The drum major’s voice rings out, sharp and clear in the tense silence. We hear her call us to set, and we freeze. The band is across the field, standing a block, every member leaning forward, forming the same angle towards the ground. We are lined up from the 35 yard line to the 45, lying on the wet grass as if we are asleep. We are perfectly still, then suddenly we rise, kicking our legs in unison.
In the year 1861 the Civil war started. The Confederates and The Union fought, thousands of men and women died and America was torn in two. The Girl in Blue, by Ann Rinaldi takes place in 1861 when a girl by the name of Sarah Louisa Wheelock runs away from home, disguises herself as a man and joins the Flint Union Grays, a regiment that becomes a part of the 2nd Michigan Infantry. Sarah wanted to help the Union, however women were not allowed to fight, only become nurses, so Sarah disguises herself and goes by the name Neddy Compton. Throughout the book Sarah is constantly battling with herself, trying not to be found out to be a girl until the unexpected happened.
Grace Peterson, the dynamic protagonist of this story, is a 20-year old lead line staffer at a group home nicknamed “Short Term 12.” After her mother died and a history of sexual abuse from her father, she landed in a group home very similar to Short Term 12. This inspired her to take care of children that faced similar neglect by their parents. This job is emotionally draining and requires strong leadership and organizational skills to provide for the children and keep them in line. This is why, according to the Matrix System True Colors Personality Test, Grace's Personality reflects the colors blue and gold.
In the poem “ What it is like to be a black girl”, Patrica Smith uses metaphorical language to show us how young black girls are being judge in society based on stereotypes . It’s describing how she wants to change and become like other people in the racial society because she’s having a hard time accepting who she is. In the beginning of “What it’s like to be a black girl” it gives you a view of a young black girl who doesn’t feel accepted in society. It emphasis the fact that many young black girls want the world to accept them for who they are.
Finding your purpose in life can be the hardest thing to do for many people. Especially when your entire family is finding the meaning of their own life and creating the world they want for themselves. In the novel, Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson tells the story of her life as a young black girl growing up with two problems she’s facing. She is living during a time of segregation against black people, and she doesn’t know what her identity is. She finds throughout the story that she has a love for words and writing.
1)Hurston’s opening paragraph in “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” functions as a joke that aims to lessen the stigma around discussing race in the 1920s. The phrase “extenuating circumstances” is defined as lessening the seriousness of a situation and therefore reducing any consequence that may emerge from her controversial stance. Hurston’s assertion that her “grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief” is intended to bring humor to the African American tendency to claim Native American ancestry in order to raise their social status. Her sarcastic juxtaposition of accepting her color versus colored people distancing themselves from it creates a colloquial tone that illustrates her defiance of social stigmas and norms. This biting opening paragraph intrigues the reader and allows her audience to grasp the overall purpose of the
Charles Chesnutt’s “The Doll” is a story of seeking truth, facing discrimination, and making bold choices for the sake of one’s own livelihood. Through Tom Taylor’s slow-building narrative, Chesnutt reveals the complications keeping the barber from exacting his revenge on the man who murdered his father, despite having the perfect opportunity to do so when the same man, Colonel Forsyth, steps into Tom’s barbershop. While “The Doll” primarily illustrates Tom’s emotional turmoil as the colonel taunts him by retelling the story of his father’s death, it also presents a overarching question at the heart of this tale, regarding how black Americans are to advance and protect themselves as individuals within a societal system built against that very
When African-American leader and activist Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4th, 1968, third-grade teacher Jane Elliott knew she had to do something to adequately communicate the severity of racism to her students from the all-white, all-Christian rural town of Riceville, Iowa (“California Newsreel”). Deciding to give her class the opportunity to experience the discrimination that blacks go through based on the arbitrary trait of skin color, Elliott set up an exercise in which she discriminated based on another arbitrary trait, eye color. On one day, she treated her blue-eyed students as superior and her brown-eyed students as inferior, citing false evidence to support her discrimination; on the next day, she reversed the roles, using new evidence that brown-eyed people are superior to justify her change. The sharp contrast in the students’ attitudes and behavior between the two days, along with the students’ deeper understanding of the negative effects of discrimination, showed Elliott that her exercise was an effective tool to combat racism and encourage empathy for discriminated minorities. Elliott continued to conduct her “Blue Eyed” exercise in Riceville and later became the pioneer of workplace diversity training when she expanded it into a workshop for business employees.
Dorothy Vaughan When Dorothy first came to Langley to join the West Computing, she’d had a stable teaching career and a family at home. Dorothy was a natural leader, even if not always shown, and she was really good at math. While America was caught up in the space race, Dorothy taught herself the programming language of FORTAN, and later headed the programming division of the Analysis and Computation Division at Langley. Dorothy is a brave African-American woman, with natural leadership skills, Dorothy is a protagonist with a personality like no other. In the beginning, Dorothy seems to be a normal African-American woman with a large family (husband and six children) to take care of.
Both Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes were writers who wrote of not only the struggles of African Americans but also wrote to empower African Americans to see themselves as great human beings and see their worth, despite what was instilled in their brains. Zora was an anthropologist, she studied the social, cultural and behavioral development of humans. The essay I am going to be analyzing by Zora is the 1928 essay “How It Feels to be Colored Me”. In the essay “How It Feels to be Colored Me,” Zora writes about the hardships that are associated with being black during her time.
Silent Racism George Saunders ' "The Semplica Girl Diaries", is written in the style of a diary in which the narrator of the diary is a lower middle-class father is just trying to make ends meet. The father seems to have good intentions by always putting his family 's happiness as his priority; however, the consequences of his actions never seem to be quite as good. One lucky day he happens to stumble upon a winning lottery ticket and as expected, he spends it on objects he believes will make his family happy. Yet in the end it turns out that winning the lottery was more of a curse than a blessing. One of the biggest purchases from his lottery money was four Semplica Girls, who essentially hung out in the lawn like pieces of decoration.
“I did not make out a very good cause for myself, for i was crying before he had finished. It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose. ” She was very nervous and was to emotional and couldn 't think straight.
Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” highlights the experiences of a woman of color in the early 1920s who is stripped of her personal pride of her own identity by a racist society. Despite her odds, Hurston chooses to mentally combat the racist ideals and beliefs of the time that were being pressured upon her by society. This led her to regain her own personal power in her pride for her identity as a woman of color. Hurston grew up with pride in her identity as a black girl, in a small colored town where it had never been challenged before. Then, as she is introduced to a mixed city for her education, her strength in her cultural identity is challenged by racist beliefs.
Shashawnda Campbell Reading Prompt #7 For colored girls… 1. Indicate two sentences or thoughts you found well written. What makes each a strong sentence? -"& she wanted to be unforgettable - she wanted to be a memory - a wound to every man - arragant enough to want her- she waz the wrath -of women in windows"(30)
Growing up my parents instilled in me that I was beautiful and my skin was beautiful. It was clear to me that everyone else didn’t feel the same way. I went to a couple different schools throughout my life starting with a predominantly black school then a predominantly white school then a very diverse school and at each one I still experienced colorism. At the black school I was not liked because I was darkskin and my hair was kinky and I was just not as pretty as the light skinned girls.
