Confessions of a Closet Catholic-Questioning the text

So here's a brief summary of what I wrote about for my questioning the text paper:

My question was , "What is the real reason for Jussie's desire to be Catholic? Is it because Jussie wanted to feel accepted/normal or was she just taking the steps towards embracing her own identity during adolescence?

I think that one of the major issues that lead Jussie towards Catholicism is the fact that she was in her adolescence and wanted to feel accepted or normal. It's important to note that during your adolescence, finding your identity is pretty much a crucial aspect of being a pre-teen. Jussie's longing for some sort of acceptance (since she doesn't get it at home from her parents) might have led her to try and become Catholic since one of her best friends is Catholic. Jussie is constantly talking about how she is a sort of "ugly misfit" and she can't understand why her friends are even friends with her at times. When Jussie talks about issues like this, it's apparent that she is still in the process of accepting her own uniqueness and needs to work on being proud of who she is as a person which is why dabbling in other religions could be a tool for helping Jussie find her true identity.

In my paper, I also talked about how Jussie is constantly comparing herself to her friend, Mac. Mac is seemly perfect according to Jussie. She has the perfect looks (with straight blond hair and blue eyes), the perfect family (with a mom that is easy to talk to and doesn't care about a messy house), and also the perfect siblings (that are easy to get along with and don't treat her like an outcast). It seems fair that because of the high regards that Jussie holds Mac in, that she would consider trying to become Catholic as well.

The last section of my paper is devoted to Kimmel's article about what it means for minority groups to find their own "Beal Streets". Kimmel said, “Embracing your identity brings great joy, along with a sense of wholeness, completion. ‘I know who I am and where I belong. These are my people". We can see when Jussie finds her "Beal Street" when she receives the Star of David necklace from her Bubbe. It is at this moment that Jussie can finally feel acceptance and feel as if she is a part of something (Judaism).

Project Mulberry

Overall, I enjoyed this book yet had some grievances with it as well. First, I'm not sure how I feel about the interjections between chapters. I do enjoy hearing about "behind the scene" info from the author, yet sometimes I felt that these chapters put akward haults into the text and disrupted the flow. Another concern I had with the text is that we as readers never really hear of Julie becoming accepting of her heritage at the end of the book. I can see how she feels more comfortable with her Korean heritage as her interest in embroidery grows, for example, yet I feel that I was looking for some closure with the topic and was waiting for her to say how she feels now about being Korean and how her project helped her embrace her culture. We also never really heard about Patrick's culture in the text. If heritage is such an important issue in this story, why isn't his heritage mentioned? The topic of Julie's mom's racism was also seemingly unresolved in this book. There are many loose ends that I feel weren't tied up as satisfyingly as I would have liked, but nevertheless it was a book I enjoyed and I was interested in the silk worm project especially.