Summary Of Sonora Babb's NovelWhose Names Are Unknown

The Worst Hard Times by Timothy Egan conveys the story of farmers who decided to prosper on the plains during the 1800s, in places such as Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. They decided to make living, and some stayed during the worst droughts in the United States in 1930s. High temperatures and dust storms destroyed the area, killing animals and humans. This competently book reveals the prosperity for many, later revealing the time of the skinny cows. The story is based on the testimonies of the survivors or through their diaries/journals and on historical research. The author describes the struggles of the nesters, in which Egan clearly blames these catastrophic events on the settler’s hubris.

In American Indian Stories, University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London edition, the author, Zitkala-Sa, tries to tell stories that depicted life growing up on a reservation. Her stories showed how Native Americans reacted to the white man’s ways of running the land and changing the life of Indians. “Zitkala-Sa was one of the early Indian writers to record tribal legends and tales from oral tradition” (back cover) is a great way to show that the author’s stories were based upon actual events in her life as a Dakota Sioux Indian. This essay will describe and analyze Native American life as described by Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories, it will relate to Native Americans and their interactions with American societies, it will

This is a very important part of the book because it shows the reader that the

“Indians are like the weather.” With his opening words Vine Deloria Jr. sets up the basis for the rest of his witty yet substantial manifesto, Custer Died for Your Sins. The book, which describes the struggles and misrepresentation of the American Indian people in 1960s American culture, is written in a style that changes from ironic and humorous satire to serious notions, then back again. Through energetic dialogue that engages the reader in a clever and articulate presentation, Deloria advocates the dismissal of old stereotypes and shows a viewpoint that allows the general public to gain a deeper understanding of what it is to be an American Indian.

The "dirty thirties," as many called it, was a time when the earth ran amok in southern plains for the better part of a decade. This great American tragedy, which was more devastating environmentally as well as economically than anything in America's past or present, painstakingly tested the spirit of the southern plainsmen. The proud folks of the south refused at first to accept government help, optimistically believing that better days were ahead. Some moved out of the plains, running from not only drought but from the new machine-controlled agriculture. As John Steinbeck wrote in the bestseller The Grapes of Wrath, "it was not nature that broke the people-they could handle the drought. It was business farming, seeking a better return on land investments and buying tractors to pursue it, that had broken these people, smashing their identity as natural beings wedded to the land."(pg. 58) The machines, one-crop specialization, non-resident farming, and soil abuse were tangible threats to the American agriculture, but it was the capitalistic economic values behind these land exploitations that drove the plainsmen from their land and created the Dust Bowl.

O’Connor also poses the contrast between the old and new South in her short story “Good Country People”. Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman represent the old South because of the way in which they carry themselves and their traditional beliefs and values. Mrs. Freeman works for Mrs. Hopewell who states “the reason for her keepin her so long was that they were not trash. They were good country people”(O’Connor 272). Mrs. Hopewell describes Mrs. Freeman and her two daughters as “two of the finest girls she knew and Mrs. Freeman was a lady and that she was never ashamed to take her anywhere or introduce her to anybody they might mett”(O’Connor

The life of a ranch girl is unknown to many people across America. In Maile Meloy’s Ranch Girl, a female narrator brings the reader into her hard life being raised as a ranch girl. Through many different literary devices including, tone, mood, and characterization, the writer set the reader to feel everything the narrator depicts and the reader ingested with a heavier impact than the reader anticipates. The obligation to the community for the ranch girl is to break all stereotypes, thus showing her community and all ranch girls alike that she can be successful and break free of the ranch girl life.

With her West Virginia upbringing and living in a coal town, she was inspired to write about “rednecks” in a more positive way. The main way of her doing so was to bring to light the characters of the novel and their loyalty to family, the land and values. The characters are very relatable, the characters manage to wiggle their way into the reader’s heart. It is easy for the reader to become attached characters and to the issues arising in the book. It is in fact a part of our history, native to Appalachia or

The multidimensional expression “hillbilly” carries different cultural significances throughout the book Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. First, Vance utilizes the term “hillbilly” to refer to the working class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree (3). Second, Vance uses the term hillbilly to refer to a group of people from a specific geographic area, namely the area of the Appalachian Mountains. According to Vance, the area stretches from Alabama to Georgia in the South to Ohio to parts of New York in the north (4). Third, hillbilly indicates the way of life, behavior, or identity of the people of Greater Appalachia.

Desert Immigrants: The Mexicans of El Paso 1880-1920 analyzes and discusses the Mexican immigrants to El Paso, Texas. The most western city of the vast state of Texas, a city in the edge of the Chihuahuan desert; a place too far away from many regions of the United States, but as Mario García explains a very important city during the development of the western United States. He begins explaining how El Paso’s proximity to different railroads coming from México and the United States converged there, which allowed El Paso to become an “instant city”, as mining, smelting, and ranching came to region. (García 2)

The opening of the novel presents a prelude of how life for the 19th century cowboy was and how

As the book progresses through the years, Blevins begins to introduce several famous faces that call Arkansas their home, in what he calls the Heyday of the Hillbilly. He mentions everyone from musicians to actors, athletes to novelists, and intellects to political figures. For each one mentioned, Blevins describes their experience with the Arkansas image, whether they found a way to embrace it or let it bring them down. It's

I started this essay off with a quote one of the characters mention in the book because it basically gives us the main idea the author is trying to get readers to understand throughout the book. By looking at the title of this novel, “The Book of Unknown Americans” and by looking at the author’s name- Cristina Henriquez, we can already get an idea of what this novel is going to be about. When someone first takes a look at the title and author of this book they would assume that it is going to be about immigrants who moved to the United States and struggled to fit in. After reading this novel, I now understand how difficult it was for these Latino immigrants to leave everything they have in hope for better lives here in the United States. Each person has their own meaning of what it means to be an American and their own reason of what most immigrants come here for. The Rivera family came here in hope for better resources to help treat Maribel because they didn 't have the resources they needed back in their country.

In the opening scene of Jane Martin’s “Rodeo,” there are many stereotypical props used to portray the beer-drinking, hard-working, cowboy image with the characteristic country music playing as an added touch. Most people are familiar with this type of scene in their minds, with a man as the character, but not this time – we find a tough, smart, opinionated woman with a distinctively country name of Lurlene, and the typical cowboy kind of nickname, Big Eight. The reader will dive deeper into the true character of this unusual woman and realize that she is no different from the average woman in today’s workforce. She is feeling the frustration of discrimination and the push out of the only lifestyle that she knows, by “Them” (1667).

Setting: Post World War I era, 1919. In Howard’s (Kreb’s) quaint home town in Oklahoma. All who have returned from the harsh war are welcomed; their stories as well. All except for Krebs.