Cannon-shooter Wannabe - Shooting Dad

I’ve never had much to relate to with my father. He’s an engineer. I’m an artist. As a full-time worker supporting a family of 7, he works long hours throughout the entirety of the day. Our relationship is quite silent and very awkward at times. I often find our interaction relatable to the limited relationship of Brad Manning and his father. I look more forward to a relationship with my father like that of Sarah Vowell’s. Reading Shooting Dad makes me long to talk to my father, even if it is just petty talk like political arguments. I’ve had a few times where I’ve “shot the cannon” with my dad. It’s when we talk and laugh, almost like friends. It’s at those times that despite the generation gap, my dad can still be like me. Or rather, I can be like him. I find that our generation is too boiled up in social media. Technology has created a larger space between parents and their children. I can most definitely see that I spend a significantly larger amount of time on the computer than talking with my father. At this rate, moving out into college will result in minimal contact with him, if any at all. I really hope to be able to be like Vowell in her last paragraph. I hope that when I let go of my dad, it will hurt. I hope I will miss him, that I will miss our interaction and relationship. I want to be able to love him.

There are usually two things that teenagers complain about these days: school and parents. While school is understandably complainable about (tests, unfair teachers, homework etc.), it seems almost paradoxical that teenagers would complain about their parents, the ones that take care of them. This behavior tends to lead to distrust and even rejection, often known as “rebelling”. It often seems that teenagers go through their rowdy phase with their parents and as they reach their latter years in college, they soften and seem to get along better. Why is that? It could be that the college independence and natural growth of time lets these students understand adulthood, and ultimately their parents. Or possibly they finally realize what their parents have done for them to get as far as they have. According to Brad Manning, in his piece “Arm Wrestling with My Father”, he claims this acceptance comes from and understanding of love. Through his retelling of his interaction and realization with his father, Manning expresses that he truly found who he was through his father’s love. It was when he and his father realized this love did Manning accept responsibility for his parents and gain the strength his father had so lovingly bestowed upon him.

Who Am I - Fish Cheeks

A culture that's commonly depicted as "different" from the american lifestyle is the Chinese. China in general is on the other side of the globe. The Chinese culture is often berated with stereotypes such as the "tiger" parents and the emphasis on respect for authority. Although they are overused, these kinds of pre-classifications are to some extent, true. Small things like taking off shoes before entering a household, cooking meals at home often, and spending sparingly seem to separate the Chinese ways from our familiar american ones. Growing up in this kind of atmosphere wasn’t exactly painful, it just seemed dissimilar. Often it was things like Chinese New Year (which is today, as I am writing this) that seemed to puzzle my friends, urging them to ask why I did the things I did. It was these things that also made myself question who I was. I most dearly wish that I had been able to read and understand “Fish Cheeks” during my elementary school years, as this would have created an understanding, a knowledge to accept who I was. Although I know now, it was important to learn that my culture was always going to be a part of me and it was part of my purpose to combine it with the culture around me, just as many others have, are, and will do as well.

The Fight- Champion of the World

We are the strongest people in the world. And yet we are the weakest. A punch to the jaw. A strike straight to the gut. Why does it matter, if he’s still standing? It’s the 21st round, and the fight keeps on going. The blows continue to rain down on your closed fists. Your face. Your back. Your people. The Liberty Bell keeps ringing, but he doesn’t stop. Injustice lifts his gloves back up, and cracks punches like whips. Beatings against protest. It’s a heavy fight, but we’re not done, no. Rise up, my arms. Hands clad together. We are the Black underdogs. Surmounting injuries that scar history’s back. Release the chains, brothers! Right jab. Left hook. Cross. We are just one person now, laid upon this wood as sacrifice. But we overcome, risen again on the third chime. The pulse does not stop now. All the suffering and all the pain, it’s in our fists now. Our revenge is relentless. This is our time now. One moment we’re fighting. The next, our arms raised, staring down at the limp body beneath us. We’ve won the fight, but the war is not over. Each of us is weak. But tonight, tonight we are strongest in the world.