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The Murals In Shadowshaper By Daniel Jose Older

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Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older is about Sierra Santiago a teen living in Brooklyn. Sierra is an artist and has recently started a big mural on the side of a building as summer starts. While working on it she looks across to the mural on the wall adjacent and notices its fading and the expression seems to be changing to an angry man them she sees a tear fall from the eye of the man in the mural and she knows something is wrong, and that something really weird is going on. The Mural is greatly pushed by Manny and her grandfather to get it done fast to help save everyone because someone is coming for them. Sierra doesn’t know much about what is after them but follows her grandfather’s directions that starts a whole adventure for her summer …show more content…

Bennie calls it “the takeover (70)” in the book. Gentrification is what its called when wealthy people and businesses move to low income areas and rebuild and move in and push out the low income businesses and families because this change makes it more expensive for families to live there. “The place that Sierra and Bennie used to get there hair done had turned into a fancy bakery of some kind, and yes, the coffee was good, but you couldn’t get a cup for less then three dollars. Plus everytime Sierra went in, the hip, young white kid behind the counter gave her either the don’t cause no trouble look or the I want to adopt you look(70).” While Izzy enjoys sitting in the new, expensive coffee shops and writing poetry, the threat in the changing culture is shown when Sierra is chased through the streets by spirits and no one in the white neighborhood will help her because they assume about her and think the worst of her for being …show more content…

Sierra paints a humongous mural of a dragon on the side of a concrete building “five-story concrete monstrosity” that was built by developers but never finished and it is useless but kind of makes a connection to the villan of the book, Jonathan Wick who is against the shadowshapers becausue he doesn’t understand it and wants to destroy something he doesn’t understand like how the building is destroying the community. “We hate the Tower,” Manny the Domino King tells her, explaining why her ­mural is important. “We spit on the Tower. Your paint is our nasty loogie, hocked upon the stupidity that is the Tower.” It turns out that the mural is important for another reason not only to give the building color but to have Sierra channel spirits into hers and Robbie’s art. Sierra learns that she comes from a family of shadowshapers. Shadowshapers are like magicians that bring friendly spirties into art and those spirits defent the community they live in form the bad. After learning about this, her talents and family past she must fix the bad and embrace the good and bad of it

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The book “Shadowshaper” by Daniel Jose, is a diverse urban fantasy novel that takes place in Brooklyn. The story begins with Sierra Santiago an Afro-Latino, who was painting a mural on an abandoned building when all of the sudden the mural started fading too quickly, the faces on mural started shifting from happy to terror, some of them shedding tears. Sierra’s grandfather, Lazaro who can’t talk due to a stroke, tells her the Shadowshaper are coming and she has to finish the murals as quickly as possible. She also needs to find Robbie an artist, who is going to help her. Together, Sierra, Robbie, and her friends unraveling the mystery of Shadowshaper and her family connection to them.

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Gentrification is the process of improving a struggling neighborhood for affluent people. One of the main causes of this shown by Kelefa Sanneh’s article “Is Gentrification Really a Problem?” , is the real estate market. Things that affect the value of something in a certain neighborhood can end up having a direct influence in all of the neighborhood and can lead to gentrification. The construction of a luxury apartment building can attract more businesses and in turn, more high-quality living spaces which could eventually displace someone living three blocks away.

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His art work reminds me of the Latino culture. This art piece has lots of details that tell the story of Ruben Salazar death and how “police brutality" did occur and how they killed an innocent person without any reason. The picture does not display any threat to anyone besides the officer that shot the tear gas projector. In the Death of Salazar painting we see on the right side, the movie theater that is showing the death of Ruben Salazar. Moving toward the left in the center of the portrait we see the Silver Dollar Bar.

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The average price of the condos on the waterfront went from $219,000 to $200, 000 in the past few months (Seward pg.2, 2015). This decrease in housing prices is not common, though. It is found that when gentrification occurs, the average rents in a neighborhood rises. This is due to new renters who come to these neighborhoods who can afford to pay higher rents which raises the rent (ICPH pg.2, 2009). Resultantly, this causes people to move due to the increased rent.

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1. Alternating between two points of view, Ed’s and Lucy’s. Graffiti Moon follows former high school students as they travel around the city of Melbourne the night after graduation in search of the famous street artist Shadow. The two main characters, despite not being very fond of each other team up to search for Shadow.

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