Out of Nowhere by Maria Padian is about an exemplary high school student named Tom, his school is infested with Somalian immigrants. Tom is forced to interact with them even though he doesn’t really understand them and he starts to understand how the Somalians live and how difficult their lives are. Tom keeps tainting his good reputation and is trying to figure out how to not seem like a failure to his parents. My first quote is, “So long, college money. What little my parents had saved, anyway,” (Padian 33). This is a thought that Tom has after he got in big trouble because he thinks he’ll have to kiss his goals goodbye because of what he did and he is also concerned with how his parents feel about what he did.
Phuc Tran talks about how English has a subjunctive and Vietnamese does not. Then he walks the audience through how he came to America, struggled with growing up as a geek, setbacks to achieving his goals in college, and the unexpected encouragement from his dad. When he learned how to accept the now and ignore subjunctive it helped him be more happier. A quote that connects this to Out of Nowhere is, “I didn’t want to major in Art and English anymore, as I awaited some reprimand from him,” (Tran 4). This quote explains how Phuc is scared to tell his dad that he quit his double major because he is worried with how he will react and doesn’t want to be thought of as a failure.
If your characters are reaching their goals, what did they need to do in order to accomplish them?
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