The Competitor

 Memories are what makes us who we are. The certain things that we remember about certain topics shape our opinion on them, other people, and even the world. Without memories, we would all just think the same thing and have no opinions for ourselves. It also shapes our personality and how we interact and react to certain things. In the Yellow Birds, memory is a key component to the story line. The narrator constantly switches back and forth between the memories he remembers from the war in Iraq in which he fought in. From our class discussion about China and Japan, we found that memories are as important as story telling, because they are your own view and story on something that happened to you. We often are inclosed in our own personal bubble and don’t really pay attention to what’s happening around us. For example, in the Yellow Birds, women are heavily discriminated and their safety rights are being violated as they are beat and have no choice but to comply with the requests of...

Personally, I don’t mind the book; I don’t particularly love it or hate it, more of a neutral feeling.  In our book clubs, we spoke up some human rights issues in the book, like the violation of privacy and torture to women in the club with the soldiers. They were unable to protect themselves and were forced to do what the soldiers intended. There’s also some discrimination regarding that as well. You can view this happening in the book specifically on page 65, where they were getting thrown against the wall. We also touched on how we felt that the book was repetitive. I strongly agreed with that topic of discussion, because that’s how I felt reading the book. I feel as if it’s just the narrator speaking about his war experiences and random events over and over again. It’s also a bit difficult to follow, through all the changing times and such. I feel like the moments specifically with Murph are repetitive, especially when they are talking about their lives back home. I have not fi...

 I decided to take a step back and read something of my own choosing, a book I found called the Testing. It took place in the ‘future’, where America was different into several different colonies and rules but the big city. Students in each of the colonies would try to be chosen for the Testing in order to have a chance to study at the University. In order to do so, they have to pass the 4 tests the supervisors give them: written tests, team working, problem solving, and making it to the center of the city on their own over the course of 3 weeks. It was a very nail-biting and adventurous book, I strongly recommend! The author did a very good job connecting the reader to the main character’s thoughts and actions all throughout the book. I really enjoyed taking a step back from The Yellow Birds for English class and reading the Testing. It’s similar to The Hunger Games, so if you enjoyed that series, I strongly recommend the Testing!