August Wilson - Fences

I enjoyed reading the play “Fences” by August Wilson.  This play is full of comedy and drama.  The language that was used was English with African American dialects.  This play was developed between 1983 and 1987 in the Unites States.  The play was first published in June 1986.  There is not a narrator on the play but the stage directions do lend an omniscient voice at times.  The tone of the play is loosely autobiographical which emphasizes links between the aftermaths of slavery as well as legalized discrimination and African American lives during the 1950’s.  The setting of the play is the dirt-yard and porch of the Maxon family’s house in Pittsburgh, PA.  The two main characters in the play are Troy Maxson and Cory Maxson.  Troy and Cory's differing views on how Cory should spend his future declines after Troy forbids Cory from playing football and going to college. Their relationship collapses further when Troy reveals that he has been cheating on Cory's mother with another woman and gotten her pregnant and signed papers permitting Cory's Uncle Gabe to be committed to a mental hospital while Troy lives in a house paid for by Gabe's money. Troy tells his affair with Alberta to his wife, Rose. Rose lectures Troy. Troy violently grabs Rose's arm and will not let go.  Cory surprises Troy by attacking him from behind.  Cory and Troy fight.   Troy wins the fight and warns Cory that he has one more strike to spend.  Rose tells Troy that Alberta died having his baby.  In Act Two, scene four: Troy picks a fight with Cory.   Cory displays his disgust for Troy's betraying behavior towards Rose, Gabe, and Cory.  Troy and Cory fight with a baseball bat and Troy wins and kicks Cory out of their house.  A theme that is present in this play is the coming of age within the cycle of damaged black manhood.  Another theme is the interpreting and inheriting of history and the choice between pragmatism and illusions as survival mechanisms.  Some motifs in the play are death and baseball, seeds and growth, and the blues.  Some symbols that are revealed throughout the play are trains, fences, and the devil.  In Act One, scene one, Troy says without humility, "Death ain't nothing," but he eventually dies before the play ends. In Act One, scene two, Gabriel talks in songs and strange stories about his friendship with St. Peter. But sometimes his words appear to foreshadow Troy's death. Gabe sings to Troy, "Better get ready for the judgment." In Act One, scene one, Bono inquires about Troy's relationship with a woman names Alberta. Troy denies his affair with Alberta, but Bono says he has seen Troy buying her drinks and walking near her house when he says he's at the bar, Taylor's. Bono's questioning foreshadows Troy's foreseeable helplessness to hide his secret.

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Fences.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. n.d.. Web. 3 May 2011.

August Wilson - Introduction

August Wilson was a playwright.  He was born on April 27, 1945.  He grew up in a working class area of Pittsburgh.  His father was a German American baker and he abandoned the family when August was only five years old.  His mother remarried and the family moved to a mostly white suburb.  August dropped out of school at the age of sixteen because he was fed up with racial indignities.  It was then when his education started in the local library.  He was a confounder of Black Horizon’s Theater Company in 1968.  At this time his voice was expressed in poetry.  He moved to St. Paul, Minnesota in 1978 where he wrote his first major play, Jitney.  August is a soft-spoken man but he is also a man of strong convictions about the role of the blacks of his country.  From the beginning he had involved himself in “trying to raise consciousness through theater.”  He has an astonishing memory and equal abilities as a mimic.  With supreme skill he can shift his voice into the rich languages of the South which stands hardly a trace of a regional accent.  He impersonates the railroads keepers that he met as a boy in Pats’ Place in Pittsburgh.  Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  referred August Wilson as “the most celebrated American playwright now writing, and . . . certainly the most accomplished black playwright in this nation’s history.”  In 1959 he was the only black student in Central Catholic High School but threats and abuse drove him away.  Connelly Vocational proves to be unchallenging.  In 1960 he dropped out of Gladstone High school in the 10^th grade when a teacher accused him of plagiarizing a 20 page paper on Napoleon.  He gets his own education at the library and on the street.  Between 1962 and 1963 he enlisted in the U.S. Army for three years but he leaves after one.  He had several jobs such as a porter, short-order cook, gardener, and dishwasher.  He discovers the blues in 1965.  His biological father also died and he changed his name in 1965.  He bought his first type writer for $20 and began writing poetry.  In 1969 he marries Brenda Burton and his stepfather dies.  His first daughter was born on January 22, 1970.  Their marriage ends in 1972.  He moved to St. Paul, Minnesota where he landed a job writing for a Science Museum.   In 1980 he had a fellowship at Minneapolis Playwrights Center.  He marries a social worker in 1981.  His mother, daisy Wilson died in 1983.  He won his first New York Drama Critics award in 1985 form “Ma Rainey. In 1987 “Fences” opened on Broadway and it won the Pulitzer Prize.  “Fences” grossed $11 million in its first year.  He was named the 1990 Pittsburgher of the Year by Pittsburgh Magazine in 1989.  In 1990 gave a speech at the 1990 Pittsburgher of Year award and “Piano Lesson” opens on Broadway and wins the Pulitzer Prize.  His second marriage ends in 1990 and he moves to Seattle.  In 1992 he receives honorary degree from Pitt and he speaks at the Honors Convocation.  He marries for the third time in 1994 to Constanza Romero a custom designer.  In 1995  “Piano Lesson” broadcasts on Hallmark Hall of Fame.  He had a public debate in New York City with Robert Brustein on status of black theater in 1997.  In 1999 he was honored at the 100^th anniversary of Hill District Branch Library.  He was also named by Post-Gazette as top Pittsburgh cultural power broker.                                                  

Rawson, Chris. "August Wilson - a Timeline." Post-Gazette.com. 5 Dec. 1999. Web. 04 May 2011.

Billy Collins - Introduction To Poetry

     I enjoyed reading the poem Introduction To Poetry by Billy Collins.  This poem describes how to find out what a poem means, how to look at the world, without stating the facts in plain words.  The ending describes how some people look at a poem with only one point of view.  Some people read the poem exactly and when an answer doesn’t appear they repeatedly run into a brick wall of determination to try and get a meaning of the poems.  The author suggests looking through the meaning of the words or reflecting the meaning onto something else that is occurring to get a sense of what the author is saying.  The author also suggests that each part of the poem, each word, works to a better sense of meaning.  If you start in the middle and look at things in a random order then as you work your way across the poem you could bring a new meaning into view.  He uses the metaphors of water skiing and torture to illustrate the picture that he is painting for the reader.  The waterskiing across the surface while waving to the author’s name gives the idea that the author started the reader on interpreting the poem.  I think that the author wants the reader to study his poem and not strangle it.  By holding the colored slide to the light means to see the brightest colors and strongest meanings.  The author wants the reader to listen to the poems secrets like you “listen to a hive.”  He wants us to put our thoughts inside the poem and let them dart around like a mouse inside of a maze.  He wants his readers to listen to the poem and not destroy it.  There is a lot of imagery in this poem.  This poem offers itself as a color slide, a hive, a dark room, a lake, a knowing, but silent, defendant.  The poem wants us to engage in all these different images - except the last one – so that we might see into the heart of a poem without beating the poor thing to death.  I am sure that we all know the feeling of being the mouse dropped into the poem, trying to probe its way out.     

Billy Collins - Winter Syntax

     I enjoyed reading Winter Syntax by Billy Collins.  In this poem, Collins writes about the difficulties of writing literature through the representation of a “lone traveler” and his adventures through a blizzard.  He talks about the important features of good writing.  The poem starts off stressing the importance of the first sentence and how it is similar to a lone traveler going through a tough blizzard.  Collins allows readers to vicariously imagine the difficulties that a writer goes through while writing by using the relation of the traveler.  The snow is similar to a white page where the poet writes down their creative ideas.  The poem ends by saying “the man will express a single thought” as if to say that he had finally finished explaining the difficulties of writing.  The setting in this poem plays a very important role since it is significant because it makes the poem viewed in a different way.  This is a very different poem because it is talking about a sentence; it gives it life, and gives it a setting.  The setting is described as cold, like the cold of a forest or mountain in the winter time.  The cold weather makes us able to play with our imagination.  The text in the poem mentions a man and if we relate it closely then we can say that the man is the sentence that has taken life.  We are given mental pictures through the images of the snow, cold weather, and the lonely man.  Continuing to read on the author not only talks about the cold places.  The author mentions “the desert heat” in the second stanza.  This whole poem is like a journey.  It is like there is a journey involved and that the author himself is learning something about it.  He makes it seem as if writing is a journey.  A journey that has a beginning and an end.  The author also mentions that for every winter there is always a spring.  Comparing all this to a sentence relates to the finished sentence of a complete thought.               

Billy Collins - Introduction

     Billy Collins was born on March 22, 1941 in New York City to William and Katherine Collins.  He is the author of several books of poetry.  He earned a BA from the College of Holy Cross.  He earned a MA and PhD from the University of California-Riverside.  He co-founded the Mid-Atlantic Review with Michael Shannon in 1975.  He published throughout the 1980s.  His poetry has appeared in anthologies, textbooks, and a variety of periodicals, including Poetry, American Poetry Review, American Scholar, Harper’s, Paris Review, and The New Yorker.  In 1997, he was recorded reading thirty-three of his poems.  His work has been featured in the Pushcart Prize anthology and has been chosen several times for the annual Best American Poetry series.  He was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2001.  He was named “the most popular poet in America” by Bruce Weber in the New York Times.  Collins is famous for casual, entertaining poems that welcome readers with humor.  He admits that his poetry is “suburban”, domestic, and middle class.  His level of fame is almost unprecedented in the world of contemporary poetry.  His reading regularly sells out and he received a six-figure advance when he moved publishers in the late 1990s.  He served two terms as the US Poet Laureate from 2001-2003.  From 2004-2006 he was New York State Poet Laureate and he is a regular guest on National Public Radio programs.  The first collection that he published outside the US was Taking off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes.  He is a Distinguished Professor at Leham College of the City University of New York and has taught for the past 30 years.  He is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute in Florida.  In 1992 he was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library.  He was selected as the New York State Poet for 2004-2006.   He is also a writer-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence College.              

   

Poetry Foundation. Web. 26 Apr. 2011.

Bobbie Ann Mason - Shiloh

I enjoyed reading the short story Shiloh by Bobbie Ann Mason.  This was a very interesting story and I was drawn into to it from the beginning.  One theme that I noticed in this story was the persistence of grief.  The death of their child, Randy, happened years before this story took place.  The death of their child continues to invade the consciousness of Leroy and Norma Jean.  The two of them never speak of their child’s death and Leroy’s memories are very fuzzy of their child.  There is still grief about that tragedy that persists.  Leroy tells every hitchhiker he picks up about Randy until it begins to seem self-pitying.  When Leroy sees grown-up kids the same age as Randy, he is reminded of his son.  Every time Leroy sees Mabel he thinks of his son.  Mabel believes that Randy’s death was a cruel trick of fate because she opposed Norma Jean’s pregnancy from the beginning.  She tells a nasty story about a dog killing a baby and claims that the mother was to blame for the disaster.  Leroy and Norma Jean assume immediately that she is taking a jab at them.  With their sensitivity to Mabel’s suggestions implies that Randy is always at the front of their minds.  The death of their child donates to the ending of Leroy and Norma Jean’s relationship.  The routine of avoiding any mention of the baby becomes an overwhelming force in their marriage.  Leroy considers mentioning something about Randy to his wife but is unable to bring up the topic.  Norma Jean complains about her mother’s spitefulness while Leroy pretends not to know what she is talking about.  Their silence between the two drove a wedge between them.  At the very beginning of the story, Leroy thinks about how lucky they are to be together despite the tragedy of their child.  Leroy has heard that the death of an infant can spoil a marriage.  At the end of the story, it seems that Leroy had been overconfident.  The death of their child has affected them both exactly as it affects most couples.  There were a few symbols that I noticed in this story.  One symbol is the log cabin that Leroy dreams of building for his wife.  The cabin is an unreasonable idea.  Norma Jean is of no interest in the building of a cabin. Leroy embraces his dreams of building the cabin with the same touching and misplaced determination with which he clings to his wife.  There is nothing that discourages him, not even the straightforward words of Mabel and Norma Jean.  They repeatedly tell him that living in a cabin is unpleasant, that new developments would not allow such a structure, that building is too expensive, and that Norma Jean hates the idea.  Leroy won’t let go of the idea of the cabin even though there is strong opposition.  Leroy won’t give up on his marriage although his wife has.  At Shiloh, Leroy realizes that his marriage is as hollow as the boxy interior of a log cabin.  He then realizes the link between his dreams of a cabin and his failed marriage.                                        

 SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Shiloh.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.

Bobbie Ann Mason - Introduction

     Bobbie Ann Mason was born in Mayfield, Kentucky on May 1, 1940.  She is an American short-story writer and novelist.  She is known for her recreation of rural Kentucky life.  She was raised on a dairy farm.  Her first experienced life outside of Kentucky was when she traveled through the Midwest as the teenage president of the fan club for a pop quartet, the Hilltoppers.  She became interested in writing as a child, when she wrote skits of the mystery series novels that she read.  In 1962, she graduated from the University of Kentucky, Lexington with a B.A. and moved to New York City.  In 1966, she attended the State University of New York at Binghamton and graduated with a M.A.  She also attended the University of Connecticut, Storrs and received her Ph.D. in 1972.  She was an assistant professor of English at Pennsylvania’s Mansfield State College from 1972 to 1979.  She then began writing full-time, publishing stories in The New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and in other places.  In her first collection of stories she describes the lives of working class people in a shifting rural society now dominated by chain stores, televisions, and superhighways.  She has received critical praise from Shiloh and Other Stories which were her first collection of stories.  Her first collection of stories won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was nominated for the American Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.  She received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and she received an Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  Her first novel, In Country, is also immersed in mass culture, which led one critic to speak of Mason’s “Shopping Mall Realism.”  This novel is taught widely in classes and was made into a film.  Many critics praised her realistic regional dialogue, although some compared the novel unfavorably with her shorter works.  Mason published Spence + Lila in 1988 which was a story of a long-married couple.  She is a writer-in-residence at the University of Kentucky.                   

"Biography - Bobbie Ann Mason." Home - Bobbie Ann Mason. Web. 25 Apr. 2011

"Bobbie Ann Mason." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 25 Apr. 2011

Amy Tan - Half and Half

I enjoyed reading the short story “Half and Half” by Amy Tan.  I believe that this story was given this title because it is about half of her childhood and half of her adulthood. As Rose is thinking about losing her husband and her faith in love, she remembers her past when her mother lost her son and her faith in God.  In this story she tells of how her youngest brother, Bing, drowns and explains her mother’s reaction to the loss.  This story also pertains to the relationship between Rose and her husband.  In their marriage, Rose is the Chinese half and Ted is the American half.  Both their mothers contest the marriage of the two.  Ted’s mother contests the marriage because she does not believe in racial mixing and feels that her son is marrying beneath his social status.  Rose’s mother knows that two different heritages will not blend and she fears that Rose will stop being Chinese.  This story also refers to the state of the Hsus before and after the drowning of Bing.  Amy describes the beach where Bing dies as “a giant bowl, cracked in half, the other half washed out to sea.”  Before Bing’s death the family was very happy and close-knit.  The mother was a column of strength for the family.  She was a very religious person and she carried the Bible around and read it for support and encouragement.  She abandoned her religion and placed the Bible as a support for the leg of the kitchen table after Bing’s death.  She was very angry with God because he did not return Bing to her.  Her anger negatively affected the entire family.  There is a huge gap in communication and thinking between Rose and her mother.  Rose has become very Americanized after her marriage to Ted.  Rose and her mother have very little in common.  The theme of loss of heritage is highlighted in this short story.  Rose’s mother totally resents her because of the rejection of her Chinese self.                              

Amy Tan - Introduction

     Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California on February 19, 1952.  Her parents were Chinese immigrants.  They lived in several communities in Northern California before finally settling in Santa Clara.  John Tan was her father and he was an electrical engineer and a Baptist minister.  He came to America to escape the commotion of the Chinese Civil War.  Her mother, Daisy, lived a disturbing early life which motivated Amy’s novel ‘The Kitchen God’s Wife.’  Daisy had divorced an abusive husband but lost custody of her three daughters in China.  She was forced to leave them behind when she escaped on the last boat to leave Shanghai before the Communist took over in 1949.  She then married John Tan and they had three children, Amy and her two brothers.  Amy’s father and oldest brother died from a brain tumor within a year of each other.  Her mother moved to Switzerland with her surviving children.  Amy finished high school in Switzerland but she and her mother were in constant conflict.  Amy and her mother did not speak to each other for six months after Amy left the Baptist College that her mother had selected for her.  Amy followed her boyfriend to San Jose City College.  She then resisted her mother again by abandoning the pre-med course her mother had urged to pursue the study of English and linguistics.  She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at San Jose State University in English and linguistics.  She married her boyfriend, Louis Mattie, in 1974.  They lived in San Francisco.  Her husband was an attorney who took up the practice of tax law.  Amy studied for a doctorate in linguistics at the University of California in Santa Cruz and then later at Berkeley.  She developed an interest in the problems of the developmentally disabled.  In 1976, she left the doctoral program and took a job as a language development consultant at Alameda County Association for Retarded Citizens.  Later she directed a training project for developmentally disabled children.  She started a business writing firm with a partner.  The firm provided speeches for salesman and executives for large corporations.  She became a freelance writer after a dispute with her partner.  Her partner believed that she should give up writing to concentrate on the management side of the business.  She wrote a 26-chapter booklet called “Telecommunications and You” which was produced for IBM.  Amy flourished as a business writer.  She was able to buy a house for her mother after just a few years of being in business for herself.  Amy and her husband lived well on their double income but the more that she worked the more frustrated she became.  Her work had become a compelling habit and she pursued relief in creative efforts.  She studied Jazz piano, hoping to feed the musical training forced on her by her parents in childhood into a more personal expression.  Amy began to write fiction.  Her mother fell ill just as she was beginning a new career.  Amy promised that if her mother recovered then she would take her to China to see the daughter who she had left behind almost forty years ago.  Her mother got better and they departed for China in 1987.  The trip to China was an eye-opener for Amy.  The trip gave her a new viewpoint on her often-difficult relationship with her mother.  The trip motivated her to complete the book of stories that she had promised her agent.  She published the book ‘The Joy Luck Club” in 1989.  The book won passionate reviews and spent eight months on The New York Times bestsellers list.  The paperback rights sold for $1.23 million.  The book has been translated into 17 languages, including Chinese.  She has written four novels and two children books since then.  All of these have confirmed her reputation and enjoyed excellent sales.  In 2003 she published an autobiography in which she disclosed her experience with Lyme disease.  Lyme disease is a chronic bacterial infection contracted from the bite of a common tick.  Her case went undiagnosed for years before she received the proper treatment.  She suffered intense physical pain, metal impairment and seizures.  For many years Amy was unable to continuing writing because of the disease.  She has been able to control the worst symptoms of her illness with medication.  She has resumed her writing but she spends much of her energy raising awareness about Lyme disease.  She is promoting early detection and treatment for the disease.  She is advocating for the rights of Lyme disease patients.                                          

"Amy Tan Biography -- Academy of Achievement." Academy of Achievement Main Menu. 17 June 2010. Web. 25 Apr. 2011.

Alice Walker - Everyday Use

I though the short story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker was very hard to understand.  This story seemed to jump around quite a bit.  One of the themes in this short story was the troublesome power of education.  Mama struggled to send Dee to a good school.  Education seems to be more disruptive than beneficial to Dee’s relationship with her family.  Mama was deprived of an education.  As a child her school was closed and no one attempted to reopen it.  There were many things that set Mama on the road to a life of hard work such as racism, passive acceptance, and forces beyond her control.  Dee was very fortunate that Mama gave her the opportunity for advantages and improvements even though they have only served to create a wedge between Dee and the rest of the family.  Dee uses her intelligence to bully others.  With all her education and knowledge she is a threat to the simple world that Mama and Maggie live in.  She is determined to hold her knowledge over them.  Not only has education separated Dee from her family but it has also separated Dee from a true sense of self.  With high ideals and educational opportunity came a loss of sense of heritage, background, and identity, which only the family can provide.  Dee arrives at the family home as a strange, threatening ambassador of a new world, a world that has left Maggie and Mama behind.  Some characteristics of Dee’s world are civil rights, greater visibility, and zero tolerance for inequality.  Dee has no respect for anything but her world which leads her to separate herself from her roots.  Maggie doesn’t know any world except for the one that she comes from.  She is uneducated and can only read haltingly.  Maggie has held back her own self-fulfillment by doing what she is told and accepting the conditions of her sheltered life without any questions.  Through all this is revealed an ironic contradiction.  Dee’s greedy journey for knowledge has led her to separation from her family.  The lack of education has harmed and suppressed Maggie.  Education and the lack of it have been dangerous for the sisters.  The quilts in this short story focus on the bonds between women of different generations and their enduring legacy.  There is a strong connection between the generations.  Dee’s arrival and lack of understanding of her history shows that those bonds are very weak.  The connection between Aunt Dicie and Mama, the skilled seamstresses who made the quilts, is very different from the connection between Maggie and Dee, sisters who share just a word and have almost nothing in common.  Dee does not understand the legacy of her name that has been passed along through four generations.  She also does not understand the significance of the quilts.  The quilts contain pieces of clothes that were once worn or owned by at least a century’s worth of ancestors.  The quilts are pieces of living history.  They serve as a testament to the family’s history of pride and struggle.  Mama considers her personal history one of her few treasures.                            

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Everyday Use.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.

Alice Walker - Introduction

Alice Walker is a poet, essayist, and novelist.  She was born on February 9, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia.  She was the eighth and last child of sharecroppers Willie Lee and Minnie Lou Grant Walker.  At the age of eight, she lost sight in one eye when one of her older brothers shot her with a BB gun by accident.  She was valedictorian of her class in high school.  She also received a “rehabilitation scholarship” which made it possible for her to attend Spelman.  Spelman is a college for black women in Atlanta, Georgia.  She attended Spelman for two years and then she transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in New York.  She traveled to Africa as an exchange student during her junior year in college.  In 1965, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College.  After finishing college, she lived in New York for a short time.  She lived in Tougaloo, Mississippi from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.  She had her daughter, Rebecca, in 1969.  Alice was very active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.  She continues to be an involved activist.  She has spoken for the women’s movement, the anti-apartheid movement, for the anti-nuclear movement, and against female genital mutilation.  In 1984, she started her own publishing company, Wild Trees Press.  She is a well-known fiction writer.  She has won numerous awards and honors.  Some of the awards and honors that she has received include the Lillian Smith Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts & Letters, and the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, a Merrill Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.  Her books have been translated into more than two dozen languages.  In 1983 she received the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple.  She also had a nomination for the National Book Award and the Front Page Award for the Best magazine Criticism from the Newswoman’s Club of New York.  Alice had also received the Townsend Prize and a Lyndhurst Prize.  She currently lives in Mendocino, California with her dog, Marley.                                               

"Alice Walker." Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. Web. 24 Apr. 2011.

Jokinen, Anniina. "Anniina's Alice Walker Page." Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature. 27 Dec. 2006. Web. 24 Apr. 2011.

Nikki Giovanni - Poem for Black Boys

            I also enjoyed reading the poem “Poem for Black Boys” by Nikki Giovanni.  In this poem Giovanni presents black boys as conventional figures.  They are in some way showing her anger from an African-American viewpoint.  This poem describes the struggle of an African-American to be acknowledged into society and treated equally.  Giovanni prepares the young boys for their future by telling them to be disobedient and infringe upon the laws since that is what everyone expects of them.  Society is classifying the African-Americans as being uneducated, treating them has people who are useless.  The society supposes that they are just a bunch of trouble makers who do not deserve to participate in normal daily activities.  The poem portrays them as being naughty pests which are only capable of doing horrible things.  The poet suggests to the boys to be strong and have faith.  They will have to invent their own games to play.  This means that the boys will need to find how to live happily regardless of what the society thinks of them.  There is a struggle for blacks to be accepted into civilization.  Giovanni wants the young black children to be themselves and not conform to what society thinks of them.  It is ok to be different from the rest of the society and what they expect out of you.  We are all different and that is what makes the world a unique place to live in.  There are many people who felt that all black children had only one destiny in life and that was to lie, cheat, and steal.  Giovanni uses games as a theme to express her ideas.  It seems as though she is using reverse psychology in explaining things to the black boys.  She reminds them to invent their own future and to be their own hero in life.  This poem shows racial labels and strains that existed during the time of this poem.  She knows that the boys are going to face many problems and have many battles to fight.  She uses a great deal of images and irony in her poems to make them so very powerful.  Giovanni is a poet who is not afraid to go against the present circumstances or put her toe over the line.  She is a very brilliant poet.  She is a very outspoken person and tells how things are.                                              

Nikki Giovanni - Nikki-Rosa

            I enjoyed reading the poem “Nikki-Rosa” by Nikki Giovanni.  This was a short poem but it was delivered with usual marks of poetry through punctuation and capitalization.  The narrator in the poem spoke directly to her audience.  The title of the poem suggested the blending of the personal life with the public or political one.  This poem also shows the development of an activist, from a girl Nikki to the revolutionary Rosa.  The name Rosa refers to Rosa Parks, a Civil Rights activist.  The poem is about a mature black woman who is recalling on her childhood.  She recognizes that not many people understand the poverty in which she lived in and that it did not worry or bother her.  There is no common rhyme in this poem.  This poem is more of an ongoing thought of something that has been building up inside of her for years.  Through this poem she is able to breathe and get every last word out before she loses it.  This poem has an emotional style to it.  The poem is written into shorter and longer sentences that make it have a soft style to it.  She did an amazing job in letting the readers see another side of being poor and a minority.  Living in poverty is not an overwhelming hardship but that it is full of plenty of happiness.  If a person will look anywhere long enough then they will be capable of seeing that beauty.  This poem displays how a white person cannot understand her true happiness.  The speaker feels that white people see black children as unhappy, uneducated, and deprived of chances in life due to a lack of money and material possessions.  She shows her readers that family is more important than money.  In this poem the speaker challenges society’s assumptions that poverty equals unhappiness when she states her life to be rich with memories and love.  Money cannot purchase memories and love.  My mom also told me that “Money cannot buy happiness.”  After reading this poem, I can see the statement that my mom made is very true.  Family is what makes happiness.                                        

Nikki Giovanni - Introduction and Biography

Nikki Giovanni was born on June 7, 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Her real name is Yolanda Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni and she was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio.  She was the younger of two daughters in a close-knit family.  She gained an intense appreciation for her African-American heritage from her outspoken grandmother.  She attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee in 1960, where she worked with the school’s Writer’s Workshop and edited the literary magazine.  In 1967 she received her Bachelor of Arts.  She organized the Black Arts Festival in Cincinnati.  She entered graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University in 1967.  She is a lung cancer survivor.  She received many honors including three NAACP Image Awards for Literature in 1998, the Langston Hughes award for Distinguished Contributions to Arts and Letters in 1996, as well as more than twenty honorary degrees form national colleges and universities.  She has been given keys to more than a dozen cities, including New Orleans, Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York.  She has been named in several magazines as woman of the year, including Ladies Home Journal, Ebony, Mademoiselle, and Essence.   Giovanni was the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award.  She has served as a poetry judge for the national Book Awards.  She was also a finalist for a Germany Award in the category of Spoken Word.  Currently she is a Professor of English and Gloria D. Smith Professor of Black Studies at Virginia Tech, where she has taught since 1987.  She is one of the best-known African-American poets who reached fame during the late 1960s and 1970s.  Her distinctive and understanding poetry confirms to her own developing awareness and experiences such as from child to a young woman, from a simple college freshman to an experienced civil rights advocate and from a daughter to a mother.  Her poetry conveys strong racial pride and respect for family.  Her casual style makes her work understandable to adults and children.  She has published several works of nonfiction, children’s literature and recordings, including the Emmy-award nominated The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection (2004).  She is a frequent lecturer and reader.  She has taught at Rutgers University, Ohio State University and Virginia Tech. Giovanni taught at Virginia Tech during the tragic shooting in 2007 and wrote a chant-poem which she read at the memorial service the day after.  She continues to supplement her poetry with occasional volumes of nonfiction.  She has published at least five books of poetry in ten years.  She enjoys writing and it is part of her life.                                                  

Poetry Foundation. Web. 19 Apr. 2011.

"Nikki Giovanni." Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. Web. 19 Apr. 2011.

Tillie Olsen - I Stand Here Ironing

                I enjoyed reading the short story “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen.  This story is about the silent burdens of motherhood.  Olsen implies that the role of an unselfish mother that society expects women to accept is actually an obstacle to any kind of successful self-discovery.  Motherhood actually locks women in lives burdened with labor and extreme responsibility rather than helping women achieve self-actualization.  She offers a picture of motherhood left empty and trimmed of any romantic enhancement.  She gives the reader a character who compulsively reflects on the stricter, harsher experiences of family life.  The speaker reduces certain exaggerated notions concerning motherhood especially in particular with the importance of the child-parent bond.  The narrator no more understands Emily than the teacher or counselor who invites the mother’s face-to-face meeting.  The speaker is not immoral, rude, or intentionally neglectful but she is a conflicted victim of circumstance whose personal resources can go only so far.  The fact that the narrator was not able to participate in Emily’s life may have led to the vague issue that currently overwhelms the young woman.  The narrator is able to meet the basic physical needs of her children but she is incapable of forming a deeper, more emotional bond with them.  Absence appears heavily in this short story as the narrator feels remorseful about her emotional distance and decision to send Emily away for periods of recovery.  They have been absent from each other’s life for potions of Emily’s development.  Emily has known almost nothing but remoteness and displacement.  Emily’s mother sent her to an unaffectionate neighbor for day care when she was eight months old, then to the home of her father’s relatives, then to another caretaker, and finally to a rehabilitation facility.  Every time that Emily returned she was forced to reintegrate into the changing structure of the household.  Emily grew slowly and more detached and emotionally insensitive.  The iron is a symbol of the chores and responsibilities that have prevented the narrator from participating with Emily’s life greatly.  The title of this short story suggests that the narrator is constantly involved in the duties that she must perform to successfully care for her family.  This is very odd because it is these duties that pulled her away from Emily and decreased the quality of her care.  The recurring motion of the iron moving back and forth across the surface of the ironing board represents the narrator’s thought processes as she moves back and forth over her life as a mother, attempting to identify the source of Emily’s current difficulties.  The distance that is felt between the mother and Emily is personified in this simple act of ironing.  Emily’s wellbeing is the central concern of the story but the mother is more actively occupied in ironing Emily’s dress than in the life of the young woman who will wear it.  The final wish for the mother is that Emily will have a strong sense of self-worth and believe that she is more than the dress that is “helpless before the iron.”  The narrator hopes that Emily will be able to rise above the narrator’s mistakes, rather than yield to the circumstances of her birth.  This was a very touching story and it really made me stop and think just how precious life is especially for our own children.  They are only little one time and we should be there for them at all times.                                                  

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on I Stand Here Ironing.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 14 Apr. 2011.

Tillie Olsen - Introduction and Biography

Tillie Lerner Olsen was born in either 1912 or 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska.  Her exact birthdate and year remain unknown because her birth certificate was lost.  Her parents were diplomatic immigrants from Russia.  After the 1905 revolution they fled from Czarist domination.  They were forced to settle for low-wage jobs and a modest life in America.  Tillie was a bright child and she attended Omaha Central High School which is a school that is well-known for academic consistency.  She left school without completing her studies, in order to work various low-wage jobs.  The reason for this decision was partially because of her family’s need and her failure in a class.  She continued to read passionately in public libraries wherever she moved.  During the Great Depression she worked as a tie presser, a meat trimmer, a domestic worker and a waitress.  She began her novel, Yonnondio, at the age of nineteen.  She claimed that the novel focused on the lives of the public and the struggles of labor as a subject for literature.  She married Jack Olsen in 1936.   They had three daughters together as a couple.  She dedicated the majority of the next twenty years of her life to raising her four daughters.  She worked low-wage jobs and participated in political activities.  Olsen was involved in left-wing politics since the age of seventeen.  She was an active member of the Young Communists’ League.  She was detained for her efforts to unionize packinghouse workers.  Her husband, Jack, was also active politically and the couple spent a great deal of time supporting local left-wing politics and participated in unionization movements.  It was not until 1953 that Olsen returned to writing.  Her oldest daughter suggested that Tillie enroll in a writing class at San Francisco State.  She won a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University for 1955 and 1956.  Her novel, Yonnondio, was written on continuous sheets of paper as well as scrawled pages, envelopes, and discarded trash.  She pieced the novel together and selected the most appropriate fragments and published it in 1974.  Olsen had a remote collection of literary output.  Her influence on other writers, especially women, cannot be over-emphasized.  She was one of the first American writers to make manual labor and the difficulties of everyday people a subject for high tragedy.  She was also one of the First American writers to understand the particular ways in which women’s voices are persecuted by conditions of time, space, and resources.  On January 1, 2007 Olsen died in Oakland, California. 

"Biography of Tillie Olsen | List of Works, Study Guides & Essays | GradeSaver." Study Guides & Essay Editing | GradeSaver. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.

Flannery O'Connor - Good Country People

     I enjoyed reading the short story “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor.  This short story had a great meaning and it made perfect sense.  This short story was one of Flannery O’Connor’s most successful and frequently anthologized stories.  This short story was published in her first collection of short stories in 1955.  This short story addresses themes of moral versus immoral, the possibility of redemption achieved through an encounter with violence and the foolishness of intellectual self-importance.  The protagonist is Joy and she had changed her name to Hulga because that is the ugliest name she could think of.  She was injured as a child in a hunting accident at the age of ten and she now has a wooden leg which is her most treasured possession because it is a mark of her difference.  She cherishes this because she considers herself more intellectual than all of the “good country people” around her – especially her mother, their neighbors, and Manley Pointer, a Bible salesman.  Manley steals her left leg after seducing her in the loft of a barn.  Joy/Hulga aims to seduce Manley.  In losing her leg, she learns about evil, which challenges her previous belief that “Nothing” is the only meaning in the universe.  This story centers on powerful irony.  In the long run, Joy loses her faith in Nothing, which means that she finally gains knowledge of evil.  The characterization of Mrs. Freeman and her interactions with Mrs. Hopewell are very important.  Mrs. Hopewell believes that the Freemans are “good country people.”  Mrs. Hopewell also believes that Manley must also come from “good country people,” which turns out to be a disgusting misunderstanding.  This elevation of what Mrs. Hopewell considers “good country people” is linked to the theme of disgust with the world in general, which is frequent in many of O’Connor’s stories.  Manley is a liar and a fraud.  Hulga’s missing leg shapes her character.  At first she was uncertain about her wooden leg but now she respects it as her defining quality, besides her education.  She cares for her leg by herself and never lets anyone see it.  This type of approach without any faith in God is symbolized as leading to her failure.  After Manley takes her leg off, she becomes really vulnerable.  Manley steals her wooden leg and leaves her in the loft.  Her education is connected to her lack of faith in God.  In many of O’Connor’s stories the eyes are an important symbol.  In this story the eyes are used to reveal that the people whom Mrs. Hopewell believes to be “good country people” are in fact nothing of the sort.  Manley’s eyes are described brutally as he is sidetracked by Hulga’s disjointed wooden leg.  This story reminds me of the saying that “looks can be deceiving.”  Even though people may seem to be good people inside they are probably not.                                                             

"Flannery O'Connor's Stories Study Guide : Summary and Analysis of "Good Country People" | GradeSaver." Study Guides & Essay Editing | GradeSaver. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.

Flannery O'Connor - Introduction and Biography

     Flannery O’Conner’s writing is filled with meaning and symbolism.  Her writings are hidden in plain sight beneath a unified narrative style that breathes not a word of outline, faith, or personal belief.  Her writing is basically mysterious because it contains knowledge that is hidden to all but those who have been instructed as to how and where to look for it.  She is a Christian writer and her work is message-oriented.  She is far too brilliant of an artist to tip her hand at but like all good writers, ridiculous didacticism is disgusting to her.  She succeeds what few Christina writers have ever achieved – a type of writing that stands up on both literary and religious grounds and succeeds in doing justice to both.  Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia on March 25, 1925.  She was born to Catholic parents Edward F. and Regina C. O’ Connor.  She attended St. Vincent’s Grammar School and Sacred Heart Parochial School.  Her father got a position as an appraiser for the Federal Housing Administration in 1938.  The family moved to North East Atlanta and then to Milledgeville.  Three years later in Milledgeville, Ed died from complications arising from the chronic autoimmune disease lupus.  Flannery attended Georgia State College for Women and State University of Iowa where she received her MFA in 1947.  In 1951, after complaining of a heaviness in her typing arms, she was diagnosed with the same lupus that had killed her father.  Despite the disease she went on to write two novels and thirty-two stories which won awards and praise.  She went on speaking tours when her health permitted. She spent most of her time on the family farm with her mother.  Flannery O’Connor dies from lupus on August 3, 1964 at the age of thirty-nine. Some of her writings seem cold and unemotional, as well as almost meaninglessly blunt and furious.  The majority of her short stories usually end in horrible, freak fatalities or even emotional devastation for the characters.  She remained a sincere Catholic throughout and coupled with the constant awareness of her own impending death.  All of this clarified through an fictional sensibility and gives us valuable insight into just what went into those thirty-two short stories and the two novels.  She had emotional bitterness, a belief in grace as something shocking to the receiver, a cold concept of salvation and a violence as a force for good.  She is considered one of America’s greatest fiction writers and one of the strongest supporter for Roman Catholicism in the 20^th century.    

Galloway, Patrick. "Flannery O'Connor." Books and Blog by Patrick Galloway. 1996. Web. 18

"Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 3 Mar. 2009. Web. 18 Apr.

James Baldwin - Sonny’s Blues

            I enjoyed reading the short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin.  The narrator’s mother asks him to be his brother’s keeper.  After their mother dies, Donny’s life is ruined by prison and drug abuse.  There is so much tension between the two brothers that at one point, Sonny tells his brother to consider him dead from that point on.  The narrator turns his back on his brother and fails to respond to Sonny when he is in prison at first.  At this point he has failed to live up to his mother’s commandment to watch over his brother but this failure is only temporary.  By the end of the story, the narrator takes Sonny back into his home.  He finally takes on the role of his brother’s keeper.  He constantly watched and worried over Sonny as he emerged from the darkness of prison and drug abuse.  Harlem is overwhelmed with drugs, poverty, and frustration.  The narrator was angered by one of Sonny’s old drug-addict friends but in the end he offers the man money.  Sonny’s problems helped the people around him endure and survive by channeling their frustrated desires into his music.  The characters in this poem are trapped physically and emotionally.  Throughout the story, the narrator and Sonny are always struggling to break free from one obstacle or another.  Sonny is physically imprisoned in jail as well as by his addiction to drugs.  The narrator is restricted to Harlem and to the housing projects that he clearly despises.  He is also trapped within himself, unable to express his emotions or live up to his obligations as a brother.  His daughter’s death gave him the motivation that he needed to change.  Sonny is able to express his frustration and rage through being a musician.  He is able to break loose and live as free as any man while he is playing the piano.  The narrator lives his life trapped inside of himself.  He has a hard time communicating with his brother and he even fails to do so because he cannot bear the emotions that come with it.  In the end he is temporarily freed by Sonny, his music offers him a rare glimpse into himself.  Baldwin uses light and darkness in recurrent tension throughout the poem.  He uses them to highlight the warmth, hope, gloom, and despair that mark his character’s lives.  He uses light to describe Sonny’s face when he was young and the warmth that came from sitting in a room full of adults after church.  Light represents all of the positive and hopeful elements of life.  It also symbolizes a form of salvation and grace.  To live in the light is to live a proper, good life.  The darkness constantly threatens the characters in the story.  The darkness represents a list of social and personal problems, which can be found everywhere.  The darkness literally haunts the figures in the story.  They are aware of all the figures once the sun goes down.  Sonny’s life in prison, his addiction to drugs, and the general state of life in Harlem are all personified by the darkness.  The darkness is always balanced against a measure of light.  Light comes to indicate salvation, comfort, and love.  Darkness is the fear and emptiness that always threatens to extinguish the light.                                                        

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Sonny’s Blues.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.