Thursday, November 15, 2007
Confessions of a Closet Catholic
Confessions of a Closet Catholic was a very interesting novel that brought different things to my mind as I read it. Throughout the book it was interesting to see how Justine dealt with trying to figure out who she was and who she wanted to be as an individual. As I was reading, it reminded me of the previous book we read, Project Mulberry. Both of the main characters are trying to figure out who they are, as well as accepting who they are within their family. They both question following their families in their beliefs or overall history. Julia in Project Mulberry had to deal with her familys' "wierdness" with the traditional things that they did, such as the food that she did not like. Justine has to deal with her being Jewish and everything that comes with, which makes her rethink her beliefs in the story. Both characters, at least initially, would trade places with their best friends because they feel that their families are more "normal." The question of identity is a huge issue for young people of this age, and seeing it from two different angles in these two books is interesting. One involves her families overall heritage and history while the other deals with their religion. Both characters learn throughout the book the positives of their respective traditions and realize how lucky they are to be in the situations they are in. Overall, Confessions is a good book that deals with a sensitive issue, and through the main character's learning the reader can learn as well.
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4 comments:
I totally agree with you. When I was trying to figure out a question for my paper, it took me a while to think of a question. Then I was thinking about our class conversation and it made sense because so many people go through trying to figure out who they are and what they want in life.
I like reading about a person's search for identity. I feel we can all relate to it, because in someway, sometime or another, we all were confused about who we were/are. It seems to be a common theme in most of the books we have read so far.
I did not make this connection before, but identity is a popular issue in stories like these. When I reflect back to the other books that we read it seems they all have a struggle with identity. In Habibi, Liyana is dealing with religion and ethnicity not just with her identity, but with generations worth of identity differences. In Heart of a Chief, there is a similar struggle in expressing what it means to be a Native American and take pride in it. The struggle for identity is universal and all of these books collectively show the different ways identity is challenged and created.
Overall, I think this type of activity is good change from the usual group meetings for a book discussion. In out group meetings, people may not always say what they are thinking about the book or a certain topic. When posting on a blog, they can write about what they want without being interupted or challenged. I know that I had an easy time just writing about what was on my mind for this post, and I had just as easy of a time responding to my group members' posts. It was interesting to hear what they had to say and I feel like we still were able to cover a lot of ground in terms of the material that we had to read this week. I think it is better to have discussion groups most of the time, but a blog assignment is a nice change of pace activity.
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