Text to Self
Connecting with Rose’s “I Just Wanna Be Average” is fairly hard to do for me. We come from very different backgrounds, him being the son of two immigrants and me being the son of born and raised Americans for generations. He grew up in cities and very rural areas and I came from small towns and farm towns, never really moving too much. I suppose the easiest example of how I connect to him is the fact that both our names are Michael but that’s not a good example of text to self. Though we may not have similar family trees we do have a similar love and and sense of wonder with Chemistry and other sciences. He enjoyed watching chemical reactions and seeing things that before were boring but now became a reaction that fizzes or combusts which I enjoy as well.
Text to Text
The beginning of this story reminded me of reading journals of immigrants coming from their country to America through Ellis Island when it was still open. They talked about their family back home or their dreams of a better life but the journals I really enjoyed reading were the ones that talked about their life after the move to America. How there was such a struggle to find work and make a life for yourself and you children and the things that kept them going were dreams. That’s what I imagine Mike Rose’s parents went through.
Text to World
Possibly the easiest to connect considering that Mike Rose is American with parents from Italy and Naples. Having parents who were immigrants during this time was probably very hard because there was a lot of discrimination between Americans and immigrants. Their family came from poor background and worked hard to get everything they had and moved many times to find work. They went from their home countries to Chicago to Los Angeles and eventually to Vermont to settle down and find work. They most likely had a hard life but Rose still managed to find his place in the world like all the other people did who came to America in search of a better life.
