Response to "Face to Face"

I listened to the stories of Golzar Kheiltash and Anjum Mir. They are both Muslim and were watching when the two planes hit the towers. One thing Mir said during one of her interviews that this was going to affect her child. He was not even a year old when the World Trade Center was hit. She knew that because they were Muslim, it wouldn't matter that he was only a baby at the time. That people would still treat him differently because of what happened that day.

During Kheiltash's interview she was telling us that she was at her college when the Trade Center was hit. She heard about it and ran to the student lounge because she knew they would have a television there. That was when she first saw all the images and videos of the crash. She watched as the people jumped out of the building and felt overwhelmed with grief. She then became aware of the people around her and started to feel claustrophobic. She realized how much this was going to impact her life at that exact moment. She could see the stereotypes that were going to evolve and what people were going to think or her and others like her. No later than a few seconds that she thought this a man a couple of feet from her said "They should just nuke the whole middle east."

The last account that I found interesting was Muhammed El Nasal's story. He went into work four days after the World Trade Center was hit with the airplanes. The first thing his co-workers said to him was "Hey Muhammed, why'd your cousins blow up the World Trade Center?" Then they said that his boss told them that he had to check Nasal for bombs when he came into work. Nasal thought the guys were just joking because they didn't really like their boss. Later Nasal's boss called him into the office and said that he had to check him for bombs. He meant it as a joke but Nasal was very offended and didn't think it was funny, especially since it was four days after the bombing.

All these stories were big eye openers for me. Being a white american and my family being white it obviously didn't affect us in the same way. I never realized how quickly it happened though. With the two accounts, Kheiltash and Nasal, it seemed very immediate when people started to stereotype and put them into categories. With Kheiltash someone not even five feet away from her mentioned bombing the middle east and with Nasal it was his co-workers. I can't possibly imagine the difficult obstacles that Muslims have to go through these days because of what happened at the Trade Center. Most of the Muslims in America are actually born in America and have nothing to do with the Middle East other than your ethnicity.

Book Review #4: The Night She Disappeared

The Night She Disappeared is about a girl named Kayla who got kidnapped when delivering pizzas. The guy who ordered the pizza specifically asked for Gabie, another employee, but Kayla traded shifts that night with Gabie. Not knowing that Gabie wasn't the one in the car, he kidnapped the wrong girl. Gabie later finds out that the guy was originally asking for her over the phone. Gabie decides to help look for Kayla, but the search gets difficult when the police think they found the culprit. Do they ever find Kayla alive? Will he come after Gabie next? Read the book to find out.

 Throughout the book, the chapters switch off between characters and they even switch to Kayla, the girl who was kidnapped. They also switch to the man who did the kidnapping. I think that was my favorite part of the book, was being inside his mind and seeing his perspective of what was going on. When Kayla finally awakes for the first time, it switches over to him. April Henry writes, "The screams rise again from the special room I built. Faint but still audible.I set down my X-Acto Number 11, pick up the TV clicker, and press the plus sign on the volume button. There. That takes care of that" (Pg 38).

I was kind of shocked and thrilled at the same time when I got to this chapter knowing that the author also wrote in his perspective. I've never read a book about a kidnapping where we got to be in their head. This was a really good action packed and thriller book. So if you're into those, you should check it out!

Book Review #3: Under the Never Sky

In "Under the Never Sky" there is a world controlled by the Aether, a storm that lingers in the air and never goes away. It funnels down to the earth to produce a tunnel of electricity and burns anything in its radius. The Aether storms come and go and are rather random and only the "Outsiders" can tell when they come. In this book there are two main characters, Aria and Peregrine, or "Perry" for short. Aria lives in Reverie which is one of the domes that serves as homes for the "chosen ones". The people who aren't chosen have to try their luck on the outside, also known as the wasteland. Perry is one of the "Outsiders" and lives in the Tides, one of the many tribes. One night Aria is thrown out of Reverie and has to figure out a way to survive. If she doesn't die from the outsiders, she'll die from the storms. Her only hope is to work with the one person her kind despises, Perry. They decide to put their differences aside, knowing the only way to survive is with each other. Their unlikely alliance forms into something more and decides the fates of everyone living under the Aether.


This book is a trilogy and I just finished the second book "Through the Ever Night". This book was kind of hard to get into in the beginning because of the author's writing style. She talks in third person and switches between Aria and Perry every chapter. Besides the writing style, the book has a great story line! If you're into the Divergent trilogy, Matched trilogy, Legend trilogy, or the Delirium trilogy you would love this book! The non-stop action and twists keep you hooked the entire time.


 "The Aether looked brighter than it had earlier. It knotted on the horizon in glowing blue waves. She watched the sky until she was sure. The waves were rolling toward her. Aria closed her eyes and listened to the flapping of the wind blowing past her ears, rising and falling." (Pg 98)

 I chose this quote to go with the pictures to give a small description of the Aether storm and what it looks like. They give more details in small glimpses throughout Aria's perspective as she travels the outside world for the first time. I chose a picture of a "Magic" card because it is actually an Aether storm, and I think that's where the author might have gotten it from. But I also think that the Aether storms look different when it is still and not funneling. I imagine it looking more like the Northern Lights because of the character's descriptions of how beautiful it is when it's calm.