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seeking social justice

Counternarratives: Defying Stereotypes and the Status Quo Photograph and essay from R&R Magazine

Introduction – In the past few years our society has continued to be rocked by the historic legacy of inequality and the efforts to build a more just society -- the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech followed by extreme division and violent protests. This unit considers what progress our country has made toward social equality and what progress we still need to make. We might also consider the two sides of our history -- the bright hope for justice and the dim reality that we have not yet reached our ideal of a “more perfect union.” As we begin this unit, I hope you know that I have no set agenda; I am not trying to put words into your mouth about these loaded topics. However, I hope that you will take this opportunity to truly consider the state of our society today. Art, literature and music have been a strong catalyst for change throughout our history. So as we look at current works and past ones, think of these works a mirror -- look at the world depicted in the poetry, music, art, and stories, but then use the ideas there as a way to help you think about our society today, and to discuss it with depth. ● Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son” (1925).......................................... page 3 ● Langston Hughes’ Dream Poems (1921-1951).................................. page 4 ● Countee Cullen’s “Tableau” (1925) and “Saturday’s Child” (1924) ...... pages 5-6 ● Frederick Douglass’ “The Battle with Mr. Covey” (1845) .................. pages 7-11 ● Paul Dunbar’s “Sympathy” (1899) and “We Wear the Mask” (1896) .. pages 11-12 ● Kate Chopin’s “Desiree’s Baby” (1893).......................................... pages 13-17 ● Kate Chopin’s “Emancipation. A Life Fable” (1869)............................ pages 17 ● Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” (1894).......................................... pages 18-19 ● Marge Piercey’s “Barbie Doll” (1973) ............................................... pages 20-21 ● Jeannette Walls’ “Desert” from The Glass Castle (2006) .................. pages 21-23 ● Martin Espada’s “Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper” (1993)........ pages 23-24 ● Louise Erdrich’s “The Red Convertible” (1984) ………….……………… pages 25-31 ● Joseph Bruchac’s “Ellis Island” (1993).............................................. page 32 ● Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony” (1977) ....................................... page 33 ● Javier Pina’s “Bilingual in a Cardboard Box” (1992)............................. page 34

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Essential Questions ● Visibility and Invisibility -- what identities does society tend to represent and what identities

does it tend to deny?

● Oppression and Liberation -- how does oppression impact our sense of self, hope and power? How does one find the resources of strength and determination to defy oppression and fight for justice?

● Search for Identity -- how does one express identity in a society that tends to present one with stereotypes that limit options for enacting that identity?

● Migrant Struggle -- what does one gain and lose from migration and assimilation?

● Collective Identities and Cultures -- what do we gain from shared culture and shared experiences? How does sharing these experiences help one persevere in times of crisis?

Key Vocabulary to give you a hold in this conversation – One of the most difficult parts of reading literature that deals with issues of social justice is finding ways to talk about how our society might privilege some groups with advantages that other groups lack. Here are some ways to think about hierarchies of power in our society that might help you discuss the literature in deeper and more reflective ways.

● Stereotypes ● The Status Quo ● Identity, Social Identity, Cultural Identity ● Ways of terming the hierarchy of power

○ Oppressor and Oppressed ○ Agent, Bystander, Ally, and Target ○ Advantaged and Disadvantaged, Privileged and Marginalized ○ Dominant and Subordinate ○ Majority and Minority

● Social capital Key Literary terms –

● Counter-narrative ● Metaphor and extended metaphor, similes, symbols ● Imagery ● Tone and tone shift ● Conflict (types of conflict) ● Characterization, dynamic characters, character transformation ● Turning points or epiphanies ● Juxtapositions, contrasts ● Irony, paradox

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Langston Hughes Hughes is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself.

Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son” (1925) Literary techniques to note: extended metaphor, dramatic poem, dialect

Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor – Bare. But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light. So boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard. Don't you fall now – For I'se still goin', honey, I'se still climbin', And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

>>> Response to “Mother to Son”

● What does the poem’s extended metaphor reveal about the mother’s life? ● In what ways might you relate to her life? ● What is her message to her son? Why do you think this message would be important

for someone from a disadvantaged community? ● Does this message only apply to people from disadvantaged communities or does it

apply to anyone?

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Langston Hughes’ Dream Poems Literary techniques to note: imagery, metaphor, parallel structure, author’s tone/purpose As I Grew Older (1926) It was a long time ago. I have almost forgotten my dream. But it was there then, In front of me, Bright like a sun-- My dream. And then the wall rose, Rose slowly, Slowly, Between me and my dream. Rose until it touched the sky-- The wall. Shadow. I am black. I lie down in the shadow. No longer the light of my dream before me, Above me. Only the thick wall. Only the shadow. My hands! My dark hands! Break through the wall! Find my dream! Help me to shatter this darkness, To smash this night, To break this shadow Into a thousand lights of sun, Into a thousand whirling dreams Of sun!

Dreams (1932) Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.

I Dream A World (1941-1950) I dream a world where man No other man will scorn, Where love will bless the earth And peace its paths adorn I dream a world where all Will know sweet freedom's way, Where greed no longer saps the soul Nor avarice blights our day. A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the earth And every man is free, Where wretchedness will hang its head And joy, like a pearl, Attends the needs of all mankind- Of such I dream, my world!

The Dream Keeper (1932) Bring me all of your dreams, You dreamer, Bring me all your Heart melodies That I may wrap them In a blue cloud-cloth Away from the too-rough fingers Of the world. Harlem (1951) What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

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>>> Response to Langston Hughes’ dream poems ● Choose two of the dream poems; try to find one that has a more hopeful tone and one

that has a more pessimistic tone. Fully annotate each of the two poems for key metaphors, tone and thought-provoking imagery

● What do these poems suggest about what makes dreams possible? What stands in they way of dreams?

● What do these poems suggest about Hughes’ outlook on America, and his hope for social equality?

Countee Cullens Raised and educated in a primarily white community in New York City, Countee Cullen differed from Langston Hughes in that he lacked the background to comment from personal experience on the lives of other black people or use popular black idioms in his writing. His poems conveyed life as he saw it, bringing the Harlem Renaissance to new heights because of its ability to show social realities Cullen was criticized for being conventional, for using the British Romantic poets as his models. His most famous lines are the last two from "Yet Do I Marvel" because these few lines express so much about Cullen’s attitude towards race and writing: “Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: / To make a poet black, and bid him sing!”

“Saturday’s Child” (1925) by Countee Cullen Literary techniques to note: imagery, metaphor, juxtaposition/antithesis, personification Some are teethed on a silver spoon, With the stars strung for a rattle; I cut my teeth as the black raccoon— For implements of battle. Some are swaddled in silk and down, And heralded by a star; They swathed my limbs in a sackcloth gown On a night that was black as tar. For some, godfather and goddame The opulent fairies be; Dame Poverty gave me my name, And Pain godfathered me. For I was born on Saturday— “Bad time for planting a seed,” Was all my father had to say, And, “One mouth more to feed.” Death cut the strings that gave me life, And handed me to Sorrow, The only kind of middle wife My folks could beg or borrow.

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>>> Response to “Saturday’s Child” ● What do the juxtapositions of wealth and poverty and the contrasting imagery in the

poem convey about growing up in poverty? ● Why is the antithesis such an important device in understanding the mindset of growing

up poor in sight of those growing up wealthy? ● How do the personified characters – godfather and goddame (the opulent fairies), Dame

Poverty, Pain, Death – speak to the struggles of growing up without safety and security? “Tableau” (1924) by Countee Cullen Locked arm in arm they cross the way, The black boy and the white, The golden splendor of the day, The sable pride of night. From lowered blinds the dark folk stare, And here the fair folk talk, Indignant that these two should dare In unison to walk. Oblivious to look and word They pass, and see no wonder That lightning brilliant as a sword Should blaze the path of thunder. >>> Response to “Tableau” ● What is your first impression of what the poem means (the theme)? ● What do you think Cullen wants you to realize about race? Why do you think he chooses

to focus on the experiences of children? ● What does Cullen’s poem say about the life of children in a racist society?

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Frederick Douglass BACKGROUND: The son of a slave woman and a white man who was probably the owner of the plantation where Douglass was born, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born in February of 1818 on Maryland's eastern shore. He only saw his mother four or five times before her death when he was seven; all Douglass knew of his father was that he was white. During his youth, he was exposed to the degradations of slavery, witnessing firsthand brutal whippings and spending much time cold and hungry. When he was eight he was sent to Baltimore to live with a ship carpenter named Hugh Auld. There he learned to read and first heard the words abolition and abolitionists. "Going to live at Baltimore," Douglass would later say, "laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity." Douglass spent seven relatively comfortable years in Baltimore before being sent back to the country, where he was hired out to a farm run by a notoriously brutal "slavebreaker" named Edward Covey. And the treatment he received was indeed brutal. Whipped daily and barely fed, Douglass was "broken in body, soul, and spirit." On January 1, 1836, Douglass made a resolution that he would be free by the end of the year. He planned an escape. But early in April he was jailed after his plan was discovered. Two years later, while living in Baltimore and working at a shipyard, Douglass would finally realize his dream: he fled the city on September 3, 1838. Literary techniques to note: conflict, symbolism, characterization, dynamic/static character, suspense

Frederick Douglass’s “The Battle with Mr. Covey” (Chapters 9-10) (1845) I had lived with [Master Thomas Auld] nine months, during which time he had given me a number of severe whippings, all to no good purpose. He resolved to put me out, as he said, to be broken; and, for this purpose, he let me for one year to a man named Edward Covey. Mr. Covey was a poor man, a farm-renter. He rented the place upon which he lived, as also the hands with which he tilled it. Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him. It enabled him to get his farm tilled with much less expense to himself than he could have had it done without such a reputation. Some slaveholders thought it not much loss to allow Mr. Covey to have their slaves one year, for the sake of the training to which they were subjected, without any other compensation. He could hire young help with great ease, in consequence of this reputation. Added to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion--a pious soul--a member and a class-leader in the Methodist church. All of this added weight to his reputation as a "nigger-breaker." I was aware of all the facts, having been made acquainted with them by a young man who had lived there…

I had left Master Thomas's house, and went to live with Mr. Covey, on the 1st of January, 1833. I was now, for the first time in my life, a field hand. In my new employment, I found myself even more awkward than a country boy appeared to be in a large city. I had been at my new home but one week before Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my back, causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger…

If at any one time of my life more than another, I was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six months of my stay with Mr. [Edward] Covey. We were worked in all weathers. It was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or snow too hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work was scarcely more the order of the day

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than of the night. The longest days were too short for him, and the shortest nights too long for him. I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!

Sunday was my only leisure time. I spent this in a sort of beast-like stupor, between sleep and wake, under some large tree. At times I would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul, accompanied with a faint gleam of hope that flickered for a moment, and then vanished. I sank down again, mourning over my wretched condition. I was sometimes prompted to take my life and that of Covey, but was prevented by a combination of hope and fear....

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man. On one of the hottest days of the month of August, 1833, Bill Smith, William Hughes, a slave named Eli, and myself were engaged in fanning wheat....The work was simple, requiring strength rather than intellect; yet, to one entirely unused to such work, it came very hard. About three o'clock of that day, I broke down; my strength failed me; I was seized with a violent aching of the head, attended with extreme dizziness; I trembled in every limb....

Mr. Covey was at the house, about one hundred yards from the treading- yard where we were fanning. On hearing the fan stop, he left immediately, and came to the spot where we were. He hastily enquired what the matter was. Bill answered that I was sick, and there was no one to bring wheat to the fan. I had by this time crawled away under the side of the post and rail- fence by which the yard was enclosed, hoping to find relief by getting out of the sun. He then asked where I was. He was told by one of the hands. He came to the spot, and after looking at me awhile, asked me what was the matter. I told him as well as I could, for I scarce had strength to speak. He then gave me a savage kick in the side, and told me to get up. I tried to do so, but fell back in the attempt. He gave me another kick, and again told me to rise. I again tried, and succeeded in gaining my feet: but, stopping to get the tub with which I was feeding the fan, I again staggered and fell. While down in this situation, Mr. Covey took up the hickory slat with which Hughes had been striking off the half- bushel measure, and with it gave me a heavy blow upon the head, making a large wound, and the blood ran freely; and with this, again told me to get up. I made no effort to comply, having now made up my mind to let him do his worst. In a short time after receiving this blow, my head grew better. Mr. Covey had now left me to my fate. At this moment I resolved to go to my master, enter a complaint, and ask his protection. In order to [do] this, I must that afternoon walk seven miles; and this, under the circumstances, was truly a severe undertaking. I was exceedingly feeble; made so as much by the kicks and blows which I received, as by the severe fit of sickness to which I had been subjected. I, however, watched my chance, while Covey was looking in an opposite direction, and started for St. Michael's. I succeeded in getting a considerable distance on my way to the woods, when Covey discovered me, and called after me to come back, threatening what he would do if I did not come. I disregarded both his calls and his threats, and made my way to the woods as fast as my feeble state would allow; and thinking I might be overhauled by him if I kept the road, I walked through the woods, keeping far enough from the road to avoid detection, and near enough to prevent losing my way. I had not gone far, before my little strength again failed me. I could go no farther. I fell down, and lay for a considerable time. The blood was yet oozing from the wound on my head. For a time I thought I should bleed to death, and think now that I should have done so, but the blood so matted my hair as to stop the wound. After lying there about three quarters of an hour, I nerved myself up again, and started on my way, through bogs and briers, barefooted and bareheaded, tearing my feet sometimes at nearly every step; and after

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a journey of about seven miles, occupying some five hours to perform it, I arrived at master's store. I then presented an appearance enough to affect any but a heart of iron. From the crown of my head to my feet, I was covered with blood. My hair was all clotted with dust and blood, my shirt was stiff with briers and thorns, and were also covered with blood. I supposed I looked like a man who had escaped a den of wild beasts, and barely escaped them. In this state I appeared before my master, humbling entreating him to interpose his authority for my protection. I told him all the circumstances as well as I could, and it seemed, as I spoke, at times to affect him. He would then walk the floor, and seek to justify Covey by saying he expected I deserved it. He asked me what I wanted. I told him to let me get a new home; that as sure as I lived with Mr. Covey again, I should live with but to die with him; that Covey would surely kill me- - he was in a fair way for it. Master Thomas ridiculed the idea that there was any danger of Mr. Covey's killing me, and said that he knew Mr. Covey; that he was a good man, and that he could not think of taking me from him; that should he do so, he would lose the whole year's wages; that I belonged to Mr. Covey for one year, and that I must go back to him, come what might; and that I must not trouble him with any more stories, or that he would get hold of me. After threatening me thus, he gave me a very large dose of salts, telling me that I might remain in St. Michael's that night, (it being quite late,) but that I must be off back to Mr. Covey's early in the morning; and that if I did not, he would get hold of me, which meant that he would whip me. I remained all night, and according to his orders, I started off to Covey's in the morning (Saturday morning) wearied in body and broken in spirit. I got no supper that night, or breakfast that morning. I reached Covey's about nine o'clock; and just as I was getting over the fence that divided Mrs. Kemp's fields from ours, out ran Covey with his cowskin, to give me another whipping. Before he could reach me, I succeeded in getting to the cornfield; and as the corn was very high, it afforded me the means of hiding. He seemed very angry, and searched for me a long time. My behaviour was altogether unaccountable. He finally gave up the chase, thinking, I suppose, that I must come home for something to eat; he would give himself no further trouble in looking for me. I spent that day mostly in the woods, having the alternative before me,- - to go home and be whipped to death, or stay in the woods and be starved to death. That night, I fell in with Sandy Jenkins, a slave with whom I was somewhat acquainted. Sandy had a free wife, who lived about four miles from Mr. Covey's; and it being Saturday, he was on his way home to see her. I told him my circumstances, and he very kindly invited me to go home with him. I went home with him, and talked this whole matter over, and got his advice as to what course it was best for me to pursue. I found Sandy an old adviser. He told me, with great solemnity, I must go back to Covey; but that before I went, I must go with him into another part of the woods, where there was a certain root, which, if I would take some of it with me, carrying it always on my right side, would render it impossible for Mr. Covey, or any other white man, to whip me. He said he had carried it for years; and since he had done so, he had never received a blow, and never expected to, while he carried it. I at first rejected the idea, that the simple carrying of a root in my pocket would have any such effect as he had said, and was not disposed to take it; but Sandy impressed the necessity with such earnestness, telling me it could do no harm, if it did not good. To please him, I at length took the root, and, according to his direction, carried it upon my right side. This was Sunday morning. I immediately started for home; and upon entering the yard gate, out came Mr. Covey on his way to meeting. He spoke to me very kindly, bade me drive the pigs from a lot near by, and passed toward the church. Now this singular conduct of Mr. Covey really made me begin to think that there was something in the root which Sandy had given me; and had it been any other day than Sunday, I could have attributed the conduct to no other cause that the influence of that root; and as it was, I was half inclined to think the root to be something more than I at first had taken it to be. All went well till Monday morning. On this morning, the virtue of the root was fully tested. Long before daylight, I was called to go and rub, curry, and feed the horses. I obeyed, and was

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glad to obey. But whilst thus engaged, whilst in the act of throwing down some blades from the loft, Mr. Covey entered the stable with a long rope; and just as I was half way out of the loft, he caught hold of my legs, and was about tying me. As soon as I found what he was up to, I gave a sudden spring, and as I did so, he holding to my legs, I was brought sprawling on the stable floor. Mr. Covey seemed now to think he had me, and could do what he pleased; but at this moment- - from whence came the spirit I don't know- - I resolved to fight; and suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose. He held on to me, and I to him. My resistance was so entirely unexpected, that Covey seemed taken all aback. He trembled like a leaf. This gave me assurance, and I held him uneasy, causing the blood to run where I touched him with the ends of my fingers. Mr. Covey soon called out to Hughes for help. Hughes came, and, while Covey held me, attempted to tie my right hand. While he was in the act of doing so, I watched my chance, and gave him a heavy kick close under the ribs. This kick fairly sickened Hughes, so that he left me in the hands of Mr. Covey. This kick had the effect of not only weakening Hughes, but Covey also. While he saw Hughes bending over with pain, his courage quailed. He asked me if I meant to persist in my resistance. I told him I did, come what might; that he had used me like a brute for six months, and that I was determined to be used so no longer. With that, he strove to drag me to a stick that was lying just out of the stable door. He meant to knock me down. But just as he was leaning over to get the stick, I seized him with both hands by his collar, and brought him by a sudden snatch to the ground. By this time, Bill came. Covey called upon him for assistance, Bill wanted to know what he could do. Covey said, "Take hold of him, take hold of him!" Bill said his master hired him out to work, and not to help to whip me; so he left Covey and myself to fight our own battle out. We were at it for nearly two hours. Covey sat length let me go, puffing and blowing at a great rate, saying that if I had not resisted, he would not have whipped me half so much. The truth was, that he had not whipped me at all. I considered him as getting entirely the worst end of the bargain; for he had drawn no blood from me, but I had from him. The whole six months afterwards, that I spent with Mr. Covey, he never laid the weight of his finger upon me in anger. He would occasionally say, he didn't want to get hold of me again. "No," thought I, "you need not; for you will come off worse than you did before."

This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self- confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free. The gratification afforded by the triumph was a full compensation for whatever else might follow, even death itself. He only can understand the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who had himself repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never felt before. It was a glorious resurrection from the tomb of slavery to the heaven of freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and now I resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me.

From this time I was never again what might be called fairly whipped, though I remained a slave four years afterwards. I had several fights, but was never whipped.

It was for a long time a matter of surprise to me why Mr. Covey did not immediately have me taken by the constable to the whipping-post, and there regularly whipped for the crime of raising my hand against a white man in defense of myself. And the only explanation I can now think of does not entirely satisfy me; but such as it is, I will give it. Mr. Covey enjoyed the most unbounded reputation for being a first- rate overseer and Negro- breaker. It was of considerable importance to him. That reputation was at stake; and had he sent me- - a boy of

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sixteen years old- - to the whipping- post, his reputation would have been lost; so, to save his reputation, he suffered me to go unpunished.

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>>> Response to “The Battle with Mr. Covey” ● How does Mr. Covey succeed in breaking Frederick? ● How does Frederick succeed in again becoming a man? ● Why does Frederick go to Master Thomas Auld? ● Why does he return to Covey? Who convinces him to do so? What does Sandy

Jenkins suggest that Frederick do? ● How does Frederick win the fight with Mr. Covey? ● Why does Frederick contend that Mr. Covey does not turn him in? ● What would have happened to Frederick had Mr. Covey turned him in? ● Why is Frederick's battle with Mr. Covey "the turning-point in my career as a slave"?

Paul Dunbar BACKGROUND: Born in 1872, Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the first African-American poets to gain national recognition. His parents were freed slaves from Kentucky, and Dunbar would draw on their stories of plantation life throughout his writing career. By the age of fourteen, Dunbar had poems published in the Dayton Herald. Despite being a fine student, Dunbar was financially unable to attend college and took a job as an elevator operator. To help pay the publishing costs of his first book, he sold the book for a dollar to people riding in his elevator. Later that year, Dunbar moved to Chicago; he befriended Frederick Douglass, who found him a job as a clerk, and also arranged for him to read a selection of his poems. Douglass said of Dunbar that he was “the most promising young colored man in America.” In 1898, Dunbar fell sick to tuberculosis and left his job to dedicate himself full time to writing and giving readings. Dunbar’s steadily deteriorating health caused him to return to his mother’s home in Dayton, Ohio, where he died on February 9, 1906, at the age of thirty-three. Literary techniques to note: conflict, symbolism, characterization, dynamic/static character, suspense

Paul Dunbar’s “Sympathy” (1899) I know what the caged bird feels, alas!

When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, And the river flows like a stream of glass;

When the first bird sings and the first bud opes, And the faint perfume from its chalice steals— I know what the caged bird feels! I know why the caged bird beats his wing

Till its blood is red on the cruel bars; For he must fly back to his perch and cling When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;

And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars And they pulse again with a keener sting—

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I know why he beats his wing! I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,— When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee,

But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings— I know why the caged bird sings!

Paul Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” (1896) We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile And mouth with myriad subtleties, Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. We smile, but oh great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile, But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!

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Kate Chopin Kate Chopin’s life and writing centers on a mix of cultural influences and on her keen awareness of the limitations faced by women of the 19th century. As a result of her childhood upbringing by women with ancestry descending from both Irish and French family, and life in the Cajun and Creole cultures after she joined her husband in Louisiana, many of her stories and sketches were about her life in Louisiana. They incorporated her unusual portrayals of women as their own individuals with wants and needs. Her work coincides with the suffrage movement of the 1880s. Her work today is heralded by feminist scholars for its groundbreaking attention to women’s desires, passions, and needs. Literary techniques to note: Imagery, symbolism, foreshadowing, suspense, ambiguity, irony

As the day was pleasant, Madame Valmonde drove over to L'Abri to see Desiree and the baby. 1

It made her laugh to think of Desiree with a baby. Why, it seemed but yesterday that Desiree was little more than a baby herself; when Monsieur in riding through the gateway of Valmonde had found her lying asleep in the shadow of the big stone pillar.

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The little one awoke in his arms and began to cry for "Dada." That was as much as she could do or say. Some people thought she might have strayed there of her own accord, for she was of the toddling age. The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party of Texans, whose canvas-covered wagon, late in the day, had crossed the ferry that Coton Mais kept, just below the plantation. In time Madame Valmonde abandoned every speculation but the one that Desiree had been sent to her by a beneficent Providence to be the child of her affection, seeing that she was without child of the flesh. For the girl grew to be beautiful and gentle, affectionate and sincere,--the idol of Valmonde.

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It was no wonder, when she stood one day against the stone pillar in whose shadow she had lain asleep, eighteen years before, that Armand Aubigny riding by and seeing her there, had fallen in love with her. That was the way all the Aubignys fell in love, as if struck by a pistol shot. The wonder was that he had not loved her before; for he had known her since his father brought him home from Paris, a boy of eight, after his mother died there. The passion that awoke in him that day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like anything that drives headlong over all obstacles.

4

Monsieur Valmonde grew practical and wanted things well considered: that is, the girl's obscure origin. Armand looked into her eyes and did not care. He was reminded that she was nameless. What did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the oldest and proudest in Louisiana? He ordered the corbeille from Paris, and contained himself with what patience he could until it arrived; then they were married.

5

Madame Valmonde had not seen Desiree and the baby for four weeks. When she reached L'Abri she shuddered at the first sight of it, as she always did. It was a sad looking place, which for many years had not known the gentle presence of a mistress, old Monsieur Aubigny having married and buried his wife in France, and she having loved her own land too well ever to leave it. The roof came down steep and black like a cowl, reaching out beyond the wide galleries that encircled the yellow stuccoed house. Big, solemn oaks grew close to it, and their thick-leaved, far-reaching branches shadowed it like a pall. Young Aubigny's rule was a strict one, too, and under it his negroes had forgotten how to be gay, as they had been during the old master's easy-going and indulgent lifetime.

6

15

The young mother was recovering slowly, and lay full length, in her soft white muslins and laces, upon a couch. The baby was beside her, upon her arm, where he had fallen asleep, at her breast. The yellow nurse woman sat beside a window fanning herself.

7

Madame Valmonde bent her portly figure over Desiree and kissed her, holding her an instant tenderly in her arms. Then she turned to the child.

8

"This is not the baby!" she exclaimed, in startled tones. French was the language spoken at Valmonde in those days.

9

"I knew you would be astonished," laughed Desiree, "at the way he has grown. The little cochon de lait! Look at his legs, mamma, and his hands and fingernails,--real finger-nails. Zandrine had to cut them this morning. Isn't it true, Zandrine?"

10

The woman bowed her turbaned head majestically, "Mais si, Madame." 11

"And the way he cries," went on Desiree, "is deafening. Armand heard him the other day as far away as La Blanche's cabin."

12

Madame Valmonde had never removed her eyes from the child. She lifted it and walked with it over to the window that was lightest. She scanned the baby narrowly, then looked as searchingly at Zandrine, whose face was turned to gaze across the fields.

13

"Yes, the child has grown, has changed," said Madame Valmonde, slowly, as she replaced it beside its mother. "What does Armand say?"

14

Desiree's face became suffused with a glow that was happiness itself. 15

"Oh, Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I believe, chiefly because it is a boy, to bear his name; though he says not,--that he would have loved a girl as well. But I know it isn't true. I know he says that to please me. And mamma," she added, drawing Madame Valmonde's head down to her, and speaking in a whisper, "he hasn't punished one of them--not one of them--since baby is born. Even Negrillon, who pretended to have burnt his leg that he might rest from work--he only laughed, and said Negrillon was a great scamp. oh, mamma, I'm so happy; it frightens me."

16

What Desiree said was true. Marriage, and later the birth of his son had softened Armand Aubigny's imperious and exacting nature greatly. This was what made the gentle Desiree so happy, for she loved him desperately. When he frowned she trembled, but loved him. When he smiled, she asked no greater blessing of God. But Armand's dark, handsome face had not often been disfigured by frowns since the day he fell in love with her.

17

When the baby was about three months old, Desiree awoke one day to the conviction that there was something in the air menacing her peace. It was at first too subtle to grasp. It had only been a disquieting suggestion; an air of mystery among the blacks; unexpected visits from far-off neighbors who could hardly account for their coming. Then a strange, an awful change in her husband's manner, which she dared not ask him to explain. When he spoke to her, it was with averted eyes, from which the old love-light seemed to have gone out. He absented himself from home; and when there, avoided her presence and that of her child, without excuse. And the very spirit of Satan seemed suddenly to take hold of him in his dealings with the slaves. Desiree was miserable enough to die.

18

She sat in her room, one hot afternoon, in her peignoir, listlessly drawing through her fingers the strands of her long, silky brown hair that hung about her shoulders. The baby, half naked, lay asleep upon her own great mahogany bed, that was like a sumptuous throne, with its

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16

satin-lined half-canopy. One of La Blanche's little quadroon boys--half naked too--stood fanning the child slowly with a fan of peacock feathers. Desiree's eyes had been fixed absently and sadly upon the baby, while she was striving to penetrate the threatening mist that she felt closing about her. She looked from her child to the boy who stood beside him, and back again; over and over. "Ah!" It was a cry that she could not help; which she was not conscious of having uttered. The blood turned like ice in her veins, and a clammy moisture gathered upon her face.

She tried to speak to the little quadroon boy; but no sound would come, at first. When he heard his name uttered, he looked up, and his mistress was pointing to the door. He laid aside the great, soft fan, and obediently stole away, over the polished floor, on his bare tiptoes.

20

She stayed motionless, with gaze riveted upon her child, and her face the picture of fright. 21

Presently her husband entered the room, and without noticing her, went to a table and began to search among some papers which covered it.

22

"Armand," she called to him, in a voice which must have stabbed him, if he was human. But he did not notice. "Armand," she said again. Then she rose and tottered towards him. "Armand," she panted once more, clutching his arm, "look at our child. What does it mean? tell me."

23

He coldly but gently loosened her fingers from about his arm and thrust the hand away from him. "Tell me what it means!" she cried despairingly.

24

"It means," he answered lightly, "that the child is not white; it means that you are not white." 25

A quick conception of all that this accusation meant for her nerved her with unwonted courage to deny it. "It is a lie; it is not true, I am white! Look at my hair, it is brown; and my eyes are gray, Armand, you know they are gray. And my skin is fair," seizing his wrist. "Look at my hand; whiter than yours, Armand," she laughed hysterically.

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"As white as La Blanche's," he returned cruelly; and went away leaving her alone with their child.

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When she could hold a pen in her hand, she sent a despairing letter to Madame Valmonde. 28

"My mother, they tell me I am not white. Armand has told me I am not white. For God's sake tell them it is not true. You must know it is not true. I shall die. I must die. I cannot be so unhappy, and live."

29

The answer that came was brief: 30

"My own Desiree: Come home to Valmonde; back to your mother who loves you. Come with your child."

31

When the letter reached Desiree she went with it to her husband's study, and laid it open upon the desk before which he sat. She was like a stone image: silent, white, motionless after she placed it there.

32

In silence he ran his cold eyes over the written words. 33

He said nothing. "Shall I go, Armand?" she asked in tones sharp with agonized suspense. 34

"Yes, go." 35

"Do you want me to go?" 36

"Yes, I want you to go." 37

17

He thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly with him; and felt, somehow, that he was paying Him back in kind when he stabbed thus into his wife's soul. Moreover he no longer loved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name.

38

She turned away like one stunned by a blow, and walked slowly towards the door, hoping he would call her back.

39

"Good-by, Armand," she moaned. 40

He did not answer her. That was his last blow at fate. 41

Desiree went in search of her child. Zandrine was pacing the sombre gallery with it. She took the little one from the nurse's arms with no word of explanation, and descending the steps, walked away, under the live-oak branches.

42

It was an October afternoon; the sun was just sinking. Out in the still fields the negroes were picking cotton.

43

Desiree had not changed the thin white garment nor the slippers which she wore. Her hair was uncovered and the sun's rays brought a golden gleam from its brown meshes. She did not take the broad, beaten road which led to the far-off plantation of Valmonde. She walked across a deserted field, where the stubble bruised her tender feet, so delicately shod, and tore her thin gown to shreds.

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She disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew thick along the banks of the deep, sluggish bayou; and she did not come back again.

45

Some weeks later there was a curious scene enacted at L'Abri. In the centre of the smoothly swept back yard was a great bonfire. Armand Aubigny sat in the wide hallway that commanded a view of the spectacle; and it was he who dealt out to a half dozen negroes the material which kept this fire ablaze.

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A graceful cradle of willow, with all its dainty furnishings, was laid upon the pyre, which had already been fed with the richness of a priceless layette. Then there were silk gowns, and velvet and satin ones added to these; laces, too, and embroideries; bonnets and gloves; for the corbeille had been of rare quality.

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The last thing to go was a tiny bundle of letters; innocent little scribblings that Desiree had sent to him during the days of their espousal. There was the remnant of one back in the drawer from which he took them. But it was not Desiree's; it was part of an old letter from his mother to his father. He read it. She was thanking God for the blessing of her husband's love:--

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"But above all," she wrote, "night and day, I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery."

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>>> Response to “Desiree’s Baby”

● What do these story elements suggest about women’s roles during this time – ○ Desiree’s immense happiness at the beginning (source of her happiness?) ○ Armand’s instant love like “a pistol shot” for Desiree in paragraph in paragraph 4 ○ The appearance of L’Abri as described in paragraph 6 ○ The irony of the wording in the phrase “I’m so happy it frightens me” in paragraph 16

18 ● Describe and explain the changes in Armand Aubigny's behaviour as the story unfolds. How

does his erratic behavior toward Desiree and toward the slaves reflect problems of authoritarian power?

● Why was it assumed that Desiree was the reason her child was not white? What details from the story explain the allegations; what suppositions about women’s rights during the time period explain the allegations?

● Why do you think "La Blanche" had that name? What is Armand’s relationship to La Blanche? What is her role in the story?

● Why did Desiree ask her husband if he wanted her to go and then act on his decision? Do you think this merely reflected her character, or society at the time of the story?

● Do you think if Désirée had chosen to return to her family home with her child, they would have been able to have any kind of normal life? Why, or why not?

● How do you think Armand feels at the end of the story? Do you think he will continue to embrace his racist views, in the light of his knowledge regarding his own ancestry?

Kate Chopin’s “Emancipation: A Life Fable” (1869) There was once an animal born into this world, and opening his eyes upon Life, he saw above and about him confining walls, and before him were bars of iron through which came air and light from without; this animal was born in a cage.

Here he grew, and throve in strength and beauty under the care of an invisible protecting hand. Hungering, food was ever at hand. When he thirsted water was brought, and when he felt the need to rest, there was provided a bed of straw upon which to lie; and here he found it good, licking his handsome flanks, to bask in the sun beam that he thought existed but to lighten his home.

Awaking one day from his slothful rest, lo! the door of his cage stood open: accident had opened it. In the corner he crouched, wondering and fearingly. Then slowly did he approach the door, dreading the unaccustomed, and would have closed it, but for such a task his limbs were purposeless. So out the opening he thrust his head, to see the canopy of the sky grow broader, and the world waxing wider.

Back to his corner but not to rest, for the spell of the Unknown was over him, and again and again he goes to the open door, seeing each time more Light.

Then one time standing in the flood of it; a deep in-drawn breath – a bracing of strong limbs, and with a bound he was gone.

On he rushes, in his mad flight, heedless that he is wounding and tearing his sleek sides – seeing, smelling, touching of all things; even stopping to put his lips to the noxious pool, thinking it may be sweet.

Hungering there is no food but such as he must seek and ofttimes fight for; and his limbs are weighted before he reaches the water that is good to his thirsting throat.

So does he live, seeking, finding, joying and suffering. The door which accident had opened is opened still, but the cage remains forever empty!

>>> Response to “Emancipation: A Life Fable”

● What is the cage meant to represent? And how does the animal’s relationship to the cage change throughout the poem? What does that relationship tell us about people who are confined in some way?

● Why might the animal be so reluctant to leave the cage?

19 ● What is the significance of the door being opened by “accident”? Would you be more satisfied

with the door being broken open from an outside force or by the animal’s sheer force of will? ● With Chopin’s interest in women’s empowerment, why might she have given the animal the

masculine pronoun instead of the feminine? Do you think the poem is specifically about men or women or open to all?

Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” (1894) Literary techniques to note in “Emancipation: A Life Fable”: Imagery, symbolism, foreshadowing, suspense, ambiguity, irony Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.

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It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

2

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

3

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

4

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

5

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

6

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

7

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

8

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

9

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Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

10

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

11

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

12

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

13

"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering. 14

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."

15

"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

16

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

17

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

18

Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

19

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills. 20

21

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Marge Piercey Praised as one of the few American writers who are accomplished poets as well as novelists — Piercy is one of our country’s best selling poets. She has taught, lectured and/or performed her work at well over 400 universities around the world. Piercy credits her mother with making her a poet. Piercy describes her mother as an emotional, imaginative woman full of odd lore and superstitions. She read voraciously and encouraged her daughter to do the same. Enormously curious, she urged her daughter to observe sharply and remember what she observed.

Marge Piercey’s “Barbie Doll” (1973) This girlchild was born as usual and presented dolls that did pee-pee and miniature GE stoves and irons and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy. Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said: You have a great big nose and fat legs. She was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity. She went to and fro apologizing. Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs. She was advised to play coy, exhorted to come on hearty, exercise, diet, smile and wheedle. Her good nature wore out like a fan belt. So she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up. In the casket displayed on satin she lay with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on, a turned-up putty nose, dressed in a pink and white nightie. Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said. Consummation at last. To every woman a happy ending.

>>> Response to “Barbie Doll”

● What were the positive strengths that the girl possessed? Do you consider them to be physical, emotional and/or intellectual?

● What stereotypes, if any, are apparent in the first and third stanzas? What do these stereotypes say about what it is to be female in society?

● Is there any evidence of gender bias and/or discrimination? If so, give examples.

23 ● What could the character have done different to overcome the negative effects that stereotypes,

gender bias, and discrimination had upon her life? ● What do you think that Piercey is saying about women in this poem? Does her view seem to you

fair, slightly exaggerated, or greatly exaggerated? Why?

● Is the text reflective of what goes on in real life? Explain. Jeannette Walls Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever. Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town — and the family — Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home. (from the Lit Lovers)

Jeannette Walls's “Desert” from The Glass Castle (2006)

"Do you like always moving around?" Lori asked me.

"Of course I do!" I said. “Don't you?"

"Sure," she said.

It was late afternoon, and we were parked outside of a bar in the Nevada desert. It was called the Bar None Bar. I was four and Lori was seven. We were on our way to Las Vegas. Dad had decided it would be easier, as he put it, to accumulate the capital necessary to finance the Prospector if he hit the casinos for a while. We'd been driving for hours when he saw the Bar None Bar, pulled over the Green Caboose – the Blue Goose had died, and we now had another car, a station wagon Dad had named the Green Caboose – and announced that he was going inside for a quick nip. Mom put on some red lipstick and joined him, even though she didn't drink anything stronger than tea. They had been inside for hours. The sun hung high in the sky, and there was not the slightest hint of a breeze.

Nothing moved except some buzzards on the side of the road, pecking over an unrecognizable carcass. Brian was reading a dog-eared comic book.

"How many places have we lived?" I asked Lori.

"That depends on what you mean by 'lived;" she said. "If you spend one night in some town, did you live there? What about two nights? Or a whole week?"

I thought. "If you unpack all your things,' I said.

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We counted eleven places we had lived, then we lost track. We couldn't remember the names of some of the towns or what the houses we had lived in looked like. Mostly, I remembered the inside of cars.

"What do you think would happen if we weren't always moving around?" I asked.

"We'd get caught," Lori said.

When Mom and Dad came out of the Bar None Bar, they brought us each a long piece of beef jerky and a candy bar. I ate the jerky first, and by the time I unwrapped my Mounds bar, it had melted into a brown, gooey mess so I decided to -save it until night when the desert cold would harden it up again.

By then we had passed through the small town beyond the Bar None Bar. Dad was driving and smoking with one hand and holding a brown bottle of beer with the other. Lori was in the front seat between him and Mom, and Brian, who was in back with me, was trying to trade me half of his 3 Musketeers for half of my Mounds. Just then we took a sharp turn over some railroad tracks, the door flew open, and I tumbled out of the car. I rolled several yards along the embankment, and when I came to a stop, I was too shocked to cry, with my breath knocked out and grit and pebbles in my eyes and mouth. I lifted my head in time to watch the Green Caboose get smaller and smaller and then disappear around a bend.

Blood was running down my forehead and flowing out of my nose. My knees and elbows were scraped raw and covered with sand. I was still holding the Mounds bar, but I had smashed it during the fall, tearing the wrapper and squeezing out the white coconut filling, which was also covered with grit.

Once I got my breath back, I crawled along the railroad embankment to the road and sat down to wait for Mom and Dad to come back. My whole body felt sore. The sun was small and white and broiling-hot. A wind had come up, and it was roiling the dust along the roadside. I waited for what seemed like a long time before I decided it was possible Mom and Dad might not come back for me. They might not notice I was missing. They might decide that it wasn't worth the drive back to retrieve me; that, like Quixote the cat, I was a bother and a burden they could do without.

The little town behind me was quiet, and there were no other cars on the road. I started crying, but that only made me feel more sore. I got up and began to walk back toward the houses, and then I decided that if Mom and Dad did come for me, they wouldn't be able to find me, so I returned to the railroad tracks and sat down again.

I was scraping the dried blood off my legs when I looked up and saw the Green Caboose come back around the bend. It hurtled up the road toward me, getting bigger and bigger, until it screeched to a halt right in front of me. Dad got out of the car, knelt down, and tried to give me a hug.

I pulled away from him. "I thought you were going to leave me behind,” I said.

"Aww, I'd never do that," he said. "Your brother was trying to tell us that you'd fallen out, but he was blubbering so damned hard we couldn't understand a word he was saying."

Dad started pulling the pebbles out of my face. Some were buried deep in my skin, so he reached into the glove compartment for a pair of needle-nosed pliers. When he'd plucked all the pebbles from my cheeks and forehead, he took out his handkerchief and tried to stop my

25

nose from bleeding. It was dripping like a broken faucet. "Damn, honey;' he said. "You busted your snot locker pretty good."

I started laughing really hard. "Snot locker" was the funniest name I'd ever heard for a nose. After Dad cleaned me up and I got back in the car, I told Brian and Lori and Mom about the word, and they all started laughing as hard as me. Snot locker. It was hilarious.

>>> Response to “Desert” from The Glass Castle ● Though it portrays an incredibly hardscrabble life, The Glass Castle is never sad or depressing.

Discuss the tone of this excerpt, and why and how do you think that Walls achieved that effect? ● What is surprising about Jeanette's reaction to falling out of the car? What does she seem to

realize about her family? What are the advantages of growing up with nomadic parents, what are the disadvantages?

● What do you think this part of the story shows about the effect of poverty on children? What do the children suffer? Do they gain anything?

● Do you think think the lessons that come from hard suffering is a universal idea? Do kids who have to struggle just to grow up gain anything over kids who grow up with other advantages?

● Imagine yourself as a parent trying to raise children in a situation of poverty. What would be the hardest part? How would you survive?

Martin Espada Poet, essayist, translator, editor, and attorney: Martín Espada has dedicated much of his career to the pursuit of social justice, including fighting for Latino rights and reclaiming the historical record. Espada’s critically acclaimed collections of poetry celebrate—and lament—the immigrant and working class experience. Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a politically engaged Puerto Rican family. He studied history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned his JD from Northeastern University. For many years Espada was a tenant lawyer and legal advocate. Espada himself has never wavered in his commitment to poetry as a source of political and personal power. In an interview with Bill Moyers, Espada spoke to the impact of poetry on the lives of second-generation immigrants who discover the power of their own experiences through the form: “Poetry will help them to the extent that poetry helps them maintain their dignity, helps them maintain their sense of self respect. They will be better suited to defend themselves in the world. And so I think … poetry makes a practical contribution.”

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Martin Espada's “Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper” (1993) At sixteen, I worked after high school hours at a printing plant that manufactured legal pads: Yellow paper stacked seven feet high and leaning as I slipped cardboard between the pages, then brushed red glue up and down the stack. No gloves: fingertips required for the perfection of paper, smoothing the exact rectangle. Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands would slide along suddenly sharp paper, and gather slits thinner than the crevices of the skin, hidden. Then the glue would sting, hands oozing till both palms burned at the punchclock. Ten years later, in law school, I knew that every legal pad was glued with the sting of hidden cuts, that every open lawbook was a pair of hands upturned and burning.

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Louise Erdrich’s “The Red Convertible” Louise Erdrich was born in Little Falls, Minnesota in 1954. As the daughter of a Chippewa Indian mother and a German-American father, Erdrich explores Native-American themes in her works, with major characters representing both sides of her heritage. In an award-winning series of related novels and short stories, Erdrich has visited and re-visited the North Dakota lands where her ancestors met and mingled, representing Chippewa experience in the Anglo-American literary tradition. Many critics claim Erdrich has remained true to her Native ancestors’ mythic and artistic visions while writing fiction that candidly explores the cultural issues facing modern-day Native Americans and mixed heritage Americans.

Louise Erdrich’s “The Red Convertible” (1984) I was the first one to drive a convertible on my reservation. And of course it was red, a red Olds. I owned that car along with my brother Henry junior. We owned it together until his boots filled with water on a windy night and he bought out my share. Now Henry owns the whole car, and his younger brother Lyman (that's myself), Lyman walks everywhere he goes.

1

How did I earn enough money'to buy my share in the first place? My one talent was I could always make money. I had a touch for it, unusual in a Chippewa. From the first I was different that way, and everyone recognized it. I was the only kid they let in the American Legion Hall to shine shoes, for example, and one Christmas I sold spiritual bouquets for the mission door to door. The nuns let me keep a percentage. Once I started, it seemed the more money I made the easier the money came. Everyone encouraged it. When I was fifteen I got a job washing dishes at the Joliet Cafe, and that was where my first big break happened.

2

It wasn't long before I was promoted to busing tables, and then the short-order cook quit and I was hired to take her place. No sooner than you know it I was managing the Joliet. The rest is history. I went on managing. I soon became part owner, and of course there was no stopping me then. It wasn't long before the whole thing was mine.

3

After I'd owned the Joliet for one year, it blew over in the worst tornado ever seen around here. The whole operation was smashed to bits. A total loss. The fryalator was up in a tree, the grill torn in half like it was paper. I was only sixteen. I had it all in my mother's name, and I Iost it quick, but before I lost it I had every one of my relatives, and their relatives, to dinner, and I also bought that red Olds I mentioned, along with Henry.

4

The first time we saw it! 'I'll tell you when we first saw it. We had gotten a ride up to Winnipeg, and both of us had money. Don't ask me why, because we never mentioned a car or anything, we just had all our money. Mine was cash, a big bankroll from the Joliet’s insurance. Henry had two checks--a week's extra pay for being laid off, and his regular check from the Jewel Bearing Plant.

5

We were walking down Portage anyway, seeing the sights, when we saw it. There it was, parked, large as life. Really as if it was alive. I thought of the word repose, because the car wasn't simply stopped, parked, or whatever. That car reposed, calm and gleaming, a FOR SALE sign in its left

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front window. Then, before we had thought it over at all, the car belonged to us and our pockets were empty. We had just enough money for gas back home. We went places in that car, me and Henry. We took off driving all one whole summer. We started off toward the Little Knife River and Mandaree in Fort Berthold and then we found ourselves down in Wakpala somehow, and then suddenly we were over in Montana on the Rocky Boy, and yet the summer was not even half over. Some people hang on to details when they travel, but we didn't let them bother us and just lived our everyday lives here to there.

I do remember this one place with willows. I remember I lay under those trees and it was comfortable. So comfortable. The branches bent down all around me like a tent· or a stable.

7

And quiet, it was quiet, even though there was a; powwow close enough so I could see .it going on. The air was not too still, not too windy either. When the dust rises up and hangs in the air around the dancers like that, I feel good. Henry was asleep with his arms thrown wide. Later on, he woke up and we started driving again. We were somewhere in Montana, or maybe on the Blood Reserve-it could have been anywhere. Anyway it was where we met the girl.

8

All her hair was in buns around her ears, that's the first thing I noticed about her. She was posed alongside the road with her arm out, so we stopped. That girl was short, so short her lumber shirt looked comical on her, like a nightgown. She had jeans on and fancy moccasins and she carried a little suitcase.

9

"Hop on in," says Henry. So she climbs in between us. 10

"We'll take you home," I says. "Where do you live?" 11

"Chicken," she says. 12

"Where the hell's.that?" I ask her. 13

"Alaska." 14

"Okay,” says Henry, and we drive. 15

We got up there and never wanted to leave. The sun doesn't truly set there in summer, and the night is more a soft dusk. You might doze off, sometimes, but before you know it you're up again, like an animal in nature. You never feel like you have to sleep hard or put away the world. And things would grow up there. One day just dirt or moss, the next day flowers and long grass. The girl's name was Susy. Her family really took to us. They fed us and put us up. We had our own tent to live in by their house, and the kids would be in and out of there all day and night. They couldn't get over me and Henry being brothers, we looked so different. We told them we knew we had the same mother, anyway.

16

One night Susy came in to visit us. We sat around in the tent talking of this and that. The season was changing. It was getting darker by that time, and the cold was even getting just a little mean. I told her it was time for us to go. She stood up on a chair.

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"You never seen my hair," Susy said. 18

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That was true. She was standing on· a chair, but still, when she unclipped her buns, the hair reached all the way to the ground. Our eyes opened. You couldn't tell how much hair she had when it was rolled up so neatly. Then my brother Henry did something funny. He went up to the chair and said, "Jump on my shoulders." So she did that, and her hair reached down past his waist, and he started twirling, this way and that, so her hair was flung out from side to side.

19

"I always wondered what it was like to have long pretty hair," Henry says. Well we laughed. It was a funny sight, the way he did it. The next morning we got up and took leave of those people.

20

On to greener pastures, as they say. It was down through Spokane and across Idaho then Montana and very soon we were racing the weather right along under the Canadian border through Columbus, Des Lacs, and then we were in Botineau County and soon home. We'd made most of the trip, that summer, without putting up the car hood at all. We got home just in time, it turned out, for the army to remember Henry had signed up to join it.

21

I don't wonder that the army was so glad to get my brother that they turned him into a Marine. He was built like a brick outhouse anyway. We liked to tease him that they really wanted him for his Indian nose. He had a nose big and sharp as a hatchet, like the nose on Red Tomahawk, the Indian who killed Sitting Bull, whose profile is on signs all along the North Dakota highways. Henry went off to training camp, came home once during Christmas, then the next thing you know we got an overseas letter from him. It was 1970, and he said he was stationed up in the northern hill country. Whereabouts I did not know. He wasn't such a hot letter writer, and only got off two before the enemy caught him. I could never keep it straight, which direction those good Vietnam soldiers were from.

22

I wrote him back several times, even though I didn't know if those letters would get through. I kept him informed all about the car. Most of the time I had it up on blocks in the yard or half taken apart, because that long trip did a hard job on it under the hood.

23

I always had good luck with numbers, and never worried about the draft myself. I never even had to think about what my number was. But Henry was never lucky in the same way as me. It was at least three years before Henry came home. By then I guess the whole war was solved in the government's mind, but for him it would keep on going. In those years I'd put his car into almost perfect shape. I always thought of it as his car while he was gone, even though when he left he said, “Now it's yours," and threw me his key.

24

"Thanks for the extra key," I'd said. "I'll put it up in your drawer rust in case I need it." He laughed.

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When he came home, though, Henry was very different, and I'll say this: the change was no good. You could hardly expect him to change for the better, 'I know. But he was quiet, so quiet, and never comfortable sitting still anywhere but always up and moving around. I thought back to times we'd sat still for whole afternoons, never moving a muscle, just shifting our weight along the ground, talking to whoever sat with us, watching things. He'd always had a joke, then, too, and now you couldn't get him to laugh, or when he did it was more the sound of a man

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choking, a sound that stopped up the throats of other people around him. They got to leaving him alone most of the time, and I didn't blame them. It was a fact: Henry was jumpy and mean.

I'd bought a color TV set for my mom and the rest of us while Henry was away. Money still came very easy. I was sorry I'd ever bought it though, because of Henry. I was also sorry I'd bought color, because with black-and-white, the pictures seem older and farther away. But what are you going to do? He sat in front of it, watching it, and that was the only time he was completely still. But it was the kind of stillness that you see in a rabbit when it freezes and before it will bolt. He was not easy. He sat in his chair gripping the armrests with all his might as if the chair itself was moving at a high speed and if he let go 'at all he would rocket forward and maybe crash right through the set.

27

Once I was in the room watching TV with Henry and I heard his teeth click at something. I looked over, and he'd bitten through his' lip. Blood was going down his chin. I tell you right then I wanted to smash that tube to pieces. I went over to it but Henry must have known what I was up to. He rushed from his chair and shoved me out of the way, against the wall. I told myself he didn't know what he was doing.

28

My mom came in, turned the set off real quiet, and told us she had made something for supper. So we went and sat down. There was still blood going down Henry's chin, but he didn't notice it and no one said anything even though every time he took a bite of his bread his blood fell onto it until he was eating his own blood mixed in with the food.

29

While Henry was not around we talked about what was going to happen to him. There were no Indian doctors on the reservation, and my mom couldn't come around to trusting the old man, Moses Pillager, because he courted her long ago and was jealous of her husbands. He might take revenge through her son. We were afraid that if we brought Henry to a regular hospital they would keep him.

30

"They don't "fix them in those places," Mom said; "they just give them drugs." 31

"We wouldn't get him there in the first place," I agreed; "so let's just forget about it." 32

Then I thought about the car. 33

Henry had not even looked at the car since he'd gotten home, though like I said, it was in tip-top condition and ready to drive. I thought the car might bring the old Henry back somehow. So I bided my time and waited for my chance to interest him in the vehicle.

34

One night Henry was off somewhere. I took myself a hammer. I went out to that car and I did a number on its underside. Whacked it up. Bent the tail pipe double. Ripped the muffler loose. By the time I was done with the car it looked worse than any typical Indian car that has been driven all its life on reservation roads, which they always say are like government promises ---full of holes. It just about hurt me, I'll tell you that! I threw dirt in the carburetor and I ripped all the electric tape off the seats. I made it look just as beat up as I could. Then I sat back and waited for Henry to find it.

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31

. Still, it took him over a month. That was all right, because it was just getting warm enough; not melting, but warm enough to work outside.

36

"Lyman," he says, walking in one day, "that red car looks like shit." 37

"Well it's old," I says. "You got to expect that." 38

"No way!" says Henry. "That car's a classic! But you went and ran the piss right out of it, Lyman, and you know it don't deserve that. I kept that car in A-one shape. You don't remember. You're too young. But when I left, that car was running like a watch. Now I don't even know if I can get it to start again, let alone get it anywhere near its old condition."

39

"Well you try," I said, like I was getting mad, "but I say it's a piece of junk." 40

Then I walked out before he could realize I knew he'd strung together more than six words at once.

41

After that I thought he'd freeze himself to death working on that car. He was out there all day, and at night he rigged up a little lamp, ran a cord out the window, and had himself some light to see by while he worked. He was better than he had been before, but that's still not saying much. It was easier for him to do the things the rest of us did. He ate more slowly and didn't jump up and down during the meal to get this or that or look out the window. I put my hand in the back of the TV set, I admit, and fiddled around with it good, so that it was almost impossible now to get a clear picture. He didn't look at it very often anyway. He was always out with that car or going off to get parts for it. By the time it was really melting outside, he had it fixed.

42

I had been feeling down in the dumps about Henry around this time. We had always been together before. Henry and Lyman. But he was such a loner now that I didn't know how to take it. So I jumped at the chance one day when Henry seemed friendly. It's not that he smiled or anything. He just said, "Let's take that old shitbox for a spin." Just the way he said it made me think he could be coming around.

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We went out to the car. It was spring. The sun was shining very bright. My only sister, Bonita, who was just eleven years old, came out and made us stand together for a picture.

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Henry leaned his elbow on the red car's windshield, and he took his other arm and put it over my shoulder, very carefully, as though it was heavy for him to lift and he didn't want to bring the weight down all at once. "Smile," Bonita said, and he did.

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That picture. I never look at it anymore. A few months ago, I don't know why, I got his picture out and tacked it on the wall. I felt good about Henry at the time, close to him. I felt good having his picture on the wall, until one night when I was looking at television. I was a little drunk and stoned. I looked up at the wall and Henry was staring at me. I don't know what it was, but his smile had changed, or maybe it was gone. All I know is I couldn't stay in the same room with that picture. I was shaking. I got up, closed the door, and went into the kitchen. A little later my friend Ray came over and we both went back into that room. We put the picture in a brown bag, folded the bag over and over tightly, then put it way back in a closet.

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I still see that picture now, as if it tugs at me, whenever I pass that closet door. The picture is very clear in my mind. It was so sunny that day Henry had to squint against the glare. Or maybe the camera Bonita held flashed like a mirror, blinding him, before she snapped the picture. My face is right out in the sun, big and round. But he might have drawn back, because the shadows on his face are deep as holes. There are two shadows curved like little hooks around the ends of his smile, as if to frame it and try to keep it there -- that one, first smile that looked like it might have hurt his face. He has his field jacket on and the worn-in clothes he'd come back in and kept wearing ever since. After Bonita took the picture, she went into the house and we got into the car. There was a full cooler in the trunk. We started off, east, toward Pembina and the Red River because Henry said he wanted to see the high water.

47

The trip over there was beautiful. When everything starts changing, drying up, clearing off, you feel like your whole life is starting. Henry felt it, too. The top was down and the car hummed like a top. He'd really put it back in shape, even the tape on the seats was .very carefully put down and glued back in layers. It's not that he smiled again or even joked, but his face looked to me as if it was clear, more peaceful. It looked as though he wasn't thinking of anything in particular except the bare fields and windbreaks and houses we were passing.

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The river was high and full of winter trash when we got there. The sun was still out, but it was colder by the river. There-were still little clumps of dirty snow here and there on the banks. The water hadn't gone over the banks yet, but it would, you could tell. It was just at its limit, hard swollen, glossy like an old gray scar. We made ourselves a fire, and we sat down and watched the current go. As I watched it I felt something squeezing inside me and tightening and trying to let go all at the same time. I knew I was not just feeling it myself; I knew I was feeling what Henry was going through at that moment. Except that I couldn't stand it, the closing and opening. I jumped to my feet. I took Henry by the shoulders, and I started shaking him. "Wake up," I says, "wake up, wake up, wake up!" I didn't know what had come over me. I sat down beside him again.

49

His face was totally white and hard. Then it broke, like stones break all of a sudden when water boi.ls up inside them. . . "I know it," he says. "I know it. I can't help it. It's no use."

50

We start talking. He said he knew what I'd done with the car. It was obvious it had been whacked out of shape and not just neglected. He said he wanted to give the car to me for good now, it was no use. He said he'd fixed it just to give it back and I should take it.

51

"No way," I says, "I don't want it." 52

"That's okay," he says, "you take it." 53

"I don't want it, though," I says back to him, and then to emphasize, just to emphasize, you understand, I touch his shoulder. He slaps my hand off.

54

"Take that car," he says. 55

"No," I say. "Make me," I say, and then he grabs my jacket and rips the arm loose. That jacket is a class act, suede with tags and zippers. I push Henry backwards, off the log. He jumps up and bowls me over. We go down in a clinch and come up swinging hard, for all we're worth, with

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our fists. He socks my jaw so hard I feel like it swings loose. Then. I'm at his rib cage and land a good one under his chin so his head snaps back. He's dazzled. He looks at me and I look at him and then his eyes are full of tears and blood and at first I think he's crying. But no, he's laughing. "Ha! Ha!" he says. "Ha! Ha! Take good care of it."

"Okay," I says. "Okay, no problem; Ha! Ha!" 57

I can't help it, and I start laughing, too. My face feels fat and strange, and after a while I get a beer from the cooler in the trunk, and when I hand it to Henry he takes his shirt and wipes my germs off. "Hoof-and-mouth disease," he says. For some reason this cracks me up, and so we're really laughing for a while, and then we drink all the rest of the beers one by one and throw them in the river and see how far, how fast, the current takes them before they fill up and sink.

58

"You want to go on back?" I ask after a while; "Maybe we could snag a couple nice Kashpaw girls."

59

He says nothing. But l can tell his mood is turning again. 60

"They're all crazy, the girls up here, every damn one of them." 61

"You're crazy too," I say, to jolly him up. "Crazy Lamartine boys!" 62

He looks as though he will take this wrong at first. His face twists, then clears, and he jumps up on his feet. "That's right!" he says. "Crazier 'n hell. Crazy Indians!"

63

I think it's the old Henry again. He throws off his jacket and starts springing his legs up from the knee? like a fancy dancer. He's down doing something between a grass dance and a bunny hop, no kind of dance I ever saw before, but neither has anyone else on all this green growing earth. He's wild. He wants to pitch whoopee! He's up and at me and all over. All this time I'm laughing so hard, so hard my belly is getting tied up in a knot.

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"Got to cool me off!" he shouts all of a sudden. Then he runs over to the river and jumps in. 65

There's boards and other things in the current. It's so high. No sound comes from the river after the splash he makes, so I run right over. I look around. It's getting dark. I see he's halfway across the water already, and I know he didn't swim there but the current took him. It's far. I hear his voice, though, very clearly across it.

66

"My boots are filling," he says. 67

He says this in a normal voice, like he just noticed and he doesn't know what to think of it. Then he's gone. A branch comes by. Another branch. And I go in.

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By the time I get out of the river, off the snag I pulled myself onto, the sun is down. I walk back to the car, turn on the high beams, and drive it up the bank. I put it in first gear and then I take my foot off the clutch. I get out, close the door, and watch it plow softly into the water. The headlights reach in as they go down, searching, still lighted even after the water swirls over the

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back end. I wait. The wires short out. It is all finally dark. And then there is only the water, the sound of it going and running and going and running and running.

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Joseph Bruchac’s “Ellis Island” Joseph Bruchac lives in the Adirondack mountain foothills town New York, in the same house where his maternal grandparents raised him. Much of his writing draws on that land and his Abenaki ancestry. Although his American Indian heritage is only one part of an ethnic background that includes Slovak and English blood, those Native roots are the ones by which he has been most nourished. He continues to work extensively in projects involving the preservation of Abenaki culture, language and traditional Native skills, including performing traditional and contemporary Abenaki music with the Dawnland Singers.

Ellis Island by Joseph Bruchac (1993)

Beyond the red brick of Ellis Island where the two Slovak children who became my grandparents waited the long days of quarantine, after leaving the sickness, the old Empires of Europe, a Circle Line ship slips easily on its way to the island of the tall woman, green as dreams of forests and meadows waiting for those who’d worked a thousand years yet never owned their own. Like millions of others, I too come to this island, nine decades the answerer of dreams. Yet only one part of my blood loves that memory. Another voice speaks of native lands within this nation. Lands invaded when the earth became owned. Lands of those who followed the changing Moon, knowledge of the seasons in their veins.

>>> Response to “Ellis Island” ● What parts of the poem seem to address Bruchac’s Native American heritage? What parts of

the poem address his European heritage? What does his Slovakian grandparents experience express about the Immigrant dream of America?

● What is the relationship between those two cultural heritages? How does Bruchac deal with the conflicts in his heritage? To which heritage does he feel most connected?

● What does the poem express about loss of culture and loss of identity?

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Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Cermony” Throughout her career as a writer and teacher, Leslie Marmon Silko has remained grounded in the history-filled landscape of the Laguna Pueblo . Her experiences in the culture have fueled an interest to preserve cultural traditions and understand the impact of the past on contemporary life. Her novels have many characters who attempt what some perceive a simple yet uneasy return to balance Native American traditions survivalism with the violence of modern America. The clash of civilizations is a continuing theme in the modern Southwest and of the difficult search for balance that the region’s inhabitants encounter. Her literary contributions are particularly important because they open up the Anglo-European prevailing definitions of the American literary tradition to accommodate the often underrepresented traditions, priorities, and ideas about identity that in a general way characterize many American Indian cultures and in a more specific way form the bedrock of Silko's Laguna heritage and experience.

Ceremony

I will tell you something about stories, [he said] They aren't just for entertainment. Don't be fooled They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death. You don't have anything if you don't have the stories. Their evil is mighty but it can't stand up to our stories. So they try to destroy the stories let the stories be confused or forgotten They would like that They would be happy Because we would be defenseless then.

>>> Response to “Ceremony”

● Who is “they” in the poem? What details give you a sense of the relationship between the speaker and the “they”? Why would “they” want to destroy the stories? Why would it matter if the stories are destroyed, according to the speaker?

● What is the significance of stories in terms of a society’s culture and identity, and in terms of an individual’s relationship to his/her culture?

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Javier Piña’s “Bilingual in a Cardboard Box” Chicano poet Javier Pina composes bilingual video poems that show the impacts of assimilation and point out the contradictions in the American dream of immigration. His poems, featured in the The United States of Poetry (a documentary in which featured poets speak, rap, sing and chant works in settings and situations that reflect, comment on, and support their words).

Soy Mexicano I'm an American Puedo cantar canciones del corazón I am mute Puedo ver los colores de la puesta del sol I am blind Puedo escuchar las voces de los pajaritos cantando I am deaf Soy indígena bailando al cielo que llora I'm forever seated in a chair with wheels Todos me respetan I'm labeled by pointing fingers Tengo mucho dinero I live in a cardboard box Estoy riéndome con el mundo alegre I am sad Salgo con mis amigos I am alone Estoy soñando and I don't want to wake up!

>>> Response to “Bilingual in a Cardboard Box”

● What is the difference between the English lines and the Spanish lines? ● What might the differences between the Spanish and English lines express about the life of

immigrants? ● Why does he end with the idea that he does not want to wake up from his “soñando”? ● Do you agree with his point about migrants living in two cultures? ● Do you feel like America is more of the “melting pot” or “salad bowl”? Which metaphor do you

feel better suits the way people assimilate in America? ● Do you think people should work to hold on to the language and culture of their homelands, or

do you think people should accept the language and culture of the new country? ● Have you ever tried to hide your home language, religion or any other aspect of your family’s

culture from your friends or classmates? If so, why?