Category Archives: ENG 1101

“Reading Lucy” summary

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According to Jennifer Egan in “Reading Lucy”, Egan met a friend named Luccile Kolkin, by the old letters from her in Brooklyn Historical Society. By reading Lucy’s letters for her Husband, Egan knew about Lucy’s life and felt there were lots of similarities between Lucy and her, and she really like Lucy’s passion. Both of them liked to write “to-do list”, they live in Brooklyn and they “both work hard and struggled to find time for practical necessities like cleaning and shopping”. In addition, while reading the letters, Egan also tried to guess Lucy’s personalities, what did her like and what did she interest with. Though Lucy’s life, we saw there were a lot of facts which reveal the society in that time. “I (Lucy) went to college. So what. I look for a job and people say, ‘Yes, yes but what can you do?’ ‘Nuttin’ say I.”  This showed the college education did not really matter; people were more willing to employ the men, because “men” are not equal at that time. Just like Minnie, a Negro who wanted to become a fitter in Navy Yard got rejected because she is a woman and a Negro. At the end, by reading Lucy’s life, it helped Egan to approach her Novel researching, a woman worked at Brooklyn Navy yard during WWII.

English Class Summary on 10/30

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On Wednesday’s English class, we discuss Jennifer Egan’s “Reading Lucy” and go over how Egan incorporate the source material in her article. At the beginning of the class we talk about how did our experiences in BHS are different with Egan. Most of us agree our goal, the purpose in the BHS are different. Then we discuss about incorporating source material.

The block quotation rules:

1.Started a new line.

2.Indent it on inch on the left, not at all on the right.

3.Keep the spacing the same. If it is prose paragraph, use regular formatting.

4.If it is poetry or something that takes a particular form, maintain that form.

Look at the example on page 22; we see there is a list, which quoted without quotation marks.  It gives us a sense of what the source material look like on the page. Moreover, we use colon (:) to set off a large quotation.

(Colon: signals an example)

If you only want to use part of a passage, use an ellipsis to indicate that something is missing; be careful not to miss leading the audience, and moreover at the end of the sentence, there are 4 dots, because one is the period.(for example: “xxoo##….”)

When a quotation inside a quotation, we use single quotation mark inside the quote and the double quotation mark for the outside.

Summary of “Reading Lucy”

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Jennifer Egan develops a strong relationship with Lucy. One day she was doing research at the Brooklyn Historical Society on the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II and she met a lady name Lucy. Lucy worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a mechanic in the ship fitting shop. Jennifer decided to do research on Lucy since she worked at the place she is researching about. Lucy married a man name Alfred Kolkin and they both worked in the Navy Yard but at different locations. They would write letters everyday to each other and the Brooklyn Historical Society had copies of it .So Egan requested to get them and she got them and she began reading them. That’s how her relationship started with Lucy. Reading her letters made Egan understand Lucy better and how much she and Alfred loved each other. It also depicts how the navy yard was during World War II and what kind of people worked there. At the time racial discrimination was also going on Lucy would use the term “Negro” to refer to African Americans. As reading through her letters Egan learns that Lucy dies and then Egan looks up information on Lucy’s obituary. At the end she starts reading  Alfred’s letter to Lucy and he had a lot of plans for Lucy when they would see each other and was full of excitement and joy.

Read Lucy

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In Jennifer Egan’s essay Reading Lucy, she was very passionate about reading Lucy Kolkin’s life and her letters to here husband. Egan made a seft-to-self connections with Lucy because she considered Lucy and herself as “Brooklynites”. Lucy’s letters telling her husband Alfred about different stuff happening in her everyday life fulfilled Egan’s interest in learning about battleships and working in a Brooklyn Navy Yard. From reading Egan’s essay I learned that Lucy was a very passionate women who was wildly in love with her husband which would be conveyed in her various letters to him while he was stationed in different areas throughout his duties in World War II. Egan’s relationship with Lucy began when she started reading her letters starting from April to September 1944. Lucy letters began with her lecture notes from navy yard shipfiiting school, she wrote down and defined different acronyms. Continuing her research which initially was suppose to be on working in Brooklyn navy yards, Egan fell deep into the letter of this extraordinary women. Egan tells use about one letter where Lucy’s pink lipstick from kissing the paper was still visible even a sixty-two years. We would go on to learn that Lucy was a 3/c ( third class ) shipfitter soon to be 2/c. Lucy had time where she would tell Alfred humorous stories about her day and times when she had spent time with her girlfriends. She complained about sore feet and mentioned her covering of shifts and the processes she had to go through. She told Alfred about her dream of a having a baby and starting a family. Lucy and Alfred did have their problems when it came to being able to see each other but they worked it out eventually. Egan tells us she Google searched Lucy only to find out she did at seventy-eight and her husband out lived her. Jennifer Egan’s connection with Lucy turned out to be more than just a research on navy yard’s but an amazing experience.

 

“Reading Lucy” by Jennifer Egan

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From the article of “Reading Lucy”, we see Jennifer Egan learn about the history by the old letters from the past, For example, she put the letter about the African American girl on the article, showing the problem in the society in that period. “Not only does she have to fight as a woman, but as a Negro”. From this we have little background about the civil right movement. Moreover, even Lucy went to the college, but she still cannot get a better job than a man does, which showed the inequality of the races.

Lucy is just an extraordinary person that Egan interest in, they live in different time period; however, both of them are Brooklynite. Egan strongly believes that Lucy and she have powerful friendship, even though she knows Lucy well, but Lucy knows nothing about her. They both have similar life style, such as the same method to write “to-do lists”; they “both worked hard and struggled to find time for practical necessities like cleaning and shopping… because of these connection, bonding Egan and Lucy, both of them develop the friendship over the time difference.

From this article, Egan conveyed Lucy’s story by her letters to her husband. And this not only conveyed the life of Lucy to the audiences, but also the life of Americans in 1944 and the problems on the society that people facing.

“Reading Lucy” by Jennifer Egan

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“Reading Lucy” by Jennifer Egan

how does the essay represent Egan’s story of how she learned about history?

From the start of the essay we believe that Lucy is a co-worker or co-researcher in the time about the essay is written. However, as we progress further we see more and more to disprove this.
Now this was mostly due to the fact that I did not see when the essay was written, somehow i avoided the entire left side of the first page. So for the first few pages I was under the impression that they both lived at the same time. However, that was the point of the essay, to show an overlap of the past and present. There are many differences in the modern world than in 1944 but there are also similarity. Both had families and careers that they pursued. The resided in similar areas and the streets were the same. Both were very outgoing and outspoken. However, the greatest difference was time. The history that the writer learned is not the kind that you will find in a text book. But a select kind that can only be seen from the eyes of those that were there, in their personal memoirs and letters to people that they share a bond with. The writer seemed to be in a trance whenever reading Lucy`s letters, the writer would be transported back to those early years of 1944. But the magic of the letters faded away when the writer looked up Lucy and realized her life would come to an end. It dispelled the entirety of the letters that were filled with life, joy and laughter. The lesson is clear, do not skip to the end of any good story.

“Reading Lucy” by Jennifer Egan

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Jennifer Egan develops a strong relationship with Lucy. One day she was doing research at the Brooklyn Historical Society on the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II and she met a lady name Lucy. Lucy worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a mechanic in the ship fitting shop. Jennifer decided to do research on Lucy since she worked at the place she is researching about. Lucy married a man name Alfred Kolkin and they both worked in the Navy Yard but at different locations. They would write letters everyday to each other and the Brooklyn Historical Society had copies of it .So Egan requested to get them and she got them and she began reading them. That’s how her relationship started with Lucy. Reading her letters made Egan understand Lucy better and how much she and Alfred loved each other. As reading through her letters Egan learns that Lucy dies and then Egan looks up information on Lucy’s obituary. At the end she reads one of Alfred’s letter and he had a lot of plans for Lucy when they would see each other and was full of excitement and joy.

Project #2 – Brooklyn Bridge

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My location for Project #2 is the Brooklyn Bridge. This was the place I chose because it is a place in Brooklyn that you should absolutely see and visit if you haven’t already. The Brooklyn bridge sees a lot of activity during all times of the day, and is also one of the biggest structures in all of the five boroughs. To get to the Brooklyn bridge from City Tech you have to head north on jay street toward Tilary street, then you take a left  on Tilary street and walk down that block until you hit the Brooklyn Bridge.

I noticed a lot of different things while I was walking there like a park in which lots of kids where playing basket ball. I also noticed a merging of old in new in the area like new buildings mixed with old town houses and it really drove home the fact that Brooklyn to me is both old and new. The mixing of old and new houses really gives the area around the Brooklyn bridge and even the Brooklyn Bridge itself a good juxtaposition. The bridge and cars are juxtaposed in the fact the bridge being so old and the cars being so new and more technologically advanced, it just makes the contrast between the two things stand out a considerable amount. Another juxtaposition in the area is the bridge itself compared to the surrounding houses, stores, and parks.

There are brand new condos by the Brooklyn bridge and they really stand out next to the Brooklyn bridge. Some of the businesses around the Brooklyn bridge as well are juxtaposed because one of the stores around the Brooklyn bridge was a Radio Shack and that store sells technology that would have never been around in the time the Brooklyn bridge was built, like cell phones, and computers. There are also a lot of instances in which the surroundings of the Brooklyn bridge can’t be juxtaposed like a lot of the buildings are still very old but they’re trying to modernize the area more. When I visited the Brooklyn bridge and the surrounding areas there were a couple of quotes from our readings that really stood out to me. The first was From a reading we did in class called A Literary Visitor Strolls in from the Airport by: Charles McGrath and he says “Maybe we’ll feel better when we get to the Brooklyn bridge.” and its true I did feel a lot better walking around and then finally getting to the Brooklyn bridge and looking at just how cool it really is up close. Overall I really enjoyed doing this project as it made me see Brooklyn in a way I would have never seen in the first place.

Summary – 10/28/13

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Since it was a double session for both classes, we observed other students give presentation including myself. We learned about many places and their historical background. After everyone finished giving their presentation. We were informed about how important it is to register for you classes for the spring semester. Professor David explained of the importance to plan ahead, to think of what classes you are required to take, and what classes not to. He explain we should review the classes we want with our advisor. After that announcement, we were told, the students that went up today for presentation should go check on Openlab to check out their video of how they did in their presentation and to afterwards fill out their informative speech self evaluation. The students who didn’t bring those sheets in weren’t going to receive back their grade for their presentation. We were also told by Professor Rosen to make sure we answer one of the 3 question she wrote and to answer in a summary. We have to read “Reading Lucy”, at the end Professor Davis said, it would be a “good idea” to start reading chapter 9.

My reflection at “The Brooklyn Historical Society”

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On October 15, my class went to the Brooklyn Historical Society with Professor Rosen and Professor Davis. When we get there the librarian assisted us to the library and we went into our groups. Each group had to analyze three different typed of map based on the location around our school. We only got to work on two maps because we ran out of time. The first map we analyze was a manuscript from the 1800’s. It was very interesting to see how the person drew the map and the land had no buildings but people had lots. The street names were different only a couple street names still exist today. We got to learn about another person’s view point of Brooklyn. The second map we looked at was a flat map. It was very interesting to look at because it had a lot of information such as Retail stores, Theaters, Business and Finance, Automobile parking. The person/company illustrated the drawing with a lot of colors that made it stand out. Also used a lot of keys and included a legend. The two maps my group looked at was very informative and can be used to do further research projects. You really have to focus on these maps to get all the details you want from it. This experience to the BHS will definitely have an impact in the Learning community this semester because I will absolutely go back there for research I will need. There are a lot of books in the library that has useful information that can be used.