Personal Narrative Essay: South Side Chicago

I have lived in East Oakland my whole life. To the majority of people, the mention of East Oakland evokes thoughts of violence, shootings, and gangs. I was one of the people who believed in these stereotypes, and for a particularly long time. I was one of the people who saw Oakland as a wasteland, a place with nothing to offer me, and a place I had nothing to offer to.

Even though the Chicago Race Riots was a negative event, over the years its effects became positive. As a result of all the looting and burning down businesses, it gave the developers a chance to integrate new business ideas and housing plans to help advance the community in the future. This is one of the major historical events used today as a lesson taught to

In No Way Out, Waverly Duck examines an urban neighborhood referred to as Bristol Hill, where the drug trade is prevalent among the residents. Duck challenges the popular misconception that these communities characterized by the drug trade, crime, and violence are tumultuous areas with no social order. Duck argues that the residents of this community have created an interaction order that is a complex social organization that allows for survival in such dangerous conditions. For seven years, Duck lived on Lyford Street in Bristol Hill, and his theory is built on his personal experiences and information gathered from residents in this community. Through residents’ personal narratives of their experiences and detailed observations, Duck validates his theory and shows how social order exists in these communities.

One night, during the cold winter, I walked along the side walk to reach the local store down the block. As I walked out, before I can realize it, I was dropping down onto the concrete while bullets swiftly passed me. I then began to run back home, but I wanted to keep running. Away from Chicago, away from the west side. Growing up in Chicago, it was easy to assume that there was nothing different beyond the blocks of my streets. Everybody lived the same way and talked the same way; not many people was different. I made my own decision, at the age of 10 to not be another statics of my community. When my mother moved my family and I to San Antonio, I devoted my time to school and bettering my opportunity to go to a Tier one institution which

Wicker Park was just a prairie before two brothers Charles and Joel Wicker purchased land along Milwaukee Avenue in 1870. When the Great Chicago Fire happened, and the city was starting to rebuild itself some chicagoans looked beyond the city limits. The land attracted families wanted to rebuild after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. The Great Fire spurred the first wave of development. Homeless chicagoans looked for building new houses. Eleven days after the fire the Aid society had 200 lots on Milwaukee Avenue for the construction of cheaps homes for the victims of the fire along Milwaukee Ave(Kreashko,2015). German, Scandinavians and other immigrants moved to Wicker Park after the Great Fire(Heidemann,2013). Wicker Park became a resident

I believe that Moore, the author, is trying to say that the second chance is trying to rewrite the first mistake and the last chance could be your last chance. The author’s last chance to stop his drug dealing was when he was sent to military school. His temper against his mother, bad grades, absences from classes and an incident with a smoke bomb were the reasons his mother sent him to military school. (Moore 87) The “other” Wes had the decision to stop selling drugs while raising his family. He later joined the Job Corps, but later realized he could not make the money like he did in the drug business. On page 144, Wes was passing the streets remaining him of his past, “But the main reason he avoided the streets was that he felt they had nothing for him. He had changed. At least he wanted to believe that.” Wes later made the decision to take the risk to sell drugs for a living.

General Purpose: To inform my audience of Gentrification in the Norther part of Chicago around the 1960s.

The great philosopher Plato once said , “Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, and the other of the rich; these are at the war with one another.” This quote perfectly summarizes the theme of S.E Hinton's novel, The Outsiders. The novel is about two gangs/groups that live in Rural, Oklahoma, the Greasers and the Socials. The Socs are the more affluent and often times referred to as the ‘West-side rich kids’, and the Greasers, are the less fortunate gang. Throughout the novel both gangs experience various types of conflict and at one point their differences ended up costing the life of a couple gang members. I will prove that the socs were the primary group that caused the conflict in the novel.

In the video, we can appreciate different realities that these people have to face every day, it might not be very different from our own reality but it is indeed a more challenging one. There are many families in the U.S. struggling each day, working to have a better life, to achieve “The American Dream”, but these particular families that life in Detroit and Oakland have more difficulties than most people. Their health is deteriorating by extreme pollution causing them asthma since an early age. Obesity is a major problem that is cause by the consumption of cheap food that they can only afford. Crime and Vandalism is part of their daily lives. All these issues are being addressed by the community but even if most of the problems are solve,

Societies and cultures often contain one thing that can exponentially affect one’s life: stereotypes. Brent Staples, author of “Just Walk On By” creates the message that many are being held to certain stereotypes that often make life difficult. He conveys this message through the persona he creates along with his emotional appeal.

The novel The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair is a fictional story based during the twentieth century on the lives of immigrants living in Chicago and the harsh conditions they went through. I think that Sinclair named his book the jungle because Packingtown, the meat-packing district of Chicago, mimicked a jungle. The conditions were terrible, the labor and work those workers were put through were extremely harsh. Everyone, including Jurgis Rudkus and his family, had to fight for their survival everyday. It was the survival of the fittest and if you let your guard down or didn’t do your job right, you would be replaced.

Where we’re from, who we know, and how our mental makeup is, is very important in our lives. It can be the deciding factor between life in prison and a life dedicated to giving back to others. In The Other Wes Moore, The lives of two young men are examined through three distinct lenses, how the role our environment, social capital (How we get ahead by helping each other) and how our mindset can dictate who we become later on in life.

Nowadays, when traditional urban Chinatowns in Manhattan, San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia are fading due to gentrification and changing cultural landscapes, Chicago 's Chinatown is growing larger — becoming what experts say could be a model for Chinatown survival in the U.S. Between 2000 and 2010, Chicago Chinatown 's population increased 24 percent and its Asian population increased 30 percent. Asians make up nearly 90 percent of the neighborhood 's population, according to 2000 and 2010 Census of the U.S. Census Bureau. Experts also say that of all the foreign-born Asians living in Chicago 's Chinatown, nearly 10 percent arrived in the last three years — a stark contrast to New York and San Francisco, where immigrants no longer fuel

Have you ever felt safe somewhere, but realized your only protection was ignorance? In Jacqueline Woodson’s When a Southern Town Broke a Heart, she introduces the idea that as you grow and change, so does your meaning of home. Over the course of the story, Woodson matures and grows older, and her ideas about the town she grew up in become different. When she was a nine year old girl, Woodson and her sister returned to their hometown of Greenville, South Carolina by train. During the school year, they lived together in Downtown Brooklyn, and travelled to. Once Jacqueline has tasted the sweet life of freedom and privilege in New York, she realizes how ignorant she was about Greenville. Her Grandmother had been protecting her from the racism and segregation that permeated the town like a disease. Through metaphor and character growth, it seems obvious that Woodson is trying to convey the theme that perceptions of home can grow and changes as one grows older.

In the first few chapters of Black Metropolis, St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton provide historical context on the early development of Chicago as the site for an emerging city, which became the American Midwest epicenter that incited significant social, economic and political changes that transformed the country. The authors also establish a foundation that helps to understand the allure of the Windy City, which contributed to the mass exodus of African Americans from the South during the Great Migration that ultimately created the “black metropolis.”