Katya's Coming of Age Blog

       In class, we discussed whether Martine’s race matters in the head-patting incident and why? In my opinion race matters. Both cases (with a white person or a black person) are weird since Benji is already a teenager in this story, and head-patting is generally done to children. However, when a white person does this, it is much more serious since they generally do it to appease their curiosity. Rather than trying to praise a black person, they do this because they believe they have a right to touch another person's head, and in a way, they treat them almost like a pet by doing this. Benji even demonstrates how common of a pattern it is by explaining that this has been happening to him since elementary school. However, he doesn't mention any such pattern happening with black people touching other black people's heads, so it is reasonable to assume that if head-patting happens among black people, it is more often to show appreciation. Black people have no reason ...

  Throughout Black Swan Green , we see Jason trying to hide aspects of himself to try and fit in with the popular group while simultaneously doing anything to seem cool. However, it’s clear to us as readers that Jason is not really Spooks material and considering that the people involved in Spooks seem like bullies, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For me, there were two moments that stuck out as examples of Jason being too nice for Spooks: the situation with Dean and the situation with Ross’s wallet. When Dean got hurt, it was clear to Jason that going back would lead to inevitable exclusion from Spooks. This would be a huge issue for Jason since he was constantly afraid of being uncovered as the school stammerer. Turning away from a position in Spooks would have meant that the Spooks members would bully him, and if they ever found out about his stammer, Jason would become an even larger target. However, when Jason realized that “if I’d fallen through Mr. Blake’s greenhouse...