansu. Isak, on the other hand, seems like a kind, trustworthy person who always sticks with his morals. His goal of marrying Sunja was intended to simply help her despite all the social sacrifices he had to make in terms of social classes. For instance, Pastor Shin keeps telling Isak that marrying Sunja is a sacrifice and he essentially should not do it, but Isak sticks with it and does not even admit that he is sacrificing his social class because he believes it is the right thing to do and it is what God wants him to do. Isak, also, sticks with his religious beliefs eve...

One of the biggest things I learned from researching on the Equiano Team was from John’s part about the Middle Passage. I always knew the slaves were given unsanitary and uncomfortable living spaces and I use the word living extremely lightly. John talked about how the diagram of the ship had 470 captives which means each captive had only 7 feet of room, which is not even 2 human beings in any direction. The most shocking part was that the ship was actually even more packed than the diagram made it seem with the ship even having almost double the captives once at 710. This means that people had around 4 feet of a room which is not even the height of a teenager, much less a man. Equiano described his voyage in the Middle Passage as horrible, but this research John did really put it into perspective. Equiano described the stench as being horrible, and I kind of just glanced over that, but now after knowing just how many people were probably on the ship there I can see why the stench was ...

  In the final chapter Equiano gives his final plea for England to end slavery. He summarizes his argument throughout the story about how slavery is economically harmful and humanely wrong. Equiano’s overall goal of the entire story is to recount the experiences of his life to show white men that slavery is bad so that they can help Equiano in the fight to abolish it. In the final chapter he continues this argument by focusing on his similarities with most white men in England, his religion, and what he thinks white people care about the most at the time, their pockets. He continues to show how he, as someone considered an uncivilized savage, is a devout Protestant Christian and is willing to become ordained to spread his faith and how slavery is harmful for the British economy.  The series of letters in the last paragraph include a message to become ordained by a bishop so that Equiano can go back to Africa as a missionary, a letter to the Quakers, a letter to the Officers of...

The topic I chose was representation of wealth and power in The Secret River.  I have not really started actually working on the final project but I have tried to do a bit of research and have not found anything on The Secret River on the library researching website, but I do plan to ask Michelle for help on this next week. One thing that has been working well for me is knowing what to talk about in the book specifically to show where Grenville's argument on wealth and power are and where to find it as my annotations have been extremely helpful. I have not decided on what platform to use for the project, so I am wondering what you guys believe the best platform to use for the project would be with my topic. I think the way I am going to research is for context for the way Australia worked as it came to social classes or the economy and use the book as my main evidence points. Even though I have not done much, the project has been going pretty well so far, I plan to start doing most...

 I think Equiano is arguing to abolish slavery, but he understands that it will be a process, so he first wants it to become humane because that is easier to argue for with the eventual goal of abolishing it completely. Equiano, in his story, does not necessarily describe the slavery in Africa as bad or argue against it all. He kind of just describes it throughout his story and even kind of praises it as it is incredibly humane with essentially the only difference between a slave and a free person in Africa is that the slave is in a lower social class. Slaves even get paid in Africa. In the British colonies and the ships though, Equiano mainly attacks the inhumanity of the system of slavery. Whether it is about how African children are raped, beat or scammed. Equiano does not necessarily use arguments against simply the idea that a person has a master, or that a person should not be in a lower social class. He also sometimes praises owners like Mr. King for treating him humanly esp...

  My understanding of the term transculturation is that it is the meeting of two cultures and how they affect each other. In some cases they merge and in some cases one culture completely eradicates the other. An example of two cultures merging is like in Home Fire. Aneeka, both do not fully follow American or Muslim cultures, but a combined mix of the two. For instance, Aneeka wears the hijab, as in Muslim culture, but she chose to follow American hookup culture and lose her virginity to Eamonn before marriage. In American culture, hijabs are looked down upon, while in Middle Eastern culture losing your virginity before marriage is looked down upon. By doing both of these, Isma is following a mix of the two cultures that she personally accepts. In The Secret River, the Aboriginal culture is essentially wiped out by the New South Wales settlers. Almost none of the settlers picked up the culture of the Aboriginals besides Blackwood and Dick, so the culture is essentially lost after ...

  My experience of reading Equiano so far has been fine. It takes more time than usual to read it because the language in it is not like the language in most books I read and it sometimes gets a bit confusing. I do find the book interesting, so I do like reading it though. I have never read about or even seen online the experience of extremely young Africans in European slavery like Equiano during the third/fourth chapter. Something I found unexpected was about how slavery worked within Africa. I have been conditioned to think that slavery means that a person has absolutely no rights and is treated horribly by their masters. However, in Africa, Equiano says that slaves are essentially just workers who are in a lower social class. They have rights, eat normal food, and are treated well by their masters, not to an equal extent compared to free people, but it is not as bad as I would think if I did not read the story.​​ In Europe, his life is also different than I would have imagined....