Monday, September 27, 2010

Responses to "The Gift of a Cuento" from the book Woman in Front of the Sun by Judith Ortiz Cofer

Goldie Barajas
English 1A
9/24/10
Responses to “The Gift of a Cuento”
from the book Woman in Front of the Sun by Judith Ortiz Cofer.

1.      I liked that Judith used the tale of the Puerto Rican Cinderella in her essay because  the Cinderella I grew up knowing was the total opposite of the Puerto Rican one. I grew up knowing about a weak, noble, dependent woman that never had the courage to stand up to her evil stepsisters and stepmother. The Puerto Rican Cinderella was “brave enough to stand up to her wicked stepmother and stepsisters and clever enough to banish them from home forever” (pg.47) and I think having girls understand a Puerto Rican Cinderella would be better rather than inscribing wrong ideas in their mind.
2.      I found interesting the way the author organized her essay because she kept me motivated to keep on reading more in order to understand the structure of her essay and purpose. The author started as being a thirteen-year-old relating herself to Cinderella and wanting a Prince but her uncle changes this perspective in her. Later on, her uncle teaches her the meaning of a tale and why tales are so important. They are important because they have words and words can take you into a world of magic. This empowering Judith to become a writer. In conclusion, I was really thrilled by her essay’s structure and that was really appealing to me because it kept me interested.
3.       What bored me was that Judith in page 42 goes into describing how her uncle would tell tales to her family and how they were so excited about them  because I really did not want to know about her uncle telling tales to the family. I would have prefer Judith to go straight to the point and tell me the purpose of her essay. I really think that piece of the essay was unnecessary to read.

5 comments:

Rocio Marrero said...

Hey Goldie overall I believe that your responses were very interesting. However your sentence structure and choice of words made it hard for me to stay focused on your response. Instead I kept trying to rephrase what you were trying to say. At the bottom I wrote something about each response and only on the first response I edited your paragraph.

1. I liked that Coffer applied the tale of the Puerto Rican Cinderella in her essay, because the Cinderella I grew up enduring (I’m not sure if that’s the correct word) was the antithesis of the Puerto Rican one. I grew up reading about a weak, noble, dependent woman that never had the courage to confront her evil stepsisters and stepmother. The Puerto Rican Cinderella was “brave enough to stand up to her wicked stepmother and stepsisters and clever enough to banish them from home forever” (pg.47) . I think having girls understand a Puerto Rican Cinderella would be better rather than inscribing wrong ideas in their mind.

• When writing you never use the first name of the writer, always use their last name. It’s more formal.
• Personally I feel like the last sentence is vague for three reasons: 1. What do you mean by understand the Puerto Rican Cinderella 2. By wrong ideas what do you mean? What are those wrong ideas? 3. Inscribe to my understanding means engrave do you mean implement?
• To me the word knowing is not the correct word because it has a different connotation and it also made your essay weak.
• Your response was interesting but I felt like your choice of words made me lose interest. You should use a thesaurus it’s very helpful  and when you don’t know how to find a word for a phrase like total opposite of you can always Google: “what word means the total opposite or complete opposite of?” and it would give you the answer. That is something I do and it is very helpful.



2. I found interesting the way the author organized her essay because she kept me motivated to keep on reading more in order to understand the structure of her essay and purpose. The author started as being a thirteen-year-old relating herself to Cinderella and wanting a Prince but her uncle changes this perspective in her. Later on, her uncle teaches her the meaning of a tale and why tales are so important. They are important because they have words and words can take you into a world of magic. This empowering Judith to become a writer. In conclusion, I was really thrilled by her essay’s structure and that was really appealing to me because it kept me interested.
• I feel like you are lacking organization in this paragraph. You don’t have to follow the I found ___interesting, because… structure you can say the same thing in a difrent order for example: I found the way the author organized her essay interesting because…. Or The authors organization was interesting because it caused me to … .

3. What bored me was that Judith in page 42 goes into describing how her uncle would tell tales to her family and how they were so excited about them because I really did not want to know about her uncle telling tales to the family. I would have preferred Judith to go straight to the point and tell me the purpose of her essay. I really think that piece of the essay was unnecessary to read.
• I feel like the word would is not necessary and maybe you could have phrased it this way:I preferred if Judith went straight to the point and told me the purpose of her essay.

• You had run on sentences and it was wordy. This made it hard for me to understand what you really wanted to say.

Rocio Marrero said...

2. I found interesting the way the author organized her essay because she kept me motivated to keep on reading more in order to understand the structure of her essay and purpose. The author started as being a thirteen-year-old relating herself to Cinderella and wanting a Prince but her uncle changes this perspective in her. Later on, her uncle teaches her the meaning of a tale and why tales are so important. They are important because they have words and words can take you into a world of magic. This empowering Judith to become a writer. In conclusion, I was really thrilled by her essay’s structure and that was really appealing to me because it kept me interested.
• I feel like you are lacking organization in this paragraph. You don’t have to follow the I found ___interesting, because… structure you can say the same thing in a difrent order for example: I found the way the author organized her essay interesting because…. Or The authors organization was interesting because it caused me to … .

3. What bored me was that Judith in page 42 goes into describing how her uncle would tell tales to her family and how they were so excited about them because I really did not want to know about her uncle telling tales to the family. I would have preferred Judith to go straight to the point and tell me the purpose of her essay. I really think that piece of the essay was unnecessary to read.
• I feel like the word would is not necessary and maybe you could have phrased it this way:I preferred if Judith went straight to the point and told me the purpose of her essay.

• You had run on sentences and it was wordy. This made it hard for me to understand what you really wanted to say.

Juana said...

Overall, what you had to say was good to hear because I also liked the Puerto Rican Cinderella story. I think you should rephrase your sentence in question number 2 when you say: "This empowering Judith to become a writer." I didn't understand what you were trying to say there, it was an incomplete sentence. In my opinion for question number 3, I think she put the tales her uncle would say because at the end he helps her with a tale he left her. I think that she put that part in there to show his tales are important to his family because they gain something from it.

Toree said...

I also agree with what you like about the Cinderella story because it seems like you could relate to the topic easily. I also liked that you found her organization skills interesting and it kept you wanting to read more. The author kept everything from going off topic and simple. I think you should elaborate on what bored me and give a few examples from the text that you felt was unnecesaary to read. Overall, you did a great job!

Brenda said...

Hi Goldie, I thought that your essay was very well structured, and your opinions were well established. I found your essay appealing from beginning to end, and I agree with that you chose from Cofer's "Gift of a Cuento", "The Puerto Rican Cinderella was “brave enough to stand up to her wicked stepmother and stepsisters and clever enough to banish them from home forever”. It speaks truth and it makes a statement of how younger women are sadly influenced by fairy tales.