Amoolya's Blog

Interviewer : Joining the revolutionary artist, Edwin Starr, we will be celebrating the 10 th year anniversary of his biggest known hit music, War . His magnificent vocals for the single track , turned it to land as the chart topper, securing a position of number 1 in the US pop category in 1970! Now in the brand new 1980, we’re here to discuss a few of his reasons and motivations to publicize this prodigious piece. Welcome Mr. Starr. A star indeed! [ chuckles ] Starr: Thank you for the compliment there [ chuckles ]. And yes, War was the hit that got me to the top man, like really. 10 years from now and I think that this song have actually made some positive changes to human mind. Interviewer : So Starr, how did you end up with this song in your recording list anyways? Starr : This wasn’t my song actually. The Temptations performed this song initially but then, it wasn’t included in their album because of their fear of controversies arising. They were quite at their peak at t

In the song “My Block”, Tupac is addressing the struggle in the African American community, where issues such as racism and substance abuse appears, thus causing AAVE speakers to strive in this criticizing environment. From the lyrics saying “…the three strikes law is drastic” we can interpret it as saying how the African American people are shown injustice and unfairly treated by the society, just because they are different and considered as “non-standardized English speakers.” Along with this, he talks about how the newer generations are being born into pre-decided fates and that “it’s like a trap.” The use of simile here communicates how African Americans are literally being unconsciously tricked into going involved in dangerous business like drug dealings and such, thus, ending up being recognized only as the nigga “clutching on a four-five”. This implies how African Americans are considered as dangerous people and so, is kept a certain distance with. This labels their whole comm

           Entering the room, I could hear the TV turned on with my sister watching her favourite Hindi series, Pavitra Rishta. Humming along with the pleasing tune of the title track, I walked step by step to the couch and dropped into a cross- legged position. “Pure Relationship.” The only two words I understood was the title’s literal translation. A great progress to me personally, as memorizing the meaning for those two words took me a lot of practice. Oh! And my mother’s scolding for asking her the definition, a million times! “What are you doing here?” a question that interrupted my memories, was posed by my sister who was still gazing at the TV with the remote gripped firmly like as if someone might steal it from her. What was I doing here? It took 10 minutes into the 50 th episode that finally made me interrogate myself on what my presence here signified. I didn’t understand what the actors were talking about but, something made me sit there frozen, and watch the whole episo

Mother Tongue In Amy Tan’s writing, she specifies how her mother’s lack of communicating proper English left her discriminated in front of a society that expects proper English to be spoken. For this, she needed to help her mother for even official matters like conversing with the stockbroker and translating some things as well. This certain scenario reminded me of a personal experience with my own mom. Last year, during the 3 way conferences, I had to translate most of what my teachers were saying to her as she couldn’t really comprehend different accents. Since she was used to just communicating in English taught back in India, she only understood English spoken in a South- Indian accent. Also for the fact that she wasn’t exposed to a wider range of international English speakers didn’t make her situation better. Therefore, I needed to reassure her of whatever she heard from my teacher by translating it back into my mother tongue, Malayalam. She could understand most of the conve