Be A Gang Member, By Bill Lee And We Real Cool By Gwendolyn Brooks

The life of a gang member is a rough road of obstacles, it’s dangerous, violent, and frightening. The article What’s it like to be a Gang Member, by Bill Lee, and the poem We Real Cool, by Gwendolyn Brooks, portray this message using different methods. The texts both describe an aspect of danger, and also a cycle that gang members fall into that can affect them for the rest of their lives. Each time a new stanza in the poem, We Real Cool, by Gwendolyn Brooks occurs, the author moves onto another aspect of his life as a gangster. He does this to get across the message to the reader, for example, “We real cool. We left school.” tells the reader that gangsters usually drop out of school. Dropping out of school early can have life lasting effect on a person, and Gwendolyn Brooks uses specific textual features to make this point. Another example of what Brooks uses in the text is, “We Die soon.” which is in a new stanza, and shares with the reader that gangsters often die young. Lastly, Gwendolyn Brooks says, “We Thin gin” which refers to the gang members drinking alcohol, and that information is the main point of its stanza.

For example, “And when your buddies are jumping someone…” is a moment where the author feels the need to put emphasis on the word jumping. Since the author uses italics, the reader is able to easily identify that the word jumping is important, and it shows danger in gang life. Secondly, Bill Lee expresses his memory of gang life is when he uses comparisons. For example, when he wrote about the ruthlessness of gangsters he included, “it was dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest”. In addition, he wrote that, “membership required a different mindset.”, which informs the reader about what you may be going through emotionally when a person joins a