Jesse By Joy Boothe

To show first hand to the whites the inequality’s and hardships that the blacks face, the entire first section is in a narrative and a descriptive format. The use of these types of essays lets the readers feel more involved in the story and feel things for themselves. Split into two sections within itself, this first paragraph juxtaposes two stories — one about a “young Negro boy” living in Harlem, and the other about a “young Negro girl” living in Birmingham. The parallelism in the sentence structures of introducing the children likens them even more — despite the differences between them — whether it be their far away location, or their differing, yet still awful, situations. Since this section is focused more towards his white audience, King goes into a description of what it was like living as an African American in those times— a situation the black audience knew all too well. His intense word choice of describing the boy’s house as “vermin-infested” provokes a very negative reaction due to the bad

In the book Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, Susanna Kaysen was only 18 years old when she agreed to enter a medium security psychiatric facility in Boston, McLean hospital in April 1967, after a failed suicide attempt. She insisted that her over dose on aspirin was not a suicide attempt, but after a 20 minute interview the doctor decided she needed to be admitted to a hospital. During her prolonged two-year stay at the hospital Kaysen describes the issues that most of the patients in her ward have to deal with and how they all differently deal with the amount of time they must stay in the hospital for. While in the hospital Kaysen experienced a case of depersonalization where she tried to pull the skin of her hands to see if there were bones underneath, after a failed escape attempt. Soon, after going to therapy and analysis she was labeled as having recovered from borderline personality disorder. After her release she realizes that McLean Hospital provided patients with more freedom than the outside world, by being free responsibility of parental pressure, free from school and job responsibilities, and being free from the “social norms” that society comes up with. Ultimately, being in captivity gave the patients more freedom then in society and created a safe environment in which patients wanted to stay in.

The steam from the kettle had condensed on the cold window and was running down the glass in tear-like trickles. Outside in the orchard the man from the smudge company was refilling the posts with oil. The greasy smell from last night’s burning was still in the air. Mr. Delahanty gazed out at the bleak darkening orange grove; Mrs. Delahanty watched her husband eat, nibbling up to the edges of the toast, then staking the crusts about his tea cup in a neat fence-like arrangement.

The stereotypes in the story, makes it difficult for the readers to conclude the race of each character. People assume that the African American character would be illiterate and uneducated and the white character to be well-educated. During the time period of the story African Americans did not have access to a decent education; making it harder for them to learn just the basics. Whites had access to good education, making it easy to believe the white character is more educated. It is also believed that a person that is well educated will have a better lifestyle when they are older. A well-educated person will have a better job, paying more, and have a better opportunity to afford the means of a luxurious lifestyle. An under educated person will most likely live in poverty, struggle for their basic needs, or live in a declining neighborhood. Behavior is a harder stereo type to use to distinguish a race. Many assume that whites have an entitled attitude toward life. Whites had access to a good education and jobs, they had a “I’m better than you” attitude. On the other hand, many think African Americans were upset because of how easy it was for whites to have better access to the basic necessities such as education and housing.

She remembers small details like how her friend only had black dolls to play with. She didn’t realize this at the time because she was so young, but she thinks that the reason why her friend’s parents weren’t too fond of her wasn’t necessarily because she was white, but because they were probably afraid of what would happen to them for associating with a white person, or if something bad had happened to her while under her supervision. Like in Mosaic, Ida B Wells discusses some of the reasons why black people were lynched. A lot of those reasons included being falsely accused of committing acts against a white person. Even if the black person did nothing and just happened to be there at the scene, they were almost always punished for it. For example, when white landowner’s wives would get pregnant and the baby ended up being of mixed race, even if it was never the black worker’s fault, they were blamed for it. This is why a lot of the times many African Americans fled from where they worked and were never to be seen again. “The daily papers last year reported a farmer’s wife in Alabama had given birth to a Negro child. When the Negro farm hand who was plowing in the field heard it he took the mule from the plow and fled… In Natchez, Mississippi, Mrs. Marshall,... [gave birth to a child who was] unmistakably dark. All were alarmed, and ‘rush of blood, strangulation’ were the conjectures, but the doctor, when asked the cause, grimly told them it was

The book Black Hearts is written by Jim Frederick and tells the story of all the controversial accounts one infantry unit ran into while on deployment in Baghdad, Iraq. The book is a documentation, captured accounts and events written down to tell the crazy story these soldiers went through. The specific unit Frederick writes about and what Black Hearts is about is 2nd brigade of the 101st airborne infantry division. “Black Hearts” was the unofficial insignia of 2nd brigade. Frederick covers one platoon in particularly and their ethical dilemmas they encounter while on deployment. 1st platoon, Bravo Company, 1-502nd Regiment is the unit the book covers. Many things on deployment unfold poorly for this platoon such as having little

Life on the Color Line is a powerful tale of a young man's struggle to reach adulthood, written by Gregory Howard Williams - one that emphasizes, by daily grapples with personal turmoil, the absurdity of race as a social invention. Williams describes in heart wrenching detail the privations he and his brother endured when they were forced to remove themselves from a life of White privilege in Virginia to one where survival in Muncie, Indiana meant learning quickly the cold hard facts of being Black in skin that appeared to be White.      This powerful memoir is a testament to the potential love and determination that can be exhibited despite being on the cusp of a nation's racial

Through my understanding of the book, Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May explores two traditional depictions of the 1950s, namely suburban domesticity and anticommunism. She intertwines both historical events into a captivating argument. Throughout the book, May aims to discover why “Post-war Americans accepted parenting as well as marriage with so much zeal” unlike their own parents and children. Her findings are that the “cold war ideology and domestic revival” were somewhat linked together. She saw “domestic containment” as an outgrowth of frights and desires that bloomed after the war. However, psychotherapeutic services were as much a boom then as now, and helped offer “private and personal solutions to social problems.” May reflects her views on the origin of domestic containment, and how it affected the lives of people who tried to live by it.

Elijah’s daughter, Luvenia, struggles to get a job and into college in Chicago while her brother Richard travels back to South Carolina. Abby’s grandson, Tommy works with civil rights and protests, and tries to get into college for basketball. The story ends with Malcolm, Richard’s grandson, getting his his cousin Shep, who is struggling with drugs, to the family reunion. In reading this story one could wonder how the transition from slavery to segregation in the United States really occurred. The timeline can be split into three distinct sections, Emancipation, forming segregation, and life post-Civil War, pre-civil rights.

This story has affected me in a few ways. One of the ways was how children think and see the world. One of the ways is how children see and picture racial equality. They do this in a way that many adults are not readily capable of doing, or choose not to. From the story early on we are told of a girl named Kesha who distinguishes beyond the socio-typical distinctions of black and white, when she states, “‘Okay, peach with spots for you and brown without spots for me, except his one and this one on my cheek”’ (Paley, pg. 15). In another part in the story, the author says two children, Jeremy and Martha, playing a game of Guess Who? Jeremey asked

“So while this is the story of a small boy in a small town one hot Southern summer,” Timothy B. Tyson writes as he closes the first chapter of Blood Done Sign My Name, “it is also the story of a nation torn apart by racial, political, social and cultural clashes so deep that they echo in our lives to this day.” Thus begins Tyson’s story of the murder of Henry Marrow, a 23-year-old black man who was shot in the town of Oxford. The murder was a turning point in Tyson’s understanding of race relations in the small town where he lived and it sparked an investigation of the role racism played not only in his community but around the U.S., from the abolishment of slavery to the present. Although Tyson primarily uses examples from his own experience and the experiences of his family and neighbors, he draws details from the political and racial climate at the time to add context to his story. However, Tyson’s accounts of racism in Oxford, North Carolina also add a sense of reality and familiarity to the much broader examples. Tyson uses examples of the color line, paternalism, and the normalization of racism to reveal the different ways that racism has manifested in American society.

Throughout the novel it is apparent that everyday instances of racism occur, causing people of color to feel outcasted. There are two very obvious occasions where this happened. In the first instance two African American woman are in a workspace of primarily all white co-workers. When a woman they worked with got these two names mixed up, it was stated that she had a “fifty-fifty chance of getting it right” insinuating that these two women are the only black ones working here. Later, the woman who had the mix-up with the names wrote an apology note; however, in the note she stated it was “our mistake” and seemingly put part of the blame on the to women. This is a primary example of how African Americans can be thrown against a white background making them seem different than everyone else.

The facts I learned about this book is that just because you have an deadly illness, doesnt mean you will die from it. The style the author used in writing this book is very unique. The author makes comments in the book as to why some specific sentence is what it is. The topic of the book can be adopted into fiction or a creative fiction. The author not only incooporates the story with the main character " Gary Gaines" who is a senior at Benson High school and the odd friendship he beholds with Earl Jackson. Greg prefers not to have friends only to associate with everyone in the social heiarchy until he has to befriend Rachel Kushner who was diagnosed with

Subsequently, the text, “Blessings’” theme is to generate a healthy relationship with a friend by bonding. How this works is, you spend quality time with a companion to learn more about their life and build a resilient connection between the two of you. For instance, in the scene, Jesse says, “Rene, first, would you read this? (JESSE takes a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket. He hands it to RENE.) It’s a poem. Real short. I wrote it about this place,” (Surface3). This quote shows when one shares critique, the other learns more about their penchants and proclivities, which is how the author cultivates the theme through their reactions.

The poem “Jamie” by Elizabeth Brewster is a poem about a sixteen-year-old boy who suddenly becomes deaf (lines 1-2), and the poem is about his struggles and emotions towards his new disability.. The poem illustrates many of the struggles of deaf adolescents, as they cannot partake in the same activities as their fully-enabled peers. Jamie’s struggle is expressed throughout lines two to ten. Jamie has no more songs to listen to, in order to help him cope with typical teenage issues, and to make matters worse, he cannot hear what people are saying about him anymore, which makes Jamie think that they are saying the worst things possible about him: “People moved mouths without a sound escaping: He shuddered at the straining of their throats.