March Blog Post

The reading I wanted to focus on in this blog post was the poetry you had us read from Amy Arellano. After re-reading the poems, I found it incredibly difficult to pick a single sentence that stood out to me. The entire set of poems stood out to me and made my heart hurt. One particular line that stood out to me was from the third poem, Price of Parenthood. "I just know we would make good parents" was a line that was soul crushing. So many people who want to be parents cannot, and not just because some people believe that a same sex couple cannot provide suitable homes. With April Fools day approaching, many infertile couples and couples who have lost children often dread this day because some find faking a pregnancy is a good "joke." This brings back their pain of being unable to have children. There are also so many individuals that would love to adopt children and make them a part of their family but cannot for one reason or another. While this particular line didn't really make me think differently about the course material, it was one that stood out to me.

One line I do that I do think made me think differently about the course material was one from the poem Budget Beating. The line from this poem that stood out to me was "knowing a slap on the wrist will hurt less than the punch of his fist fist closed in rage that legally cannot be caged because there is not a system in place to prosecute." There have been an increasing amount of news stories in the media lately that affirms this statement. For example, one story was reported just yesterday. A wealthy Mexican man was just let off his assault charges because "he didn't enjoy it." (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/28/mexican-man-cleared-sexual-assault-schoolgirl-because-he-didnt-enjoy-it). While this particular story isn't about domestic violence, it still reaffirms the statement in Arellano's poem. What concerns me is even though we know all of the different things we've learned in our class (advocacy, rhetoric, communication in different cultures), things like this are still allowed to happen. Victims are still not listened to. Their voices are still silenced and their abusers often go free. I do not know what more we can do to get change to happen.