How do your own cultural assumptions affect your reading of the work andThe culture contemporary to it?

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Stephanie Rowan

Prof. Best

Oct. 11th, 2005

Studies in Poetry

How do your own cultural assumptions affect your reading of the work and

The culture contemporary to it?

        Due to the obvious fact that all cultures differ from one another, no other human being is similar in the ways that they apply their cultural knowledge to everyday tasks. The cultural background of my family is so vast and expanded around the world, that even within my own family, our views are set upon a scale with such extremities that it’s difficult to sometimes have a civilized discussion. Being born in Brazil, I had a different upbringing than, for example, Americans. Denise Duhamel, a creative writing teacher for the Florida International University in Miami, writes in her collection of poetry, “Two and Two” about the incident that changed America’s fate forever, 9/11. In her poem “Love Which Took Its Symmetry for Granted” she writes little bits and pieces of experiences of different American’s who lived through the tragedy. By taking in events that happened before September 11th, and after, she is able to add a puzzle-like structure that represents chaos just as if people’s lives were dipped in the same. By being an outsider to this event that shook the world, I saw it all happen - but by watching television. My external view of this occurrence is extremely ignorant, therefore both Duhamel’s and my own perspective of this cultural shock differs in our opinions of what happened during the horrors of this event.

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        “How easy was our failure to recognize the new weapon of the Middle East, which neither Americans nor any other Westerners could equal: the despair-driven, desperate suicide bomber.” (Duhamel, Two 32) The fact is, these suicide bomber’s have been a Kamikaze warrior for as long as their religion has been alive. Their ultimate goal is to give their all to Allah, even if it means taking the role of Hitler and driving other human religions off the face of the earth. It is a matter of opinions which my family strongly supports. I am not saying that America deserved such a tragedy, ...

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