Podcast - FINAL

The speaker, Jasmin Hassong, discusses her journey to appreciating literature. She shares her initial disinterest in reading and writing but realizes that literature can have a personal impact. She mentions various readings that have influenced her, such as "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan. She also reflects on how literature has changed her view on writing and the importance of clear communication. Despite some frustrations, she now sees literature as a tool for self-expression and connection. Overall, Jasmin encourages her listeners to explore literature and find their own connections to it. Hello, my name is Jasmin Hassong and welcome to my podcast, The Jasmin Show. For my jazzy topic of the day, I'll be talking about something I never thought I would be discussing, which is literature. This is new to me, since I am never really into reading and writing, and it's still not my favorite thing to do, although recently I have learned that it is not impossible to achieve a great paper when you need to, and it's greatly connected to things within daily life that everybody loves. To give more clarity as to why I did not like literature growing up, I used to have phases when I wanted to be a writer for fame and fortune, of course. Well, at that point in my life, I never read or wanted to read a book because I was so young. I remember specifically writing a story about a guy named Bob who had a friend named Ed. They missed the bus, got into an argument, and it never continued to page three because I gave up and couldn't care less about Ed or Bob. Or how in first grade, actually, I had to read my very first book. It did not have vibrant colors on it, and it did not have a single sentence per page. I did not want to read it, but not out of just pure laziness, but because I was told to. I kid you not, I sat in a chair with my parents watching me, quote-unquote, read my assigned book, flipping through the pages in a timely manner, forcing my eyes to look at every line for hours and still did not read a single word. I purposely avoided reading, even though I could have just read it sitting there, because why not? Well, I figured it out. I don't find hobbies and things that I am being told to do or have consequences that go with it if it's something that's not enthused by me, obviously. This is not a good look for my future, though, since that applies to some major basic life principles, and now I am beginning to understand literature from perspectives of others, though it all started when I started reading about literacy narratives. What does literature mean to them? Well, that got me to think. What does it mean to me? I define it as almost like an autobiography, but the author writes about their own personal coming to literature, their connection, experiences, growth, and how it ultimately changed their life, better for worse. Most of the time, it changed their life for better. That's why you don't hear about it being bad. But one of the few readings that I have been reading over and over again was actually called Mother Tongue by a lady named Amy Tan. Her story was short, sweet, something out of a perfect article that a lot of people, including myself, related to on the basis of culture. Her story is based on her mother's experiences and troubles with speaking grammatically correct in quote-unquote American terms. A lot of the other literature we've read in class, such as Malcolm X, Literacy Behind Bars, which was actually mind-blowing but also makes so much sense, and a more poetic narrative about ancestry and culture by Kiki Petrosino, they all shared their appreciation for literature and how it changed their lives, ultimately leading them to creating these stories. Now I can emphasize that this also has changed my view on literature. This is shown in my very own literacy narrative that I created, where I stated my meditation process of songwriting for my own personal stresses and reflecting onto a piece of paper is a tool I use for surviving daily life. This was one of the ways that I connected with literature and created an understanding of its importance in my own life. Music has always been a happy greeting in my daily routine, and this is a form of literature in and of itself. This realization has led me to appreciate reading, writing, and poetry that entered my life long ago without knowing. Another idea is that these writings and stories seem to be so thorough and thought out, especially in literacy narratives, and it made me think more clearly on how I tend to write things. Let me tell you, I get frustrated. I got even worse when realizing that a great paper had to be a complex or detailed thesis. The good thing is that I can make so many different claims, but I would never get it done because I cannot pool evidence for the life of me. This happened to me recently with my research paper on educational barriers in Indian reservations, where I then stated there are children and adults alike that long for bettering their education outside of the reservations, whether that be for financial stability or self-benefiting factors in life. This type of claim that I've created had a lot of excitement in me. This quote represented something that I related to in my own experiences when volunteering at these certain reservations, but I had to dig for my research, and that's something that I just did not like and got frustrated with, but to the point where I realized that these experiences are something that I can talk about to create awareness, and that's something that I have connected with. That's something that literature is able to do. To wrap things up, though, there are many ups and downs in literature that I've came across, and I find that it can be frustrating or it can't be, and it all kind of really depends on you, and through my perspective, I like to learn literature more since I have found that I can connect to it better, and I hope that's the same to you guys. So thank you for listening to my podcast. I hope everybody has a great day. Thank you.