This module’s texts often portray conflict between characters who have different goals, beliefs, or demographics (gender, age, etc.). How do 1-2 assigned texts from Module 1 use a journey to convey the complexity of human relationships? Rather than summarizing texts, focus on the significance of characters’ journeys and potential conflicts that arise from them.
750+ words of relevant content
No secondary sources should be used without advance instructor permission.
The Turnitin similarity score should not exceed 25%.
Standard essay organization (introduction with a thesis, body paragraphs, conclusion)
Third-person pronoun use; no first (I, me) or second (you)
MLA document format and citations (in-text + Works Cited)
College-level proofreading and sentence mechanics
Readings:
JUAN FELIPE HERRERA
Borderbus
Juan Felipe Herrera (b. 1948) was born in Fowler, California, the son of immigrant farmers. He graduated from San Diego High School in 1967 and received a B.A. in Social Anthropology from UCLA and an M.A. from Stanford in the same subject. He also received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop in 1990. He was named Californias Poet Laureate in 2012, and in 2015, he became Poet Laureate of the United States. His most recent work includes Notes on the Assemblage (2015), from which the following poem is taken; Senegal Taxi (2013) and Half of the World in Light (2008). He is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Fresno. Called exuberant and socially engaged, reflective and healing, Herrera also has, as National Public Radio (NPR) noted, the unusual capacity to write convincing political poems that are as personally felt as poems can be.
A dnde vamos where are we going
Speak in English or the guard is going to come
A dnde vamos where are we going
Speak in English or the guard is gonna get us hermana
Pero qu hicimos but what did we do
Speak in English come on
Noms s unas pocas palabras I just know a few words
You better figure it out hermana the guard is right there
See the bus driver
Tantos das y ni sabamos para donde bamos
So many days and we didnt even know where we were headed
I know where were going
Where we always go
To some detention center to some fingerprinting hall or cube
Some warehouse warehouse after warehouse
Pero ya nos investigaron ya cruzamos ya nos cacharon
Los federates del bordo qu ms quieren
But they already questioned us we already crossed over they
already grabbed us the Border Patrol what more do they want
We are on the bus now
that is all
A dnde vamos te digo sal desde Honduras
No hemos comido nada y dnde vamos a dormir
Where are we going I am telling you I came from Honduras
We havent eaten anything and where are we going to sleep
I dont want to talk about it just tell them
That you came from nowhere
I came from nowhere
And we crossed the border from nowhere
And now you and me and everybody else here is
On a bus to nowehere you got it?
Pero por eso nos venimos para salir de la nada
But thats why we came to leave all that nothing behind
When the bus stops there will be more nothing
Were here hermana
Y esas gentes quines son
no quieren que siga el camin
No quieren que sigamos
Estn bloqueando el bus
A dnde vamos ahora
Those people there who are they
they dont want the bus to keep going
they dont want us to keep going
now they are blocking the bus
so where do we go
What?
He tardado 47 das para llegar ac no fue fcil hermana
45 das desde Honduras con los coyotes los que se bueno
ya sabes lo que les hicieron a las chicas all mero en frente
de nosotros pero qu bamos a hacer y los trenes los trenes
cmo dir hermana cientos de
nosotros como gallinas como topos en jaulas y verduras
pudriendse en los trenes de miles me oyes de miles y se resbalaban
de los techos y los desiertos de Arizona de Tajas sed y hambre
sed y hambre dos cosas sed y hambre da tras da hermana
y ahora aqu en este camin y quin sabe a dnde
vamos hermana fijate vengo desde Brownsville dnde nos amarraron
y ahora en California pero todava no entramos y todava el bordo
est por delante
It took me 47 days to get here it wasnt easy hermana
45 days from Honduras with the coyotes the ones that well
you know what they did to las chicas
right there in front of us so what were we supposed
to do and the trains the trains how can I tell you hermana hundreds
of us like chickens like gophers in cages and vegetables
rotting on trains of thousands you hear me of thousands and they slid
from the rooftops and the deserts of Arizona and Texas thirst and hunger
thirst and hunger two things thirst and hunger day after day hermana
and now here on this bus of who-knows-where we are going
hermana listen I come from Brownsville where they tied us up
and now in California but still were not inside and still the border
lies ahead of us
I told you to speak in English even un poquito
the guard is going to think we are doing something
people are screaming outside
they want to push the bus back
Pero para dnde le damos hermana
por eso me vine
le quebraron las piernas a mi padre
las pandillas mataron a mi hijo
solo quiero que estemos juntos
tantos aos hermana
separados
But where do we go hermana
thats why I came here
they broke my fathers legs
gangs killed my son
I just want us to be together
so many years hermana
pulled apart
What?
Mi madre me dijo que lo ms importante
es la libertad la bondad y la buenas acciones
con el prjimo
My mother told me that the most important thing
is freedom kindness and doing good
for others
What are you talking about?
I told you to be quiet
La libertad viene desde muy adentro
all reside todo el dolor de todo el mundo
el momento en que purguemos ese dolor de nuestras entraas
seremos libres y en ese momento tenemos que
llenarnos de todo el dolor de todos los seres
para liberarlos a ellos mismos
Freedom comes from deep inside
all the pain of the world lives there
the second we cleanse that pain from our guts
we shall be free and in that moment we have to
fill ourselves up
with all the pain of all beings
to free them all of them
Reading 2: T. C. BOYLE
The Relive Box
T. C. Boyle (b. 1948) graduated from the State University of New York, Potsdam, with a B.A. in English and history. Boyle taught high school for several years in his hometown, then attended the Iowa Writers Workshop, and later received a Ph.D. in nineteenth-century British literature from the University of Iowa in 1977. He has published more than twenty books of fiction and has received numerous awards, including many O.Henry Awards and Best American story selections. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. Some of his recent work includes the novels, The Harder They Come (2015), The Terranauts (2016), and Outside Looking In(2019); and the collection The Relive Box and Other Stories (2017), from which the following story is taken.
Katie wanted to relive Katie at nine, before her mother left, and I could appreciate that, but we had only one console at the time, and I really didnt want to go there. It was coming up on the holidays, absolutely grim outside, nine-thirty at night on a school night and she had to be up at six to catch the bus in the dark. Shed already missed too much school, staying home on any pretext and reliving all day, while I was at work, so there really were no limits, and who was being a bad father here? A single father unable to discipline his fifteen-year-old daughter, let alone inculcate a work ethic in her?
Me. I was. And I felt bad about it. I wanted to put my foot down and at the same time give her something, make a concession, a peace offering. But, even more, I wanted the box myself, wanted it so baldly it was showing in my face, Im sure, and she needed to get ready for school, needed sleep, needed to stop reliving and worry about the now, the now and the future. Why dont you wait till the weekend? I said.
She was wearing those tights which all the girls wear like painted-on skin, standing in the doorway to the living room, perching on one foot the way she did when she was doing her dance exercises. Her face belonged to her mother, my ex, Christine, who hadnt been there for her for six years and counting. I want to relive now, she said, diminishing her voice to a shaky, hesitant plaint that was calculated to make me give in to whatever she wanted, but it wasnt going to work this time, no way. She was going to bed, and I was going back to a rainy February night in 1982, a sold-out show at the Roxy, a band I loved then, and the girl I was mad crazy for before she broke my heart and Christine came along to break it all over again.
Why dont you go upstairs and text your friends or something? I said.
I dont want to text my friends. I want to be with my mom.
This was a plaint, too, and it cut even deeper. She was deprived, that was the theme here, and my behavior, as any impartial observer could have seen in a heartbeat, verged on child abuse. I know, honey, I know. But its not healthy. Youre spending too much time there.
Youre just selfish, thats all, she said, and here was the shift to a new tone, a tone of animus and opposition, the subtext being that I never thought of anybody but myself. You want to, what, relive when you were, like, my age or something? Let me guess: youre going to go back and relive yourself doing homework, right? As an example for your daughter?
The room was a mess. The next day was the day the maid came, so I was standing amid the debris of the past week, a healthy percentage of it abandoned sweat socks, energy-drink cans, crumpled foil pouches that had once contained biscotti, popcorn, or Salami Bites generated by the child standing there before me. I dont like your sarcasm, I said.
Her face was pinched so that her lips were reduced to the smallest little O-ring of disgust. What do you like?
A clean house. A little peace and quiet. Some privacy, for Christs sake is that too much to ask?
I want to be with Mom.
Go text your friends.
I dont have any friends.
Make some.
And this, thrown over her shoulder, preparatory to the furious pounding retreat up the stairs and the slamming of her bedroom door: Youre a pig!
And my response, which had been ritualized ever since Id sprung for the five-thousand-dollar, second-generation Halcom X1520 Relive Box with the In-Flesh Retinal Projection Stream and altered forever the dynamic between me and my only child: I know.
Most people, when they got their first Relive Box, went straight for sex, which was only natural. In fact, it was a selling point in the TV ads, which featured shimmering adolescents walking hand in hand along a generic strip of beach or leaning in for a tender kiss over the ball return at the bowling alley. Who wouldnt want to go back there? Who wouldnt want to relive innocence, the nascent stirrings of love and desire, or the first time you removed her clothes and she removed yours? What of girlfriends (or boyfriends, as the case may be), wives, ex-wives, one-night stands, the casual encounter that got you halfway there, then flitted out of reach on the wings of an unfulfilled promise? I was no different. The sex part of it obsessed me through those first couple of months, and if I drifted into work each morning feeling drained (and not just figuratively) at least I knew that it was a problem, that it was adversely affecting my job performance, and, if I didnt cut back, threatening my job itself. Still, to relive Christine when we first met, to relive her in bed, in candlelight, clinging fast to me and whispering my name in the throes of her passion, was too great a temptation. Or even just sitting there across from me in the Moroccan restaurant where I took her for our first date, her eyes like portals, as she leaned into the table and drank up every word and witticism that came out of my mouth. Or to go farther back, before my wife entered the picture, to Rennie Porter, the girl I took to the senior prom and spent two delicious hours rubbing up against in the back seat of my fathers Buick Regal every second of which Id relived six or seven times now. And to Lisa, Lisa Denardo, the girl I met that night at the Roxy, hoping I was going to score.
I started coming in late to work. Giving everybody, even my boss, the zombie stare. I got my first warning. Then my second. And my boss Kevin Moos, a decent enough guy, five years younger than me, who didnt have an X1520, or not that he was letting on sat me down in his office and told me, in no uncertain terms, that there wouldnt be a third.
But it was a miserable night, and I was depressed. And bored. So bored you could have drilled holes in the back of my head and taken core samples and I wouldnt have known the difference. Id already denied my daughter, who was thumping around upstairs with the cumulative weight of ten daughters, and the next day was Friday, T.G.I.F., end of the week, the slimmest of workdays, when just about everybody alive thinks about slipping out early. I figured that even if I did relive for more than the two hours I was going to strictly limit myself to, even if I woke up exhausted, I could always find a way to make it to lunch and just let things coast after that. So I went into the kitchen and fixed myself a gin-and-tonic, because that was what Id been drinking that night at the Roxy, and carried it into the room at the end of the hall that had once been a bedroom and was now (Katies joke, not mine) the reliving room.
The console sat squarely on the low table that was the only piece of furniture in the room, aside from the straight-backed chair Id set in front of it the day I brought the thing home. It wasnt much bigger than the gaming consoles Id had to make do with in the old days, a slick black metal cube with a single recessed glass slit running across the face of it from one side to the other. It activated the minute I took my seat. Hello, Wes, it said, in the voice Id selected, male, with the slightest bump of an accent to make it seem less synthetic. Welcome back.
I lifted the drink to my lips to steady myself think of a conductor raising his baton and cleared my throat. February 28, 1982, I said. 9:45 P.M. Play.
The box flashed the date and time and then suddenly I was there, the club exploding into life like a comet touching down, light and noise and movement obliterating the now, the house gone, my daughter gone, the world of getting and doing and bosses and work vanished in an instant. I was standing at the bar with my best friend, Zach Ronalds, who turned up his shirt collars and wore his hair in a Joe Strummer pompadour just like me, only his hair was black and mine choirboy blond (Id dye it within the week), and I was trying to get the bartenders attention so I could order us G.-and-T.s with my fake I.D. The band, more New Wave than punk, hadnt started yet, and the only thing to look at onstage was the opening band, whose members were packing up their equipment while hypervigilant girls in vampire makeup and torn fishnet stockings washed around them in a human tide that ebbed and flowed on the waves of music crashing through the speakers. It was bliss. Bliss because I knew now that this night alone, out of all the long succession of dull, nugatory nights building up to it, would be special, that this was the night Id meet Lisa and take her home with me. To my parents house in Pasadena, where I had a room of my own above the detached garage and could come and go as I pleased. My room. The place where I greased up my hair and stared at myself in the mirror and waited for something to happen, something like this, like what was coming in seven and a half real-time minutes.
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