Final Exam Brielle Cetraro

Brielle Cetraro

English 103-20 Final

 

Through being in this English class, I have loved finding new ways to write, and reading   a variety of  author’s stories. Another thing I enjoyed was how personal our class got because we had the opportunity to read our peer’s writings each week. This gave us a better look into our peers’ lives and their experiences. I think a main aspect I loved about the readings that I was assigned in this class was not only how they helped me understand the material we were learning, but gave me a new insight into my own life. I was surprised that the readings all ended up relating to my own life. This made me think of the painful things occurring in my own life, but then I could recognize writing as a positive outlet for this pain and hardship. I truly did enjoy writing and incorporated examples from the readings we were assigned into my own works, which I think strengthened them greatly.

In Laura King’s “Goodbye to Afghanistan,” King talked a lot about the beauty that encompassed the horrors of Afghanistan. “…nearly every ugly experience is balanced by moments that make the heart lift.” This quote truly summarizes what I felt from reading her essay. Even though Afghanistan is a terrible war zone full of blood and broken hearts, there is love that fills the air and families that crowd the streets. There is always a hidden blessing within the terrors of life. This string of hope is also weaved throughout my memoir. In my memoir I explained the mental hardship my younger cousin has been struggling with in the past few years. She has had terrible depression, suicidal thoughts, self harming actions, and has shed what seems like just a few short of a million tears. Even though this pain that she has felt is excruciating, it has shown me the impact I can make on her life. It has opened my eyes to the importance of being there for her not only as a cousin but also as a mentor. King’s story truly made me think of how a terrible situation brought my cousin and I together. We have shown each other how much love we have to share and have been a constant support for eachother no matter the physical distance. Through this heartache, we have felt more connected than ever. We both know that we have a shoulder to cry on when we need it and that we care for each other enough to make our lives valuable. The theme of having a silver lining in the terrible stories of today’s world brings me a lot of hope for the future. It reminds me that there will always be tragedies going on around me, but I just have to take a step back and discover all of the positives in life.

I, again, try to find the silver lining of the tragedies of life in my essay. Yet, this time I think of how life can be made easier for prisoners, hoping prison can teach them a lesson instead of marking them the “bad eggs” of society. These prisoners usually want to be good people, but it is a constant battle for them to fight the normalcy of their destructive actions. There is a theme throughout the essay of hope of finding inner strength. Similarly, I found that Lisa Tillmann-Healy’s ethnography,  A Secret Life in a Culture of Thinness, had a similar theme. Tillmann-Healy speaks of her mental battle with knowing she should not binge and purge, but her feeling deep inside that makes her feel it is necessary to do so. “I read these stories aloud and I am conflicted. As a feminist, I am embarrassed by the amount of attention I have paid to my body. As a daughter, I am worried that these revelations will hurt my parents. As a scholar, I’m concerned that fellow academics will dismiss my work as self-absorbed… Perhaps I should feel ashamed, but somehow, I feel only relief.” This quote shows that Tillmann-Healy wants to better herself, yet, finds this to be a difficult task. In both my essay, and Tillmann-Healy’s ethnography, there is a similar cry for society to have patience for those who have to fight  for their past instincts. In the past, there has been a feeling that it is necessary to listen to the little devil on their shoulder. The angel has not been used in a while  to tell them the right thing to do.  These writings teach that not all people have good moral values ingrained into them, and their bad habits are hard to break.

Lastly, while reading the memoir “This Boy’s Life” by Tobias Wolff, I loved seeing his perspective of his mother change as he got older and wiser. He used to view his mother as a loving caregiver capable of anything. He states in his memoir “Everything was going to change when we got out West. My mother had been a girl in Beverly Hills and the life she saw ahead of us was conjured from her memories of California… they’d lived in a big house with a turret.” This quote shows the unwavering trust he has in his mother, even when maybe she shouldn’t have all of his trust. Later in the story, Wolff realizes his mother can not make anything happen, and his perspective of her completely changes. Wolff shows a loving sorrow for his mother. She had a heart full of hope that usually hurt her more than helped her. As a mother, she wanted to provide a comfortable life for her son, yet she could not do so financially. Instead of making financially smart decisions, she hopes her gambles with money will end in her favor, which they rarely do. Just like this change of perspective that the author and reader had for Wolff’s mother, I hoped to have a similar effect on the reader of my ethnography. I wanted people to see vegans and hunters as people with a similar respect for animals, not polar opposites. The usual view of these two groups is that they will never get along, yet I aimed to change vegans’ view on hunters, and vice versa through their mutual respect for animals.

Within this english course, reading the essays, memoirs, and ethnographies from multiple writers inspired me to express myself, read novels, and find how stories can relate to my life, more often. These writings, peer readings, and in class conversations helped me develop my writing skills and understand the materials we learned. I hope my writing continues to evolve over my time at Chapman and beyond. Writing has proved to be a great outlet for me, being a positive source for me to express my feelings. I intend to take more time to read novels, blogs, and essays during my free time. Instead of taking un unnecessary nap or watching television when I can’t sleep, I can dive into a book and nourish my mind with an interesting story.

Brielle Cetraro Ethno Draft 3

It is dinner time with my family for the holidays. The strong smell of roasted poultry fills the air as she sets a plate with half of a potato on it dripping with melted butter and cheese. I remind her, “I don’t really eat any animal products, which means no butter or cheese on my potato, can I get a plain one?” She smiles back at me “Oh, sorry, sweetie! I forgot! Let me show you where they are… isn’t your dinner going to be so boring, though?” The question I would get daily. “Do you just eat nuts and seeds?” “Is your food all very plain?” “I could never be vegan.”

I would never be mad at my family for eating meat. I just chose not to eat it. Some of them would ridicule me, mostly in a playful way. Sometimes I would joke back, but the meat eaters and hunters in my family outweigh me, I am the only vegan in the family.

I talked to my grandpa, who is not only a meat eater, but also a hunter, about his thoughts on me being vegan. He said he is worried that I don’t get enough protein and that vegans all try to shove their beliefs down his throat. I hear this a lot, too. I asked him “Grandpa, have you ever felt like I tried to shove my beliefs down your throat?” He paused for a minute. “Well, no, I guess you don’t talk much about my hunting or you being vegan.” I looked up at him and laughed as I see him reach for his venison sausage mid-conversation. We are on facetime and he thinks I can’t see him eating the meat that he hunted last week. I look at him with a raised eyebrow as he drools and I giggle. Next, I asked him why he hunts. He told me stories about his father taking him to shoot ducks for the first time when he was 12 years old. I could see the spark in his eyes as he talked about how proud he was when he hit his first duck and took it home to eat it with his family. I can only imagine how bright the spark was on that day, I can still see a little glimmer in his eyes when he brings home a new animal to feast on.

I could never understand why someone would want to kill another animal. I do understand that people need to eat, and I am Christian so I believe that God did put animals on the earth for us to eat. I know, it’s a little confusing. But once I got to be in high school I learned how poorly animals are treated before going to the slaughterhouses and started to change my eating habits. In the documentary Forks Over Knives, I watched what the meat industry doesn’t want consumers to see. I saw cows being shoved and slaughtered carelessly, baby calves screaming for their mothers as they are being dragged away to be killed so they don’t drink her milk, and then their mothers getting artificially inseminated so she never stops producing milk. Yet, besides all of these facts, I was never a vegan who hated meat eaters. I understand that everyone has different opinions and never thought mine was above anyone else’s. Yet, not all vegans view meat eaters, or worse, hunters, in a positive light.

I have 2 close friends that have been vegan for years. Kelly, who has been vegan for 1 year, and Sophie, who has been vegan her whole life. I asked both of these girls what their opinion of meat eaters are, and especially what they think of people who hunt. Both laugh and roll their eyes. I know, they get asked this a lot. Sophie sighs and says “I don’t understand how someone can be so cruel as to promote animal cruelty by buying meat and animal byproducts. There are so many alternatives that are better for the wellbeing of those sweet helpless animals.” Then I ask, “could you ever listen to a hunter’s opinions and begin to understand and possibly accept their actions?” Both of their responses were stares at the ground and soft whispered “Hm, maybe. I don’t quite know. It would be hard.” But, this is progress towards both types of people being tolerant towards the other group.

I began to think of similarities that non-sport hunters and vegans may have. I thought of the respect they have for the animal, and how neither choose to eat meat from the store that has been factory farmed, A.K.A. in the terrible conditions of slaughterhouses. “Bringing home meat that will keep me and my loved ones alive means so much more when I know exactly where that food came from. It took a lot of commitment to get it. Choosing to live this way has built a sense of gratitude and respect; not only for that animal, but the system as a whole.” http://harvestingnature.com/2012/07/02/the-traditional-hunter-in-the-modern-world/

This quote is from a hunting blog, along with another quote from the cookbook Eat Wild Game: Recipes for the Adventurous by the author Justin C. Townsend. “That animal’s life was taken to feed our family and friends. The meat should always be respected by using correct butchering techniques to avoid waste and by properly honoring the animal through the preparation of a delicious and hardy meal.’ both of these quotes, from the view of hunters, talk about the respect they have for animals. Hunters realize they are taking a life and appreciate the animal for that, which is what vegans need to understand.

Next, I wanted to see what vegans would say about hunters. It is easy to find a vegan who says anyone that kills animals are terrible and wrong. Yet, when you dive more into it, shouldn’t they appreciate the respect hunters show for their prey? “Hunting is far more humane than factory farming as their prey hasn’t had to live in horrific, cramped conditions and their death will be swift and painless.”

http://bitesizevegan.com/ethics-and-morality/is-hunting-more-ethical-than-factory-farming/

This quote from a vegan blogger relieved me, there is a common ground that hunters and vegans can find. What is the one thing that vegans seem to hate most? Animal cruelty. Well, store bought meat that comes from factory farming is full of horrific brutalities and desensitizes the people who eat meat to what the animal had to go through so that they could have a nice burger or turkey sandwich. If both vegans and hunters could understand the mutual respect and appreciation that each group shares for animals, they could possibly begin to get along.

Each group can be tolerant of the other without taking on their beliefs or changing their actions. A vegan doesn’t have to eat meat to understand that not all hunters are bad, and visa versa. Yes, both groups can be seen as polar opposites that will never get along, yet, I do not think there is no hope for these people to have a mutual respect for one another.

 

#12 “From the Personal to the Universal”

I think it will be easier for me to connect my personal experience to my ethnography because my ethnography has to do with the competing views of veganism and hunting, I used to be vegan and my family is full of hunters. It may be more difficult for me to have an unbiased approach to writing because of my views and beliefs as well as experiences being vegan and around hunters who also care for animals and do not do it just for sport, but for food. I will make my ethnography more universal by reading outside sources in blogs, articles, books, and even documentaries. I hope that since I have had this personal experience with both sides of hunting and veganism I won’t be too biased and learn more towards either side, even though it is hard to avoid that. I hope I can present my writing as a reflection on how my views are compared to my family members that I look up to and love. How they differ, and how they can come together towards a common goal or appreciation for animals.

Improvements on my Ethnography

In my ethnography I liked the professor’s comment on how I should add quotes after speaking on my reason for becoming vegan. I was planning on doing this so I am hoping it will flow well.

Also, I want to add a paragraph about how hunters can be good in the eyes of vegans. This will be a contradictory paragraph among the paragraphs talking about the differences between hunters and vegans.

I will also talk to my grandpa and hear his point of view and hopefully bring his views into a paragraph to contradict the views of some vegans. But, after this, ask him why vegans can be seen as good and ask the vegans the same question about hunters.

Brielle Cetraro_ethno_two

It is dinner time with my family for the holidays. The strong smell of roasted poultry fills the air as she sets a plate with half of a potato on it dripping with melted butter and cheese. I remind her, “I don’t really eat any animal products, which means no butter or cheese on my potato, can I get a plain one?” She smiles back at me “Oh, sorry, sweetie! I forgot! Let me show you where they are… isn’t your dinner going to be so boring, though?” The question I would get daily. “Do you just eat nuts and seeds?” “Is your food all very plain?” “I could never be vegan.”

I would never be mad at my family for eating meat. I just chose not to. Some of them would ridicule me, mostly in a playful way. Sometimes I would joke back, but the meat eaters and hunters in my family outweigh me, the only vegan one in the family.

I talked to my grandpa, who is not only a meat eater, but also a hunter about his thoughts on me being vegan. He said he is worried that I don’t get enough protein and that vegans all try to shove their beliefs down his throat. I hear this a lot, too. I asked him “ Grandpa, have you ever felt like I tried to shove my beliefs down your throat?” He paused for a minute. Well, no, I guess you don’t talk much about my hunting or you being vegan. I looked up at him and laughed as I see him reach for his venison sausage mid-conversation. We are on facetime and he thinks I can’t see him eating the meat that he hunted last week. I look at him with a raised eyebrow as he drools and I giggle. Next, I asked him why he hunts. He told me stories about his father taking him to shoot ducks for the first time when he was 12 years old. I could see the spark in his eyes as he talked about how proud he was when he hit his first duck and took it home to eat it with his family. I can only imagine how bright the spark was on that day.

I could never understand why someone would want to kill another animal. I do understand that people need to eat, and I am Christian so I believe that God did put animals on the earth for us to eat. I know, it’s a little confusing. But once I got to be in high school, learned how poorly animals are treated before going to the slaughterhouses, and how much better veganism is for the environment, I started to change my eating habits. I was never a vegan who hated meat eaters.  INSERT QUOTE HERE ABOUT ENVIRONMENT AND VEGANISM I understand that everyone has different opinions and never thought mine was above anyone else’. Yet, not all vegans view meat eaters, or worse, hunters, in a positive light.

I have 2 close friends that have been vegan for years. Kelly, who has been vegan for 1 year, and Sophie, who has been vegan her whole life. I asked both of these girls what their opinion of meat eaters are, and especially what they think of people who hunt. Both laugh and roll their eyes. I know, they get asked this a lot. Sophie sighs and says “I don’t understand how someone can be so cruel as to promote animal cruelty by buying meat and animal byproducts. There are so many alternatives that are better for the wellbeing of those sweet helpless animals.” Then I ask, “could you ever listen to a hunter’s opinions and begin to understand and possibly accept their actions?” Both of their responses were stares at the ground and soft whispered “Hm, maybe. I don’t quite know.” But, this is progress towards both types of people being tolerant towards the other group.

Next, talk about my grandpa’s views on being able to listen to a vegan and understand.  Then, talk about the positives of hunting  INSERT POSITIVE QUOTE ABOUT HUNTING Then talk about how we can be tolerant of each group without taking on their beliefs and actions

#11 “My Fruitful Question” (Post by Tuesday, Nov 14)

I am excited about immersing myself into this topic, as it is very relevant in my life. Why do vegans and hunters usually have such negative views of each other, and what are each of their views on morals or ethics? I think my best source of information will come from in person interviews. I have lots of vegan friends and most of my family is full of hunters, so I will be able to get insight from them, and I know they are reasonable people who are rational in their thinking. A poll on my facebook asking which people think is more ethical: hunting or veganism, may be helpful. But, it does not give people the chance to explain why they chose their answer. There are lots of blogs about hunting and veganism, or ted talks, that I will bring into my ethnography. It may be a good idea for me to write about the question and post it on my social media, asking for my friends and family to respond with their opinions and thoughts. I don’t know of a book that I could use, I will have to look more into that at the library. One difficulty I may go through is connecting the similarities between veganism and hunters.

 

Brielle Cetraro Ethno Draft one

 

My story topic will be answering the questions: what are some differences between vegan people and people who slaughter animals to sell their meat? Are there huge ethical differences? Is there one way that is right and another that is wrong? I am compelled to ask these questions because I used to be vegan for about a year, and my family is full of hunters. I never looked at my family as though they were doing anything wrong, but I could never hunt and kill an animal. I intend to ask about this topic and also make people realize that just because someone else has another way of treating animals, it does not make them better or worse than you.  

The main cultural phenomenon is the reasoning of each type of person for how they treat meat. Along with their reasoning, why they may think their reasoning is so much better than another person’s ideas. My specific target audience are vegans and meat eaters/ hunters so that they can hopefully gain tolerance for each other and be content in their beliefs without demeaning other’s beliefs. Other audiences may be regular people who aren’t passionate on one side of the extreme or the other, yet will benefit and gain more acceptance for each group with more knowledge about each one.  My research strategy will be to talk to people who are vegan and my family who hunts, possibly asking the same questions and letting them react to the opposing side’s answers. These will probably be nice to be able to speak to people I know because they will be more willing to open up to me and telling me something they may not tell a stranger. There are plenty of blogs and web articles about why to hunt or why to go vegan, also, that I will read. These blogs and articles will probably be very hard-headed because only people who are very passionate about their beliefs will want to write about them and teach others how they feel in a persuasive way.

#10 Time and Space: When to Show—What to Tell

I wrote a lot more in expositional mode in my essay writing project because I had to speak more on the research to make the essay persuasive. I moved around time and space in my essay writing project by switching between my friend’s mother’s story and other prisoners’ stories. I would tell the story by reflecting a lot on my friend’s mother’s experience in prison as well as my friend’s experience with her mother being gone. Adding supportive context, such as data that I found from other outside sources. This data helps my essay be more persuasive since it is more than just my opinion, but includes proven facts. The time that I focused on was the time when my friend’s mother was in jail, but I was hoping to impact the future through speaking of the past.

In my memoir, I used a lot more of a scenic mode to explain the story of my little cousin and I. Adding insightful meaning to my memoir helped the narrative connect to the readers in a more emotional way. Supportive points, like the ones I used in my essay, would not have affected the readers in the same way emotionally. I showed the story a lot through back flashes of time I had spent over the years with my younger cousin. This flips back and forth with the time between my graduation a few years ago and many years ago when my cousin and I first met.

 

Brielle Cetraro Memoir Draft 4

My little cousin and I met when she was 3 and I was 5. She is technically my step cousin, but we don’t ever say that. We are just cousins, and truly we are more like sisters. From the first day I met my little cousin I knew that we would get along. We were at a birthday party for a family member and we went up to my room playing cops and robbers for 3 hours straight. She would would steal anything in sight, running away with it run, and I would chase after her yelling “stop, put your hands up!” in between panting from the constant running.

 

Years later, we have grown up together. Every birthday we have spent together, every first day of school we FaceTime each other. She lives about an hour from my house, yet I’d drive to her every other weekend when I got my license. She was the first person called when I got accepted into Chapman, the first person I called after my first heartbreak, and the person I can truly tell anything to. I know I am also this shoulder to lean on for her.

 

On the Sunday morning that I saw her post on social media “wouldn’t it be easier to just end it all?” my heart dropped. I felt like I couldn’t stop sweating besides the forty degree weather outside from the winter morning. I immediately called her. I didn’t exactly expect it to mean that she wanted to end her life, because she had never told me any depressive thoughts before. But what if she did want to end her life? How could I help her not want to do that besides tell her how much I need her and love her? My anxiety was triggered, but that was the last of my worries.

 

The phone was ringing for what felt like hours. She didn’t pick up the first time. I called again. More ringing. She didn’t pick up once again. Then, I got a text from her saying “hi, I’m working out right now, can we talk later? Love u!” I tried to stay calm and text back without freaking out. The 20 minutes I waited for her to call me felt like an eternity.

Finally, my phone rang and we ended up talking for 4 hours. She told me everything she had been feeling. I could hear her silent sobs on the other end of the line as tears were streaming down my face, too.

We talked about how she can get professional help, and how much it has helped me. Anxiety has affected my life for as long as I can remember. For example, one day in high school I started panicking during a fire alarm drill and couldn’t calm down for an hour. This day I knew I needed more help. I always wanted to be strong enough to deal with it on my own, but I know that truly I needed professional help. I talked to a therapist and started thinking about taking daily medication. She knew this struggle in my life and found comfort in the fact that I knew how influential professional help can be.

When I was five years old, I remember I couldn’t sleep because of the fear of my family and friends dying. I thought that if I stayed awake I would be able to hear if a bad guy came into our house and save my family, or pray all night for my friends’ safety. When I was ten years old crowds petrified me. I hated Disneyland and any concert I went to. I constantly thought there was someone bad in the crowd who had a weapon or who was going to steal me or my younger siblings. When I was fifteen I started feeling my heart rate go up, my body start to shake and sweat, and an indescribable thought that I was going to die whenever I felt anxious. I later found out from my therapist that this was probably an anxiety attack. I learned tools from her on how to control my breathing, bring my heart rate down, and how to prevent the anxiety attacks. I haven’t had once since talking with my therapist and being on a medication that she prescribed to me.

Only a few months after my cousin told me about her depressive thoughts, I graduated high school. We both struggled with the fact that I would be moving to Southern California, and therefore, moving away from her and our biweekly visits.

 

She texted me the day that I graduated saying “I know you said to not get you a present, but I found something perfect for you. You’ll love it. Can’t wait to see you, love u!” I told her I really didn’t need a present, but I appreciated that she thought of me and I was excited to see what this item was.

 

Later that day, she came up to me at my graduation party with a big smile on her face and a small tear in her eye. Her nose was red and her eyes glossy. We had been dreading the time when we had to say goodbye before I left for college in Southern California. She lives in Northern California, like most of my family, and we have never lived more than an hour apart from each other. I could hear her sniffle as she smiled and handed me a small shiny blue bag with white tissue paper inside. I hugged her as we sat down to see what was inside the bag. I pulled out a small blue string necklace and noticed a similar black one on her neck. There was a small square of hard paper with writing on it, that said the stone was blue aventurine, that the necklace dangled off of.

The square paper explained that the stone of blue aventurine promotes spiritual healing, symbolizes stress relief, and protects from anxious thoughts. She had found the perfect stone for me. The paper also said that once you put on the necklace you have to make a wish and once the necklace breaks, your wish will come true.

I asked her what her black stone meant, as I could easily tell they were the same type of necklace. She told me quietly that it is black onyx. Before I could ask what the stone is meant for, she told me that it alleviates stress and worry, and anchors strength. She has the perfect stone for herself, too.

We both know the necklaces were a little cheesy but both of us loved what they reminded us of, each other and the benefits of each stone. We made a wish when we put it on and haven’t taken the necklace off since. We each wished for her mental health. I am the only one who knows about her suicidal thoughts and she knew how much I want her to stay strong each day. Even though the string hasn’t broken on either of our necklaces yet, I know our wishes are coming true each day. Now every time I look at the few knots and the fraying in the string I think of how long my cousin has been staying out of her lowest depressive state, which was what both her and I wished for.

She has always silently struggled with depression. I have always been the only person she can talk to about her feelings and depressive thoughts. This has been a huge weight off of her shoulders that was put onto mine, but I have gladly taken the heavy load. I’d do anything for her. I booked her an appointment with a therapist, but she refuses to go. As I am away at school eight hours away, I couldn’t make her go. The distance is hard for us both. We used to stay up all night talking and I was her physical shoulder to cry on. We like having things to remind ourselves that no matter the distance, we are always on each other’s minds.

#9 Musing On Musing

A lot of my memoir has to do with scene. I talk about when my younger cousin and I met, when we played cops and robbers, the time when she told me about her depression, and the time of year when I graduated high school. I set the scene talking about what emotions I see in my cousin when she gives me the small bag with my blue necklace in it. I try to set the scene with stories of how I have been close with my cousin since we were very young, always being a huge presence in each other’s lives.

I also summarized a lot of my cousin and my relationship. As well as this, I summarized both of our struggles with mental illness. I could talk forever about all the adventures I have been on with her, which is not the main focus of the story.  As well as this, depression and anxiety affect our daily lives and I could give examples of how it has affected my cousin and I each and every day. Yet, again, that is not the only point of the story.

I feel like writing this memoir has taught me a lot about myself and my relationship with my cousin. After talking about how I have dealt with anxiety my whole life, I realize that I can show empathy towards my little cousin and have personal experience on how to help her. I know what can help mental illnesses, which is what helped me guide her to therapy or give her other advice on what to do.