Blue Winds Dancing By Tom Whitecloud

Bentonia - a very small town in Mississippi with a population of 500 as of 2000

Naturally, the narrator feels the pressure of being a minority. At first, he wants to be like everyone else, to be a part of white society. Then, he realizes that such society is not what he imagines it to be. As a result, he wants to reconnect with his family, this time appreciating them as his own. Nevertheless, the narrator is afraid of what his father

The speaker’s change in attitude and evolvement of emotions depict the enduring effects of prejudice and societal boundaries on the speaker. Unable to rise past the class system, the speaker remains on the outskirts of city limits, picking berries. Losing his enjoyment of picking berries, the speaker comes to a new realization about the cold side of reality, and consequently, when the speaker gives up his child-like view of the world and the sweetness of nature, he receives pain, the stinging thorns of

In a quest for a sense of belonging and success in life as well as a need for survival and money from a steady job, Richard attempts to conform to the social rules of those around him and the expectations of how he must behave like a second-class citizen. To feel like a part of the community and to please his family in hopes of improving his home life, Richard begins to attend a Protestant church. He consents to become a member of the church and is baptized, but he does so to please his mother and because his need for association and acceptance with a group is immense. After the church service that night, Richard reflects, “I had not felt anything except a sullen anger and a crushing sense of shame. Yet I was somehow glad that I had got it over with; no barriers now stood between me and the community”. In addition to these expectations from his family and the black community he associated with,

a prison or a treadmill; he did not think for a second that the places

The first example of society behavior is used through the story of a late thirties white man name Benhard Goetz who shoots four black youths on a subway cart in New York. This anecdote is significant to the novel because it takes place in the mid-80s where society is pointed by drugs, and violent brutality wreaks havoc through the city of New York. Leaving his Manhattan apartment, Goetz hops on the subway and notices four African American youths “horsing around,” and “acting rowdy.” According to the story, Troy Canty, one of the boys, asked Goetz for five dollars. Out of instinct James another one of the boys, “gestured toward a suspicious-looking bulge in his pocket, as if he had a gun in there.”

Storm Runners by Roland Smith. This book is about a boy named Chase Masters whose with his father.. They travel across the country to areas where natural disasters have hit or are expected too and help rebuild in the aftermath for a fee.

Once attending college, the man is betrayed by his professor, Dr. Bledsoe. “‘Tell anyone you like,’ he said. ‘I don’t care. I wouldn’t raise my little finger to stop you because I do not owe anyone a thing, son’”(Ellison 153). In the same way, Dr. Bledsoe creates betrayal because the narrator looks up to him and the professor wants nothing to do with the narrator. Moreover, he a gets in predicament at well known bar called Golden days, which lead Dr. Bledsoe to ask the man to leave the college. Evermore, Dr. Bledsoe grants the narrator the opportunity to attend school by handing the man seven letters of employment recommendations to Harlem. Besides, this act of kindness from Bledsoe is just to appease the narrator from returning to the college. Additionally, Dr. Bledsoe presents, “A former student of ours (I say former because he shall never, under any circumstances, be enrolled as a student here again) who has been expelled for a most serious defection from our strictest rules of deportment” (Ellison 168). Ironically, the principal Mr. Norton promises not to dislodge the man from the school, but this was just so the narrator would return to the school to prove that nobody would speak up on his behalf. Essentially, Dr. Bledsoe gives the narrator the impression that he has a future at Harlom and the all-black college, but to no prevail because of the betrayal of Bledsoe.

The use of blunt language constantly throughout his narrative conveys the lives of suffering slave during the 1800’s. The author states that “He dealt sparingly with his words, and bountifully with his whip” when discussing how the slaveholders treated the ones they thought

1. One of the main characters in the book Black and Blue is a woman named Frannie Benedetto. Some of the roles that Frannie had were being a wife, a mother, a Catholic, and a nurse. Her role as a wife was very challenging, due to the fact that she was in an abusive relationship and was married to a New York City Police Officer. Frannie had been married to her husband Bobby Benedetto for almost twenty years. Her entire relationship with her husband has been traumatizing. Numerous times Frannie had been physically assault, raped, and belittled. Bobby physically assaulted Frannie when she was nineteen years old for the first time in their relationship. Frannie recalls many times that Bobby came home drunk and would rape her. Bobby belittled his wife by accusing her of sleeping with the doctors she worked with and by making her feel like she had deserved to get beaten up by him. One of the major reasons that Frannie stayed in the relationship with Bobby was because of their son.

A person’s heritage and cultural identity may be lost when moving to a new country where the culture is different and other cultures are not easily accepted. In the short story “Hindus”, Bharati Mukherjee uses setting, characters and the plot to discuss what it is like to lose your cultural identity while being a visible minority in America. Mukherjee uses the plot to describe the events that take place in the main characters life that lead her to realize how different the culture and life is in the America’s. She also uses the characters as a way of demonstrating how moving away from one’s culture and heritage can change a person’s perspective and ways of thinking. Mukerjee also uses setting in her story to identity the physical differences in culture between living in India and America. Alike the setting and characters, the plot helps describe the loss of culture with a sequence of events.

When one first watches the movie, one may quickly judge that the characters are in direct contrast to the colors they represent. In the movie, Tangie (orange) which means vitality with endurance plays the part of a promiscuous girl whose hatred for her mother drives her to do what she does. On further look at her character, I realize she is a true reflection of the color orange. She endures sexual abuse from her grandfather and faces abortion at a tender age but is still strong enough to overcome it and bring out her true beauty. The text also employ poems and songs to show the intensity of pain and emphasize the strength of each character and women in general.

The varieties of jazz dance reflect the diversity of American culture. Jazz dance mirrors the social history of the American people, reflecting ethnic influences, historic events, and cultural changes. Jazz dance has been greatly influenced by social dance and popular music. But, like so much that is “from America”, the history of jazz dance begins somewhere else.

Almost all teens experience some sort of an identity crisis. They struggle with finding a clearer sense of themselves. Arnold Spirit Jr., a 14-year-old reservation Indian, faces an identity crisis when he leaves his reservation to go to school in Reardan, a town inhibited by white people. To begin, Arnold moves between different settings, and when he does, there is a change in his identity. Moreover, there is a change in his character as he moves between cities. Finally, Arnold experiences an identity crisis as well as conflicts with his community. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, the author uses literary elements to emphasize that one’s racial and ethnic identity changes depending on the social surrounding.

The oranges show the final obstacle the family must suffer through as a result of their migration. The final scene when the narrator finds a family member lying on a table with an orange next to it, “ The orange was dried-up and shrivelled” (144). As discussed previously, the orange represents the homeland of the family. However, the memories and good times associated with the homeland is what is important. The realization of this loss is what seemed to be the final obstacle. It’s easy to relate the life cycle of an orange to their eventual sentiments. An starts out as a mere flower that emerges into a full and ripe fruit, just as this homeland was the grounds in which they shared and grew up on. Once the family left their homeland, they left behind their memories just as if we left behind an orange and were unable to eat it. However, as the orange begins to shrivel up and die, the orange loses all meaning. Just as the memories and thoughts established as a child start to disappear in a saddening fashion at the end of the short story.