2nd Response

Of the three authors I enjoyed “The Thinking Men” by Nikky Finney the most. I loved the rawness of the words. I am personally drawn to the poetic style of the form. Stylistically the words flowed so beautifully. They seemed to point to ability by forcing the reader to notice the juxtaposition of these men and more specifically how they are capable. The exploration of the binary of men being those that do and those that do something different, or more specifically can't do was haunting. I think that author was trying to get at the racial inequality and let the voice of the men ring through the piece by validating the mind AND body. Dismantling the idea of these hard working men as being incapable of doing the thinking that would take place in this school building that they were working on was beautiful. I loved the line, “Math, mind, and muscle plied deep into each and every dark seam.”(165). As the reader I felt that this compounding of skills was being unfolded as I kept reading. 


Arroyo's "Working in a Region of Lost Names" was so somber and full of longing. The estrangement that wove their way through this piece were intricate and full of detail. The relationship between father and child, job and jobless, Spanish and English, responsible and irresponsible, cared and uncared for, made for a rich reading experience. I felt myself being pulled into the lives of these characters. Juan's suicide after the closing of the cannery highlighted this harsh landscape of loss and dependance. The harshness was made worse by the fact that our main character seemed alone with his feelings: his father is lost to the drink and then back home to Puerto Rico, his friend lost to death, and his memories in the field, rich and fleeting. Silence and solitude are what end this story when the protagonist reflects on all that is lost, even the names of those men he worked with in the field.


"Belonging to the Land" by Masumoto was full of delicate details as well as blatant disparity. I liked the combination of the two and found it to be a pleasant read. I did not like the sort of chunked up individual stories. There seemed to be three separate stories, and as a reader I found that confusing and frustrating. I understood that the link was that it was the experiences of one character and how that compounds to create a larger more complex narrative. The friendship between two young boys of different backgrounds (Mexican and Japanese) highlighted the obvious lack of dialogue about their differences. The exchange of knowledge and the noticed lack of dialogue was interesting but I wished the author would have gone deeper with that. The story about the common thread of being helpless to nature and thus leveled in terms of cultural background, wealth of knowledge,  and economic differences was fascinating. I don't often think of nature as lacking prejudice but it is so true. I liked the use of the word "democratic" to describe that affect of nature. The final story of this series was about sacrifice and the hope for a better life. The war destroyed what this family had worked so hard to create. This beautiful crop of raisins is ready to be harvested, the family is ready to reap the reward of their hard work but can't. The soil has provided but the land they are living on is not theirs, the country they live in and call home has turned against them because of war. They are shipped away from the location they need to be, off to camps, to be confined. The land and specifically the need to be at a certain location is so beautiful and subtle. By the time I got to the once gentle father burning the families belongings to white ash, I wasn't frustrated at the waste I was sympathetic and almost grateful. They had worked so hard for so long, all that they owned on that land was now returning to that land as white ash.