Being a student of New York city and reading and responding to eighteenth century works, it could result a little bit challenging. I live in Little Italy in the Bronx. In the Little Italy there are multiple restaurants and bars. There are a lot of noise each day and more over the weekends. Near my house, it is found the emergency room of Saint Barnabas hospital and one firefighting station. Sometimes I have tried to change the time when I read. As I work full time, the best time for me to read and concentrate is at nights. However, since the Little Italy is a noisy place at night, it is difficult for me to fully understand my assignments. Then, I decided to change my habits of reading. For example, couple weeks ago I started reading in the morning to be more concentrated and understand the reading that my professors assign me. But it is difficult to read in the morning when there are cars at double parking. There is too much noise between the cars, and it is annoying. Additionally, I rent a room in a house and sometimes my roommates are very noisy. In this house there are more people living and it is hard to concentrate because I cannot demand them to be noiseless.

Last week, I was reading the book Oroonoko by Aphra Behn. I have to say that I started reading the book with the best interest because when I realize that the reading is about a story instead of facts, I pay the most attention needed. I started reading it Sunday morning since I was free from work. It was very interesting reading the first couple of pages, but at the same time I was disoriented because of the noise around me. In the moment that I was most concentrated, there was an ambulance or firefighting truck passing by. So, I have to go back and start reading the page again in order to understand what the author was saying. One vivid example of that is when Oroonoko was captured and sold as a slave. Being honest, I was very confused of what was happening. I was deconcentrated by the outside noise of my neighborhood and the inside noise of my roommates. So, I have to re-read the page one more time in order for me to get the idea and understand the real situation within the text. When I read it twice, I realized that Oroonoko was betrayed by his best friend, the Captain, who captured him and sold Oroonoko to Trefry. At the moment when I understood this, I was astonished because I would not think that Oroonoko could be sold as slave because he was an outstanding warrior, respectful and prince of his land.

After that, I kept reading because I was intrigued to know how Oroonoko’s life was going to be since he was not a prince anymore but slave. So, I continued reading and, in the trajectory, I was distracted once again, therefore I had to re-read multiple times. Another example of that was when Oroonoko encounter Imoinda, married and pregnant her. Because of that Oroonoko wanted to be free before the child’s birth, and many people including Trefry started making promise and distracting Oroonoko to prevent him of starting a rebellion against the slaveowners. When I was into those pages, I had to take a breath in order for me to process this information because I was not understanding what was happening at once. I had to re-read it once again until the end to make sure that I really understood the context.

As I said before, living in a noisy neighborhood, it is very difficult to concentrate while reading especially eighteenth-century materials. Sometimes the language is different because it is old English and because of that we need more concentration. But when the place ones live do not help and it is not quiet, it is still more difficult to get engaged with the reading.