A Country Boy Quits School

By: Lao Hsiang

The story is about a poor Chinese family which has a boy of an early age, toiling every day for a living just to help augmenting the other basic needs of their family. The family is forced to send this boy to school following the City Ordinance, to cite: An official proclamation had been issued in the city to the effect that unless a boy over six years of age is sent to school, some adult in the family will go to jail. Good thing there is a law that compels this boy to study so that it could have been a chance for him to acquire knowledge too but sooner or later he misses that mere chance due to the intervention of his family’s poor insight.

As the boy studies he frequently reads these books at the top of his lungs and it brings discomfort to the ears of every family member every time they hear this due to their own inaccurate interpretation of the foreign system of education.. It only demonstrates that the entire family lacks in education itself because there is no doubt that they are seeing things differently which is out of context.

Reflection:

I learned that education is very important to us so that we can improve and do better with our lives.  If we are well-equipped, we could be flexible enough to all the changes around us. Education is what we become in the future.

Silk

By: Alessandro Baricco

The story is

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Hervé Joncour travels the world buying silkworm eggs and eventually travels as far as Japan. He buys eggs from Hara Kei, a French-speaking nobleman. Joncour falls in love with his mistress. During his second visit to Japan, Joncour learns about the aviary of exotic birds that Hara Kei has built; he leaves a glove for Hara Kei's mistress to find in a pile of clothes. Hara Kei's mistress gives him a love note written in Japanese that says, "Come back, or I shall die."

During Joncour's third visit to Japan, Hara Kei's mistress releases the birds from the aviary. Joncour and Hara Kei's mistress have sex by proxy. Hara Kei conducts the silkworm egg transaction via an associate and does not say goodbye when Joncour leaves. When it is time for Joncour to make a fourth trip to Japan, war has broken out.

One day, he receives a letter written in Japanese. He takes it to Madame Blanche. It is an erotic love letter from a woman to her beloved master. Madame Blanche gives him some of her trademark blue flowers. Joncour retires from the silkworm egg business; he and Hélène have three daughters. Baldabiou leaves Lavilledieu suddenly and is not heard from again. Hélène dies of a fever several years later. On a visit to her grave, Joncour sees Madame Blanche's blue flowers there. He visits her and learns that his wife is the author of the letter.

Reflection:

 The very thing that this story has taught me is when to let go of someone that you love, even if you love it to the max.

Malinche

By: Laura Esquivel

When Malinalli, a member of the tribe conquered by the Aztec warriors, first meets Cortés, she -- like many -- believes that he is the reincarnated forefather god of her tribe. Naturally, she assumes that her task is to help Cortés destroy the Aztec empire and free her people. The two fall passionately in love, but Malinalli gradually comes to realize that Cortés's thirst for conquest is all too human. He is willing to destroy anyone, even his own men, even their own love.

Throughout Mexican history, Malinalli has been reviled for her betrayal of the Indian people. However, recent historical research has shown that her role was much more complex; she was the mediator between two cultures, Hispanic and Native American, and two languages, Spanish and Náhuatl.

Reflection:

I realize are words are very powerful, proven by Mallinali. She is a powerful person because of her abiliy to translate the words. She is also known as "The Tongue" because she is Interpreter and being Interpreter is big responsible because all the outcome of what you will say it will be depends on you. And I aIso realize that as a person we don't need to trust anybody. We must learn to know the people around us first before we trust them.

The Seven Ages of Man

By: William Shakespeare

This Seven Ages of Man summary is a poetic endeavor to understand the deep philosophical truth that deeply informs the central idea of this poem – the rather stoic stance that right from our entry to exit on this stage of life, a man’s mortal bearings have been pre-determined by the universal creator by means of seven neat division or ‘Acts’ that define our worldly duration. This explanation seeks to ask some critical questions about free will or the lack of thereof, and the guiding force of destiny that reduces us all to mere actors who are but following a script in our pursuit to add meaning to life.

                     

Reflection:

There is no everlasting thing in the world, a man lives from an infant and dies as a corpse is already part of the human cycle. The lesson is, we should accept the fact that all of us are dying and the reality behind the human life cycle

A Thousands Splendid sun

By: Khalled Hosseini

Mariam and her mother, Nana, a former housekeeper for Mariam’s wealthy father, Jalil, have been banished to a hut near a small Afghan village to avoid humiliating Jalil’s three wives and nine children in Herat. Nana bitterly disparages both Mariam and Jalil, who visits his daughter weekly. Even though the village mullah urges Nana to send the girl to school, she refuses, insisting that the only skill a woman needs is endurance.

 

To celebrate her fifteenth birthday, Mariam begs Jalil to take her to a cinema in Herat, but both parents strenuously object. When Jalil fails to meet her, Mariam walks alone to the city, only to be told that her father is not at home. On her return she discovers that Nana has killed herself.

When the Soviets are finally driven from Afghanistan, unrest returns to Kabul, as local warlords turn against each other. Fariba supports the Mujahideen, the Islamic militia that her sons had joined, but Hakim fears them and wants to leave Kabul. As ethnic violence continues, Laila is forced to drop out of school after a fellow student is blown to bits in the street.

Laila’s closest friend, the neighbor boy Tariq, has an artificial leg because of a Soviet land mine. Tariq and Laila become intimate after Tariq announces that his family is going to a refugee camp in Pakistan. Although he begs Laila to come with them, she cannot leave her father, who seems lost without Fariba’s support. Hakim and Fariba are killed when their home is shelled, and Rasheed finds Laila injured in the rubble. Mariam reluctantly tends her as she recovers. Later, Laila is...

Reflection:

We should be grateful for what we have, by never taking the people that bring happiness and fulfilment in our lives for granted.

She Walks in Beauty like a NIGHT

By: Lord Byron

The poet describes a woman who “walks in beauty, like the night/Of cloudless climes and starry skies” (lines 1-2). Immediately the light of stars and the shadow of night are brought forth as contrasts, foreshadowing the further contrasts the poet notices regarding this beautiful woman. Seeing her eyes, he declares that in her face “all that’s best of dark and bright” are joined. Her beauty is contrasted to the “gaudy” daylight.

In the second stanza, the poet reflects on the balance in the woman’s beauty: “One shade the more, one ray the less” (line 7) would hinder the “nameless grace” which surrounds her. He then turns to her inner life, seeing her external beauty as an expression of thoughts that dwell in a place (perhaps her mind, or her beautiful head and face) both “pure” and “dear” (line 18).

The final stanza returns to her face, but again sees the silent expression of peace and calm in her cheek, brow, and smiles. Her pleasant facial expressions eloquently but innocently express her inner goodness and peacefulness.

Reflection:

I learned that, “What is your beauty if your brain is empty”. So we need to balanced our beauty and knowledge so that we are globally competitive.

The Valley of Amazement

BY: Amy Tan

For as long as she can remember, Violet has believed herself to be American through and through. Her mother owns a courtesan house in Shanghai, and although they live in China, this has never prevented Violet from being certain of her heritage. When she finds out that she is actually half Chinese, it is devastating to her and she begins to doubt her identity. It doesn't help that she has never met her father; until the day when he visits her mother and tells her that it is now time to meet their son, who lives in San Francisco.

After Flora is ripped away from her, Violet begins to feel differently about her own mother. Suddenly she sees her mother's need to separate them and go in search of her son in a different light. She even contacts her mother and learns that she had actually been told that Violet was dead. Both women are glad to find each other again.

Loyalty eventually relents and marries Violet, and is also extremely supportive of her desire to get her daughter back. He begins to send gifts to Flora, but Edward and his wife never give them to her and so the situation remains static for quite some years, until Flora discovers the hidden gifts herself and finds out about the existence of her mother. She is reunited with her in Shanghai, and the meeting triggers some suppressed memories that Flora now realizes are of her time with her mother before Edward and Minerva took her away. Now that she has her daughter back, Violet begins to re-frame her life, seeing it less as a series of events that destroyed her and more of a life that makes her feel good because of the circumstances that she overcame.

Reflection:

I learned that we need to threat equally and value who they really because all of us are children of God.

Coraline

By: Neil Richard Maakinnon Gaiman

This short novel tells the amazing, and creepy, tale of what happens when a girl named Coraline and her parents move into an apartment on the second floor of a very old house. Two elderly retired actresses live on the ground floor and an old, and quite strange, man who says he is training a mouse circus, lives in the flat above Coraline's family.

Coraline's parents are frequently distracted and don't pay a lot of attention to her, the neighbors keep pronouncing her name incorrectly, and Coraline is bored. In the course of exploring the house, Coraline discovers a door that opens onto a brick wall. Her mother explains that when the house was divided into apartments, the doorway was bricked up between their apartment and "the empty flat on the other side of the house, the one that's still for sale."

The apartment is furnished. Living in it is a woman who sounds much like Carline's mother and introduces herself as Coraline's "other mother" and Coraline's "other father." Both have button eyes, "big and black and shiny." While initially enjoying the good food and attention, Coraline finds more and more to worry her. Her other mother insists they want her to stay forever, her real parents disappear, and Coraline quickly realizes that it will be up to her to save herself and her real parents.

Reflection:

I learned that always obey and love your parents because no matter what happened they are still your parents and they know the good thing for you.

Telephone Conversation

By: Akin Wanae “olowole” Soyinka

It seemed like a good price and the location was fine. The landlady promised that she didn’t live in the building. The only thing left was to confess something important about myself. “Ma’am,” I warned the landlady, “I don’t want to waste a trip over there. Just so you know, I’m black.”

There was silence on the phone. In that silence, I could hear the tension between the landlady's prejudice and her manners. When she finally spoke, she sounded like the kind of person who'd be wearing a thick smear of lipstick and have a long, gold-coated cigarette holder in her mouth. Now I was stuck in a terrible position. “How dark are you?” she asked bluntly. It took me a second to realize that I hadn't misheard her. She repeated, “Are you light skinned or very dark skinned?” It was like she was asking me something as simple as choosing between Button A and Button B on the phone booth: to make a call or to return my coins. I could smell her rancid breath hiding beneath her polite speech.

I took stock of my surroundings: a red phone booth, a red mailbox, a red double-decker bus, its tires squelching through the hot asphalt. So this kind of thing actually happens! Feeling ashamed at my rude silence, I gave in and asked, utterly confused and shocked, for clarification.She was nice enough to swap around the order of the words in the question: “Are you dark-skinned,” she asked, “Or very light?” Finally it made sense. I replied: “Are you asking if my skin is the color of regular chocolate or milk chocolate?” Her confirmation was detached and formal, devastating in how thoughtless and impersonal she sounded. I quickly changed my tactic and chose an answer: “My skin color is West African sepia.” And then, as an afterthought, I added, “at least it is in my passport.” Then there was silence again, as she imagined all the possible colors I might be referring to. But then her true feelings took over and she spoke harshly into the phone.

Reflection:

I learned that we must stop the discrimination of colour or anything because we are all born equal whether we are black or white and we are all children of God.

The Boy Named Crow

By: Haruki Murakami

Fifteen-year-old Kafka Tamura, who is preparing to run away from home, sits in his father’s study with the boy called Crow. Kafka is nervous; Crow advises him to be tough and strong, and make sure he has taken enough money to survive, at least for a while.

Crow warns Kafka that he will have to weather a storm—a storm that he will not be able to outrun, because it is within Kafka himself. Kafka predicts that he will run away from home, journey to a distant town, and live in the corner of a small library. Afterwards, he will be a different person.

Reflection:

I learned that challenges and problems are the point of our life and why we are still living. So in all problems we face today we must face it and avoid.