Non-Fiction Blogpost

Non-Fiction Text: On Staten Island, Relentless Bullying Is blamed for a Teenage Girl’s Suicide

By: Vivian Yee

The main idea of this article is to show how bullying has an impact on peoples life. When people tease one another they have to understand the harm that they are doing. Felicia was teased because she had piercings and lived in foster care. Many thought nothing would happen because she never expressed her emotion at all. Some details in the story were, “She looked happy. She was laughing. It didn't look like anything was upsetting her at all”. This show how she was a ‘closed person’ and never told people how she felt. Also in the article it states “if you tried to bully her, she’d laugh at you” this shows how she would hide her emotions and later on she would express them when no one was there to stop her. Lastly, in the article it says something like how “Somebody must’ve said something pretty bad about her for this to happen” this shows how she is a strong person so in order to break her, you have to say something that will actually hurt her in more than one way. This detail support to main idea because it shows how you shouldn't bully people because you never know what will happen.

Author wants us to feel sad and bad for this girl. No one wants to see a girl get bullied by other people. This is what makes us resistance the text a little, because you kind of don’t want to read it because it’s just depressing. “I can’t, I’m done, I give up.” This quote was from the article and it shows when I resistance the text because she gives up so it means this ‘bully’ done something really bad to make her almost want to die.

            I will take away that bullying is not a joke, it serious. You shouldn’t bully someone because you don’t know the harm that you are doing to that person. My thoughts have been shaped because I know this issue is bad, teenagers commit suicide, start cutting them and it’s not funny. This article shows that you can only take so much pain, till you just want to kill yourselves. I want to know, why do people do this to others? Do they take this as a jok

Social Action Question #4: When do you find yourself resisting the text? What does your resistance say about you or the text?

         The story I am reading is “a long way gone” by Ishmael beah. It’s about a 12 year old boy named Ishmael beah going into war. He is a child solider that is forced to fight with the rebels and wanders land rendered by violence.

            I found myself resisting this story way too many times, that I wanted to stop. I found myself resisting when he had to fight. He said it was like a bloodbath. When the rebels first came to attack his country, he saw a family in a van, died. The girls were shot in the head, and the parents were killed by a gun going through the windshield. This is just so intense, because this is when I started to shake, and made me think that he would die since the rebels seemed so close. Also, according to the story, he saw a guy walking that had been shot in the arm, throwing up blood, and looked like he had no hope left. This is when I really resisted because it made me gag and say to myself ‘oh my god’ this is so much! How can a 12 year old boy handle this danger and disturbing sight!

            The resistance says that I can’t handle the text. I think this goes out to everyone though, because I mean if you see people throwing up blood, or people getting shot in the head, and you know rebels are in your country, what are you to do? What can you do? This is an intense situation because it makes you nervous that you can be ‘next’. I should have expected some resistance, since I did research about child soldiers.

            This book is really good so far. I think the resistance shows how bad and brutal being a child solider was, and the bad memoires and images that they had to go through. I hope as I read along good things start to happen and maybe even a change.