Little Failure

     The title says enough. Parents usually give their children loving nicknames, but this is not however the case for Gary Shteyngart who grows up being called Snotty, and even worse "little failure" by his mother. Low self esteem is obviously present from the very get go of the memoir and the setting in which Shteyngart is placed in such an early age having just immigrated from Russia is the icing on the cake. From early suffering, pain and anguish, to later assimilation as Shteyngart is able adjust to the new atmosphere, to ultimate self realization and understanding the abilities of ones self. Although at many points i wanted to put this book down feeling lost sometimes, and even agitated by all the Russian word add ins, i felt a satisfaction in completing it and seeing the journey of the once frail and sickly Gary who no one believed in, into becoming someone much more.

Color Complex

             "1492, Columbus sailed the Ocean blue." I've remembered this saying since as far back as i can remember and in my mind i've always envisioned the Europeans coming across this new land and pleasantly exchanging gifts, goods, ideas and what not with the natives who've already resided on it. Of cource as i grew older i realized everything wasn't so black and white; there was far much more to it. I mention this because the whole notion of white supremacy and the inferiority of another race has dated back to the very beginning of America, or even before it had existed. In much later years with middle passage and the forced arrival of the numerous amount of African slaves the shocking acts continued in a viscous manor. Barbaric treatment and using ones power to humiliate, destroy, overpower another group of people is not just. It boggles my mind as i wonder if morals, and even a simple conscience was even present among the whites who looked down upon these people as "objects" and even worse: property. We talked in class of Thomas Jefferson and his writing of the Deceleration where he writes, "all men are created equal with certain unalienable rights", but himself owned various slaves. Such hypocrisy is jaw dropping. Although times have changed, and progress is evident, i feel as though there still however, a long way to go for as a society and these are the issues that the text tackles.