I Am A Blonde Bombshell

In “Terwilliger Bunts One,” Annie Dillard recalls childhood memories to describe her mother’s eccentricity. Early in the narrative, Dillard recounts her mother’s love for language. She illustrates scenes where her mother ingeniously creates scenarios for her daughters along with unsuspecting strangers. Dillard also recounts occasions when her mother uses creative, quick-witted gags or questions to both teach her daughters to stay on their toes and catch other people off guard. Throughout the story, Dillard reflects on her mother’s tendency to engage people using her unique witticisms, questions, and personality. Throughout the piece, Dillard depicts her mother’s quirky nature and intellectual energy by incorporating imagery, word choice, and dialogue.

When the class sang songs about happiness and games her lips barely moved.” Margot ignored the other children, the only time she participated was when an activity mentioned the sun. Margot keeps herself apart from the rest of the class while she talks about experiences with the sun, when that is what the kids want the most. Although Margot’s classmates hurt her because of their jealousy, Margot was also partly to blame for since she keeps mentioning something that her classmates has always wanted.

Bartels, Eric. “My Problem with Her Anger.” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. 10th ed. Eds. Laurence Behrens and Leonard Rosen. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. 328-333. Print.

This novel “is a book that truly speaks to adolescents in contemporary language and with teenage characters about adolescent sexuality” (Kaplan 27). Katherine is learning about her sexuality in the novel.

Kelley Simon’s anecdote, “Frank Sinatra’s Gum,” is a literacy narrative about an outcast teenage girl’s personal account of her riveting interview with the one and only Frank Sinatra. The narrative illustrates Simon’s internal struggle over how to successfully become part of a school clique of girls and her external struggle with Frank Sinatra. Her motivation for the interview, her self-identity, and her ultimate decision all play a part in her methods. She uses rhetorical devices throughout the autobiographical sketch of Sinatra that help portray her true feelings. Simon’s exaggerated use of imagery and sensory language, parallelism, and the modes of persuasion all dramatize the main focus in distinguishing between the allusion of an image and reality.

Language is a powerful ensemble of instruments that all eject different tones. How instruments are played, effect the tone that is given. The way language is used affects the feelings that are released. The power of language has different uses: it can hurt or heal, it can destroy relationships or build new ones, it can make a girl feel like nothing or make her feel as though she is on top of the world. No matter what language is used for, it can make a huge impact, how language is used determines whether the impact is positive or negative. In her essay “The Meanings of a Word”, Gloria Naylor’s effective depiction of language is revealed through syntax, diction, and imagery.

We hear of her moving to New York to escape her life as a child bride after being orphaned at a young age. This story allows the audience to gain a sense of sympathy for Holly, and enhances the pathos of the story. This pathos puts the audience into the shoes of Holly and enables them to understand the reasoning behind her escape. The use of language features like pathos and literary allusion allow the authors of both texts to convey the theme of escapism.

The use of monosyllabic language “the thing I could not grasp or name’, emphasises adolescent ignorance and the obliviousness towards youth, a precious finite commodity of life, seen through, “that, while I slept, had stolen from me”.

Her first non-children’s book was Fever 1793, although she took a yearlong break from that book to write Speak (Lew 23-25), her first true young adult novel. As she began writing for teens instead of children, she also began writing about more controversial issues, such as the rape and depression in Speak. Anderson has become “knownfor writing realistic books about controversial subjects for teens” (Deutsch). Not only does she write about these difficult topics, she approaches them with “humor and sensitivity” and “her work has earned numerous national and state awards, as well as international recognition” (“Laurie”). Speak itself was a National Book Award finalist and is a Pritz honor book the year it first came out (Lew 34). Despite this recognition, Wesley Scroggins, a Missouri State University professor, called the book “soft pornography,” and demanded that it be taken out of school curriculum (qtd. in Lew 35). Judy Blume, Anderson’s favorite author, backed Anderson in this situation, calling the claim “outrageous” (Lew 35). Clearly, Blume and Anderson won the battle because “[Speak has] been used in schools in order to not only teach literary analysis but also to teach and give students tools against sexual harassment” (“Voice”). The response to Speak can be better understood by learning about the time it was written.

Born on Christmas Day in Philadelphia, Kay S. Hymowitz is a graduate from Turks University, Brandeis University, and Columbia University. The 66 year old is currently a professor at Brooklyn College and Parsons School of Design. In 2010, she was named William E. Simon fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the contributing editor of City Journal. Hymowitz enjoys writing about American childhood and education. Her books include, Ready or Not: Why Treating Our Children as Small Adults Endangers Their Future and Ours (1999), Liberation’s Children: Parents and Kids in a Postmodern Age (2003), Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age (2006), and Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys (2011). Hymowitz is a wife and mother of three. She currently lives in Brooklyn. In 1998, she wrote “Tweens: Ten Going On Sixteen.”

Time and time again, Tan’s mother’s inability to speak proper English is seen by standard English speakers as a sign that she is unintelligent; they believe that the way she speaks is wrong and therefore the things she has to say are not important. This belief is so pervasive that as a teen, Tan herself used to believe that her mother was not smart because of how she spoke. Because Tan’s mother’s speech did not follow the rules of traditional English, Tan “believed that her [mother’s] English reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly, her thoughts were imperfect” (146). Because Tan’s mother speaks in ways that are described as “broken” and “limited”, as a teen Tan felt her mother’s language indicated that her mom was simple minded. However, as Tan grew up, she came to appreciate the beauty and intellect behind her mother’s words. While Tan’s friends comment that they cannot understand a majority of what Tan’s mother says, Tan hears her mother’s speech as “perfectly clear, perfectly natural”, and remarks that “her language, as [she] hear[s] it, is vivid, direct, full of observations and imagery” (146). Tan’s friends seem to hear Tan’s mother’s speech on a surface level; since they cannot understand what she is trying to say, they cannot understand how rich her language is. Just because Tan’s friends do not understand her mother, it does not make the intricacies of how she speaks any less unique. The tendency of standard English

The idioms of everyday American speech in a middle-class domestic situation are used in showing the events and relationships of the Berlin family. In contrast to the conversations of Becca and Stan, usually presented as straight dialogue, the discussions among the three sisters are conventionally presented, often with “she said” and other interpolations to give explicitly the emotional level of the sister’s disagreements. Madga, the Polish student who acts as Becca’s guide to the death camp site speaks fluent English but at times awkward English “Oh, they are much in appreciation” she says when given a pair of jeans. Contrast between the formal, traditional language of the fairy tale and childish, informal chatter is shown when the children comment or question as Gemma proceeds with her Briar Rose fairy tale story telling. Her contrast revisiting of just this one fairy tale shows the reader that while her conscious memory has buries the details of her past horrors, she cannot help returning to the fairy tale allegory. Contrast is also shown between the warm, happy imagery of life in the Berlin house and the bleak, harsh details of the holocaust.

Miss Ferenczi’s tutelage represents a breath of fresh air and a new experience for her students. Everything about her is foreign to the students yet not inaccessible. Hope and truth are connected within Miss Ferenzci; her style of dress, lunch choices, and forthright speech are prime examples. Miss Ferenczi has found her own truth, herself, as evidenced by her nonconformist attitude, elaborate dress, delightful stories, and a touch of humility. She exemplifies that all adults are not like those the children are accustomed in their community. Miss Ferenczi’s symbolism of truth is foreshadowed by Tommy when he notices his substitute’s peculiar marionette lines reminding him of Pinocchio. Pinocchio is a wooden boy who wants to be real and is a liar. Miss Ferenczi may be a real, in the flesh, person, but she is very surreal to Tommy and his classmates; they’ve never seen anything like her. Also, Miss Ferenczi bends the truth and tells stories of myths in order to provoke the students’ sense of thought, imagination, and wonder. The truths the children seek are far beyond spelling and arithmetic, but constitute the character the students will eventually mesh with and emit.

Colloquial diction offers a conversational, entertaining style of writing. Rather than being a record of her observations in poverty, the novel is humorous, charming, and witty. Her writing style makes her a relatable person that acknowledges her own shortcomings, and she humbles herself to her coworkers. This broadens her audience to include all income groups and social

The culture shock of the words the boys would use to describe her, like “No titties” and “Monkey legs”, was more haunting than her experience with the man in the green car (Alvarez, 71). This I believe is because she was felt that the boys detested her and the man just baffled her. She could not articulate how the man in the green car made her feel but her feelings of the boys who taunted her where clear, shame and