Best of the Worst Parenting is never perfect. Every parents questions whether they are raising their child correctly, and no parent ever feels like they are doing the right thing. With no clear distinction between good and bad parenting, it is usually left to personal preferences and judgements to decide which parents have adequately raised their children and which have failed. When a parent so call “fails,” often it is the children with their strong will and determination to survive that collectively raise themselves. In Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, Leonie, one of the narrators and the mother of another narrator, Jojo, is not the most caring, hands-on mother, but is loving of her children nevertheless. Leonie is not just the failed mother most make her out to be because her thoughts are in the right place, trying the best she can given her own circumstances, but her past and her own childhood haunts her too …show more content…
Firstly, Jojo does “not hear Mama in my head, but her name: Leonie” (16), which shows that on a subconscious level, he does not think of her as a maternal figure. Jojo fails to recognize Leonie as a maternal figure because she does such a poor job taking care of him. On the car ride up to Parchman, Leonie leaves both Jojo and Kayla hungry and thirsty the whole way up and only thinks of herself when she stops for gas: “Leonie hands me the same thirty dollars I saw Misty hand to her when she got in the car this morning and looks at me like she didn’t hear me say I’m thirsty” (64). Having not eaten in a long time, “[Jojo is so] hungry and thirsty: [his] throat a closing hand, [his] stomach a burning fist…now [Leonie] says no” (84). Since Leonie doesn’t even take care of Jojo and Kayla’s basic survival needs of food and water, she forces Jojo and Kayla to fight for their own survival and figure out their childhoods
and she just wants her family to be safe. Sang Ly thinks of herself as just a poor mother in a waste dump while everyone else in the dump sees her as an affectionate mother who loves her family. At the end of the day, Sang Ly must live day by day just trying to learn to read, trying to cure her son's chronic illness and making sure everyone makes it so sun down. Sang Ly has many wonderful traits about her. Sang Ly is caring because she tries so hard for her son, Nisay to be well
Sing Unburied Sing, written by Jesynm Ward, and published in 2017, Develops a social commentary about generational trauma with author tools like allusion and characterization of people in the book, JoJo, Michel, and Given. Jesynm Ward uses the characterization of Jojo to develop generational trauma, which are horrible experiences that pass across generations, from parents to children, by either witnessing or being a part of some violence. In Sing Unburied Sing, Ward illustrates black injustices on page 170 is about the time Jojo and the others got pulled over, and because of some of their skin colors, they are treated differently, which demonstrates the injustices that had been happening in Jojo’s past generations. “The man telling me to sit,
While unparenting assumably means neglect, it actually is a parenting style, giving children the right to have numerous freedoms. Unparenting is a form of parenting involving partial parental detachment from the offspring (YourDictionary.com). This often includes a lack of rules or parental guidance. Unparenting has no strict rules or guidelines, leading to countless different forms of the word. However, they are all united by one common category: Independence.
Once she appeals to mothers, they will reach out to the rest of the world and make an impact. Initially, the appeal to emotion and pity that Mathewes-Green utilizes in this article digs deep into a person’s mind and convinces them about the importance of life and the value of a human being in the
Some parents smudge,others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.” Throughout this novel, it can been seen how nurture plays a bigger role in the development of behavior and morals of the Bundren children rather than nature.
Parenting is one of the most important if not the most important responsibility someone can undertake. A good parent is responsible for the physical and emotional development of a child who in the beginning is totally dependent on parents. Parenting is not an easy job. If you are incapable of this responsibility, you should not be a parent. At the beginning of her book, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls, her parents were incapable of providing a safe environment for their young, innocent children.
One subject they tend to talk about often is motherhood. Larsen continues her use of character foiling through the contrasting of Irene’s and Clare’s feelings about motherhood to emphasize how their contrasting situations influence their feelings. Clare does not enjoy being a mother. She believes that it is too much pressure, especially because she doesn’t want her daughter’s skin to reveal that she has a black parent. She says, “I nearly died of terror the whole nine months before Margery was born for fear she might be dark.
“Free-Range Kids,” offers the controversial perspective of the ‘free-range’ parenting philosophy, telling readers that “children deserve parents who love them, teach them, trust them—and then let go of the handlebars”. Similarly, the speech given by Julie Lythcott-Haim, “How to raise successful kids without over-parenting” offers the perspective directly opposing the belief that “kids can’t be successful unless parents are protecting and preventing at every turn”. The two texts offer similar perspectives, but utilise different generic conventions. Skenazy utilizes persuasive techniques such as anecdotal evidence, statistics and expert opinion to endorse the ‘free-range’ technique and add a level of validity. She uses satire to criticise parents,
Raising children is a hard job, and many parents can vouch for that. Parents must be loving, make sure their children grow up to be successful, and provide an equal balance of discipline. Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, follows her from childhood to adulthood as she grows up in an unstable environment but eventually becomes successful in New York City. Jeannette’s parents, Rosemary and Rex Walls, continually make Jeannette’s and her siblings’ – Lori, Brian, and Maureen – childhoods stranger than most. The neglect Jeannette’s parents inflict on her causes her to become stronger and more independent.
In the novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, Jojo and Kayla often fail to be cared for by their parents, Leonie and Michael, due to their drug addictions. At home, the true nurturers of Jojo and Kayla are Pop and Jojo, himself. Throughout the novel, caregivers provide food, assist the sick, and hide information which contributes to effective nurturing. Feeding or giving food is an effective way of caretaking.
In “Mama Day” by Gloria Naylor the novel focuses on loved one, loved ones lost, and one’s personal reconciliation with the past, present and future. The theme of reconciliation is widely illustrated throughout the novel as Naylor creates a story that spans two worlds. One is the southern island of Willow Springs, inhabited only by the descendants of slaves; the other is New York City, a multi-racial, strict society. As Mama Day achieves a personal breakthrough of her own during the story as she experiences her own moment of reconciliation for all the sacrifices she has made throughout her life.
Sometimes people don’t realize how much their decisions and choices can effect others around them. Parenting is one of these such cases. The thought of having to raise children is loved by many people, but it is often a feared reality. Many people don’t see themselves as being capable of being a parent, even though they are very capable of being a good parent. Some of the best examples of good parenting fall into the book To Kill a Mockingbird.
The Case of Parents and Children”, says that a child’s responsibility will only take place if the parent has met their responsibility (60). Contrary to that belief is mine. In my culture it is part of morality and your self-worth to care for your parent even if the history of encounters has not been pleasant or give reason for partiality. Although, to contradict my argument, Kolodny brings
In these collections of songs compiled by William W. Brown is one called “The Bereaved Mother”. This song describes a mother whose child is being torn from her arms and being sold to an auctioneer. The mothers sorrows are overwhelmingly worse than the lashes she received as she watched her child be carried off into the distance. Ultimately, the bereaved mother was left with a broken heart which overpowered her will to stay alive.
So often the question of personhood has intrigued me, who gets to define it, and by what standards. An only child from a single parent home, my identification, desires, needs were a reflection of the manifestations of my environment. My mother was a champion since birth. She is never too shy to speak the truth to power, always bold, and always beloved. She makes the most out of the least.