2. Group E---rbelanger27

In my book The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon is about a girl named Natasha that is struggling with facing deportation because they are non-documented immigrants. Because of this, Natasha is trying to wrap her head around the fact that she’s being taken away from the life she’s lived for so long and the only thing she really remembers. Those that are involved in the deportation process are telling her that she will be fine back in Jamaica, but nobody knows the life she lived there before moving. Natasha has met a boy named Daniel, and day by day they continue to gow an unbearable connection through the love experiment. Meanwhile, Natasha’s deportation process and daniels family academic pushes create tension. 

Natasha starts to realize that her beliefs that everything must be explained by science may no longer be so strong. After spending days with Daniel, she feels a real, true connection with him. This then makes her question her belief that love and fate are not real. She begins to feel true emotions and gratitude towards Daniel and has seen that real relationships and real love is still important, even if it can’t be proven. 

“I think it’s possible to fall in love in twenty-four hours.”

“ Needless to say, I was ashamed of the way that I had approached my job. My perception had been challenged. And then came the moment that completely shattered my idea of perception.” 

This TED talk quote also shows the idea of perception and perspective. You never necessarily see how one decision or one's attitude towards something so small could really change a small thing into something unimaginable.

Yolanda faces a lot of changes in perspective throughout the book, through learning how to stand up for herself. The book is being told in reverse chronological order, Yolanda grows up in a pretty stable home with money and nice things, but they have very strict rules when it comes to their family and culture. Their family later moves away to America, which causes them to struggle to adapt to the culture there while also trying to continue their own culture from the Dominican. 

Throughout my book, How the Garcia Girls lost their accents, Yolanda faces change in perspective when she starts dating an American man named Manuel. Manuel and Yolanda seem to be having a very good start to their relationship, and Yolanda sees him as a romantic guy. It is later shown that Manuel just sees her as a exotic foreign girl and doesn't even understand her culture, “ I don’t wanna. You can’t make me. This is a free country” (Alvarez 184). He would rather see her as a foreign girl instead of trying to understand who she really is. This causes her to end up breaking up with him, and learn to be happy with her own culture.  

Yolanda realizes that he doesn't truly care for her the way she cares for him, and that he isn't trying to learn her religion at all. This really frustrates her, and he starts to pressure into doing things she doesn't want to do, it causes her to see a different side of him which shows a different perspective. In the TED Talk,  “Why children of immigrants experience guilt– and strategies to cope” by Sahaj Kaur Kohli, she talks about how immigrants feel like they don’t fit in and need to change to feel better about themselves, “You know, the guilt of feeling misunderstood, the guilt of feeling like you can’t do the things that you want, the guilt of feeling like you’re not enough are tied to grief that you didn’t have” ( Kohli 3). This quote is related to my book because it shows how the immigrant kids and Yolanda both feel a way about moving away from their home and struggle with the change. Yolanda overcomes cultural differences and learns how to stand up for herself just how Kohli shows how she can help the immigrant kids. 

In my book, Out Of Nowhere, by Maria Padian, there are technically 2 main characters, but were going to focus on Saeed, the boy from Somalia. He is an extremely talented soccer player and is very important to his team. Tom, the other main character, doesn't understand Saeed too well, and it can make it awkward at times. The book shows perspectives from immigrants, and it can be fascinating to learn about some of their differences. One time that shows when Toms perspective changed is when he mentions Saeed’s talking, and how it changes how he thinks about language and about Saeed. “Sometimes he surprised me and came up with a string of English that made you think he could speak the language. Other times he faded.” (Padian 96). this quote shows how Tom could really see differences with culture and language.

In the novel Brighter than the sun by Daniel Aleman a Mexican immigrant named Sol is having to travel back and forth between the U.S. to go to school and also work in the US because she gets paid more there than she would in her home town in Mexico Tijuana. She eventually moved into her best friend's house in the US as it was easier for her to live there compared to going back and forth on the border everyday and night. Throughout working she meets a boy named Nick and they get close; he eventually asks her out and he becomes a big love interest for Sol in these last few chapters. Sol goes back to Tijuana one weekend to find out the restaurant they've been struggling to keep open that her dad finally chose to shut it down. Sol was very upset as this was the last thing left from her mom. Sol gets asked to speak up for a boy she was kind of friends with on the border named Bruno. He got in big trouble because he fought a white boy in the lunch line for Sol because he was flirting with her but also just being a bad person. But Bruno gets called the bad guy and the other kids' parents decide to try and press charges against Bruno so Bruno's friend asks Sol to stand up for him, Sol says she can't because she's scared of public speaking and doesn't want to risk getting kicked out of school. She was working and enjoying her shift talking with Nick and her other staff members, eventually she gets called to the staff room and finds out she's getting accused of stealing a really expensive dress that's worth three of Sol's paychecks. Sol tells them she didn't steal anything but they have to put her on leave till they figure out who actually stole it. Sol then decides to go back home early since she can't work anymore and she knew she had to tell her dad. Sol got home back in Tijuana and told her dad and grandma the three of them knew they needed Sol to have this job without it, how would they pay the bills, debt, and get food on the table? Sol decides that she needs to find another job and fast. In the Ted talk Hi. I’ Nic by Nic Stone is a story about the author and how she often doesn't understand others perspectives and how she finally decided she wanted to travel and be able to understand other cultures and perspectives. So the summer she turned 23 she hopped on a plane to Israel and tried putting herself into other people's shoes and how other people see things differently, “It wasn't until the summer I turned twenty-three and hopped on that plane to Israel that I began to get a real grasp into other people on the role of Storey in the human experience.”(Stone)  She experienced change in perspective when she was at the beach with Ari and her friends as she realized how easy they are to talk to as she had always thought she Ari’s friends were scary to talk to and she was just so nervous but her perspective on them changed during this time, ““but I’m suddenly finding it difficult to remember why I used to be intimidated by Ari’s friends. I’m having a hard time understanding why I’ve been so quiet around them, when there so easy to talk to.”“(Aleman165)