Me As A Writer – David Wu

David Wu

5/22/19

Prof Hall

Eng 1121

Me As A Writer

            I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a perfect writer. Everyone has their own set of writing skills. I believed that I was a horrible writer for a long time since elementary school. I had to take ESL to learn how to write. Till now, although I feel my writing has improved a bit then before, there is still a lot for me to learn as a writer.

Coming to this class at the beginning of this semester, I expected it to be another regular English class. I expected us to just be given research papers and regular writing assignments to work on, just hand it in to be graded, and not learn on how to become a better writer. However, the assignments given to us by Professor Hall were something I wouldn’t have expected from an English class. The assignments given to us were assignments to help us find our “inner voice” in our writing and to be able to express our ideas on topics. I felt as if these type of assignments of being able to incorporate one’s point of view or ideas on certain topics is what makes the writer interested in writing and readers being able to see and read what the writer has to say.

The first assignment given to us, we had to write a specific event that impacted us in learning something. For me, I just wrote down lessons I learned from basketball from the top of my head without giving any details or explanations. Most professors would just read it, grade it, and hand it back, but Professor Hall read the paper thoroughly and had a lot of comments on it. She told me there was nothing in the essay that makes it me, there’s no specific details to my claims, and there was a lot to write about. Hearing the feedback from her showed me on how my writing can improve than before. Given the third assignment, a revision on any of the previous units, I decided to rewrite the education essay. This time I took the feedback I heard and incorporated it into the writing. Improving this essay by going into detail about my claims and showing how it makes it me by including my point of view and ideas. I felt the revision I wrote is definitely a lot better than the first essay I wrote.

This carried on to the following units and assignments. Every unit I would incorporate my point of view and ideas on the topic. For example, the final unit which was another revision, I decided to revise the second unit which was an essay about pop culture and social responsibility. Given what I learned on how to improve my writing, I did the same for this unit, incorporating my ideas and thoughts onto the assignment. I analyzed the Kendrick Lamar video “DNA” in depth and went into detail about lyrics and scenes in how I viewed it. This made me confident and interested in writing this essay knowing I am able to incorporate my thoughts to this essay for readers to read on what I think about this topic.

To sum it all up, I feel my writing has definitely improved through the semester. Before I would struggle to write a 500 word essay and feel my essays aren’t great because I wouldn’t know what to write or to know to go into detail in my essays. But this course showed me how to improve my writing by expressing my thoughts and ideas and going into detail on topics. This course definitely helped me find my “inner voice” in my writing. To me, I feel Professor Hall has made me a better writer than before and I would take her for my future English courses if possible to learn on how to improve my writing even more.

Unit 4 (Revision of Unit 2)

David Wu

5/15/19

Prof. Hall

Eng 1121

To me, Kendrick Lamar is the greatest rapper of our generation. His music is different unlike other rappers who rap about money, fame, etc. In 2017, Lamar released, what seems to be his best album, “Damn”. The album tackles on issues that the African American race face such as police brutality and discrimination. One of the hit songs in the album “DNA” shows us how DNA is powerful. Kendrick soon released the music video a couple months after which is racking up over 200 million views.

The video starts off with Kendrick being cuffed to a lie detector inside what seems to be an interrogation room. A couple seconds later, famous actor Don Cheadle walks in to interrogate Kendrick. He then states, “You know what D.N.A. stands for? Dead Nigger Association.” Cheadle’s interpretation of the acronym DNA speculates on how society target black people. This relates to society issues like police brutality and discriminating African Americans. In the next scene, Cheadle turns on the lie detector and seems to be possessed. Once the lie detector was turned on, we can see it going crazy without Kendrick even saying a word. This can maybe represent African Americans in real life society being accused of anything without even getting a chance to say anything. Cheadle then returns back to normal but he looks like a whole different person. He then starts to rap the first verse and Kendrick soon joins in. Kendrick raps in one verse “I know murder, conviction, burners, boosters, burglars, ballers, dead, redemption, scholars, father dead with kids.” This shows us that Kendrick knows people of his race that are murderers, criminals, or been murdered. This verse tells us how the world views the African Americans in society.

Image result for kendrick lamar dna        Related image

They continue to rap in sync since the lie detector has now linked them together. Their, hence the title,“DNA” has been connected. Cheadle and Kendrick are both connected by their past experiences since it is shown that they are rapping as if they were one person. Kendrick wraps up the first verse with “Salute the truth, when the prophet say”. Cheadle then sees the truth which leads to him setting Kendrick free from the handcuffs. He is then greeted by a group which looks to be Kendrick’s group of friends. The second verse then begins with Kendrick stating “You mothafuckas can’t tell me nothin. I’d rather die than listen to you.” As he says the second line, it shows a priest yelling at Kendrick while he is lying in a casket. This can mean and be a message to his race that they shouldn’t care what society says about them. The verse ends with “Sex, money, murder our DNA”. Kendrick wraps up with this showing us that society views his race with sex, money, and murder built inside their mind and DNA.                                                  Image result for kendrick lamar dna                Image result for kendrick lamar dna

Kendrick’s visuals in the music video shows us the meaning behind his lyrics very well. Kendrick shows us throughout the video that his race is being portrayed as the villains in society. Kendrick told us an amazing message through this video which I would have never found out without this assignment. Being able to analyze a video this deeply really shows us the meaning in the visuals and lyrics.

Link to DNA music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLZRYQMLDW4

Education Essay (Revised)

David Wu

More Than A Game

Ever since I was a child, I loved the game of basketball. The speed of the game, intensity, and aggressiveness of the basketball stars always got me excited to watch them play. Little did I know that playing basketball would have a much greater impact on my life than I could have ever imagined. It all started with me spending time with my cousins watching the games on television every day. Watching the sport constantly made it intriguing for me to start playing the sport at the age of 10. I would practice dribbling around the backyard and go to local parks to practice shooting the ball into the basket.

I always thought I knew what I was doing in the sport until I actually learned how to professionally play the game at the age of 13. A group of my friends and I went to an indoor gym to practice and run a couple of games. One of my friend’s cousin showed up and decided to watch us play. After the game, he pulled me aside and told me I was playing the game wrong. It was then he taught me how to shoot the ball, dribble, play defense, make good passes, you name it. He was like a mentor to me and taught me everything I needed to know. Throughout my years of playing basketball, I learned that basketball is more than just a sport and can teach people a lot of life lessons.

One of the lessons I learned was that life isn’t fair. I soon learned that when the referees in the game were making horrible calls or calls that didn’t make sense at the time. It seemed that all the calls that were being made never went our way and the referee never made the correct call when the call needed to be made. One bad call that I will never forget  was a call in a playoff game that would have won us the game and move on to the next round. It was the last quarter with the score being tied and it was our possession of the ball with 5 seconds left on the clock. The ball was in my hands and I drove to the basket going for a layup. The ball went in the basket and the intensity of the crowd and my teammates went out of one’s mind. It was then the whistle went off and the referee made the call. The call was a charging foul which occurs when a dribbler charges into a defender who has already established his position and you already know what that means. The basket didn’t count and the possession of the ball was turned over to the opposing team. The call left me and everyone in disbelief. That call had everyone and myself arguing with the referee but we knew that we would never win an argument against any referee. We soon lost that game in overtime and got eliminated from the playoffs. Bad calls happened a lot in a lot of our games so I learned to accept it and just move on.

Another life lesson it taught me was how to have good sportsmanship. Playing any sport in general involves both a winning and losing team. After every game that my team and I play against, no matter the outcome, we would always shake hands with the opposing team and tell them it was a good game. It was a form of respect for both teams. If we win, we learn to be proud of our success without despising our opponents or if we lose, we learn to accept our failures and come back stronger next time. Over time you will realize it’s not really the win or loss that makes a difference. If you gave everything you’ve got, no matter what the outcome is, you can walk away with your head held high as my coach always said. This also applies in life too that everything you do does not always go your way. Everything is a slow process but quitting won’t speed it up. There are highs and lows but if you continue to give whatever you do your very best you will always feel victorious.

Basketball has also taught me that nothing comes easy in life. It all comes down to hard work and dedication. A lot of the stars in the league states that they didn’t make it here by luck but by all the hard work they put in everyday to deserve to be in the league. If you really want to excel at something, hard work is the only way. My teammates and I had to put in hours of practice every day after school. Our coach would always push us beyond our limits. After every practice we would be drenched with sweat. Coach told us if we wasn’t drenched, we didn’t put in any effort at all. It is the same with any other field in life. If you want to get better at school or get a raise at your workplace, the only way you can do it is by hard work. There are no shortcuts to this. We are always taught to dream big but what we don’t realize most often is that our dreams don’t work unless we do. There is no substitute to hard work, ever.

In basketball, you are taught to never give up. A few minutes can change the game in so many ways. You keep trying until the very last second. During a game that determined if we were going into playoffs, most of my shots wasn’t going in and we were down by 10 with 3 minutes left on the clock. I felt hopeless, tired, and even wanted to give up the game. My coach then sat me out and told me, “You can never give up, not on the game, not on your team, and especially not on yourself.” He even quoted which I later on found out it was a quote from Michael Jordan: “I would tell players to relax and never think about what’s at stake. Just think about the basketball game. If you start to think about who is going to win the championship, you’ve already lost your focus.” And I will never forget those words as they sparked a fire in me. I then came back into the game and helped my teammates in whatever way I can to win the game. In life too, there will be many occasions where you will want to give up, but you need to not give up because we all know things take time.

The most important lesson that basketball has probably taught me is leadership and communication. A lot of the games that my team and I played, I took charge if the captain of the team or the rest of the team isn’t communicating. I would be the one to call certain plays for us to score to get their adrenaline flowing on the court for us to win the games. During the preseason games, the team wasn’t communicating on the court since the games didn’t count towards our record but that doesn’t mean for our team to not play their heart out on the court. So I took on the captain role and made sure our team was communicating, scoring baskets and winning the game.

To a lot of people, basketball is just a game because majority of the people just watch the players play and don’t know what the players go through and learn. I believe it can teach people a lot of lessons by playing the sport. It has certainly taught me a lot of life lessons that I would have probably never learned anywhere else as effectively.

Final Draft Unit 2

David Wu

3/25/19

Prof. Hall

Eng 1121

Police brutality is one of several forms of police misconduct which involves undue violence by police officers. Police brutality against African Americans is one of the most serious social problems that affects many states across the US. This issue has gained special attention in recent years due to the numerous killings of young black people by police officers. This issue has gone so far that it has sparked various movements, such as the well known “Black Lives Matter” movement. One of the main stereotypes against the police officers across America is that they unfairly discriminate against people of color, while being more lenient towards white people.

Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 album “To Pimp a Butterfly” is a multiple Grammy award-winning masterpiece. Its mix of hip-hop, jazz, soul, funk, and other styles is a testament to the incredible range of the Compton-born rapper. This album won Kendrick four Grammy awards in 2016. More than just a great album, it features several singles that have gone on to become anthems of the modern social justice movement. Most notably, the 2015 single, “Alright” has become the anthem of a generation.

On March 2015, Kendrick Lamar made his message on the music video “Alright.” This song became the anthem of the nation’s rallying cry, especially for the Black Lives Matter movement. The troubles of police brutality victims can be heard in every breath of Lamar’s takes on “Alright” as he states with “Homie you fucked up, But if God got us then we gon’ be alright.” Pharrell Williams can be heard on the chorus, chanting “We gon’ be alright!” The music video starts by showing shots of life in a neighborhood. A young African-American man is seen lying on the ground and Kendrick begins speaking. Police and destruction flood the scene as the music starts, Kendrick and friends are seen riding in a car. As the camera rotates, we can see that the car is being carried by 4 white police officers. During the video, Kendrick flies through California, while his friends are throwing out money to everybody and dancers performing in the streets. At the end of the music video, Kendrick stands on a lamppost and a policeman shoots him down. Kendrick falls to the ground finishing his statements from the beginning of the video, but ends the video with a smile.

The video contains themes of the relationship between the black community and the police, an issue that was a serious topic at the time and still is today. The message of the video indicates that everything will be alright despite the hardships and injustices that Kendrick and in this case, black people  struggle with as Americans due to institutionalized racism and prejudice in the face of protest. The anthem of the song, the symbolic importance of its chorus, and its deep references to African American history are all cautious. And it’s clear that it took much more than the beat and hook coming together for “Alright” to become “the protest song of our generation”, as Rick Rubin puts it. “That song could’ve went a thousand other ways,” Lamar states.

The song is an anthem of positivity written amongst a backdrop of civil unrest. For some context, these all took place in the last six months of 2014 (during the recording of “To Pimp a Butterfly”): The shooting death of an 18-year-old black man named Michael Brown by a 28-year-old white police officer, and the weeks of protest that followed. The death of a 43-year-old black man named Eric Garner at the hands of two white New York Police Department officers; Garner was being arrested for selling loose cigarettes at the time of his death. The shooting death of a 12-year-old black boy named Tamir Rice by two white Cleveland Police Department officers.

“Alright” is the song that moves beyond Kendrick’s personal tragedy by directing his words to be relevant to the Black Lives Matter movement. “Alright” is used as a protest song that affirms Black humanity in the context of police killing:  “Wouldn’t you know, We been hurt, down before, Ni**a, when our pride was low, Looking at the world like ‘Where do we go?, Ni**a, and we hate po-po, Wanna kill us dead in the streets fo sho’/Ni**a, I am at the preacher’s door, My knees gettin’ weak, and my gun might blow, But we gon’ be alright.” These lyrics acknowledge years of collective struggle and perseverance through those struggles. Kendrick understands the killing of black men by the police to be another obstacle in the Black experience that can be overcome through spiritual strength to survive (the preacher’s door).

Despite this message of black determination by Kendrick Lamar, people found Kendrick Lamar as an artist for the Black Lives Matter movement. According to music journalist Jamilah King, Kendrick Lamar had a disputed relationship with a Black Lives Matter activist because of his statement about Ferguson. Kendrick, in an interview with King, stated: “I wish somebody would look in our neighborhood knowing that it’s already a situation, mentally, where it’s fucked up. What happened to Michael Brown should’ve never happened. Never. But when we don’t have respect for ourselves, how do we expect them to respect us? It starts from within. Don’t start with just a rally, don’t start from looting, it starts from within.

It’s no question that Lamar deserved the honors of Best Rap Album and Best Rap Song. He sings about the oppression of the African race in the modern day context, and translates these personal stories into artistic masterpieces. The music video for his famous rap song “Alright” brought Lamar on the headlines of social media because of the visual elements used in documenting the historical and ongoing struggles of African Americans. Kendrick Lamar isn’t the voice of a single rapper. He’s the voice of millions.

Music Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-48u_uWMHY

 

 

 

Mentor Article

David Wu

3/13/19

Prof. Hall

Eng 1121

The mentor article I chose that was interesting to me was short, simple and straight to the point. With the article being short and simple it is easier to understand and remember. The author analyzes the song and music video thoroughly to explain the whole idea and concept in a short amount of time. In the article, the author explains how Kendrick’s “Alright” goes about on police brutality. The author deconstructs the video and explains the important scenes and lyrics of the video on how it tackles on the social issue. I see the article fitting in the publication I chose because most of the audience who views this mentor article are African Americans of all ages. The topic of police brutality will definitely engage the audience since the problem of police violence against African Americans has been a relatively popular of nationwide discussions about race. The language will also engage the audience since Kendrick is not afraid to get into politics and use his voice to drive movements that matters to him. The song, which has served as the rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement, seemed to speak directly to the audience facing a time of increased tension to show that black lives matter too.

Pop Culture Draft

David Wu

3/11/19

Prof. Hall

Eng. 1121

 

What is police brutality? It’s when police officers use unnecessary excessive force against people. Police brutality against African Americans is one of the most serious social problems that affects many states across the US. This issue has gained special attention in recent years due to the numerous killings of young black people by police officers. This issue has gone so far that it has sparked various movements, such as the well known “Black Lives Matter” movement. One of the main stereotypes against the police officers across America is that they unfairly discriminate against people of color, while being more lenient towards white people.

On March 2015, Kendrick Lamar made his message on the music video “Alright.” This song became the anthem of the nation’s rallying cry, especially for the Black Lives Matter movement. The troubles of police brutality victims can be heard in every breath of Lamar’s takes on “Alright” as he states with “Homie you fucked up, But if God got us then we gon’ be alright.” The music video starts by showing shots of life in a neighborhood. A young African-American man is seen lying on the ground and Kendrick begins speaking. Police and destruction flood the scene as the music starts, Kendrick and friends are seen riding in a car. As the camera rotates, we can see that the car is being carried by 4 white police officers. During the video, Kendrick flies through California, while his friends are throwing out money to everybody and dancers performing in the streets. At the end of the music video, Kendrick stands on a lamp post and a policeman shoots him down. Kendrick falls to the ground finishing his statements from the beginning of the video, but ends the video with a smile.

The video contains themes of the relationship between the black community and the police, an issue that was a hot topic at the time and still is today. The anthem of the song, the symbolic importance of its chorus, and its deep references to African American history are all cautious. And it’s clear that it took much more than the beat and hook coming together for “Alright” to become “the protest song of our generation”, as Rick Rubin puts it. “That song could’ve went a thousand other ways,” Lamar states.

Rhetorical Questions

Question 1: Who is the speaker? What do we know about this person? How do we know it?

The speaker is Kendrick Lamar. He is known as an American rapper, songwriter and record producer.

Question 2: What is the occasion? When and where did it occur?

The occasion of “Alright” is an anthem of the modern civil rights movement. It occurred in March 2015 and was produced in many studios across the U.S. with a variety of different producers.

Question 3: Who is the audience? What group of people is the speaker trying to talk to? How do you know?

The audience the speaker is trying to talk to is the modern black people. We know this because this song was recorded in the time of 3 cases in 6 months that were about police brutality.

Question 4: What is the purpose of this piece? What is the writer trying to accomplish?

The purpose of this piece is that he channels the struggles of the modern black experience in America while also recognizing hundreds of years of struggle that led to this point. It’s a song of positivity written amongst civil unrest.

Question 5: What is the tone of this? How can you tell the writer’s feelings by the words or phrases (or other clues?)

The tone of this song is uplifting but aggressive. In the song, Kendrick states “And we hate popo, wanna kill us dead in the street for sure, n***a.” However, Kendrick then states in the chorus ” We gon’ be alright.”

Question 6:  Other thoughts of this piece? And by the way, what’s your name?

I really like this song because  Kendrick sees himself as a voice for African Americans who don’t have one, and believes he has a great responsibility to speak up for them. My name is David Wu.