Author Archives: WeiTing Zhou

Live Life So You Don’t Regret

“For the ordinary girls. For all the girls who broke my heart. And their mothers. And their daughters. And if I could reach back through time and space to that girl I was, to all my girls, I would tell you to take care, to love each other, fight less, dance dance dance until you’re breathless. And goddamn, girl. Live.”

Throughout the ending part of “Ordinary Girls”, it was relieving to read that even though she had such a childhood, she was still able to make it past all that and look back at it as fun times. When she went back home, she couldn’t help but feel regret and sadness because she had left. Even though she was only gone for a year and a half, so much had changed. Her mom’s health was getting worse, her best friend was getting married, her abuela’s house was destroyed, her dad’s store destroyed, etc. She then writes, “How do we keep living in the world when everything we built is gone? How do we even go on?” This made me think really hard because we live for others and for the stuff we built, but when they’re all gone, what do we live for now? What I thought was that even though everything is gone, we should still live for those who are gone and experience things for them, anything that was built can be rebuilt. 

At the end where Jaquira states who she writes for, it made me realize that this book wasn’t made just for herself and the people in her life but also every girl that felt lost and labeled as weird, ugly, all the above. The ending sentences made me feel nostalgic because it reminded me of that time I was having a deep talk with my friends about the past and the future. We brought up so many memories we had together and talked about advice we would give to our younger selves. I regretted not taking more care of myself and people that I cared about and just living life. Jaquira’s last sentence brought back memories from my childhood. “And if I could reach back through time and space to that girl I was, to all my girls, I would tell you to take care, to love each other, fight less, dance dance dance until you’re breathless. And goddamn, girl. Live.” This sentence kind of made me rethink my life choices and also questions such as, “is this what I want to do in life, should I give up on this idea and go back with my original idea? Overall I really enjoyed the ending because it was mostly about Jaquira reflecting on her life and remembering everything she had to go through and using that to keep herself moving.

Teenage Years Gone Weird

“Ms. Gold was known in most cliques as the counselor for the losers, druggies, troublemakers, kids who got suspended, kids who fought or brought knives to school, kids who flunked so much they were already too old for Nautilus, kids whose parents were drunks or junkies, or whose parents beat them, homeless kids, bullied kids, kids with eating disorders, or brain disorders, or anger problems. So naturally, when I showed up at her door, she knew exactly who I was.”

During this part of “Ordinary Girls”, Jaquira discusses her teenage life, how she always got in trouble and became a child delinquent. She was going through a hard time because her parents didn’t pay attention to her and what she did. Jaquira while growing up never really got the attention she needed or wanted, she had turned to someone else that she didn’t know to talk about her problems. 

Like Jaquira, while growing up I didn’t get the attention that I needed or wanted. Most of the attention was to my brother and this caused me to act out in school. Even though I did all my work and finished everything on time, I wouldn’t listen to the teachers and would talk back. But once my teachers threatened to tell my mother about my behavior, that’s when I would stop acting out for a bit because I was terrified of my mother. If she had found out about me acting out in school, I would get screamed at and slapped. In my school, there was a counselor like Ms. Gold. I hated her because I knew she was the counselor for people that got in trouble or did bad things. It was a constant reminder that I had to go to her because my parents didn’t pay attention to me or at that time I thought they didn’t care about me. As Jaquira talks more into her teenage years, I couldn’t help but feel bad because she had to go through all this by herself, and even though she did have a few friends with her, she still had to go through these things personally.

Happy Sad Mother

“These are the memories I want to keep: my mother, exhausted but happy, how carefree she was, how beautiful. How for those moments, before we knew that she was sick, the whole world seemed possible. How when I looked at her, I hoped that one day,  I would be exactly like her. (pg 90)”

While reading about Diaz’s relationship with her mother and father, I came to a realization that everyone’s life is completely different, even if we are similar in some ways, we will always be different because we don’t go through the same experiences. Not only that but also, it was shocking to me how messed up it was that no matter what Diaz’s mother did, her father never really cared. He was in his own world and when Diaz’s mother threatened to take away his children, he never said anything about it. The way Diaz explained how different her mother was before she was sick felt very real. She described how happy her mother was before she was sick, running around chasing each other laughing, and how she felt like she could accomplish anything. She looked up to her mother and hoped to be like her one day. But after her addiction to drugs, Diaz’s greatest fear was becoming her mother. She didn’t want to grow up like her mother even though she had admired her for so long.

Having Someone There

While reading the first few pages of Ordinary Girls, I was already captivated by Jaquira Diaz’s story. But what caught me was the quote, “At first it felt like being interrogated, but after a while, I was so happy to have a grownup listening to me talk about myself, I let it all out. (Diaz 2019, pg 27.)” I felt like I was able to relate to that in a way because while growing up, there was no one to talk to, not even my family and when someone was there to listen to me, it felt relaxing and just telling them everything. Jaquira as a child was able to tell someone she never knew about her problems and to have someone listen to her was very comforting.   

Jaquira as a child had experienced many things that a child shouldn’t have experienced. From her stories of her parents fighting to her being able to feel comfortable with someone that she never knew was a little improper. She had to go to someone else to tell her problems to, and even though she loved her father very much, he wasn’t around much for her. I am similar to her in some ways, even though my dad wasn’t around much, he was still my favorite parent because on days he would have off, he would hang out with me and teach me random things that were very interesting.

Pick a Book- Ordinary Girls

Weiting Zhou

Writing for the Social Sciences 

Professor Dalton

21 September 2021

In Jaquira Diaz’s memoir Ordinary Girls, she discusses her life experiences, how she grew up, what she went through, and how it impacted her. Jaquira was born to a white mother and a black father in Puerto Rico, as a child she didn’t have the “typical” childhood that most children had. She grew up in a neighborhood with a dangerous reputation, her experiences in this neighborhood included being threatened by men carrying machetes and police raids were common occurrences. All this had an impact on her because she started acting out and her life became difficult. While she grew up in that milieu, I grew up in a very different one which made her stories interesting to me. After doing some research about her and reading her short story Season of Risks, I fell in love with her writing style and her story. I was intrigued to understand more about her life because it was so different from mine and anyone else I know. I was drawn into her life by her seemingly lack of fear and desire for freedom. 

While reading some of Jaquira Diaz’s stories, every sentence captivated me, it felt like I was the “I” in the memoir, it didn’t give me any chance to escape her world. Her writing seemed fiction but was actually nonfiction. It felt like I was the one who moved from Puerto Rico to Miami instead of her. Her writing style made me feel like I was the protagonist and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for myself. Even though I hadn’t actually experienced the same as Jaquira, it felt real to me, I was able to picture what was happening. 

Jaquira, as a gay and brown woman growing up in America, she didn’t get the support and love she wanted which caused her life to be upended by violence. Her mother had bought her barbie dolls, which she despised because they reminded her of who she wasn’t. “But I didn’t exactly like them. They were like reminders of everything I wasn’t —blond-haired, blue-eyed. They always made me feel ugly, the brown kid who would never look like her white mother.” (Diaz, 2019, p.32). Even though her mother was white, she didn’t resemble her which only made her feel worse about herself because at that time, being white was seen as the ideal look.

The freedom and love she craved so much were out of reach, yet she persevered through the help of her friends who are the “ordinary girls” in the memoir. I was able to relate to her in some ways because I never had the support and love I wanted. No matter what I did, I didn’t feel the support or love and that’s when I turned to my close friends. They showed me what it felt like to be supported and loved, which caused me to be a more considerate and amiable person. Before, I was acting out a bit, but was afraid when my parents confronted me about my poor decisions. But I didn’t stop because I wanted some attention. Reading about her life made me realize that no one’s life is exactly perfect, but the imperfections is what makes it worthwhile.  

    Jaquira Diaz wrote Ordinary Girls “for the girls they were, for the girl I was, for girls everywhere who are just like we used to be. […] For the girls who are angry and lost. For the girls who never saw themselves in books.” (Diaz, 2020). Jaquira writes about her childhood friends, they were the definition of ordinary girls, the ones that struggled, were enraged, confused, and supported her through her highs and lows. Even though Jaquira was writing her own story, she includes the everyday girls that she grew up with, who she once was. 

Through Ordinary Girls, the dangerous and exciting life of Jaquira Diaz had sparked my interest in reading her memoir. While reading a bit of Jaquira’s stories, she seemed so carefree even though her life was upended. I wanted to learn more about her life and how she’s still standing tall with courage despite having a messy childhood. I admire her courage in writing about these deeply personal experiences and sharing them with the very opinionated  world. 

Citations:

Diaz, J. (2019) Ordinary Girls A Memoir, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Watkins, J. E. (2020, July 23). Latino Book Review  https://www.latinobookreview.com/8203jaquira-diacuteaz—ordinary-girls-a-memoir–latino-book-review.html

Jaquira Diaz on Place, Ana Maria CARDONA, and Her memoir, Ordinary Girls. Apogee Journal. (2019, November 18). https://apogeejournal.org/2019/11/18/jaquira-diaz-memoir-ordinary-girls/.

Interviewing Jaquira Diaz

In an interview, “Jaquira Diaz’s Memoir ‘Ordinary Girls,’ Jaquira Diaz Searches for Home”, hosted by Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition, she discusses her childhood tale. Fights, raids, drug dealings, and firearms were all part of her upbringing. She thought it was usual as a child to grow up in this kind of situation, but as she looked back, she realized how out of the ordinary it was. She describes how she attempted suicide for the first time when she was 11 years old, and how after fleeing her home, she began to be jailed. She didn’t know what was happening, but was filled with a rage that she couldn’t describe. When she tried returning home, she didn’t feel like she belonged. A boy approached her as she wandered around her old school and said “No, you have to leave. You don’t belong here.” It was true what he said, no matter how much it felt like home, it wasn’t her place anymore. This source is reliable because it passes everything on the CRAAP test. This is a recent source, where Jaquira Diaz was interviewed by Steve Inskeep.

Steve, Inskeep (2019, October 29). Jaquira Diaz’s Memoir ‘Ordinary Girls,’ Jaquira Diaz Searches for Home: “[Radio Broadcast]” NPR. https://www.npr.org/2019/10/29/774306278/jaquira-d-az-on-her-memoir-ordinary-girls

The Promises for ENGL 21002

Expectations are beliefs that something is going to happen in the manner that we expect. Even if what we expected did not occur, it was still an expectation because that was what we expected to occur or how we expected someone to act. The name of this course, “Writing for the Social Sciences”, leads me to believe that the class would focus on human behavior and relationships. Social science is the study of society and how individuals interact with and shape the surrounding environment.

I expect this class to dive deeply into each reading assignment, analyzing it along with our writings and thinking critically. In the previous semesters, we had a lot of group discussions and from the previous classes we had, we would most likely have many breakout group discussions along with whole-class discussions which I am looking forward to. Even though breakout rooms are a bit awkward at times, as long as someone speaks up, everyone would chime in at some point. I expect the professor to help students create friendly relationships with each other by trying to engage us in small groups and as an entire class. Although it might be a bit difficult because of covid, having the small breakout rooms and going in person once in a while would definitely help in creating wonderful friendships.

What I expect for myself, is to finish every assignment and try to interact with the class in some way. I’m usually a person who sits back and doesn’t really raise my hand to talk, even if I know the answer. But for this semester, I’m hoping to break out of that zone and at least try to speak a few times. I expect myself to ask questions when I’m confused and when I need help, and I expect this for my classmates as well. Communication is an essential in life and I hope we can all communicate with each other if anything is confusing. In conclusion, I am looking forward to working with everyone this semester.