The Shoe Breaker By Daniel Boulanger

    This story was about a man who was being exploited by his employer. The story starts when a customer comes in to the store to pick up his shoes that he had left the day before to be repaired. When he got there the person hadn't gotten back with the shoes and so the employer was there trying to talk to the customer while they waited. But then the customer was getting mad because he was taking a long time. And when the customer was about to leave, the worker came in with his shoes. He explained why he was late and he tried to tell his employer that he just couldn't handle the job anymore. That he was getting tired more frequently. But the employer kept on telling him things and readings things to him about him staying with him. He was kind of influencing him to stay because he knew that the guy was the best shoe breaker in Paris. But the thing was that the worker didn't even knew how to read or write, so most of the time he didn't even knew what the employer was telling him.

    This story relates to the theme of barriers because this guy wasn't able to progress due to him not knowing his rights. Not knowing how to read was a major barrier for him because he couldn't read about his rights with the employer. It was like he was tied to his employer. From this story I learned that we need to keep more people informed of their basic rights. A lot of them are uneducated and so they are exploited because of that. This story was sad to me because the worker had basically worked for the employer for a lot of time and most likely he had been exploited by him all of that time. 

Las Papas By Julio Ortega

    This story was about a a father who was preparing a dish for his son. The story begins when he is getting all of the things that he is going to need to make a dish for his son. He takes out some potatoes and starts to cut them into pieces. He starts to talk about the history of potatoes and while he is saying all of this his son emerges and asks him what he is making. The father tells him what he is doing and the son kind of disapproves the dish. Then when this happens the father remembers how his father used to do the same with him. He then remembers how he had disapproved one of his fathers dishes and so he now regrets it because he is feeling what his father felt with his own son. Towards the end he changes the dish for another one and his son ends up liking it. At the very end the father buried the big potato while his son watched him and he tells him that "no one is ever going to know that he had planted it there."

     This story talks about food and history. But this story is more about keeping up with culture. This man doesn't want to forget his culture and he kind of wants to keep it going. He talks about how his dad did the same with him him when he was a child and so in a way this lets me know that he wants to keep the tradition going with his own child. Another thing that I got from this story is disappointment. This dad was trying to do everything he could to kind of not disappoint his son, but he still wanted to keep his culture and history going at the same time. He didn't wanted to lose it.

Love, Your Only Mother By David Michael Kaplan

 

      This is a story about a women who is getting a lot of letters from her mother. Her mother left her and her dad when she was 7 years old. This woman talks about how her mother kept on sending her a lot of letters all postmarked from different places. The woman has kept every single letter in hopes that she could track her mother down one day. But this never happens, the mother is never where the letters are postmarked from. The woman just wants to see her mother but she never finds her. She only keeps on receiving the letters from her with the signature of "Love, Your Only Mother." At a point the woman kind of wants to forget about her but she always remembers her from the letters that she keeps on getting. In the end the women says that she even wakes up in the middle of the night terrorized about her mother coming back to her. We can see how bad she wanted to see her Only Mother.

     The topic of this story was about family. In here we can see how this mother left her child and husband. She keeps on sending her letters but she doesn't want to return for a reason. We can kind of say that she wanted her daughter to always remember her. She never signed her letters with her signature. I thought that this story was very weird. I say this because usually a mother would at least show up to visit her daughter every once in a while. They might of had problems with the husband but it was still her daughter! 

Iguana Hunting By Hernan Lara Zavala

     This is a story about a guy who is visiting his grandparents and friends. His friends are Chidra and Crispin. Chidra is a half breed Mayan. The three guys got together and they proposed that they were going to go Iguana Hunting. They were on their way to the expedition when Chidra decided to tell the other guys tales like usual. He told them about Xtabay, which was an evil women from Mayan mythology. He also told them a tale in which he said that "he had seen a naked woman with beautiful long hair bathing in a deep pool," the day before. Crispin got mad at this because he didn't believed Chidra. But this time Chidra told him that he was willing to take them to the place where he saw her. So they went and they did found the lady by the pool. After seeing the lady they found themselves covered with ticks.Then in the end Crispin did believe Chidra and they also realized that Xtabay was not a tale just made up by Chidra too. Everything was and had always being real.
     In this narrative we can see how sometimes we have to see things for ourself's before believing in them. I am the same way because I don't believe people that just tell me things, I want to see it for myself. If I don't see things for myself I feel like I'm being lied to. I honestly liked this story. I'm not into tales so I don't believe in this one but I liked the path the author took with it. For example how he gave me background information first before throwing everything in. He also explained who Xtabay was. I would of had been lost if I wouldn't of had known who she was. Overall the descriptions of Xtabay worked very well because those were what got my attention the most ;)

Disappearing By Monica Woods

    This is a story about a woman who is tired of being called fat. She has an unsupportive husband who constantly keeps on calling her names. And because of this she decides to start taking swimming lessons. At first she kind of hates the water and gives up but then as she sees that her husband is still calling her names she decides to resume with the swimming lessons. After this she starts going to swim more often; even on weekends and holidays. She kind of gets addicted to being under the water. Then her friend Lettie sees this and tells her that she's overdoing it but her response is that she is not swimming because she wants to loose weight. She says that she likes to swim because she feels "transparent and invisible." In the end she loses a lot of weight but she is still continuing to swim and says that she will continue until her "..feet leave the board."
     I chose this story because it talks a lot about self image. In here the lady never seemed to be satisfied with her self image. She did almost everything to "disappear" because in my opinion she had the image of being fat in her mind all of the time. She just wanted to be invisible to others now. What I learned from this is to watch my mouth more. I say this because most of the time I also say these kind of things to some of my relatives. Even though I'm playing around all of the time, I don't know how they might really feel towards my comments. But most importantly I don't know how they might react to my comments.