Chris Cleave. Why he is an incredible author?

I have chosen the topic about chris Cleave's life because as soon as i finished the book i went through the questions at the end of the book to find out more about author's personality. Luckily, that was a question for lab, so it became a very exciting process. 

To start with, i want to share a link to a very simple Chris Cleave's biography which tells us basic facts of his life. 

He was born in 1973, in London, United Kingdom. He is just 5'7 feet tall. He works for The Guardian newspaper as a novelist and columnist. 

He wrote 3 novels in his career: 

• Incendiary (2005)
• The Other Hand (UK title, Sceptre, August 2008)
• Little Bee (USA/Canada title, Simon & Schuster, Doubleday, January 2009)^[5]
• Gold (June 2012)

1) Biography

2) Article

The article i found is an interview with Chris by Alison Roberts, published April 30, 2009 in "London Evening Standard". This article tells a lot about Cleave's background and tells us a bit more details about his personality. He is a person of the world, who had to leave with a family to Cameron when he was young. He says that London for him now is a place where all best writers get together, but he does not fully belong to London. He could not fit in British society when he came back from Cameron, although he managed to get to Oxford. He always wanted to write , "Primo Levi" was his first reading which made him realize how powerful literature can be. 

 "Your story should be interesting because you've got something to say - and that applies to characters in a novel as much as to writers. " says chris in the interview. This phrase made me think about his style of writing. I think that Chris had a very powerful say in Little Bee. He shouted out to the world, how does detention centers work, he revealed the truth that they want to go against human rights, because it seems to work with refugees. When i was reading the book, i really wondered what can happen in Nigeria, that can keep me interested in the book, and the way Chris described the events, i would not even try to predict. He definitely had something to say. I want to refer to another article: Interview about Little Bee. The was asked how he managed to write from woman's perspective. This question definitely caught my attention, since i had a feeling that an author was woman till the end. He wanted to show the contrast in social status from both parties, from Little Bee's point of view and Sarah's. He had a story to tell, which can not be left without attention. Through his books (well judging by reviews and Little Bee) i can say that he is a person, who does not pursue people , but tell them the truth about the world. He brings up such social issues as  human rights of: children, refugees, normal people, immigrants, woman. He combined all the "hot" topics in one book, which is incredibly easy to read. 

By reading his interviews. i realize that he is one of those writers who can combine humor and real life, who can live audience with food for thought, who is making a right decision and who is not. He is very well educated and well travelled person, who definitely should bring to the world more ideas and thoughts which can make us - normal people - think carefully about our lives and lives of those who surround us. 

Essay 1. Final Draft. Why Don't We?

Olesya Besprozvannykh

 Professor Hayers

English 1A04HR

20 April , 2014

Word count: 1173

                                                Why don’t we?

Every day we wake up in the mornings, watching the sunrise, getting our morning coffee, dressing up and leaving for work or school. We get into our cars, hit the traffic on the freeways, arriving at our offices or colleges, spending time socializing with others. We barely pay attention to what is going on around us.  We do not even think that some people actually wake up in complete hunger, they do not even know what “Starbucks” is, they have never seen the face of money and took a nice long shower in a clean bathroom. Unfortunately, I consider myself as one who tends to overlook such initial matters in our everyday life. Before the first day of class I did not even consider gender inequality or slavery as a still existing social issue. Watching and reading transcripts from TedTalks showed me a difference in the world we live right now. Sheryl WuDunn and Kevin Bales discussed various issues, that are not emphasized enough in our daily lives. I prefer Kevin Bales talk because he brought up a topic that completely stroked me in a sense that I did not know the real meaning of slavery before, I did not think that slavery takes place in the 21^st century. In 18 minutes Bales explained slavery in the best possible way because he provided appropriate examples, which created a good illustration about the slavery in the modern world. He opened an insight into a new different world for me.

            WuDunn claims that in the present century gender inequality became a challenge for many places of the world. For evidence she provides some terrifying examples where girls are treated poorly while their male peers are respected in a different light. She refers to many families with low incomes and to those who live in rural areas because those places demonstrate the severity of these social issues. I want to focus on the Saima's story. This story at some point contradicts with the UDHR article 6  which says that “ Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law”. She is a girl from Pakistan, who was beaten by her unemployed husband every day, she gave him only 2 daughters and never gave him a son. “Her mother-in-law told her son, “I think you’d better get a second wife. Saima’s not going to produce you a son.” This is a clear reference back to an inequality. The question came up to my mind was what is wrong with producing a girl? Does this make her a bad wife? It was said by a woman, who was born as a girl, why would she not want another girl to be born. This sounds so absurd for me. Saima appeared to be such a dedicated woman who opened up an embroidery business and involved her husband in it as well. She is such a good example for me since she did not leave her husband, she did not try to fight him back, she just found a solution for her particular case and proved her mother-in-law thoughts wrong, because she is a good wife who cares about her husband and kids even though they are girls.

            Kevin Bales on the other hand talk about a more serious issue which is slavery. By slavery he literally means “ people who can not walk away, people who are forced to work without pay, people who are operating 24/7 under a threat of violence and have no pay”. This might sound bizarre to many of us, we may not believe that it it actually happening in our world, but we currently have 27 million slaves in the world. He emphasized on the definition of a real slave because some may think that slavery is an unfortunate marriage or low paid, high demanded jobs. When we have a look at the UDHR article 4 which states that “No one should be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms” we see that in real world this is not a law because human trafficking exist and more than that it is a very well developing business. People suffer from hunger, people are seeking for any opportunity to earn a coin to buy a piece of bread to feed their kids and relatives, instead they are finding themselves enslaved by those cruel slaveholders who hold them for small amount of food and no money. When I read the UDHR i thought of such countries as Nigeria for example. I remember that my Nigerian friends would always complain about a corrupted government. I saw a close connection between slavery and business, because instead of  the government fulfilling its job to protect its people, benefits and profits from these issues. Bales conforms this by saying that corruption destroys the rule of the law, that the law does not protect people because money would have the final say. Reading, listening, watching this Ted talk made me think only about how do slaveholders live their live with such a guilt on them, how do they even sleep at nights knowing that they ruined so many lives, that they are dragging the world back to ancient times by enslaving others.

            Both talks gave me such a huge platform for discussion, I kept talking about this social issues to the people around me because I was just amazed and shocked at the same time. We have all the recourses to end slavery, just so many people close their eyes when faced with such issues. We need to speak up about those problems to the world, we need to let the world know that our peers are in danger. They are headed in the direction in which they will  never feel what it is like to have friends, to read books and browse the web. We know that education is the best investment, but we never heard that in some places girls would not even have a chance to go to the school and sit behind the desk just because she is a girl. We are so focused on our own lives that we forget to take care of those who actually need our aid. I recall such events September 11 , 2001 when we did not care about terrorism and we got such a dramatic event happening. The entire world was devastated, but the consequence was that every single country enhanced their security level, every country started paying attention to terror attacks because it did affect the population. So why wont we take an action now to solve this social issues in advance when they did not become mind blowing issues? Why don’t each of us consider about small input in order to change our society and world for the best?

           

Works cited:

Bales, Kevin. “How to combat modern slavery.” TED. Feb, 2010. Lecture.

WuDunn, Sheryl. “Our century’s greatest injustice.” TED. Jul, 2010. Lecture.

Essay 1 Rough Draft. Why dont we?

Every day we wake up in the mornings, watching the sun rise, getting our morning coffee, dressing up and leaving for work or school. We get into our cars, hit the traffic on the freeways, arriving at our offices or colleges, spending time socializing with others. We barely pay attention to what is going on around us.  We do not even think that some people actually wake up in a complete hunger, they do not even know what “Starbucks” is, they have never actually seen money and took a nice long shower in a clean bathroom.  And I do fall into that category unfortunately. Before the first day of class I did not even consider gender inequality or slavery as a still existing social issue. Watching and reading transcripts from TedTalks showed me a difference in the world we live right now. Sheryl WuDunn and Kevin Bales discussed various issues, which are no enough highlighted in our daily life’s. Personally I prefer Kevin Bales talk because he brought up a topic that completely stroked me in a sense that I did not know the real mean of slavery before, I did not think that slavery takes place in 21^st century. In 18 munetes Bales explained slavery in the best possible way because he provided appropriate examples, which created a good picture about the slavery in the modern world. He opened an insight into a new different world for me.

WuDunn claims that in the present century gender inequality became a challenge for many places of the world. For evidence she provides some terrifying examples where girls are treated poorly while their male peers are treated totally fine. She refers to many families with low incomes and to those who live in rural areas because those places have outrageous examples. I want to focus on the Saima's story. This story at some point contradicts with the UDHR article 6  which says that “ Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law”. She is a girl from Pakistan, who was beaten by her unemployed husband every day, she gave him only 2 daughters and never gave him a son. “Her mother-in-law told her son , “I think you’d better get a second wife. Saima’s not going to produce you a son.” This is a clear reference back to an inequality. The question came up to my mind was what is wrong with producing a girl? Does make her a bad wife? It was said by a woman, who was born as a girl, why would she not want another girl to be born. This sounds so controversial for me. Saima appeared to be such a dedicated woman who opened up an embroidery business and involved her husband in it as well. She is such a good example for me since she did not leave her husband, she did not try to fight him back, she just found a solution for her particular case and proved her mother-in-law thoughts wrong, because she is a good wife who cares about her husband and kids although they are girl.

            Kevin Bales on the other hand talk about the way more serious issue which is slavery. By slavery he literally means “ people who can not walk away, people who are forced to work without pay, people who are operating 24/7 under a threat of violence and have no pay”. This might sound bizarre to many of us, we may not believe that it it actually happening in our world, but we currently have 27 million slaves in the world. He emphasize on the definition of a real slavery because some may think that slavery is an unfortunate marriages or low paid work demanded jobs. When we have a look at the UDHR article 4 which states that “No one should be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms” we see that in real world this is not a law because human trafficking exist and more than that it is a very well developing business. People suffer from hunger, people are seeking for any opportunity to earn a coin to buy a piece of bread to feed their kids and relatives, instead they are finding themselves enslaved by those cruel slaveholders who hold them for small amount of food and no money. When I read the UDHR i thought of such countries as Nigeria for example. I remember that my

Nigerian friends would always complain about corrupted government. I saw a close connection between slavery and business, because government instead of fighting this issues makes money on it. Bales conform by saying that corruption destroys the rule of the law, that the law does not protect people because money would have final say. Reading, listening, watching this Ted talk made me think only about how do slaveholders live their live with such a guilt on them, how do they even sleep at nights knowing that they ruined so many lives, that they are dragging the world back to ancient times by enslaving others.

            Both talks gave me such a huge platform for discussion, I kept talking about this social issues to the people around me because I was just amazed and shocked at the same time. We have all the recourses to end slavery, just so many people close their eyes on that issue. We need to shout out about those problems to the world, we need to let the world know that our peers are in danger. They are about to never feel what it is like to have friends, to read books and browse the web. We know that education is the best investment , but we never heart that in some places girls would not even have a chance to go to the school and sit behind the desk just because she is a girl. We are so focused on our own lifes that we forget to take care of those who actually need our aid. I recall such events September 11 , 2001 when we did not care about terrorism and we got such a dramatic event happening. All world was devastated, but the consequence was that every single country enhanced their security level, every country started paying attention to terror attacks because it did affect the population. So why wont we take an action now to solve this social issues in advance when they did not become mind blowing issues? Why don’t each of us consider about small input in order to change our society and world for the best?

           

           

homework 1.

1) When I first saw doctor WuDunn talking I could not follow her ideas at all. Everything seem to be senseless since she was jumping from topic to topic as well as from one example to another. I felt a little bit lost at the beginning, but afterwards she started providing a lot of examples to audience. I felt more connected to the topic only after few minutes of the talk. However I can say that I always hear about such social issues, but I do not pay much attention. I know that this happens in many countries especially inequality part, though I never considered this topic before. Doctor WuDunn actually gave me a bigger picture of the issue, since in this kind of social issues there is no right or wrong, there is just the real image of what is happening in the world and how badly some people are treated. Those specific examples made me think more about people who are in the need of help, I never realized that before how important is just to notice such people with challenging life just because of cultural prejudice. I think that transcript made me think more about the inequality, about girls education , about mistreatment because I had a chance to read it twice sometimes when I did not understand some parts , moreover transcript made me think critically about the issues author was bringing up. The example about mother telling a son to find second wife was just rebelling for me. As soon as I finished reading the transcript I was shocked for a minute that such individuals exist in the 21^st century.

2) Doctor Wudunn is a perfect public speaker. She used a lot of transitions in her speech. She made every point very clear by directly applying to the audience. She was engaging audience in her speech. She was making good eye contact with audience. She had a perfect body language which showed some of her emotions. She was changing tone of her voice in order to express her emotions. I had a feeling that she has years of experience doing public speeches.

3)WuDunn claims that in the present century gender inequality became a challenge for many places of the world. For evidence she provides some terrifying examples where girls are treated poorly while their male peers are treated totally fine. She refers to many families with low incomes and to those who live in rural areas because those places have outrageous examples. Author uses a problem-solution pattern where she stated what problems were and gave examples which show a solution and how woman are actually being part of solution, not the problem.

4)WuDunn’s piece of writing for me looks like a good, well structured essay with organized ideas. She would start every paragraph with a topic sentence introducing her idea and then clearly support it with an example usually with one person who does represent her point. She used transitions perfectly and almost every where. For example: “ I’ ve talked about some of the challenges, let me talk about some of the solutions…” ; “Let me tell you about…” ; “And that brings me to my first major of two tenets…”. Phrases like this make the entire speech smooth and even in the writing it makes a better sense because ideas seems to be connected with each other. She has a theme which I would call global social issues in terms of human rights. Yes, I think that WuDunn does have a sentence which can learn a point of sentence craft such as in the 4^th paragraph about Dai Manju that “she was able to move out from a vicious cycle to a virtuous cycle”. This sentence was striking because of the phrase used in it which makes a paragraph looks much stronger.

5) I think that WuDunn did a great job by speaking the topic so clearly, even the transcript of a speech looks like a well though and organized essay. Some of the ideas like example with Bill Gates does not make sense because they do not refer to the topic at all. Some ideas are just thrown in the speech just to fulfill it maybe. As well I noticed that WuDunn would quote others pretty often which is good, however sometimes irrelevant.  

Welcome to my blog :)

Hey ENGL 1A Class!

My name is Olesya , i am an international student from Russia. This is my 3 quarter at Foothill and i absolutely love it! I am so happy to finally be in advanced english class. I have been studying english for a very long time, i studied in Australia for certain period of time, in the UK for a year and now here i am in the US. I left Russia in 2012 right after i graduated high school. I was traveling around the world in order to find my perfect spot. So far California is my biggest love. I would love to settle down in silicon valley. 

Moving on to a blog description, this blog is going to be primary focused on English 1A homework. The topic of this class is Human Rights, which seems to be very new to me because i never actually considered this topic before. I hope by the end of a class i would be more than acknowledged about the topic and i would come up with my evaluated standpoint.