3. Group B---caustin27

In my book, “Breathe and Count Back From Ten” by Natalia Sylvester Veronica has lived in the U.S. since before she can remember so she's never had to think much about fitting in unlike her mother and father. They push her to be perfect and do nothing wrong, but while they think it's for the best they are really taking away all her freedom and choices. Rather than her trying to fit in because of her ethnicity she has to fit in due to her hip injury; her hips are lopsided, and she just found out her parents have been keeping a huge secret from her. She finally gets her dream job but her family won’t accept it so she is forced to lie to them. Also due to the new worsening condition of her hip she has to learn when to figure out if she is actually okay or if she is just being brave for others. The job she thought she had wanted and she fought for, the place she thought would truly accept her with her scars ends up trying to cover up the part of her she's always been most self-conscious about. In the end she finally starts to live out her dream, her parents accept what she chooses and she finds out the decision she thought was going to be made for her was actually something she could finally control. 

Vero struggles keeping relationships with people due to her injury, it causes her to be uncomfortable and people always assume things about her so she never feels open or safe enough to share that part of life. Even her family never truly understands her, her sister always seems to be jealous because Vero gets most of the attention so they tend to push each other away when they really need each other the most,  “Wait. What are you saying? Geoff and I are performing next week. Don't F- this up for us. I swear, I’ll tell Mami and Papi about you and Jason if you do!” (Sylvester 280). I feel that this also connects to the Ted talk, “Sweet, difficult sounds” by I.M. Desta, when she needed to make friends the most she was frozen and couldn’t get herself to break out of her box, “It made Nothukula nervous, stiffening her tongue. With each wordless second that passed, she felt more pressure to make up for the awkwardness, say the right thing to Ashley and ensure it came out perfectly. She opened her mouth, but not a single thing came out.” This is showing  how she needed connection but feared the idea of rejection or embarrassment.

mpetersen27: What if Vero never had her injury? Do you think she would have a better relationship life?

caustin 

My character Natasha struggles with making relationships with people or getting  into romantic relationships because she does not believe in love. “Well, lust fades, and then there are children to raise and bills to pay. At some point it just becomes friendships with mutual self- interests for the benefit of society and the next generation.” (yoon 82) This relates to the ted talk  “sweet, difficult sounds”  by I.M. desta. It is about a girl who moves to America and has a hard time speaking in front of her classmates. Due to this she has a hard time making friends and relationships. There’s a boy in her class that talks to her a lot, but she struggles to talk back. “But she never answered him, even when he offered to help her with her English after school. She smiles awkwardly and shrugged her shoulders.” (Desta) her not being responsive makes it hard for her to make relationships with people. 

TSmith: What if Natasha believed in love would she have a better relationship's with people. 

caustin27

The novel “The Sun Is Also A Star” by Nicola Yoon shows how two teenagers experience the first stages of “love at first sight” in their own unique ways. Daniel is a lot more spiritual than Natasha in the fact that he believes in fate and love. Poetry is one of the things he loves which his parents think is basically a waste of time. He is fairly different from the rest of his family, his older brother goes to Harvard and he feels the need to be like “the perfect son” and his parents are being pushy for him to go to Yale while he tries to follow in his brother’s footsteps but also trying to make his own decisions. Especially when Natasha comes into his life. Natasha is a “keep to herself” kind of person. She is scheduled to be deported back to Jamaica, but she’s nervous to go back to her old life that she’s already left behind. Being deported is not her decision, it’s the government’s decision because she is an illegal immigrant, with a false social security number, which is also not her decision. Unfortunately the day that she is set to meet about the deportation she, literally, bumps into Daniel, or “Red Tie” and starts to fall for him. As Natasha and Daniel continue spending the day together in New York City, they are getting to know each other better. Natasha meets with an immigration lawyer to try to stop her family’s deportation, but she learns there is little he can do to help. Meanwhile, Daniel keeps trying to prove that two people can fall in love in a single day by asking Natasha deep and personal questions. He brings her to a karaoke place and he sings a song almost perfectly to show Natasha his talent. Natasha sang a song too, but she was all heart and no skill. Then they went onto each other, which both of them had been waiting for all day. When they share their thoughts about family, dreams, and the future, Natasha slowly begins to open up to him. Even though they grow closer, Natasha still worries about having to leave the country soon. When they leave the karaoke place, Natasha tells Daniel the truth about her deportation and they have a big fight, leaving them both guilty in their own ways. When Natasha’s family deportation is finalized, it leads into a heartbreaking goodbye and separation from Daniel. For 10 years, Natasha and Daniel live their own lives apart from each other. It wasn’t until a plane flight that they met again. The flight attendant that thanked Natasha was the security guard named Irene from when Natasha was a teenager. This conversation got Daniel’s attention from down the aisle and he spoke up and said “Natasha?” Natasha looked over at the stranger and knew it was Daniel, so she said, “Daniel.” This ending makes it seem like there will be a new beginning for the two.

Both Natasha and Daniel have struggled with relationships for a number of unique reasons. Natasha has always been a sciencey, factual, and reserved person which makes her prone to not changing her beliefs and keeping quiet and not talking to the other person. She also has had a broken relationship with her difficult father since she was a kid. He wanted to pursue his dream as an actor in America, but he got lost in all of the scripts for plays after one day and Natasha took his actions personally I think, “When my father finally noticed us watching, he scolded us for sneaking up on him. At first I thought he was just embarrassed. No one likes being caught unawares. Later, though, I realized it was more than that. He was ashamed, as if we’d caught him cheating or stealing. After that he and I didn’t do much of anything together anymore” (Yoon 206-207). Daniel has always been pushed away or suppressed by his parents’ strict rules regarding dating and relationships. He wants to be himself by being a romantic and outgoing artsy guy who writes poetry and sings, but his father keeps testing his integrity, “I’m about to leave when he says the final thing, the thing he’s been waiting to say. ‘I saw the way you look at that girl,’ he says. ‘But that can never be.’ ‘I think you’re wrong,’ I tell him. ‘Doesn’t matter what you think. You do the right thing.’ We make and hold eye contact. It’s the holding of eye contact that tells me he’s not sure what I’m going to do. Neither am I” (Yoon 237).