Analysis Of Year Of Wonders By Geraldine Brooks

     Gwendolyn Brooks is the female poet who has been most responsive to changes in the black community, particularly in the community’s vision of itself. The first African American to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize; she was considered one of America’s most distinguished poets well before the age of fifty. Known for her technical artistry, she has succeeded in forms as disparate as Italian terza rima and the blues. She has been praised for her wisdom and insight into the African Experience in America. Her works reflect both the paradises and the hells of the black people of the world. Her writing is objective, but her characters speak for themselves. Although the

The city of Mumbai has seen much growth in the past years. A string of elegant hotels have been set up for travelers and high-class business men. An ever growing, top of the line airport has been built for those coming in and out of the country. From the outside, Mumbai seems to have taken a liking to being internationally integrated with the rest of world, otherwise known as globalization. This is not the case, however; as seen in Katherine Boo’s novel Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. This novel is set in a slum right next to the Mumbai International Airport called

In the article “Two Years Are Better Than Four” author Liz Addison writes about how community college is a forgotten option for many students in America, and that it is not well advertised like the universities are. She writes about how community college is a great option for students who need a less expensive option, but still want a chance to further their education. Addison also writes about how they allow everyone to attend so you can “just begin”. Community college is a great option for many students because it allows for an affordable option for students to continue their education.

During the story the author often uses foreshadowing to give hints to the reader of things that will happen in the future. When the story starts, a storm is coming on a late October night. The storm symbolizes the evil approaching the town. Usually it seems a storm would resemble something dark and evil, because a stormy night is always a classic setting for something evil. At the

The poem “We Real Cool” is a very powerful poem, although expressed with very few words. To me, this poem describes the bottom line of the well known “ghetto life”. It describes the desperate and what they need, other than the usual what they want, money. Without actually telling us all about the seven young men, it does tell us about them. The poem tells of the men’s fears, their ambitions, and who they think they are, versus who they really are.

In this section, Jeannette Walls starts off, in the present time by telling the readers about her seeing her mom on the street, that she hasn’t seen in a long time. Jeannette uses emotional words like blustering and fretted to show that seeing her mom was an emotional time. Later in the section, she goes way back into her life to when she was three years old and when her family and her was living in the desert. She started off telling a story of when she was on fire. This story was intense, it was really dramatic on her parents part, her dad was screaming at her and the doctor a lot. Then she talked about when they moved to Las Vegas, her family lived in a motel room, which didn’t last long, they had to leave Vegas in a rush, because her dad was cheating in blackjack and the dealer found out. The last story in the section is where her family drove to San Francisco and stayed in another motel. One night her dad was at the bar, across the street. He left Jeannette and her three other siblings in the room. Jeannette got bored so she decided to play with fire and that let to a big disaster resulting in the whole hotel burning down.

People lose their senses and blamed everything on witchcraft. For example,in the first scene when Betty got sick, she laid on the bed and could not move for days. Every now and then she would even call her dead mom. Seeing that, Putman concluded, “ She cannot bear to hear Lord’s name Mr. Hale; that’s a sure sign of witchcraft” (Miller 41). With little knowledge in illnesses during that time, many died from a common cold or fever that could be easily treated nowadays. Betty, who might have caught a cold or she might have been feeling sorrow over her dead mom. Instead of using their logic to cure the illness,people assumed Betty’s illness has something to

In this chapter it talks about how Catherine LeMaigre was dying, and dying horribly and painfully. The two physicians sent for their esteemed colleague Dr. Benjamin Rush. They were trying to find out if they could stop the plague from spreading.

Love is not always an easy adventure to take part in. As a result, thousands of poems and sonnets have been written about love bonds that are either praised and happily blessed or love bonds that undergo struggle and pain to cling on to their forbidden love. Gwendolyn Brooks sonnet "A Lovely Love," explores the emotions and thoughts between two lovers who are striving for their natural human right to love while delicately revealing society 's crime in vilifying a couples right to love. Gwendolyn Brooks uses several examples of imagery and metaphors to convey a dark and hopeless mood that emphasizes the hardships that the two lovers must endure to prevail their love that society has condemned.

“He [Jeannette’s father, Rex] will not keep me out of harm’s way, he will put me in harm’s way and I have to find a way to remove myself from the situation.” (Diversity Connection). I feel like this quote, from Jeannette, came t directly from the situation where Rex took her out to the bar to help him earn money for alcohol, but yet she still doesn’t see herself as a victim. Even though Jeannette Walls was the victim of sexual abuse at a very young age, she tries to recreate the freedom from her childhood into her adult life, But in her younger years where she has no occupational activities, no nurturing, no money and no friends to turn to, it proves to be very hard to maintain.

She views herself as responsible for them, therefore her actions are independent of the needs of her society, but instead focus around the needs of her children. This means that Anna, a widow with children, is much more of an independent woman than her peers, simply because of the fact that she can combat societal oppression by letting her actions be led by the needs of her children. Yet soon after the beginning of the novel Anna’s life completely shifts; the plague takes over the village and Anna’s children are killed by it, rendering Anna a childless mother. Without children Anna loses a piece of identity; this is seen as she becomes more reliant on her peers, and more in tune with the stereotypes inflicted by her society. Anna does not regain her independence and reestablish her identity until she once again becomes a mother when she adopts a bastard child. Ultimately both Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees and Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders use their main characters to establish the premise of what it means to be a mother or a child, and express the ascendency of their relationship in regards to the development of identity.

Gwendolyn brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas. Her family moved to Chicago during the great migration when Brooks was six weeks old. Her first poem was published when she was 13 and at the age of 17, she already had a series of poems published in the poetry column “Lights and shadows” in the Chicago defender newspaper. . After working for The NAACP, she began to write poems that focus on urban poor blacks. Those poems were later published as a collection in 1945. The collection was titled A Street in Bronzeville. A street in bronzeville received critical acclaim but it was her next work, Annie Allen, that was got her the Pulitzer Prize. She lived in Chicago until her death on December 3, 2000 at age of 83.

Gwendolyn Brooks is one of the most celebrated poets and some of her poems have been at the center of academic discussion for many years. One of her most famous poems includes ‘The Boy Died on My Alley’, which will particularly form the center of discussion in this study. The study will focus primarily on the critical analysis that helps to define and to unify the central argument. In addition, the study will also examine some of the aspects that make this poem unique and worthwhile. Moreover, the study will critically analyze the techniques used by the author, the arguments that are central to the piece and how these techniques help to define the importance of the literature.

Katherine Boo, a staff writer at The New Yorker and former reporter and editor at The Washington Post, has worked for over two decades “reporting within poor communities, considering how societies distribute opportunity and how individuals get out of poverty” (Boo 257). In November 2007, she and her husband, an Indian citizen, moved from the United States to India to study a group of slum dwellers in Annawadi, Mumbai (Boo 249). While studying this group of individuals in India from 2007 to 2011, Boo’s goal was to learn why the individuals within this slum have not banded together against a common enemy in order to gain upward mobility. She illustrates several common issues of developing nations including: corruption, education, the mismanagement of foreign aid, and the possibility for social mobility in her book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. In this literary work, Boo accurately portrays the acts of corruption and as well as how corruption has entered the sphere of education, which is typically an individual’s only avenue to social mobility and success in that area. She argues that instead of rising up against a higher power, the individuals within the slum fight against one another to get a leg up on their competition, even if it keeps them in the same social class.

“D.W. Griffith was the first American director to be as well-known as the films he directed, and he was among the very first to insist that filmmaking was an art form” (Lewis 53). This statement is very true. However, the inherent discriminating content in some of his movies also made him one of the hardest to appreciate. One of the most famous examples was The Birth of a Nation (1915), which was in favor of the Ku Klux Klan. After a few more controversial movies, he finally tried to redeem his reputation with Broken Blossoms (1919). Broken Blossoms is Griffith’s attempt at an apology in the portrayal of minorities and the idea of miscegenation within The Birth of a Nation in the midst of a troubling society heading towards the anti-miscegenation law.