Hip Hop Life

I picked this reading because it was very much part of my culture. I grew up with my uncle and mother listening to hip hop all the time. They listened to it because it had a story to tell about the struggle they were going through at the time. DeSean Robinson Walker said “To me, hip hop isn't a style. It's not the way you walk and talk. It's the way people live...” He brought it back to his life experiences like school systems being bad and magazines have statistics about ghetto neighborhood schools having low rate of getting out. I feel like people use music such as hip hop to help them cope with their situation and try to help make a better life for them, but some cannot get out of this life. At the end he says that hip hop gives hope to those who do not have any and a lot of people give up but some songs of struggle also have stories of how they overcome that struggle to help those who might think there is no way out.

Razia Jan : The Woman Who Changed My Life

At first I looked at this as extra credit for the class. As this woman started to speak it was not about doing this for my English class, it was more than that. This woman was touching my heart and she did not even know it yet. She explained that she wanted to help educate underprivileged girls in Afghanistan.  Razia wanted this project to grow and grow so these girls can be given a chance in life. She explained that women and young girls in Afghanistan were not usually educated. Razia explained one situation with a young girl being asked what she wanted to be and her response was “ an engineer” , someone asked her what exactly is that and she replied with “ I don’t know , but when I become an engineer I will come back and tell you”. The fact that these girls did have dreams of being something else other than a housewife is amazing.  Razia mission was to build a school for girls and later on build another school for boys.

She then showed a video that explained all that she has done for some families to make them proud of their daughters to what they had to wear and how the school was. The school has been teaching these young girls for six years now. Razia wanted to explain equality to these girls to help them be able to have a voice about what is going on in their life. An example of this was one young woman fought with her dad for six months which created an unhappy home because her father wanted to trade her for a younger wife instead of paying. He finally then agreed. I could never let my father do that to me. They struggle every day and I do not think I could ever go through what these girls do every day. I complain about walking in bad weather, but these girls walk for miles just to get their education and that is very inspiring. To build this school was a very long process getting people to help give money for such an important cause. She was already a part of the Rotary Club which was willing to always help and then they fundraised and made $80,000. The other donator was the author of “The Kite Runner”, who dedicated his book to the children of Afghanistan.  There are several different villages and four hundred females attend school that goes from first grade to ninth grade. In the future she wants to build institutions that they can go to after they finish ninth grade to study nursing or becoming a teacher. I believe this is an amazing idea and should be followed through. Razia Jan has influenced me so much in just twenty minutes and has me considering to start teaching overseas as my aunt has done for twenty-five years. She is more than a hero and I am so glad I got to meet and take a picture with this wonderful woman.