MP2

Delaney Day

World Lit

Neely McLaughlin

November 10th, 2020

MP2

Aya Life in Yop City was a well thought out book. This book was all about the cultural differences and about all the imagery. This book’s graphic picture helped tell this story and all that went into it. You can tell that this author put in a lot of effort because not only did the author come up with this story line and the characters they had to collaborate with an artist to get the exact picture the author wanted.

Culture is a big thing anywhere. This is the foundation for so many different families. It is how kids are shaped and where they get their manners and how they learn what is right and what is wrong and what they believe in. Culture is about religious beliefs and food and clothing and how they raise children both boys and girls. Some girls are raised not to go to school and to learn to cook and clean and take care of children. Boys are taught to provide for their families and to work all day and come home to eat and sleep and repeat. This is just one example of hundreds of different expectations that families expect of their children. Cultures are so important and diverse and unique and are beautiful and in the book Aya Life in Yop City they are as well.

When reading Aya Life in Yop City I noticed the culture and I believe I am going to be making this my main point throughout this entire assignment. I think that the pictures were the most important part of this whole book. The pictures are a huge part of what makes this book special. Honestly without the picture in this book I would not have thought culture was an important aspect of this book. This book has so many different pictures that will show all the readers what it is capable of. This book Aya Life in Yop City has drawings of families and their clothing. Their clothing for women is a beautiful red dress with a fun pattern on the dress with no shoes and her hair is up with a yellow headband and she has big dangly earrings. This is just one example of the women’s outfits. There are many more that completely define their culture and how women in their city dress. Men on the other hand they dress in tank tops with jean shorts and flip flops, they also have long jeans and sneakers with an overly large sized T-shirt. Again this is just a few examples this is not what all men and women wear but it is just a few examples and how they dress is a part of their culture and how women accessories and how men keep their hair. This is just a few examples and this here is to just help you visualize what the pictures look like. 

Another part of their culture is what their homes and buildings look like. They have very close buildings and their homes are very close to one another. Their homes are not built on normal cement like our homes are. Their homes are built on dirt they also do not have grass that is outside their homes and that children can play on. They have dirt roads. They also have cars but most of them do not. Most of them just walk to where they need to go because everything they need is within walking range so they do not feel the need for vehicles. They can walk to the market or to the hair salons and to friends houses. They feel they do not have a need for vehicles so they do not own them. They would prefer to walk anyhow because they get to talk with their neighbors who they run into on the street. They also do laundry a little bit different than how I myself do laundry. I use a washer and a dryer to do my laundry as to where they do not. They chose to hand wash their clothing and then after they hand washed their sheets and their clothes they chose to hang dry it outside. They allow their clothes to air dry. Now I know some people chose this method in my own culture because it saves money but it is also time consuming and people nowadays do not want to take the time to sit down and hand wash all their clothes and their sheets. They would rather throw their stuff onto the washer and let it be. I know I personally do not have the time or the will power to sit down and hand wash all of my clothing so I would prefer a washer and a dryer because if you do not have a dryer and it is raining out your clothes could take forever to dry and honestly I would chose to not wash my clothes if it was not a good day outside to wash them because if they won’t dry I would not want my clothes to smell because they did not dry and they just sat around all wet and smelling. I think in the book Aya Life in Yop City they don’t have the money to have washers and dryers and I think they honestly chose to hand wash their clothes. I think the women prefer to do it this way because that was how they were taught when they were little girls and even if they had the money for washers and dryers they would still hand wash it because they have plenty of time to do so. They can sit down with the other neighborhood women and they can sit and talk and wash their clothes at the same time while getting to catch up with the other women. I think this a beautiful thing to do and I wish nowadays that was the case for most people to be able to have that much time but in my culture and how it is here in Cleves Ohio is all about the go go go. You barely have time to sit down and watch a thirty minutes episode on Netflix. But with Covid going on now people everywhere have plenty of time to get things done now. I guarantee if I chose to hand wash all of my clothes I would be able to do so with the amount of time I now have. 

This culture also does not seem to watch TV or have smartphones or anything like that. They get their entertainment through playing sports and watching others play sports or reading or working at the market or a hair salon etc.. Most of them chose to spend their time outside and they are outside from dusk to dawn. They will fish and dance or go out to restaurants with great music. They chose to be with other people and they want to go dance under the twinkling lights at this restaurant. They also enjoy getting all dressed up. That is something I have in common. I think many people have this in common actually. I would love to get all dressed up to go out with my friends and family rather than stay inside night after night and watch Netflix all day and just become a hermit and never come outside my house anymore. Covid has taught me the luguaries we as America had and how quickly it could all be taken away if we do not live in America. American people are so lucky to be free. We used to be able to go out whenever we wanted and did not have a curfew. We used to be able to leave our homes without masks and we could go over to our friends’ homes without the fear of getting them sick or them getting us sick. Just like in the book Aya Life in Yop City. This culture and city they are free to do as they will they do not have a curfew they get to go out to restaurants until it closes and they do not have to wear masks and they get to hangout with their friends and families and they are not as scared to let their friends and families hold their new born babies. Right now with everything with Covid I know personally that new mothers will not be comfortable with people holding their new babies or even hold them without a mask. I know this because my cousin just had a baby two months ago and I still have not met this baby because she is terrified of this virus and is very careful with who comes into contact with her baby. This is something that currently is not happening in this book but that was because this virus was not around when this book was written. I am sure if this virus had happened when the book was being written they would probably have the same regulations we have here in America right now. 

Reading this book was definitely an eye opener because when they are in their homes I guess they just chose to leave their doors to their homes unlocked so anyone can walk in and I know within my own home every time I walk through that door I lock it again unless we are having a family party where people just walk in. We chose to lock our doors because people will break in and steal stuff within our homes. We also chose to lock our cars everytime we got out to go into a store or into school or at a friend’s house. We lock our cars because we do not want people to steal what is inside of our cars and more importantly we do not want them to steal our cars themselves. This is not also a solution because people can still break the windows to our homes and to our cars but this is a solution that we can do ourselves and it usually works. In this book there is a group of women sitting in their house looking at this baby and a man just walks in and then they all look up to him saying “Hello ladies” now  this may be very common for their cultures for people to just walk into their homes but that is not as common here in my culture. I was always taught to lock my front door and the back door and the basement door I was also taught to make sure all the windows were locked after I shut them. I was also taught when I get out of my car to keep my keys in my hand and lock my car I was also taught to make sure my windows were not down. Now the window rule is for if people want to break into my car all they have to do is unlock the car from the inside and they are free to take anything within my car or my car itself  because they clearly wanted to if they are trying to break in anyways. I was also taught to roll up my windows because we live in Ohio and the weather is unpredictable and if it rains it would ruin my car. I do not this is a major problem for Aya but who knows because some of them own cars but not all. But I am curious as to why they are so comfortable with leaving their doors unlocked. My idea with this is because they are all neighbors and that they are all close and they trust one another and they would not steal from each other. This might go along with their culture and how they would not do that because they are all a closenet group of people and that is something they would just not do and if they were really struggling to where they would need to steal something all they would have to do is ask because their community would help them out. I wish that was how it was everywhere because I know I would personally rather help someone out and give them what they need instead of them breaking the law to break into my house to steal things. But most of the time people aren’t even stealing food or things that are essential to life they are stealing things that they can make money off such as TV’s and radios and money etc.. so they can buy drugs or alcohol. 

I think culture is a very important thing to people. It determines what they wear, how they act and what they chose to spend their time doing. If they chose to go to church or if they want to go to work it all depends on their culture. Also not everyone lives by their culture some people tend to leave because this is not how they want to live and some cultures say if you leave you can not come back and it can be really hard on people. Culture is very important and I think it is something everyone should look into when they can and learn about it.