Memories

 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 the men in the restaurant. Others may have similar memories, but everyone perceives something differently. This is why they are important, because we want to avoid the single story as much as possible.

To conclude, we can honestly see that our memories are very important and must be shared in order to bring awareness to human rights violations, like in the Yellow Birds.