The autobiography Black White and Jewish by Rebecca Walker is about her experiences growing up feeling split between two worlds. Rebecca Walker reminisces on her memories from childhood to high school being a “copper-colored” girl during the Civil Rights Era. Her parents married illegally against the interracial marriage laws that forbad them, however Rebecca was born after the laws were passed and still seen as an oddity to others. Her parents eventually get a divorce, leaving her in a lonely position when she realizes her life is drifting apart. Walker’s intends for her audience, biracial girls, to establish a relationship with her through the similarities they may have faced. She desires to define herself as a human rather than a symbol …show more content…
While living in San Francisco with her mother, Walker had a situation in elementary school where she was attacked by two boys in her grade. “Dakeba comes charging out of the building. He shouts to Robert, Get her! And then Robert stands in front of me and won’t let em by and starts pushing me with big, rough ashy hands. Dakeba gets behind me and when Robert pushes me my back slams into his chest. When Dakeba pushes me back, my chest shoves into Robert’s”(Walker 108). Walker uses various verbs and adjectives to make the reader feel like they are a witness to the scene. This moment is a turning point for Walker because it was her first experience being attacked and called out for her skin color after leaving the safety of her two parent home. After her parents divorce Walker was left in a vulnerable place and began to hang with the wrong company. The internal pain that she bottled up allowed her to make some decisions that she would regret years later. While living with her father in the Bronx, she hung out with a group of teens who did drugs. “I let my head fall all the way back until my eyes smack the blue sky. The clouds are start going fast. Soon it feels like I’m not on the car anymore and I am falling in circles into the sky”( Walker 196-197). This moment Walker applies a realistic feature to her words that allows her audience the ability to picture the scene. The author’s use of imagery presented her memories in a way that her audience could either relate or feel empathy towards
Anna Deavere Smith is a very talented woman; she’s a playwright, a journalist, author, and an actress. She focuses mainly on social issues particularly ones with race. Within the plays/books, Twilight Los Angeles 1992, Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities, and House Arrest, the race issues she talks about relates to recent events. In this paper, I will do my best to compare and contrast the books and the issues within them. I will also be discussing about how I feel about certain parts within these plays, each play, and them all together.
The novel Passing by Nella Larsen takes place in the 1920’s. The Passing consists of two characters, childhood friends; Clare and Irene. Both females are both mixed-race and portrait different lives, Clare lives her life as a white woman. Meanwhile, Irene lives her life as an African-American, true to herself.
A Paper on Rachel Dolezal 1. Outline Text 1, Civil rights activist Rachel Dolezal misrepresented herself as black, claims parents, presents an objective view on the case: whether Rachel Dolezal is African American or not. The author, Jes-sica Elgot describes how Dolezal began to adapt her appearance as African American, and ex-plains in what manner her social circle had affected her. However, according to her parents, she has misrepresented herself as black and she has chosen not to be herself, but somebody she is not.
In this book Glory is overwhelmed with how her town is handling people who are different than they are. She realizes that her favorite local pool is closing down so colored people can’t swim with the whites. Glory becomes an activist herself and writes a letter to the newspaper lining which makes her preacher father proud. Therefore, the theme of this book is to treat everyone equally, such as when Glory’s friend Frankie from Ohio drinks out of the “colored fountain”. Also, when Glory’s sisters boyfriend that he was arrested for sitting with a “colored friend” at the white table.
When an individual reads something historical they cannot fully comprehend the story because they did not live in that time period nor did they experience the event in the character’s shoes. In this story the writer uses imagery to make the reader feel as if they were present during the event. The entire story takes place on a beach where the author is a young child posing for a picture her grandmother is taking. While narrating this event in her life the writer describes the ocean, she says “The sun cuts the rippling Gulf in flashes with each tidal rush” The way in which she described the sunset on the ocean illustrates the event in a descriptive way in which the reader can imagine it and feel as if they were there. She also uses forms of imagery to create nostalgia, for example she states “ I am four in this photograph…
In the story “A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote, imagery is used to create an image in your mind by appealing to your five senses. Imagery is often used to describe the setting of the story and to give you an idea of what is going on. Capote shows many examples of imagery throughout the story to make you understand the importance of his memory. The use of imagery helps create the mood by making the story real and bringing you in what Capote saw.
“I’ll buy you something again if you don’t tell your mother,” he said in a flat tone as I heard his keys tinkle with every small movement he made. We were just making our way to the empty street, whose pavement color seem to fade into a colorless light grey. But those words he spoke made my heart race. I was looking down, noticing the unevenness elevations of the concrete and its cracks. Those damaged sidewalks were representing my father, showing off his unstable behavior or so I thought it was.
1920’s society offered a prominent way for blacks that look white to exploit its barrier and pass in society. Visible within Nella Larsen’s Passing, access to the regular world exists only for those who fit the criteria of white skin and white husband. Through internal conflict and characterization, the novella reveals deception slowly devours the deceitful. In Passing, Clare and Irene both deceive people. They both engage in deceit by having the ability to pass when they are not of the proper race to do so.
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 authors Paul Langan and Ben Alirez use characterization to show the theme how innocent people are victims of gang violence. Lagan and Alirez use the mom and Martin to show how innocent victims suffer. On page 14, the authors depict the mom with misery on her face through Martin eyes, “Even when she managed to stop, there were quiet tears rolling from her eyes, sparkling on her face like tiny shards of broken glass.” This shows that innocent people can also affect by violence. The mom with the big wound in her heart, and that wound even worse than physical wound, will last the rest of her life: The mom lost her little son without official reason.
When Ruth McBride was a teenager in Suffolk, VA, all she wanted was to be like the other teenagers in her school, white Anglo Saxon protestant Americans (McBride, 2006, p 109). In other words, she would have liked to conform to norms of the society that she spent most of her time with. However, because she was a Jew in the rural south in the 1930’s and 40’s, and because she was the child of an abusive and overbearing Orthodox Jewish father, she never had a chance to try (McBride, 2006). To conform to the norms of her society, Ruth would have had to remain obedient to her father and had as little interaction as possible with non-Jews and African American people
She was born into a poor family of 10. Her Dads income was share cropping while her mother was a maid. With both jobs her parents still had to struggle with feeding all of the family. Walker was the youngest of all the boys which made her a perfect target for shenanigans and roughhousing; during a game of Cowboys and Indians one of her brothers shot her in the eye with a BB gun. The gun wound had left her eye scarred for six years she went from happy and fun to shy and quiet.
“A Short Guide to Imagery, Symbolism, and Figurative Language Imagery” describes imagery as “a writer or speaker’s use of words or figures of speech to create a vivid mental picture or physical sensation”(Clark). In the short story, “The Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin uses nature imagery to portray the journey of emotions that Mrs. Mallard experiences
Slavery in America created an upsurge of racial discrimination. This demoralizing practice forced many generations of black “slave” Americans to endure, or more specifically suffer the extortions of white people. They were dehumanized as the very essential criteria for survival in society was eliminated from their lives or even from their dreams. Their identity, their self respect suffered for they were viewed as the “properties” of white people. America gradually became a powerful country
In the poem “The Instant of My Death”, poet Sarah Jackson utilized sensory image through the use of figurative language. Sarah delivered various images in her work to the readers by using similes and metaphors. For example, she uses the simile ‘the fat man rubbed against my leg like a damp cat’ to help the readers better understand the narrator’s feeling of disgust and uncomfort towards the fat man sitting next to him/her. Usually, a ‘damp cat’ isn’t a pleasant sight, nor is it a good feeling to get rubbed by it. Sarah cleverly uses this to her advantage and intentionally incorporates touch and sight imagery to enhance the emotions of the reader.