Mona+in+the+Promised+Land


 *  DIRECTIONS: Each student in the group is responsible for inventing one discussion question. This discussion question must be posted on the Monday of each week, ensuring time for discussion of each question. Each member of the group, including the person who invented the question, MUST respond to the discussion AT LEAST twice EACH week. Your participation in these online discussions, along with the amount of effort and reflection put into your responses, will account for a portion of your Literature Circle final grade. Each time you post a discussion question or a response,you MUST skip a space from what was written above, and you MUST begin your writing with your last name and first initial so I can mark your participation. It would also be helpful if you choose a specific colour and stick to that colour each week to identify yourself with also.

Week 4 Discussion Question:** Costello.T: What do you think of the author's writing style and discuss the plot structure?

k.p:the authors writing style seems to be poor. This may be because she is trying to make it seem like she is actually chinese but it was kind of werid in my opinion. The plot structure wasn't that fun i found. The plot seems really slow and nothing really happened, it was just a bunch of dialog. The climax, i think was when Mona was slapped by her mother, Helen. I found that to be a interesting part of the story because in the Chinses culture its all about respect. that showed no repect. R.sh: the authores style of writing is descriptive, simple and fairly understanding, fairly understanding becasue she jumps alot, her writing seems more like a sereis of aparted discription by this i mean like she is wrting her thinkings. genaraly she writes disconnected and it seems that in the whole story she is giving a discription of the story. i think the plot structure is like the following ; exposition: the first chapter when it gives an explaination about mona and her famly, when, where and why they came to united staded, rising action: i beleive when mona ecame a jew, it was the start of all disagreement and the confilict that mona has with her famileis and meeting seth and also suporting the theme of indivisualism, the climax: the turning point of the story is where mona run aways from the, till this aart of in the story we did not have such a huge advanturess and dangrous, the falling action: when they understand that fernardo is the one who attend to rape mona which lead to the relationship between seth and mona and many questions are answered here, the momnet of suspend: i found two diffrent thing here, one was when seth and mona go to alfred and he starts to bully them and u though he is never going to let go of his suing thing, but another one when mona's mother denied to consider her as doughter and pretend she doesnt know her at the verry end, actually another one when the reader thinks that sherman and mna are going to meet one more time, but i am not so sure i would be happy if someone could give a hand?

Hurs: I was about to write my essat for exam and I wanted to know how you guys think, and after I read you guys thought it's about same as me. Thanks Shima because I had difficulty to find plots I was only sure about introduction, climax and falling action. The stying of writing is that story is not continuous, even end of the book story that mentioned earlier did not finished. It's kind of left to solve that in our own. How are you guys doing about writing essay?

Week 3 Discussion Question : ** **k.p:discuss the plot of the novel,is the author succesful in making an intresting plot, why or why not?**

R.s; i think the author was not succesful at all, because there is no problem being solved u dont know what are u following and u do not have a purpus for reading the book. other book are having advanturas or something happening, but this book is like an educational book about how was the life in 1970s. Hurs: I agree, In every chapter, in different stories they have plots but if you see as a whole story, it does not exist. Or may be we didn't notice because we haven't finished the book. I think the best time to disucc about the plot is after we finish the book but so far we are not sure about the plot.
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Costello.T: i think it took way longer then it should have, but yes the author has made an interesting plot. Sheema is very right. I think as the book goes on the plot will "thicken". One thing i would suggest to Gish Jen if she were to write another novel would be, to speed the pace of the novel and the action in the novel up quite a bit. But we shouldn't judge because Sungmu is right we are not at the end of the book yet. it could turn out to be a really good book?

k.p: enjoyed the epoligue when i finsihed the book tonight. i agree with all of you guys. the plot wasn't very well done and she could have put more detail and speed into the actions. **

R.s: but there is only one chapter left and the last chapter is where u look to find the resolustion not to found out what the plot is. i think that all this diffrent stories in diffrent chapter makes the story to be all over the place, me personaly didnt like it.

**Hurs I guess everyone including my self did not enjoy the book. I thought, when we started the book, Mona and Sherman's love would be the main story of the book but after all, we had some other stories. If you try to see the plot, you can find several plots. What I mean is that we can see Sherman's story as a one plot. Story about Alfred is another one and for the last, story about Mona choosing university as a plot. So there are three plots, we can not say there weren't plots after all.**


 * Week 2 Discussion Question:R.S:** **Now that we have reached half the book, its a suitable time to discuss about the main theme. what do you think is the main theme of this novel. Do u think the author is succesful in conveying this theme? why ? **

k.p:I think the main theme of this novel is something around rasicm. I believe that the theme is that you should just be proud of your race no matter what type you are, Jewish, Japense, Chinses, Russian, Canadian, AMerican, no matter what be proud. I think the author is partly succesful in convyingt her theme. I believe that althouugh she is showing an opposite message when Mona is talking about being Jewish, I believe that she made it come through when the Black roomate wasn't ashamed or discouraged. She was still proud of the fact that she was Black and loved it. What do you think the theme is ?

Hurs: I agree that theme is about rasicm, but I also think the theme of the novel is religions too. They talked about Chrisitian, Judaism and Buddhism. Mona's parents is Buddhim and also Christian. Mona is not Buddhism but Christian and wanted to be Jewish. It's all complication of religious.

R.s. i think that the main theme of the this novel is racism and indivsualism. the theme racism because she talks about the privilage of each race and theit recognistions and the theme individualism not only becasue of several notitions of author talking about bravenew worl but because the author several times recalled that mona is a young chines jew. i think the author put all of her time conveying her them even more than developing the plot.

K.P:Yeah thats a good point! It does show many signs of that throughout the novel. Yeah I also agree with your last statement. The theme is conveyed way better then the plot. The plot is just kind of something that is manditory that she doesn't seem to put much effort into. Most of her time seems to be spent on the theme or message of the novel. I think that she could improve the novel by spending as much time as she did on the theme on the plot, then maybe i might enjoy the novel more.

Costello.T: I think that there is definitely more then one theme of this novel. For example trying to fit in. Mona converts to Judaism because the Jewish people in her community are well respected and wealthy. It seems like Mona just wanted to be Jewish simply to say she is Jewish. However i think the real theme of this novel is teenage love. No matter what happens in the novel, be it random characters who are introduced then never talked about again, Gish Jen always seems to bring the focus back to Mona and love. PS: i deleted the entry you put at the top Paige cause it was the exact same thing as the entry above this one :P

<span style="color: rgb(0,0,255);">Hurs: I think you are right Ted. I was keep focusing on Mona's race and religions. Because that's what it metioned in every chapter and that's what I think the main theme is but yeah she's teenager like us and she does feel love. She just in different time and has different race. And it's really hard to notice becuase other things that Mona mentions disappear very quickly and talked about little. Since we talked about Mona's teenage love, Mona's first and may be to Barbara too, Sherman, would he ever come back and falling in love with Mona? I know he's not kind to Mona any more and didn't meet for years but they grew up so they had chage so i think they would feel different to each other. That's what I felt when I met my firends after a year later.


 * Week 1 Discussion** **Question:<span style="color: rgb(0,0,255);">HurS: In the chapter one, Mona met Sherman, who came from Japan. Since Mona had to help him out, they spend time together, even after school. Finally Sherman's English get little bit better than before. They talked about many things and one of them was their country and Mona was confused about different culture. Do you guys had any culture shocks? or confused like Mona was wondering why Sherman hates Americans?

<span style="color: rgb(128,0,128);">R. <span style="color: rgb(255,0,130);"><span style="color: rgb(128,0,128);">s: Since i am from another country i think i know a little about it. Now that northen amercian countries are expecting alot of imigrants and with the existence of internet, they are no longer strangers to cultural difrence, but when it comes to fredericton and kids our age its quite diffrent, because fredericton is new to the subject of new comers, so some students or maybe elders are not as aknowledge as people are in bigger cities. when i meet people here, they always want to know about my country, what do we do or eat? do we party like them? what is going on in our schools and How is our life generally?,,, Western civilization is famouse and wellknown by others, so it usually is not a shoke for us how their culture works, the iro ny is that a freind of mine once told me,"our cultural (she is from USA) is easy to get and short in explenation, we basicaly dont have any culture, we are what we want to be." so usually these are mostly hosts that are more astanished and shoked with our compelecated culture. btw there is no meaning of offence in example above i thought that was funny and i actually am tired of all the things we have to do becasue we are persian or (iranian) makes you so commited from the day u are born prrf.. :) (here culture i am pointing out traditional culture, like how we should marry)

<span style="color: rgb(255,0,130);">k.p: **<span style="color: rgb(255,0,130);"> I have had two culture shocks. One when i taravelled to British Columbia in the summer. I went by myself and i could tell there was a big difference from a small quiet city to the big busy city of Vancouver. Even though everything was in the same country I still felt as though i was in a different culture. I have a huge respect for immagritents that don't know how to speak the language in which they are traveling into. ALso, when I went to cuba in March with my family. I could tell a huge difference as soon as I got off the plane. Almost everyone was speaking Spanish. The airport was my first shock. Once getting off the plane and going in, the airport wasn't like the ones in Canada. It was very cheap looking and not nicce. It didnn't feel very safe. The security seemed alsmost like a joke since the women that were checking bags were wearing miniskirts. Going from 2 hours to get through security to 10 minutes in secrutiy in Cuba, I didn't feel very safe. In some asspacts I can realte to Sherman, but not very closely. When my family traveled to a city in Cuba, Moron, I could see how poor and how happy they were even though they had nothign. I think that Sherman may hate Americans because he is having a hard time communicating with them. When in Moron, Cuba, i found it very frustrating and draaining trying to communicate with them. Although I did know a little bit of SPanish, like hello, haha, I didn't know enough to have a conversation with someone. Commincating was a pain. I also didn't like that the food was different. I find that when i have to eat food that doesn't taste good, that is when i get in a bad mood. So the communication and the bad food made for some frustating times. This may be why Sherman hates Americans, because he is tired and frustated and misses people at home, in Japan. do u guys think the same thing that i am ?

<span style="color: rgb(128,0,128);">R.S: i expereinced the language barrier and i still am, but once or twise it really made me frustrated once when i was in turkey(istanbul) i got shoke from the moment we landed, even the people who worked in the internatitonal airport couldnt speak english and the taxi driver was smoking in the car and i felt sickso i asked the driver to stop and he didnot stop becasue he didnt know what was STOP, then you know what happend next. another expereince is talking to some of my freinds who are english, it really takes alot of energy to repeat and say something several times when they dont understand you and i have to do this almost everyda y.<span style="color: rgb(128,0,128);"> paige i think sherman's mane reason for not liking america is becasue of the hiroshima atomic bomb, but the language difficultie makes him to hate it even more. <span style="color: rgb(128,0,128);"> <span style="color: rgb(255,0,130);">k.p: Yeah, Shima, I can tell when I'm talking to you and i am not underswtanding what your saying then you get frustrated. I feel bad, but I want to be able to understand you. I feel the same way I guess when I am talking and people can't hear what I'm saying. I find that annoying. Do you feel the same Mungmu? Sherman doesn't like the atomic bomb? I thought they invented that in Asia. Werid. But I feel that I would be very frustrated with the language also.