To me, “home” is just wherever you live. Currently, my dorm room is home. When I'm living with my parents, their house is home. When I stay with my partner, his house is home. I've never understood the conception of home as being something particularly meaningful or deep, but that could just be me taking things too literally. I can’t conceptualize “home” as a feeling, so I can’t answer most of the questions posed this week in a satisfying way. No place, person, culture or language “feels like home” to me, because I don’t think of things that way.

I've left countless marks on my parents' house, most of which are crafting-related. Over the years I've had many paint, hot glue, or marker related mishaps that have left their marks on parts of the house, especially the carpets. The worst incident, however, would have to be when I cut off the very tip of my finger as a preteen while trying to cut fabric. I proceeded to pace around the house, shaking my injured hand around to distract from the pain, which got little speckles of blood all over basically every surface. Many of these dots of blood are still there, with age and air exposure leading them to look more black than red.

Mother Tongue - Reading Response

In “Mother Tongue”, author Amy Tan discusses the differences in the English used in school, her writing, and many spaces populated solely by people whose first language is English, with the English she uses when speaking with her mother. She laments the concept of “broken” or “limited” English, stating that the way her mother speaks isn’t broken, just different. Tan reminds readers that the difference in how her mother speaks has little to do with how much she can understand, as well as the fact that her speech patterns make her no less deserving of respect than anyone else.

“A speech [...] burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, all the forms of standard English that I had learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother.”

“Lately, I’ve been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks. Like others, I have described it to people as “broken” or “fractured” English. But I wince when I say that. It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than “broken,” as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholeness and soundness.”

“Math is precise; there is only one correct answer. Whereas, for me at least, the answers on English tests were always a judgment call, a matter of opinion and personal experience.”

“Apart from what any critic had to say about my writing, I knew I had succeeded where it counted when my mother finished reading my book and gave me her verdict: “So easy to read.””

Language & Literacy Vignette

It didn't go all at once. It never does -- it's not some dramatic moment of panic like in stories. It's more of a slow decline, almost too slow to notice; it's a VHS tape degrading into fuzz upon use after use. Were it able to think, would a VHS tape be aware of its own degradation? Would it fear the loss of all it once held?

I've always had trouble with recall; that much was nothing new. What was new was the brain fog, the failures of understanding. Words stopped coming as easily. The block in my mind felt physical, a creeping tension behind my eyes that made me nauseous. My mind was an under-moved limb wasting away to atrophy, and all I was doing was watching it happen -- what else could I do?