Journal 8 by Lucas

Dreamers and eccentrics broaden our culture. If it were not for dreamers and eccentrics then everybody would be the same way in a certain sense and there would be no uniqueness. I believe that our culture discourages uniqueness and eccentricity nowadays because if somebody is different from what society deems as "normal", then often times that person is bullied and tormented for being themselves or what society considers different. In my own experiences I have often been teased for playing golf in high school by some of my friends instead of playing football because a lot of people think golf is a boring and lame sport.

So far my reading in Holding On  has been going pretty well. I believe that one of the strengths of this book is that it is very straight forward and gets to the point instead of adding in a bunch of other pointless information. I like the short chapters in this book compared to A House On Mango Street because I can actually understand what is happening in these chapters. I think one of the weaknesses of this book is that it is so many people with so much information jammed into each chapter that it is hard to retain a lot of the details of each story. One question I have of this book is what made these men want to go around and hear stories from all of these people to make a book?

The one story that struck me the most was Moreese Bickham, the prisoner. I learned that even though Moreese was innocent he had no chance of avoiding prison or death just because he was a black man and the Klan had that much power. Even all those years later the community was trying anything they could do to keep him in prison. The theme I notice in this chapter is hostility. The passage that means the most to me is when the town and the police chief are trying to keep him in prison. "Each time Bickham appeared before the pardon  board, his appeal was strongly protested by the Mandeville Police Department. We will do anything we can to keep him in prison." (Isay 37-38). This means the most to me because it shocks me they are doing anything to keep an innocent man in prison after all these years just because he is a black man,