#2 "A Father"

You should never forget where you came from. In "A Father" Mr. Bhowmick was trying to keep his culture alive even if everything around him was different. I could never imagine what it is like to have to convert the lifestyle you once knew to appease your surroundings. Being that they live in the states now his wife and daughter had started to become more americanized which he had grown accustomed to but did not fully accept it. But in almost every culture being a father is always the same. A father should love and care about their daughter in Mr. Bhowmick case he did not show that. As he even describes Babli he goes on to say that she is not the child he would have chosen, she is not womanly enough and she is only good enough to help him out money wise but nothing else. I never understood how one's father can describe their own child in such selfless(I am not sure if that is the word I was looking for but it will do for now) manner. Even when he finds out she is pregnant at first he seems surpise that anyone took time to love her. This story to me made me angry as to how a father can think such a way towards their child.

Towards the end when he does come to terms about her being pregnant and that he convinces himself that it would be all alright if he gets a grandson and if the father is white. The only time in this story that I did feel the same as Mr. Bhowmick is when he hit her at the end. I would have never hit her on her stomach though because of the baby but I would have still hit her. I only say this because if I was him and I had convinced myself that I would be ok if some man got my daughter pregnant before marriage even though it's against my culture, and she tells me that she got pregnant without a man I would be furious. One thing I guess he felt to go against the culture the right way but another thing to go against and not even an acceptable way. It was one of those stories were new school and old school collided. 

#1 "I Would Remember"

    I have to say when reading this I felt the passion and situations Carlos Bulosan went through. I love when writers can make you feel like your in story. I also connected with story because at a very young age my mother had passed as well. When that happens you later grow up trying to understand life and death. Unfortunately in Bulosan case he was surrounded by more deaths in such a short period that anyone should bear. As he describes each death of the people he encountered you can almost picture them interacting and what effect they had on him. The two deaths he encountered that he describes in great detail are of Crispin and Leroy.

    When describing Crispin death it is clear that there was a emotional connection. He describes him as if a person would describe a lover or a friend. As he wakes up the next morning and realizes Crispin has died he says "Men like Crispin who had poetry in their soul come silently into the world and live quietly down the years, and yet when they are gone no moon in the sky is lucid enough to compare with the light they shed when they are among the living." That passage to me shows how he felt Crispin was kind of like the light that shown through his darkness. Even though he did not know him that long he brought him hope and made an impact on him which made his death a significant one. 

    Leroy's death brings the whole story to a turn around. Being that Leroy was of the last death he describes it is also one of the most violent. Leroy's death reminded him of his homeland in which he saw his father violenting kill a carabao. It was a vicious death which was the same as Leroy's because these men showed little to no mercy on him. This made him see that even through he was trying to escape his homeland some of the same things he saw there were also everywhere else as well.