This entire thing about being treated differently comes back to the argument of the black and white humans.
Blacks and whites never respected each other. They were mean, selfish and impolite to each other. Humans shouldn’t be treated by their background, skin color or even men or women. They never stop being mean. They thought that they were more powerful then each other, they thought some day one would finally win. But what they don’t know is that the strongest thing is working together. It’s the strongest power in the world. Luckily, they did settle together and know blacks and whites are becoming friends and are having fun together. Nobody cares about the argument anymore. The past is the past and the present is present. But we still all need to be careful because this whole argument could
restart.
Most importantly, in the book Olemaun got her name changed, hair cut and had to read when she didn’t even know the nun’s language. Kids don’t learn like that. Teachers aren’t supposed to just throw down a book and tell them to start reading. Teachers have so far never done that to me and they should never do that. Reading is something that we have to do a step by a step. Everything is done in steps. Nobody is born like a genius and we’ve all been through life a step by a step. Were born, we say our first words, we take our first step, and so on. Everyone has to through that process. No one is born ready to go to university. We all need to learn. Yes, some babies can be born smarter than others but some can be born less smart but can take the information in quicker.
When Olemaun leaves home to go to school. It reminds me of Iqbal. Iqbal, Fatima and all those slaves were taken away from home to go work at a carpet factory. They’ve stayed there so long that Fatima forgot what her parents looked like. Same as Olemaun, her mom didn’t even recognize her. I cannot imagine leaving home for so long that I would forget about my parents, it’s scary. The only difference is, Olemaun wants to leave home to learn how to read and Iqbal had to leave home because his family didn’t have enough money and was poor. One was because of curiosity and the other was because of money.
When Olemaun was at school and is lonely because she’s always the one that’s picked on I felt the same way. Sometimes I feel abandoned and alone. Mainly because I never have time to see my parents and when I do it’s usually only for a few hours. My dad leaves at 8:00am and my mom leaves at 8:30am and they both come back at 7:00. Then at 9:00pm we have to go to bed. I wish I could talk to my parents more because when they’re back from work they keep working or my brother gets their attention first. Then on the weekend my brother and me have classes and so we barely get to go outside together and have fun.
I think that the author is trying to say that even though people are different in different ways we can still become friends and get along. Chinese people don’t have to friends with each other. We have the freedom to be friends with anyone and we should take the advantage to do so. Mine and Ashley’s friendship had an awful start but then at the end we got to know more about each other and we became extremely good friends.
Why didn’t Olemaun’s father and Rosie tell her about the residential schools and the nuns when she asked about it? Maybe because they thought it get Olemaun interested in the schools and then she would want to go their to learn how to read. Or maybe it was because they didn’t want to tell her the pain of being in the school and how tiring it is. But what they didn’t know was that the more they don’t tell her the more curious she becomes. So that’s how she thought of going to the residential school.