Fighting for my Life: Hunger Games

Title & Author: The Hunger Games By Suzanne Collins   Date of Publication: September 2008
Publisher:Scholastic 
  
Summary:

   The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is about a girl named Katniss. Katniss with her mother and little sister Prim in District 12. Since her father died Katniss has to take care of the family. She hunts illegally in the woods with her best friend Gale. District 12 is one of the poorest District and is controlled cy the Capitol.
          Every year two names get pulled from each district, a boy and a girl, and they got chosen to compete in the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is a competition where you have to comptete to survive and there can only be one winner, their prize is money. That year Katniss's little sister Prim gets chosen and Katniss being very protective of her sister takes her place instead. Along with Katniss being chosen is a boy named Peeta. Not knowing what she got herself into Katniss's life changes once she enters in the game along with Peeta.

Quotation: "Listen up. You're in trouble. Word is the Capitol;s furious about you showing them up in the arena. The one thing they can't stand is being laughed at and they're the joke of Panem." (Collins, 294)

Quotation Context: This is before Katniss's goes for her interview after winning the Hunger Games. Haymitch is warning her about the Capitol. I like this quote because you think everything after her winning but it adds more action and suspense.

Holla If Ya Hear Me, Searching for Tupac

In Holler If Ya Hear Me, Searching for Tupac Shakur by Michael Eric Dyson Tupac Shakur's whole life is discussed. Tupac's mother Afeni Shakur was discussed as well, she is Tupac's mother. Afeni was a drug addict, convicted, and was also in the black panthers in the 60's. Afeni being on drugs affected Tupac and the kind of life he had. The media and how women are portrayed negatively and how it affects young women and other adolescents as well. The author talks about the use of the "b" and "n" word and how the definitions for the words are changed. He compares Tupac's different songs for example: "I Get Around" which shows how promiscuous he is to "Keep Ya Head Up" which is to stay positive and to keep your head up through rough times. The author met with a close friend of Tupac's who talked about how they met and how he was a bigger reader. Overall Holler If Ya Hear Me, Searching for Tupac Shakur just shared different events in his life up, who Tupac was as a person and what he believed in.

Quote: "All the themes that surfaced in the conversations I had when I went to the warehouse are important: his strong black masculinity, his willingness to speak up, his thirst for attention, his powerful poetry, his thug image, his entrepreneurial exploits, his prophetic stances, his role as a pop icon, his search for the authentic black experience, his heartfelt messages to the urban poor, his incredible work ethic, his unfulfilled potential, his ascension to Elvis-like status, and the grief that was provoked by his premature death." This quote was important to this story and just overall because it represents everything Tupac was about and who he was.