en-year-old Kenny Watson is the middle child of an African-American family of five whom he affectionately refers to as the Weird Watsons—who live in Flint, Michigan, in the 1960s. He is very bright, but has a lazy eye that makes him the target of bullying, though he notes that things could be worse, if not for his thirteen-year-old brother Byron. Sometimes Byron leads the bullying, but other times he subtly defends Kenny instead. Kenny doesn’t have a real friend, though, until the day that Rufus and Cody Fry move to town, from Arkansas. Rufus and Cody have a southern accent and an obvious lack of money that make them the new butt of everyone’s teasing. At first, Kenny is just relieved that the attention is no longer on him, and hesitates to associate with the boys, but soon he is sharing his lunches, his gloves, and his time with Rufus, and Rufus responds by becoming the first real friend Kenny has ever had.When the three siblings head out to go swimming, and Grandma Sands warns them to …show more content…
The author may have used sources from newspapers from that era. Stories told by people in that time who had made journeys from the north to the south, and stories found in newspapers about both michigan and alabama in that time period. The author also may have been using sources from elders that had experienced such in the times of the book taking place.
IV. Personally my perception hasn’t changed a lot. But it does give insight into the world in that era. It shows not only major aspects of society like racism but also shows minor things like the way people talked and acted in that time. It also documents a true bombing that took place in alabama in the time the book is set in.
V. The author hasn’t shown many or any bias that I have noted. However I do believe that another perspective of the world would allow better insight when reading the book. Possibly a remake but from his mothers perspective would be very very interesting. Or any other family member for that
A slave, Betty Abernathy’s, account of plantation life, “We lived up in Perry County. The white folk had a nice big house an’ they was a number of poor little cabins fo’ us folks. Our’s was a one room, built of logs, an’ had a puncheon floor. ‘Ole ‘Massa’ had a number of slaves but we didden have no school, ‘ner church an’ mighty little merry-makin’. Mos’ly we went barefooted the yeah ‘round.”
They truly believed in civil rights and preached out that everyone has a voice. There were plenty of foreshadowing I caught reading the novel.
From 1954-1968 black people were not safe, every Every day they would be scared to go outside because blacks were tortured and beat and even killed. In the book Watsons go to Birmingham The Watsons lived in Flint michigan and they took a drive to go see their grandma and to take Byron there too. She lived in Alabama so they got there car all ready to go and drove to Alabama.
I feel like there were more problems than the book mentioned but the main problems were still there. They did not want the slaves to be free and they did not want black men to gain equal rights as white men because the white men in the South believed that black men should not be considered equal to white men. The book did a good job of showing the view of the South and that is important because you need to look at both sides of the argument before you make a
The book was very informative of life when racism was more apparent. I think that books like this show that standing up to racism is an option. It shows that even children of a younger age were involved in the situation.
In the novel, white Americans did not portray American values, publishing the book questioned America and its
But I will give the author this, the book had great slang from the old days and it was pretty funny. Moving on, there was the whole Watson 's family: Joey the smallest one, Kenny the 4th grade narrator, Byron a 13 year old juvenile delinquent, the dad, and the mom from Birmingham Alabama. Byron gets
The authors use of words such as “dark clouds of racial prejudice” and “I cannot sit idly by” shows the injustice that was occurring in Birmingham. The “dark clouds” represent the social climate of Birmingham, allowing readers to see the negative effect it his having on the black citizens. He believed the injustice needed to be addressed and action needed to be taken against it, therefore what he did was justified. Additionally when Martin Luther King writes, “nagging signs reading ‘white’ men and colored when your first name becomes ‘nigger’ and your wife and mother are never given the respected title of Mrs…” This further demonstrates the unjust treatment of African Americans which is why someone needed to take action and not idly sit by as these things occcurred.
It is a heart wrenching story, but it gives you perspective. We sometimes fail to remember how hard people worked in the past for the equality of today. This book helps people remember not to take freedom for granted, and it also allows us to remember those who lost there lives because of injustice. I would also recommend this book because Ida B. Wells was from Mississippi. It is important to have an appreciation for history, especially the history of the state that you live in.
The book was challenged by a middle school in Brentwood, Tennessee in 2006 because the book contains “profanity” and “contains adult themes such as rape and incest.” The complaints also say that the book promotes “racial hatred, racial division, racial separation, and promotes white supremacy.” The people that say that are people that are trying to ‘protect’ other people from knowing and understanding what happened in the past because they believe that if they do know and understand what happened in the past then they will become racist and believe in white supremacy. These kinds of people are like the Holocaust deniers who believe that six million Jews where not murdered despite all of the evidence against that. George Santayana once said “Those who cannot remember the past are bound to repeat it.”
Many African American authors and critics very strongly disagreed with how the white plantation owners and the slaves were portrayed in the book. For example Nat Turner’s first slave owner, Samuel Turner, was presented in very high light. This was probably not the case, and that is the reason it enraged so many readers. The book was also banned in some places because of the sexual violence that was portrayed in the novel. Before I get into the book itself it is important to know about the actual person who was Nat Turner and the rebellion that he led in 1831.
Humans live in a world where moral values are very clearly set determining what is good and what is bad. We know what scares us and how racism should be treated. Nevertheless, this was not the case back in Alabama during the 1950s. In the famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee narrates the lives of the people of Maycomb, Alabama, focusing on the story of Scout and Jem Finch, and the case of a said to be rape. In this emotion filled narrative, readers learn how life was back then not only in general, but for the separate social statuses that there was.
How does Harper Lee vividly capture the effects of racism and social inequality on the citizens of Maycomb county in ‘To kill a mockingbird’? In the novel, ‘To kill a mockingbird’, Harper Lee conveys the theme of racism and social inequality by setting up the story in Maycomb, a small community in Alabama, the U.S back in 1930s. Lee presents some of the social issues of 1930s such as segregation and poverty in the novel. These issues are observed and examined through the innocent eyes of a young girl, Scout, the narrator.
How did the time period of the novel (30’s) affect how black people were treated? One of the main themes in To Kill a Mockingbird is racial discrimination. Examples of racism and prejudice against black people can be seen throughout the novel. There are several reasons as to why people segregate dark people and they are mostly the important events happening in the 30’s. The time period of which the book was written is the 1930’s
Lying uncomfortably on his side, on top of his stiff, springy mattress, Matt Watson stared with locked eyes up at a small dot on the ceiling. Nothing was interesting about it, nothing about was special, it was just there and that was all Matt cared about at the moment. Friends had come and gone in his past like a rich, chocolate cake, waiting to be devoured at a birthday party. One of these friends had actually brought him to the horrible hole in life where he was now, but through the year and a half he had spent in the Tripton, Tennesee, Correctional Facility, that puny dot was his companion through it all. Every night, including this peculiar one, Matt gazed at this small, circular, imperfection that rested on the smooth, gray ceiling,