Writing about Jim Cooper's "Down on the Island"

        The recognized writer, Jim Cooper, narrates his experience as an English professor in the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez. In his book “Down on the Island” he gives an insight of Puerto Rico’s distinct features through the way of life he acquires coming to teach to the island. His first thought of was to escape from “real life”, but then finds himself actually integrated to its people’s way of life.

         On chapter seven of the book titled Teaching English, Cooper says he was not capable of teaching literature or even a language, although he had a degree on literature. At first it was hard for him, since he was the only continental English professor, and was given much responsibility. Students were not able to learn English properly, even though they really desired to learn and communicate with it. Cooper realized that not only Puerto Rico’s schools had a bad educational system, but also the Colegio (as the Mayaguez University is known). Therefore, he bought new books and, with the help of other professors, created a new syllabus. Politics also had a negative influence over students’ capability of learning English since high school. This, along with other teaching methods, like “oral method” and “pattern practice method”, did not improve the learning of English.

         The next chapter, Helping, is about his opinion of students and parents’ reclaim of their grade, in which every situation consisted of the perception students have that the teacher “gave” them a grade instead of understanding that they had to earn it. There’s a curious situation that Cooper explains, in which a boy makes the assignment for his sister, whom is not so good at English, and he asks Cooper why he did not gave her a good grade. I agree with Cooper in that the girl does not deserve a good grade, if she did not do the composition. The boys’ idea of helping is obviously not the correct one, and cannot be given credit for it. Personally, I have not been a situation like this. My sister has always been there for me and my mother too, and they help me in everything they can. Though, not doing a complete assignment for me; for that would not be helping me at all, academically nor growing as a person. Since we studied at a very competitive school, my sister also had her many assignments, so she only helped me as long as she could. Thankfully, I could graduate with high honors, and I could say, with a good preparation to begin my next stage of life, university. 

Journey Journal

         Writing is art, for it conceives the use of various approaches to develop a great work of literature, or even a short narrative. Through writing you can get to know aspects of yourself, especially by doing the first thoughts technique. For our class, we realized this technique which not only created a record of each one of our internal journey, but also helped us in our development of writing by exploring new areas of thought. The goal was to do it routinely five times a week for about ten minutes, and it had some specific rules, I would say. These were discussed by the writer Natalie Goldberg in "Writing Down the Bones": keep your hand moving; don't cross out; don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar; lose control; don't think, don't get logical; and go for the jugular. At the same time, it’s a fun activity to set that communication with your inner self and to learn from.

          Now as I look back through my journal from the first day I began writing, I realized at first it was hard for me to follow the rules since I’m used to a more organized writing. Even though I enjoy writing poems, most of the writing I have done in my life have been essays with specific formats. Neither there is so much stream of consciousness in them; fairly, that back and forth did not appear much when I was writing my thoughts. Towards the middles my thoughts began to flow as my hand kept writing and writing. I felt as if it was truly art; I was able to develop many ideas and getting to learn more about my inner self. One of these realizations was that I’m constantly overthinking, and wondering about my future. I guess it’s because it is one of my most significant concerns presently.

I truly enjoyed being able to interact, in another way, with the introspective part of me. I will continue performing this activity as long as I can, since it is also very interesting. The life compasses helped me reflect on aspects of my internal journey, like my spirituality, creativity, emotions, and physical aspects on a daily basis. For then, I could know where I had to reinforce these to be a better person every day. Here, I saw a clear connection between my internal and external journeys and how they affected each other. Finally, in this journal I recorded some of my dreams as Carl Yung does in his book; to know more these writings, I invite you to read my previous entry, Daily Writing, Remembering Dreams.

The front cover of my journal is a collage I made with 
cut outs from magazines to represent my external journey.

The back cover of my journal is a collage I made with 
cut outs from magazines to represent my internal journey.

Daily Writing, Remembering Dreams☼

       As soon as I wake up, most of the times I can remember my dreams, and sometimes they are the reason I wake up in the middle of the night. Some are vivid; some are blurry ones, and some I can’t even recall. But what is curious about them is their meaning, if they have any. Recently, I did the technique of writing about your dreams as soon as you woke up, and try remembering as much as possible. Having done this activity for some days, one can then look back at them and in these; one might discover an aspect of oneself or of one’s personality that is hidden in the unconsciousness. As Carl Young says in his book, “Soon I realized it was right to take dreams in this way as the basis of interpretation.” It’s interesting his reflection of writing his own dreams; he saw it as art and that his unconscious was forming a personality that was not him.

         It worked for me; although I might not be sure of the exact meaning of them, I can make inferences and learn about my unconscious, which is the one “working” while sleeping. I also believe though that’s not always true because in dreams, where I find myself in situations that happened to me in real life, I feel like if I had the knowledge of what to do or if something is wrong. Therefore, I believe there’s a connection between the conscious, which knows the outcome of a situation and the unconscious, which is experiencing or creating the situation at that moment in my dreams. Neither do I want to leave behind the fact that dream interpretation is a complicated topic, for there are innumerable perceptions about dreams.  

         Last night I dreamt that I was on the beach, just walking in the sand as if heading nowhere, and then I found my family. I recall that suddenly I found myself in another place with my high school classmates, and we were at a fancy party wearing long dresses and having quite fun. I have the perception I felt somehow lost or lonely; here’s the part where I say my unconscious intertwines with my conscious and I get the present feeling, but in an unreal situation, which is my dream. I’m not sure what that means, but it definitely says something about me. Lately, in most of my dreams, I have the thought that a tsunami is going to occur, so I’m always wondering about that, too. As for last night I woke up at midnight, but I cannot remember what happened in the dream that caused me to wake up. Most or the time these are vivid or colorful, for I can see the faces of people in them clearly, and even recognize the feelings I experience while I’m in my dreams.

Reflection to "A Small Place"

Jamaica Kincaid, as a person who was born on a tropical island such as Antigua, uses well her ability of writing naturally and fluently to express her ideas over the island she grew at. For this, she takes the position of a tourist who visits the island to vacation, in order to describe Antigua from an outside and inside perspective. Kincaid primarily, argues the consequences British rule brought to the island. Thereof she blames colonialism for the actual and impoverished status of the island. As she expresses, Antiguans learned corruption, bad governing, and uncultured habits form English people. In her opinion, “living as monkeys” was much better than living under British rule. Antiguans were good people with good habits, so much, that they seemed more cultured than the English living among them. Kincaid also expresses that Antiguans have a special reverence for English culture, which is somehow of an irony since they were the ones who colonized them to the point that there was racism, slave trade and oppressive rule.

As a reader, I enjoyed the contents of this book, because in a way I can relate to Kincaid and her experiences. Puerto Rico is also a small island but is not independent; it is still a territory of a strong nation like the United States. Living here, I’ve noticed the people’s mentality of an oppressed country, exactly our current status. Therefore, there are variations in Puerto Rico’s identity, and society ideologies are in constant change. Some are trying to protect our island’s culture and traditions so they continue defining who we are. While others, are not. This has been occurring for many years now, and I believe we need to unite as a country and work with what we have, the many resources including our people and our island’s beauty, before we lose them too! As for me, I keep enjoying Puerto Rico’s amazing culture, even as a tourist, every now and then.

About "A Small Place" by Kincaid

The book “A Small Place” commences describing the island of Antigua as a tourist would see it. By writing the story through this perspective, it is more interesting knowing the fact that its author, Jamaica Kincaid, is actually Antiguan, which she mentions in the first section. She has the ability to see her island from the outside as a tourist, but being part of the inside. Kincaid narrates the experiences and possible thoughts the reader might have if they were tourists visiting Antigua. She describes all the beauty the island offers, which are clear water beaches, friendly sun and delicious local foods, and the feelings these provoke in a tourist. Kincaid also talks about some harsh situations the locals live through, but always disguising it by the good time the tourist is experiencing since it’s supposed to be vacations, a time to relax and enjoy nature’s beauty.

As the narrative continues, while the tourist is “in” a taxi, Kincaid being Antiguan presents an insight of these features that reflect the island’s poorness. There is a hospital which Antiguans don’t even consider a good one, and those who are better financially travel to another country to get attended. The school and the library are also in poor conditions, especially the library which awaits repair since an earthquake in 1974. When the tourist finally arrives at the hotel, there is an image of the tourist enjoying the island’s beauty and wondering where everything in the island began and ended. Suddenly, Kincaid comes up with the idea of the tourist visualizing himself or herself as a tourist, the ugliness it represented. Finding pleasure in a place where natives found it full of boredom, and being envied by them for having such an ability of leaving your home and enjoying somewhere else.

 In the second part of the book Kincaid expresses the love for her island especially the old times where she grew up. She remembers it was a whole different island when Great Britain had possession of the island. There was racism due to that there was a time of slave trade, which was later outlawed. Kincaid recalls some buildings, such as the Barclay’s Bank and the Mill Reef Club, which were certainly founded and administrated by English, wealthy people. Every now and then, she repeated that they, Antiguans felt more superior among English, since they were so much better behaved than the uncivilized English. Kincaid tries to justify the island’s current situation by the oppression they experienced in the past as victims of colonialism.

Puerto Rico, My Homeland

      The term identity encompasses a variety of meanings according to a person’s way of thinking given that we’ve all had different experiences in our life. As the writer Peter Roberts expresses in the introduction of “The Roots of Caribbean Identity: Language, Race and Ecology”, home refers to a psychological factor of attachment, and it may be the place of one’s birth, place of residence or 'where the heart is'. Of the book’s introduction, I liked what I thought that was extremely truthful, is that the knowledge of identities and the distinguishing of cultural aspects is gained through the communication with natives.

As for me, Puerto Rico the country where I was born and grew up with my family is the place that I identify myself with; the place I refer to as my home. Even though my roots are African, Spanish and Taíno, and my country has been governed by Americans for many years, I identify myself as being Puerto Rican, which is exactly that, a unique mixture of all our roots.

          Puerto Rico is a small island that has many beautiful features not only to offer people who come to visit, but also to make it a great place to live at! I’ve had the opportunity to live in both rural and urban areas of the island. As to climate, since Puerto Rico is a small tropical island, no matter if you find yourself in the south or north, it will be more or less the same, which I love. In the rural area the environment is fresh, calm, and involves more familiar unity. People share with one another more closely between neighbors and friends. While life in the urban area, or the city, has more going on. For example in the capital city, San Juan, since it has more things you can do and attractions to visit, the key is to do as much as you can to enjoy of Puerto Rico’s beauty!  

          Like very place in this world, not everything in the island is as beautiful as its landscapes. For example, crime, which mainly involves robbery, and for being a small island, it is considered high. I believe the education offered is really good, considering that there are many opportunities, financially and educationally, to become professionals. The economy of the island is a poor one, though. I also think that our island have the enough resources to be in good or better conditions, but we Puerto Ricans need to work our land and with ourselves so we create a change and become a stronger nation. Through history, politics have had a negative influence on us, on the present, and on the success of the island. Therefore, I believe politicians, governors, leaders of different political parties should unite for the improvement of our island.

          This and many other features are the ones that characterize Puerto Rico, the reason why I identify with it and I am glad to call it my homeland. Its language, art, history, food and its people are all unique; including its variety of landscapes like blue-beaches, tropical rainforest, farmland, and green mountains. 

Embrace to Poetry!

After my experience of watching Dead Poets Society and expressing my thoughts about the film, I would like to share one of the many poems I have written along my lifetime. Since, in occasions, I prefer to express my feelings not only through dance, but also through poetry. I hope you enjoy it!

Today, she is an owl,

with big eyes as if with glasses.

She glares into the forest,

watching the woodpeckers work.

Wonders if tomorrow she will become a red rose,

In a garden full of diversity,

Being touched by the rain, standing still,

And tries not to be blown away by the wind.