Pauli Murray’s Proud Shoes tells the story of Murray’s family as they developed through segregation. After the death of her parents, Murray is taken to live with her grandparents, Robert and Cornelia Fitzgerald. Proud Shoes focuses on the life of Robert and Cornelia and how they experienced life differently due to their individual situations. This book discusses how race and gender played key roles in the life of Robert and Cornelia. Through this discussion, readers are able to understand a broader American life based on individual experiences and express topics on gender identity and gender difference.
The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson contains many accounts of madness and magic that shaped society in Chicago in the late 19th century. The city of Chicago hoped that hosting the world’s fair would lift their reputation of being the “black city.” Daniel Burnham, the man who created the magic, was put in charge as the lead architect of the fair; he had to overcome many obstacles in order to create the dazzling designs that turned Chicago into the “white city.” Along with the magic comes the madness, the madness is created by H H Holmes who believes the he is the “devil” and goes through Chicago and other cities killing numerous people. Through the novel, The Devil in the White City, Larson uses contrasting juxtaposition, extreme
In Eugenia W. Collier’s short story “Marigolds”, Lizabeth and her family experience an external conflict against society when the Great Depression’s burdens fall onto them, creating both emotional and financial stress; in this, Collier reveals that external struggle may lead to reckless actions. Early on, Lizabeth describes poverty as “...the cage in which [her family] was trapped…”, alluding to her desire to be free from the bars of impoverishment (Collier 126). Towards the climax in the story, Lizabeth hears her father crying about his inability to support his family without a steady income, which leads to her “...feelings [combining] in one great impulse toward destruction” (Collier 126). In this, Collier projects the idea that strenuous
The Devil in the White City The Devil in the White City is a historical non-fiction book written by Erik Larson that reads like a novel. The book follows two, real main characters, during the building and existence of the Chicago World’s fair. The first is an American architect named Daniel Burnham.
If you had to drop everything you had leave your life right now and go to pursue a better life, would you be able to do it? You would have to leave everything you have like your family, friends, and your job, to step out into an into an unknown world and start a new life. In the Devil in the White City, this was a thought that was running through many of the lower class and some middle class's mind looking for a new life or to trying to get money. There are many jobs that were available during the construction and during the fair like construction and cashiers or other positions for the stores in Chicago. Construction was one of the most important jobs/parts in the building of the fair so it was going to take a vast number of workers to be able
The Langdon family, as Some Luck envisions them, serve as an emotional ambassador for the thousands of Iowa farm families like them. Their story with its emphasis on the everyday and the incremental changes in Midwestern life, is something millions of Americans today both inside and out of the borders of the Midwest can relate to on an emotional level as the story of their own ancestors. Smiley chooses to examine changes in Midwestern life, not through the lenses of statistics, great men, cataclysmic events or lingering effects, but by invoking her imagination of how change was experienced as it occurred. She succeeds at conveying a truth in fiction, representative of thousands of truths in fact which will never be discovered. The historical
It is often said that a new definition of a woman arose in the 1920s. But is that true? While most women experienced many newfound freedoms in the 1920s, black women could not explore these freedoms as easily as white women. In the novel Passing by Nella Larsen, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry grew up in Chicago together and are now both two wives and mothers in New York City during the 1920s, but there is a big difference between them. The novel’s title refers to light-skinned black women masquerading as white women for social benefits.
Characters like Mr. Thornton from North and South were able to rise from poverty into their wealth. Dodd provides readers with an alternative point of view opposing Thornton’s upbringing. As a work of nonfiction, Dodd’s encounters and experiences are more raw and descriptive. From the beginning of the text until the end, Dodd tells readers about how working in mills or factories has impacted his life. Dodd was not always crippled and he explains himself at the time as “ a fine, strong, healthy, hardy boy, straight in every limb, and remarkably stout and active” (Dodd 187) .
In Erik Larson’s novel The Devil in the White City takes place during the Gilded Age. During this period of time everything appears good and golden on the outside when in reality everything was full of corruption. In the novel, the author takes the reader to the city of Chicago, where the city is “swelled “in population causing the city to expand in all “available directions” (Larson 44). As Chicago became the “second most populous [city] in the nation after New York” there was an urge that city show off to the world and the nation of how great it was through the Chicago World’s Fair (Larson 44).
Living on the Nebraska prairie in the late 1800’s was a hard life, but even more so if you were a girl from Bohemia who did not speak English. Antonia is the eldest daughter of the Shimerda family and is a bold and spirited young woman who becomes the center of the Jim Burden’s attention. Outlasting childhood poverty, family tragedy, and seduction that leads to betrayal, My Antonia describes how one woman survives the prairie using her strength, courage, and the immigrant spirit of hope for a better life. My Antonia begins on a train where two old friends, a nameless female and Jim Burden, have a conversation about their childhood past.
In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck uses the ranch as a demonstration of marginalization between characters' lives. Those who have no control over their lives lose all or any little source of power they had and hand it over to the people in positions of power way higher than them. Throughout the journey on the ranch, many characters experience different demonstrations of marginalization such as gender, race and poverty. John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men, illustrates the experiences of Curley’s Wife and Crooks, and how gender and race compounds the character’s feelings of isolation and loneliness.
Debra Marquart's memoir, "The Horizontal World," is a compelling and evocative work that explores the complex relationships between people, places, and identities in the American Midwest. Through a careful examination of personal anecdotes, cultural myths, and historical context, Marquart creates a rich and nuanced portrait of life in the Midwest. One of the central themes of the book is the idea of home and belonging. Marquart grew up in a small town in North Dakota, and her memoir reflects on her experiences of leaving and returning to the Midwest throughout her life. She explores the ways in which the Midwest can feel both comforting and confining, and how the landscape and culture of the region have shaped her sense of self.
In her autobiography, I Came a Stranger Hilda Polacheck reveals the conflicting role of women in the late 19th / early 20th century as workers, caregivers, and social activists in a conflicting age of progress, hardship and missed expectations. Coming from a very traditional Jewish family in Poland it seems that Polacheck was destined to be a full time mother and wife never having immersed herself in the American society where women were becoming more and more relevant. The death of her father changes all of this forcing herself, her mother, and her siblings to fight for survival. This fight is not only what transformed Hilda Polacheck into the woman we remember her as today, but into an American . At age thirteen and even much later after her husband’s death forced Polacheck to go to work to keep her family fed and clothed.
These “minorities” majorly affect The Women of Brewster Place, a novel by Gloria Naylor. All the women face challenges that still affect women today. Mattie Michael, a recurring character throughout the seven stories, was ejected from her home because she is impregnated. She leaves her home in the south and goes up north, around the same time as the Great Migration. Because she was forced to leave her home, it was hard for her to find a decent and affordable place to live in the North, as a ripple effect
Somewhere Between Discord and Solidarity: Industrialization, Conventions and Change in 1840-1890 America. Martha Hodes writes about a historic character, Eunice L. Richardson Stone who experiences challenges to her eternal desire to finally be a conventional woman in the pre-civil war North. A place that is industrializing at a rapid pace starting around the time Eunice was born, and continuing to well after the Civil War. Within this landscape, Hodes examines economic and social institutions, while simultaneously describing Eunice’s experiences.