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Kiswana

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Raised in a highly wealthy community, Linden Hills, Kiswana dropped out of college to live in
Brewster Place, where she thinks she can effect real social change in the black community.
Kiswana is anxiously waiting for her mother’s first arrival to her poor like studio apartment. Once her mother arrives, both of them have several short arguments that raises when Kiswana calling her mother a “white-man’s nigger.” (79) Kiswana’s mother responded by trying to explain the genesis of
Kiswana’s actual real name, and the pride she actually had with her heritage. Before leaving, she secretly gives Kiswana enough money to have a phone line installed.
Mrs. Browne and Kiswana are trying to change a personal aspect of their life but are
unsuccessful. …show more content…

She finally realizes that she would not be able to change Kiswana’s mind and makes a desperate final attempt of trying to at least get Kiswana to change her name back to her original name by telling her the story of her grandmother and her proud heritage. Overall, she is trying to change her daughter’s life but is unsuccessful as Kiswana keeps her name and continues what she is doing. Kiswana is similar to her mother because she is trying to change the living conditions of her fellow tenants in Brewster Place but is unsuccessful. Kiswana then goes door to door trying to ‘start a tenants’ association on this block” and “put pressure on him to start fixing this place up” (115). She tries to get the tenants to group together and do something about the landlord neglecting several important issues in the apartments. However, she is also unsuccessful in her pursuits, as her mother was, since at the end of the book “Brewster Place is abandoned, the living smells worn thin by seasons of winds, the grime and dirt blanketing it in an anonymous shroud” (192). But at the end, Brewster Place was abandoned and left in ruins. Kiswana’s life has been completely …show more content…

Starting off with this essay or just in general I have always struggled with my opening thesis statements and making it more appealing to reader. When going through with this essay we all had to make it a process with our revisions and multiple drafts to make the final draft the best that we had after everything. I would say my biggest challenge through writing this was trying to analyze the different perspectives that Kiswana and Mrs. Browne had with viewing the black community. While revising this essay I kept struggling with correctly citing the sources of everything so I wouldn’t get portrayed as plagiarizing in my

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