San Francisco 2.0 By Joan Didion

The book “The Other America”, written by Michael Harrington, describes poverty in America in the 1950s and 1960s, when America became one of the most affluent and advanced nations in the world. The book was written in 1962, and Harrington states that there were about 50,000,000 (about 25% of the total population) poor in America at that time. The author did extensive research with respect to the family income levels to derive the poverty numbers, and used his own observations and experiences to write this book. This book addresses the reasons for poverty, the nature of poverty, the culture of poverty, the blindness of Middle Class America with respect to poverty, and the responsibility of all Americans in addressing the issue of poverty in America.

Characters: Leo is a person that never gives up on getting something that he believes should be his, How “ He looked around for his gold nugget” And he never gave up on looking for it. Also leo never likes to leave anyone behind how he saved his friends/not so good friends from the the fire in the building, They would of died almost if it wasn’t for Leo. He saves good or mean, Which i thought was pretty cool and nice, And as a gift guys gave leo the sack quickly and let him have his gold nugget while in the burning building, I think that this main character is the best one I’ve seen yet. Leo, A saviour of good and bad people. :)

Ann Lauinger, a literature professor at Sarah Lawrence College and winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry, in her narrative-like poem, “Marvell Noir”, published in 2005, describes a tale about a man interacting romantically with a woman who is serving time in prison. This man with a tough-like persona speaks diligently with a loving passion for this woman until his demeanor turns dark and reminds her about the past crime she has committed and how he must move on because he is not suited to life in jail unlike her, ultimately leading to their fallen and broken relationship. Lauinger’s purpose is revealing a prevalent theme in poetry, carpe diem, which translates to relishing and seizing opportunities in the day and simply making the most

In “The Victims” by Sharon Olds it describes a divorce through the eyes of the parents’ children. The first section is shown through past tense as the speaker is a child and the last section is shown in present tense with the speaker already being an adult trying to make sense of past events. The word “it” in the first two lines carries a tremendous weight, hinting at the ever so present abuse and mistreatment, but remaining non-specific. The first part generates a negative tone toward the father who is referred to as malicious by the mother who “took it” from him “in silence” until she eventually “kicked him out.” Through the entirety of the poem the children are taught to hate their father. Who taught them? Their mother showed them that their father was a villain and were taught to have no sympathy for him but “to hate you and take it” and so they did so. Although the poem never directly states what the father did to receive the family’s hated, the speaker gives examples as to why he is hated.

America’s answer for dealing with crime prevention is locking up adult offenders in correctional facilities with little rehabilitation for reentry into society. American response for crime prevention for juvenile’s offenders is the same strategy used against adult offenders taken juvenile offenders miles away from their environment and placed in adult like prisons.

Our Town by Thornton Wilder focuses on the lives of the residents of small town Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire in the early 1900s, more specifically, the lives of young George Gibbs and Emily Webb. Throughout Act I, Thornton describes the daily lives of the people of Grover’s Corners. The milkman delivers the day’s milk, the paperboy brings the morning paper, mothers prepare breakfast, and children get ready for school. The day winds down, everyone has had their supper, homework is finished, and adults arrive home from choir practice. Life in Grover’s Corners is traditional, ordinary, and unremarkable, not much goes on out of the ordinary. Act II focuses on love and marriage in the town. The narrator says “Almost everybody in the world gets married, - you know what I mean? In our town there aren’t hardly any exceptions. Most everybody in the world climbs into their graves married.” and Mrs. Gibbs articulates that “People are meant to go through life two by two. Tain’t natural to be lonesome.”(54) George and Emily get married, much like the other young couples of Grover’s Corners, and proceed to live blithely and contentedly on George’s uncle’s farm. Act III looks into the last act in a person’s life, death. Emily passes away during childbirth, and at the cemetery, she meets the spirits of her mother-in-law and many other deceased townspeople.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).” The love and respect for the outdoors is something everyone should value, many things promote this way of life, due to its extravagance and true freedom in this great creation. They can sometimes go to that outdoor place in books, poems, art, and even some news articles. Much of this world doesn’t get to see the other side of America; they don’t get to see the best part, the outdoors.

Crossroads at Clarksdale by Francoise Hamlin sketches the struggle to freedom for African Americans in Clarksdale, MS. Hamlin shares the stories of two successful African Americans at the forefront and how they work to become leaders in Clarksdale. From the 1950’s to the 1970s, college students, numerous organizations, and campaigns for social transformation fought hard battles for social and economic justice. In an attempt to withstand the social prejudices that were highly advocated in Mississippi African Americans were targeted for violence and degraded by Jim Crow laws that were inhumane and restricted their rights. Despite the poverty and inequality African Americans had to undergo, their slow struggle to freedom in Clarksdale was accompanied by accomplishments and relentless efforts for civil rights. Hamlin articulates in detail the situations that were occurring in the south, how the citizens were affected by the situations, and their responses to these situations.

Stereotypes are part of everyday life. Stereotyping is part of our society; it wouldn’t be our society with typical stereotyping. Stereotypes have an enormous impact on how we feel and see things. In Gilb’s point of view he is stereotyping the life of the typical Mexican American lifestyle. In all four stories he has a stereotype or he is stereotyping the life style of a family, man or woman. I believe that Gilb wants to make his point through, “there is more to life” than just the regular stereotyping the Mexican American life style. I believe he wants to get his point across through stereotyping and using it as an example that there are many ways of life and that there are many ways of living.

In the autobiography of Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates explains how the education system shackled him, instead of empowering him to liberate his soul and mind. It wasn’t until he was enrolled in Howard University, where he found comfort in an educational system. Before attending Howard University, Coates was blinded by society’s view of the “black body”, and what it was capable of accomplishing. The limitations and lack of support on their side, bounded African Americans and made them feel insecure. The discrimination African Americans faced in their daily lives was no different in an educational environment.

Joan Didion uses parenthesis as a way to add qualifying information to a more impactful statement, which causes the reader to dismiss the parenthetical statement and focus on the first clause which Didion has chosen as a greater statement. For example, when Didion is relaying the conversation about John’s autopsy, she writes this statement, “Doctors themselves, according to many studies (for example Katz, J. L., and Gardner, R., “The Intern’s Dilemma: The Request for Autopsy Consent,” Psychiatry in Medicine 3:197—203, 1972), experience considerable anxiety about making the request,” (21). In this section, Didion wants the reader to feel the importance of her decision to allow the autopsy. She chose to do so by including how hard it must have

My favorite nonfiction book is Devil in the White City  by Erik Larson. I enjoy Larson’s book because of my love for a book with mystery. The complex psyche of Holmes is something that intrigued me throughout the read and the abundance of history within the pages kept me turning them. Moreover, the multiple perspectives from which the “novel” is told kept my mind turning. The point of view may quickly change to Burnham to Holmes and the topic may shift from dissecting female victims to what color should the facade of a building be.  One takeaway I got from the book is the need to always change and evolve. To quote Winston Churchill “ To improve is to change, to perfect is to change often”, this ideology is found enrooted in the novel as architects

Nick is a World War I veteran who, as many veterans, suffers from emotional trauma that his experiences from the war left him with. Multiple scenes throughout the story, Big Two Hearted River, relates to Nick, the main character’s, journey toward recovery. Nick describes his surroundings in way that parallels to his own experiences and current voyage in respect to his revival.. He takes a calming adventure saturated with calming natural paths over hills, through woodland, and along a river to find peace with himself and to return to his prewar state of mind.

With the 1960s came a need for change, as an immense amount of smog and toxic chemicals used in agriculture and industry caused, the blue to fade away from the sky and water in America. Rachel Carson provided the catalyst for this change with her book Silent Spring published in 1962, which revealed the harmful impacts of pesticides on almost all wildlife and human beings. People reading a book wouldn’t be enough, though, for twenty million Americans came together on April 22, 1970, to celebrate the beauty of Earth and raise awareness about increasing concerns for the environment and declining quality of life. (maybe add a sentence about structure and diversity of the movement) Without these key events leading to the Environmental Movement’s diversity and unique structure through the 1970s, American values in politics and way of life would not have been able to change.

Identity is who a person is or how they see themselves, but is this something they are born with or is it something they learn over time? Can this identity be changed? Or is it permanent once set? Identity is a major theme in Toni Morrison’s Sula. Scholars discuss the different identities that the characters possess, but tend to fail to mention character development or lack of character development. Character development or lack thereof is usually an important literary move in most writing. This development provides a deeper understanding of characters in addition to a deeper understanding of themes throughout the literature. Sula focuses mainly on the lives of Sula and Nel, which makes tracking their character development easier to track and observe their identity and sense of self. Identity is a major, yet easily overlooked theme in Sula.