Villanueva

Before Reading Activity
Superficial characteristics are things that everyone bases their opinions about others at first. When you see someone, you determine whether or not they look friendly by their facial expression. You look at their clothes to see if their style matches yours. People are constantly looking for companions, which is why judging is something that we all do not matter what. To say that we should not judge does not make sense, because it is part of human nature to judge. Allowing the judgements to get in the way of giving someone a chance is a whole other story. Sadly, the same thing is going to happen with skin color as well.

Summary
The article is the coming together of many past works dealing with different people with different backgrounds (ethnicity wise) and how there have been obstacles involved. The author uses her past works of poems and short stories to portray the importance of diversity and understanding that not everyone is the same. The audience intended for this reading is anyone wiling to listen and understand the authors views (it is not directly aimed at adults or children).

Synthesis
Villanueva's article was entitled Memoria is a Friend Of Ours: On the Discourses of Color. Just in the title we are able to start making connections because it is speaking of discourse communities. There are several other others that talk about discourse communities, Wardle was a key connection however, because he discussed different memories, which is what the main part of Villanueva's article. Another connection can be made because with Heilker and Yergeau because it spoke of the struggles of autism and how it was hard for people to accept them, just like it is hard still to this day for full acceptance of people of color.

Dialectical Notebook

Response	Quotation
I understand this because I see how hard it is to learn something and not fully understand what it is to belong. When I learned Spanish and went to Spain, it was very hard to understand how to make it seem like I was one of the people that lived there.	“Does it all, only to realize that assimilation just can’t happen. Yet he can’t really be Puerto Rican. So maybe he goes to Puerto Rico to find out who he might have been and what he is tied to. I don’t have it all worked out.” (169)
It is something so strong that it can almost dictate certain peoples lives because of the past.	“Memoria calls and pushes us forward. Memoria is a friend of ours. We must invite her into our classrooms and into our scholarship.” (170)
I like how this is the exception of the rule. Everyone tries their best with what they have and it is all we can all do.	“And in [so doing] the story suggests how we are – all of us – subject to the systemic. This is the personal made public and the public made personalized, not for self-glory not to point fingers, but to suggest how, maybe, to make the exception the rule. (xviii)” (170)
I agree with this because it hard to do so. Memory is so much more than that.	“Memory simply cannot be adequately portrayed in the conventional discourse of the academy.” (172)
Academics go beyond reason and judgment so it is hard to keep the discourse community on just this level.	“Academic discourse tries, after all, to reach the Aristotelian ideal of being completely logocentric, though it cannot be freed of the ethical appeal to authority.” (172)
I feel like this is the case with everyone in life.	“I’m trying to figure this out, somehow: who I am, from where, playing out the mixes within.” (176)

AE3

My Thoughts
I found this article to be semi hard to read. The stories were easy to follow along with, the poems were a different story however. Thinking of people of color as a discourse community became easier with the personal ties of the author. I liked how it all dealt with past memories because it made it easier to read and made me want to read more.