The City that Built Me There is a certain pride that comes from living and enduring life in a place where people consider to be dangerous and poisoned- Flint for example. In the anthology Happy Anyway by Scott Atkinson tells the stories of the people who call Flint home. My favorite story in particular is Sarah Carson’s “When home says, “Go.”” Carson tells her story about growing up and planting roots in Flint, just like her entire family did generations ago. Carson beautifully captures what it’s like growing up in Flint with blunt, truthful and clever stories about her dog, and the civilians of Flint. Although I find flaws with Carson claiming the city of Flint after living in Chicago for over ten years, the story itself is a brilliant …show more content…
Carson also offers stories of her family and describes how whole generations were built in the streets of Flint by the working class men and women, and pride was hard earned in Vehicle City. As a result of the deep heritages and rich histories built in Flint, Carson explains that no one leaves Flint because it’s familiar, even as the crime rate surges. “…no one leaves home unless leaving home is a necessity, unless home is a set fire burning too hot to go back (110).” Carson herself ponders leaving after witnessing several violent acts and becoming very close to being involved with one too. One incident described was ‘men creeping through the neighborhood’ and stealing whatever they could get their hands on. They had hit every house except Carson’s, claiming her dog Amos was there to protect her. Other incidents involving a smashed truck window, a stolen purse and cell phone, and being a witness to a violent crime, never made Carson afraid until one particular day. When she locked eyes with a man carrying a TV across her lawn, this is when she decided she must uncover her roots and leave Flint Michigan. Carson justifies leaving flint citing: “I started wondering if there weren’t only three kinds of people from Flint: those who’ve always been there, those who’ve come back and those who’ve gone. I started wondering if Amos and I weren’t meant to be all three
I have lived in only one location my entire life: Edwardsville, Illinois. A peripheral suburb of St. Louis, it stands as the rare oasis of people in a desert of corn, pinned in its own personal bubble. Due to this blend of time and isolation, I developed a natural familiarity with my hometown. But, throughout my childhood, I longed to break free from the confines of the bubble and venture outward. However, this changed last summer, as I walked through Richards Brickyard, our family heirloom, that my great-grandfather, Benjamin Richards, founded over 120 years ago. I felt these childlike sentiments slip away. The bubble that had surrounded me for so long began to vanish, and the picture that it had been obscuring was slowly revealed.
As you walk down the streets of Arcadia, Nebraska, you look from side to side and see nothing more than a quiet little town. What you probably aren’t aware of is the history behind this “little town”. Arcadia is built off of determination, character, and distinctiveness. As you make your way down Main Street, you start to grasp a glimpse of the past. Arcadia, Nebraska is a village with quite a story to tell. Not many people know how Arcadia was founded or even how it came to be. Arcadia has dealt with struggles and overcome tragedies, whereas most towns simply would have died away. In addition to the charm of Arcadia’s perseverance, there are also many fun
- Characters: The main character is developed by what type of book the author is writing. My main character Sugar Mae Cole was developed because of the way she acts toward different characters in the book. And by her personality and sugars personality is sweet kinda like her name and she is polite. She is always trying to brighten the other characters up especially her mom Reba. She has a different personality that any of the other characters and connects with them in a different way that is what makes her the main character. she is cautious and also believes in people and things like her mom. Her mom Reba is about to give up but Sugar still believes in her and she believes she and her Mom will get a home and things will
Over time, Frank’s journey to rescue his debilitated sister, the siblings’ dependence on each other becomes more evident. Frank and Cee Money, the protagonists of Toni Morrison’s Home, exemplify this powerful need, a need that at times flirts with greed. The reason Frank feels so responsible for Cee is due to the fact while growing up they had neglectful parents as well as an abusive grandmother, his failed relationship with Lily, and lastly him facing his inner turmoil due to his actions in Korea. Toni Morrison states numerous times in the text, how Frank would do anything for Cee. Frank recalls, “Only my sister in trouble could force me to even think about going in that direction”
Knowing Our Place is and excerpt from Barbara Kingsolver’s SMALL WONDER. The excerpt is basically all about the places where her life stories and where important times in her life take place. They all end up having to take place in the wilderness in a small town, in a small house in the middle of nowhere; where she had actually grown up. She talks about how her log cabin at the end of Walker Mountain is near tobacco plants and also how it has old historic nature to it. She talks about how she loves the rain and how it sounds in her little log cabin house that was built in the early 1900’s. She grew up and spent most her childhood in these woods filled with neighbor’s miles away and
* Pride in one’s local area (para 5): “tremendous monuments we find all over New York,”contrasted with “[i]f he lives in one of those housing projects of which everyone in New York is so proud”; his appeal to pathos is sardonic in tone
In her essay “On Going Home,” author Joan Didion speaks to new parents about how the experience of “going home” after starting a new family can trigger feelings of disconnection between families, old and new. Written from Didion’s own experience returning to her childhood home for her daughter’s first birthday, the essay describes her nostalgia for her previous home and how she regrets being unable to, as a mother, provide the same familial experiences she had as a child. Using relatable invention, imagery-inducing arrangement, and syntax that inspires more deliberate reading by the audience, Didion effectively convinces her readers of the familial fragmentation that occurs with the creation of a nuclear family.
Picking up the book Fun Home, one would imagine that the novel would embellish some sort of comical life story of a misunderstood teenager. Although the short comic-book structured novel does have its sarcastic humor, Alison Bechdel explains her firsthand account of growing up with the difficulty of living of finding her true identity. Alison was a teenager in college when she discovered that she was a lesbian, however, the shock came when she also discovered her father was homosexual. I feel that the most influencing panel in Fun Home is where Alison and her father are in the car alone together. Not only does this panel explain the entirety of the novel in a few short speech bubbles, but it is the defining scene that connects
“The Hard Way on Purpose” by David Giffels is a well written book. However, just like any other piece of literature there were things either left out or could have been used more to increase the impact of his writing. The story focuses on explaining what Akron means to Giffels and others in the community while comparing people that stay and people that leave the city. To express his ideas he uses different styles of writing that influences readers well, he also gave explicit information to support his writing, but the amount of bias and his sense of animosity towards people that leave Akron acts to counter effect the positive aspects of his writing. After reading “The Hard Way on Purpose” readers may conclude
In the initial report by the City of Flint, the city refers to the Flint Water Crisis as a “man-made disaster caused by the City switching to the Flint River as a water source in 2014.” Also, the report stated that Water Resource Centers, located around the city, would provide water filters, bottled water, and at-home water test kits free of charge to Flint residents. This statement shows the integrity, a characteristic of being ethical, of the City because the city took responsibility for the Crisis and followed through on the responsibility by providing goods and service free of cost to residents.
Reviews of A Nice Place to Visit, Life in and against the Odds, Pennsylvania Stories—Well Told, and Walking in Cities
At first glance, the Blue-Collar landscape of Detroit Michigan, with its dilapidated factories and toxin belching smokestacks, may seem coarse and profane. Yet, when one looks closer it is not hard to find beauty
In the prologue, Audre describes her “home” as being a place that could only be from a fairy tale (enchanted even). This home is somewhere Lorde never visited or never observed. She only knows this extraordinary place through her mother’s stories. As Audre grows older, “home” is something she does not have in life. She even expresses that the extraordinary place (Carriacou) from her mother’s stories in no longer the home, she longed for it to be (Zami 256). Even though her home was in Harlem, New York, Stamford, and Cuernavaca, they never felt like home. Throughout the novel, it appears that Carriacou helped Audre deal with the racist society. She finally accepts her character in society as a black lesbian. She in time grows to admit that
about the problem with the water several days before they told the public about it. (In-depth:
Fun Home is a retelling of Alison Bechdel’s life through the lens of her relationship with her father. However, because of what she considers to have been his suicide, Alison is left with an incomplete picture of who he was in life. By calling Fun Home an autobiography, Bechdel enters an autobiographical pact with the reader that ensures that what Bechdel is telling us is the truth. However, elements out of her control leave Bechdel unable to provide certain objective facts necessary to her narrative. As an attempt to remedy these absences and in turn maintain the validity of her story, Bechdel uses intertextuality to fill in the gaps of in her retelling. By overlaying masterplots of fictional narratives over her own, the reader is able to get at an understanding of the kind of person Alison’s father was. In this way Bechdel is able to reveal things about her father that she can 't prove to be true, but are reflective enough of his life to become true.