1. Group G---dbiron27

My Response: in my book Out Of Nowhere by Marina Padian Tom Bouchard is a great student and a great soccer player and has a hot girlfriend  but he is a bad diction maker and is not always doing the right things and he deal with lots and lots of racial diversity  

Yes Saeedsaeed is poor, he dosentpoor he dosent live in the best part of town and he doesn't even have cleats for example “I tried to get my head around the idea of playing without any protection on my feet. Yeah, when I come? To America? Saeed said. He is pronouncedHe pronounced in Am-ree-ka. I want to play soccer. But I need shoes, you know?”(pg83)

My Response : My book is not able to answer this question. My book “The Burning Tigris” is about the Armenian Genocide. The book is both a history on the genocide, a history of the world’s response to the genocide (America and Europe at this time) and how the genocide affects world human rights and humanitarian issues today. Each chapter details the historical events and the situation leading up to it. The Armenians of the 19th century lived in the Ottoman Empire, which was increasingly hostile to them. “The Armenian Question” was what to do about the Armenian people. The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire sought to eliminate the Armenian people, therefore, “solving the question”. The book details the massacres and increasing destruction of the Armenians and their culture. The United States and Great Britain both exposed the tragedies of the Armenians to their populations through newspapers and gatherings. The first Red Cross mission to go international was to help the ravaged Armenians. The Armenian Genocide did not start until 1915, but terrible violence was brought on the Armenians through the 1890s. My book does not have main characters, it has side characters but they are not crucially important to the narrative of the stories. Many of these characters die or are important for only a few chapters. The closest to support and relationships is Clara Barton’s Red Cross trip to Armenia, “The mission, Barton said, would relive the suffering people “from continued distress, the State from the burden of providing for them, and other nations and people from a torrent of sympathy which was both hard to endure and unwholesome in its effects.” (Balakian 79). Basically, the hostilities to the Armenians during this time means that they are unable to support themselves, and the Red Cross under Barton aims to help them where they can. The Red Cross trip helps to heal wounded villagers, repair burned villages, and help farmers replenish their ravaged fields. 

Hello iadams27, I found your response difficult to read because of its formatting, but I think I understand your response. The character needs to support himself, just like how many of the characters in my book must support themselves through the hard times in Armenia. 

In my book The Only Road by Alexander Diez there is a boy named Jamie who struggles with the loss of his cousin Miguel. He lives in a small town in Guatemala. There’s a group called the Alphas who are considered bad. Anyone who refuses to work with them is hurt or killed. Like Maguel. Jamie lives in fear of her being the next one to be killed. My character handles his relationships with his family pretty well. They are all somewhat close due to a family member in their family getting killed. He doesn't have many people to support him due to them also dealing with the loss. Although his cousin Angela can be a person to support him. I think the only thing who will help him with the relationships in his life is time. A quote that supports this says, “Next to Jamie, with her eyes squeezed tight, Angela let him guide her through the quiet streets.” (Diaz 14)

In the book, Throwback by Maurene Goo, Samantha, or as she’s called through the book, Sam, is the daughter of a first-generation Korean immigrant, Priscilla, with whom she has a… troubled relationship to say the least. After a fight with her mom that leaves her stranded in the mall parking lot over her not trying for homecoming queen, she orders a ride share service called Throwback Rides, after a talk about what happened with her mom with the driver, Samantha is thrown back to when her mom was in the running for Homecoming Queen, and now has to help her mom achieve said title to get back to her place in time and make amends with her mother. While most of Sam’s relationships are well, the one with her mother is not only troubled, it’s also the main conflict of the entire book. This is best shown when Sam’s Korean grandma, Halmoni, gets hospitalized because of a heart attack, and they both argue over how they saw her, with Sam seeing her as sort of a kind grandma, while from Priscilla’s perspective, she was the sort of stereotypical strict parent, not allowing her to have a normal teenhood and making her study her hardest. “I thought of how Mom talked about Halmoni (“She wasn’t the grandma that you know”),” (Goo, 80). Sam also seems to have kind of a rocky relationship with her boyfriend, with him not being all that approved by her mom and her walking out on him during a shared project, although it was because she just received a text hearing that her grandma was hospitalized, she also just seems generally cold to him. 

iadams27, I noticed in your response that you talked about your characters moving to the U.S., can you give more information about how and why this happened and how this is impacting your characters? 

In Daniel Aleman’s book, Brighter Than The Sun, a 16 year old girl named Soledad, who lives in Mexico, is struggling to get by. After her mom passed, it's been difficult to make money and keep their family restaurant running. But Sol goes to school in America because she was born there. So because her dad had been working hard on the restaurant, Sol took it upon herself to get a job in San Diego. Because of this, she starts sleeping over at her friend Ari’s house, only returning home on the weekends. She deals with stress because of the schoolwork, her job, and grief from her mom. That's the biggest relationship she lost, her mom. Her Dad always supports her with what she does and her friend Ari lets her stay with her while she works in America. If she had school in Mexico, And not America, she would probably have an easier time making friends because they would be more like her.

sgolob27, This is very interesting, because my book is nothing like that. My book does not have genocide.

eberube27, Your response Is interesting our characters are pretty similar. My character also doesn't have many people to support him.

ksmith27, What I see is your character is struggling if anyone in their family has a problem it becomes their problem. My story is a little different then that. 

In my book Interior Chinatown, My character Willis, Willis’s relationships mirror his internal struggle: until he can claim his own identity and self-worth outside the roles others give him, his connections will remain shallow or performative. The novel is as much about social commentary as it is about personal growth, showing how societal constraints shape personal relationships.