Reader (Journal? Response? Whatever) to "Children of the Sea"

Hello all,

Today's post is ... well... not so good a topic, let's say. The "Trick of Writing" one would have been better, but we have to do the reader response journal.

However, I do have one thing that's interesting that i noticed while reading Children of the Sea. If you notice, the guy on the boat says "Now they'll never mistake us for Cubans". From that comment, I thought I could pinpoint the precise time, however, I needed to do some research. So, where did I go?]

 THE 1NT3RW3BZ!!!!
(that's "interwebs", for those of you who don't speak 1337(leet)speak.)

So the first place I went? The place EVERYONE goes to check stuff out: Wikipedia. Because I have a short attention span, however, I ended up clicking on random links for a while, until I finally remembered what I was doing. So, let me give you the background: Basically, at various points in Cuban history, people have left in order to escape the economic conditions blah blah blah, and they usually came across in boats. Sometimes, the U.S. government was complicit in these acts, for example the Pedro Pan incident. The U.S. government thought it could destablize Cuba by taking the brightest Cuban kids and essentially kidnapping them. They took them to the U.S. with the promise that they would bring the families later. For most, that never happened. Anyways, I thought that the story could be taking place during the mass exodus that took place in 1980.

So, naturally, I checked the history of Haiti.

Bingo.

The year 1980 took place during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, or "Baby Doc", son of the previous tyrant, "Papa Doc" Duvalier. In 1980, he married Michéle Bennet, and kicked his father's widow out of the country. However, I ended up not being able to find any record of violence on a scale that the book was talking about, so I went to the next chapter in Haitian history: 1996-1991, the transition government. The military took over and committed terrible atrocities, like the killing of thousands of voters across the country. It was probably then. Then again, it could have been any time in Haiti's recent history. *sigh* Oh well.


Anyways, if you somehow made it this far, congratulations!
You're not lazy like some people who might not even have read the whole thing *cough* *cough*

This is Noah, signing off.

P.S. The word of the week is "Stochasticity". Don't believe it's a word?

stochasticity

noun

the quality of lacking any predictable order or plan [syn: randomness]

You might say my choice of this word was very "Stochastic"
although it really isn't, I came across it listening to RadioLab on my iPhone.