Reading

 This year I read

Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian
Purple Hibiscus
Macbeth
Lord of The Flies
Zodiac
Beyonders
Ender's Game



Pieces I feel show my progression

We ride home listening to the Fela tape to avoid the silence that has rooted itself into our lives since Papa’s death. We turn onto our street after what seems like seconds thanks to the absence of the silence. I see Mama’s hands start to shake against the inside of the car before I see the black van parked outside of our house. She thinks Jaja is coming home and we’ll be together again but I know better. I know they’ve come for Mama. Somehow I just know that they know the truth. The man in the suit with the nice glasses walks up to her and puts her under arrest, I would expect her to be upset but her eyes told a different story. I knew she was so happy that they had finally figured out it was her and Jaja would be free. I felt so mad my skin boiled. Why did Mama have to do this. Why did she have to break what little we had left of at our chances of being like Aunty Ifeoma and her family. I start to feel heavy as I remember them; heavy with the thought of not seeing them again. Jaja sauntered out of the van as if his shoes were cinder blocks. I know immediately it wasn’t him who admitted that it was Mama who killed Papa.

 Sisi walks out of the car slowly afraid of what is to come. She is crying hysterically, “I’m so sorry.” Sisi looks shocked as Mama exclaims “Thank you Sisi.” Before she gets into the van to be taken out of our sights she walks to us “Jaja I am so proud of the remarkable person you have become my son, never stop fighting for what you believe in and remember I did this because I love you.” She turns to me with the first smile I have ever seen on Mama’s face and and I struggle to make eye contact through our glassy eyes. “Kambili you have always given me a reason to keep fighting and I’m sorry it had to be this way but it was for you and Jaja. I will always love you and I hope you find a better life than what we could give you.” The smile she still has on her face looking at me and Jaja through the windows of the armored van as she leaves is something I will remember for the rest of my life.

Jaja and I go into the house and pack up our things to head to wherever the government men are taking us. Jaja’s eyes tell me he thinks we’re going to an orphanage. I just hope we go somewhere loud so the silence won’t plague me anymore. I pack barely any of my clothes so I don’t remember my old life. So I don’t remember the silence at the dinner table and the trying of Papa’s new products. So I don’t remember the sound of Mama hitting the wall repeatedly. So I no longer see the swirling red images of a baby I never met. So I will live. I don’t remember getting into the black Mercedes with the rough looking man with the hard eyes or falling asleep. I remember Jaja nudging me awake and the car standing still. We get out of the car and I realize we were driven to an airport and I don’t know why. This time I ask the man in the suit where we are going without feeling nervous and my throat clear. He looks annoyed as he mutters “to catch your flight.” I felt so confused all of a sudden “where are we flying to” I quickly asked as if I never would know if I didn’t ask quickly. This time it’s Jaja who answers with a rare smile on his face “we’re going to America, to live with Aunt Ifeoma.” I didn’t even know what to say when we were taking our bags out of the car. I knew for the first time in my life that things were only going to get better.

Ex: I meant to say I am sorry Papa broke your figurines, but the words that came out were, “ I’m sorry your figurines broke, Mama.” (10)	Ex: Between thinking it and saying it, Kambili takes her father out of her sentence, so that what she says doesn’t acknowledge his role in the breaking of the figurines.  I wonder why she has so much trouble saying what she means--whether this is about her relationship with her father or an awkwardness in talking to her mother about it.
“Kambili is right, she said, Something from God was happening there.” (275)	Kambili feels something when she is not forced to feel something. All of her life her Papa has forced religion onto her so strongly and her biggest religious moment was when it was of her own free will. Aunty Ifeoma and her cousins bring out the best in Kambili. Papa is a psychological barrier to her and even her religion. She needs to be without him to scale her psychological bars.
“You are almost sixteen, Kambili. You are beautiful. You will find more love than you will need in a lifetime, he said.” (276)	Father Amadi had been contemplating or so it seems, to leave the priesthood for Kambili or not. It seems here he has chosen the priesthood as it is what is best for him and for her. It had always seemed like Father Amadi was not a character who was very dedicated to his line of work and we get a lot of character development here in the sense that he is dedicated to his work.
“Or any other choices. Still, I would not pray for what I did not want.”(277)	Aunty Ifeoma getting the visa is the worst think that could happen to Kambili as she was finally coming out of her shell with them and she was truly developing as a character and taking on a real personality. If Aunty Ifeoma gets the visa Kambili just goes back to the terrible life that she used to have and she doesn’t want this to happen and so she refuses to pray for what they want because this will be terrible for her.
“Anger suddenly filled me, constructing my air passages, pressing my nostrils shut. Anger was alien and refreshing.” (280)	Kambili has never experienced anger before even when her father was brutally abusing her she was not angry because she knew no other way. Now she knows how much better she wants life to be.  This lifestyle to her is completely alien to her just as this new emotion is and she doesn’t want to feel this back again. She has developed so much and she is truly whole.
“I laughed. It seemed so easy now, laughter. So many things seemed easy now.” (284)	Kambili has developed so much and she is finally happy. She in this moment has everything she wants and nothing involves money. She is happy without her father paying for things for her and she doesn’t need that to be happy and what she needs is a loving family which she has gotten in Nsukka.
“Jaja laughed. It sounded like a series of snorts strung together. Ofcourse God does. Look what He did to his faithful servant Job, even to His own son.”(289)	The times with Papa have not been very good to him and we learn something very important about Jaja here. We learn that maybe he wasn’t skipping communion to rebel against Papa, but maybe with his life being so bad he was struggling to believe that there was a God who cared about him. Jaja is so different than when we first met him.
“When she spoke, her voice was just as calm and slow. I started poison in his tea before I came to Nsukka. Sisi got it for me; her uncle is a powerful witch doctor.	We now know that all the times we thought that mama was putting up with him, she hated him. She could not take the abuse anymore and she couldn’t take watching it happen to her children. We also learn that Sisi must dislike him a lot as well to give mama that poison knowing what she would do with it. It also just adds insult to injury that it was from a witch doctor as Papa was making fun of them to mama a while back.

My epilogue I felt showed the way I grew to understand voice and character so much to where I could impersonate the voice and the character development of Adichie. I felt my dual column analysis of quotes In Purple Hibiscus showed my understanding of diction and the authors usage of rhetorical situations.