Week 10 Discussion

In my thesis, “The Lesson” written by Toni Cade Bambara opens eyes about how the economic system oppressed African American. I want to talk about how some people are aware of the situation and some don’t seem to understand the issue. In the short story, I want to talk about how one of the kids; Syliva, understood how unjust American is on its own people. Sylvia realizes that there was no equality in the world. On the other hand, the lesson Miss Moore taught went over Mercades head. The type of secondary source I would use for this research paper is “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome” written by Dr. Joy Degruy. I feel like it will better understand “The Lesson” Toni Cade Bamara was trying open minds about. I know its controversial, but that was what Bambara wanted to do. To write a short to open a debate on the injustice of America. Also understand how undivided African Americans are.

Hello everyone, For my thesis statement from “The lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara is how Miss Moore wants the kids Sylvia, Sugar and her friends, to see the reality of the injustice of education and class and money of the poor and the rich. As she wants to teach the kids what is money and how those who are poor live, not in the best condition. Another thing Miss Moore shows, Sylva and her friends about, is how their parents money is spent for rent and they’re expenses, also how money is not divided right in the country. I still have not found a good secondary source but Im most likely to use stories or an article about social  and economic inequality and social injustice. I will be checking on Bmcc data to see what can I find more to backup my thesis statement and my essay.

My thesis statement from my “Salvation” by Langston Hughes shares an ironic moment in Langston’s early adolescence being introduced to Christianity, misinterpreting the way he felt he had to react to worship. Though religion is practiced by many starting at a young age, a nuanced idea like religion is complex for children to understand. Though the reader is aware of this, Hughes uses dramatic irony as a way to show the naivety of the narrator whereas the reader understands the disconnect. I’ve explored a few secondary sources but I will try to look for something in the BMCC database but so far a lot of the articles I would have liked to use aren’t available so I will continue to use reputable sources from Google Scholar about Hughes’s biographical background and way or writing.

My research essay is based on “Salvation” by Langston Hughes. My thesis statement is: “ When the big day comes, the author goes through a transformative experience in which both: his faith in Jesus and his morals are being challenged.” This ceremony was a very significant experience that marked the author’s coming of age moment. So for the secondary source information I plan on using to support my essay will most likely be Langston Hughes biographical paper with an addition of a critical analysis as well.   I’m using information from a couple of different sources but mainly using BMCC Database.

For my essay, I chose “Araby” by James Joyce, the thesis statement that I wrote was “He realizes towards the end of doing this that his feelings for the girl have blinded him. Not only that, but he also had high expectations for the bazaar, and this leads the narrator to have a loss of innocence. He realizes that not everything will be how he wants it to be.” I believe that the type of secondary source information that supports my thesis might be analyzing the author’s history with the Catholic Church and how he uses it in his story to “mock” it. He uses religion as well a tremendous amount in “Araby” and one of the secondary sources I found speaks exactly about this. It is a critical essay I found on Gale, and it criticizes Joyce’s use of religion in the story. The author writes about how the girl affected the narrator’s views and beliefs of Catholicism, and I think I could use this as my secondary resource because of my theme that I’m writing about. 

For my research paper I will be writing about the story “Salvation” by Langston Hughes. In the story, a young Langston believes he must lie about being saved to appease those gathered in the church, where the story takes place. This lie is so detrimental to Langston that it causes him to lose faith in Jesus Christ. My research paper will explore the significance of social culture and how it plays an influential role in his decision to lie by examining both the setting and secondary characters. My secondary sources will be Langston Hughes biography to gather knowledge on the familiar and cultural upbringing of Mr. Hughes and various articles pertaining to Lev Vygotskys theory of social culture to provide a clear point of reference to what social culture is and its effects on the human experience. I have not explored the BMCC database yet, I have been using external sources from google searches and textbook infromation. 

For my research essay I chose “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara and my thesis word for word is ” Miss Moore wants to show them the unfairness of the world and its distribution of wealth, in the end only two students actually get the lesson.” I have recently, to the best of my interpretation of the story, tried to show how certain actions of Sylvia and Sugar are different from the other students which may show why they were the only ones who actually got something out of the trip to the toy store. I think the kind of secondary source of information that would be helpful to me would be how other people would interpret some of the actions or things the kids have said to help show my point on why only those two got the lesson. So far I have used One search to try to find what other people have written on the actions and words of the children. I have found one result that talks about one thought Sylvia has made that could help my thesis statement.

My research paper will be on “The Most Handsome Drowned Man in the World” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The main points that I am focusing on are the villager’s perspective on life and how they want to change their lives for the better when they see this drowned man wash up in their village. My thesis is “The arrival of this mysterious man displays to the reader that it does not take much to change oneself rather it is a deeper want for them to want to change for the better.” The kind of secondary source information that will support my thesis is physiological studies on how other people may change your mindset and life and also a biography on Gabriel Garcia Marquez to understand the way he thinks. I would get these articles from places like JSTOR and the BMCC library. I would also add other articles where people have similar ideas on how and why Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote this and thinks that it takes a great person to change others.

For my research essay, I have chosen “Araby” by James Joyce. My thesis statement is – “The author uses light and darkness to demonstrate the narrator’s battle between the fantasy and brutality of reality”. I have decided to use literary critique as a secondary source to support my research essay and to better describe Joyce’s use of dark and light imagery. I found several literary databases in the BMCC library, such as JSTOR, Literature Resource Center, however, I have not made my final decision yet.

My research essay will be on Araby by James Joyce. The main thing I will be focusing on for my essay is how the story is not actually a love story but one with many other underlying tones. The thesis statement is “Throughout the story readers see how the narrator uses settings and metaphors, particularly the contrast between light and darkness to show how the feelings he has towards the girl are not love but obsession.” I feel like dissertations on the author, James Joyce, would be useful as I would be able to gain insight on the authors writing style. Furthermore, there are many Journal articles on JSTOR which would provide many different interpretations of the story which I could draw ideas from in my research paper. Biographies on James Joyce would also further my understanding of her, specifically her writing style. Lastly, criticisms of literature would be helpful as they provide constructive criticism of Araby from which I can draw points from to connect to my thesis.

For my research essay I will be focusing on the short story written by Langston Hughes, “Salvation.” The reading centers on a young boy who attends church with high hopes of being “saved by Jesus,” only for circumstances to change when he is the last child sitting on the mourners bench and has yet to be rescued. In fear of wasting any more time, he stands- though he goes to bed later that night with the lack of faith in Jesus and feeling remorseful for lying. From the beginning to the end of the story, readers are able to see the change in his thought process as well as feel his emotions. The secondary source information I will use to support my thesis will be the journal article “The American Dream of Langston Hughes” published by Southern Methodist University. [JSTOR] This article supports my thesis because throughout the reading, readers are informed on everything Hughes had experienced. From being a victim to racial discrimination to using poetry to make ends meet and than making poetry his voice. Readers are able to witness the character development.

I chose to do my research essay on the short story “Salvation” by Langston Hughes. My thesis is “During the course of the story, the character undergoes a great change and is a very different person by the end.” For my secondary source, I am choosing to do a biography on him. This will explain will more about his childhood life, since in this story he was twelve turning thirteen. By researching, I am hoping to find out why he wasn’t able to see Jesus in the church, and I think that his early childhood may have had an impact on that. I am choosing to go more into his personal life and find deeper meanings in his childhood because it will show how one course of the event led to another. The BMCC database that I explored is the “Gale Literature Resource Center.” I found this database interesting because it explains how he saw his “home” in another church. 

For my essay I chose “Araby” by James Joyce, My thesis statement is “James Joyce uses light and dark imagery to symbolize the narrator’s journey from childish romanticization to disillusionment.” I think the specific kind of secondary source information that will support my thesis best would be a literary critique analyzing or critiquing Joyce’s use of dark and light imagery. So far I’ve browsed JSTOR and GALE. I haven’t had luck yet finding a critique similar to my idea that the narrator is  childish for his romanticization, but I’m sure I’ll be able to bounce off of some of the opinions in whichever source I decide to work with.

For my research essay, I picked “Salvation” by Langston Hughes. The reason I chose this story is that the young boy lost his faith in Christ due to misunderstanding what his Aunt said about being saved. The narrator shows how the pressure of his aunt and the crowd add to his distress. This reflects my thesis of the character undergoing many shifting emotions and is significantly changed by the end of the story. My secondary source will be Langston Hughes’s biography where he talks about the hardships of who he was, especially in the early 1900s, and also his famous “Harlem Renaissance” explaining the path that led to Hughes’s determination to understand religion, although often from a critical perspective, and incorporates his experiences going back as far as his childhood. His experience relates to my thesis on how Langston lost his faith in Christ when he was young because of his disappointing experience of not being saved. 

For my research essay I have chosen to write about “salvation” by Langston Hughes. My thesis is about the conflict the young boy faced throughout the story that led to an internal battle between his expectations, beliefs and his realization of harsh reality. For my secondary source I will be using Langston Hughes biography because in there it mentions the few times Hughes had to experience conflict because of his writings and beliefs which soon clashed with the harsh truth of reality. This resonates with my thesis so I will be putting that to use to help with my research summary. As for the bmcc databases so far I’ve explored JSTOR but haven’t found anything useful yet.

my research essay is about “Salvation” by Langston Hughes my thesis statement is about the range of emotions by the young boy on the path to his epiphany going in with  expectations and leaving with disappointment. I will be using Langston Hughes biography as my secondary  source to help with my research summary. Langston Hughes was one of the most talented writers of the Harlem renaissance in the 1920’s they weren’t very religious which can show how much that experience in church has had a major effect on Langston hughes which I will be mentioning in my research summary.

My research essay will focus on “Salvation” by Langston Hughes. Everyone has different religious experiences. Young Langston Hughes religious experience was in an African American church. In this church he experienced the church singing songs and hymns. There was a spiritual word from a preacher reading directly from the King James Version Bible, dissecting the words of God for sinners to understand and hopefully get some sort of spiritual healing. Young Langston had high hopes and expectations of what was told to him about God and being saved. In my essay I talked about what he was informed, his experience, and how he felt after his experience. Some secondary source information that I feel will support my thesis is black religion, influence in an African American church, and Langston Hughes autobiography, because this story was a real-life experience. So far, I have searched the Gale and JSTOR databases on the BMCC library website. I received a lot of results in which I explored “Make A Joyful Noise Unto the Lord” and “The Church, The Family, and the School in The African American Community” so far.

I have chosen for my research essay, ” A good man is hard to find” by Flannery O’Connor.  My thesis will be focused on southern femininity and the deceptive image of wholesomeness through god fearing and charm, which allowed the grand mother to constantly maneuver every decision to suit her wants. Through out most of the story, she uses her overbearing charisma to manipulate every outcome or get a pass for inappropriate speech and behavior.  Using past southern teachings as the standard and imposing herself and her beliefs onto everyone else in the story.  I initially explained how I found the grand mother harmless. In the beginning I thought she was trying to gain ground on how her upbringing is important and was using certain tactics to get through to stubborn grand children, including her son. She wanted to feel important. Which means I also fell for her southern charm.  Her moment of grace was short lived and didn’t redeem the grand mother at the end. However, her ignorance didn’t seem to be harmful until the very end and it seemed easily missed by me because of the image she portrayed as a southern god-fearing woman who only wanted to share her roots with her family. I will be using  the BMCC Library to collect information on white southern womanhood.

I am focusing my research essay on “Araby” by James Joyce. My thesis statement is that this story shows how people’s ideas of love are warped by what they see around them. This is shown by the relationship that the main character’s aunt and uncle have with each other and how this changes his mindset on what a loving relationship looks like. I am using a biographical paper to back up my research paper and as my secondary subject. I am talking about how the examples of relationships that people see in their lives set up the foundation of what they think relationships should look like. So I want to look at James Joyce’s life and his parents to actually examine what he say and how it affected him. I want to see if I notice bits from his life that made their way into his work and shows how his parent’s relationship affected his own ideas.

My essay is about the short story “Salvation” by Langston Hughes. The main idea in my essay claims that this story is about expectations and disappointments, as well as that the resulting epiphany in the story makes him doubt what he has believed in all his life. I would like to use it for my research essay on Langston Hughes’s Biography. Langston Hughes was one of the most promising black writers, and a leader of the Harlem Renaissance (The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics, and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s). they put art before religion and that connects to the part in my essay where young Langston lost his faith in Jesus at a such young age (He was around his 20s when was part of the Harlem Renaissance, and his experience in the story was when he was 12). I would also like to use critical analysis about “Salvation”, or if I will be able to find articles about the connection of the African Americans to church during the same times (1900). 

My essay is on “Araby” by James Joyce and my thesis statement is: Although it seems like a love story “Araby” is really about a boy who creates a fantasy to help him escape from the harshness of his reality. As for the BMCC database I have looked and have seen some articles and literary critiques about the boy in the story and other resources about the story in general which should help me to prove what my thesis statement is saying.

In my essay, I’m writing about “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara. My thesis is on: In “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, the writer uses different Literary elements to present the difference in the life of children and the life of the people in Manhattan. Ultimately, we saw a change in the children after the trip. I feel that secondary source information about African-American lives in the 1960s as well as the lives of new yorkers in the 1960s. Also maybe the chance of walking out of poverty by having an education or not. If these I can’t be found I will also look for information on the differences of the poor and the rich in the 1900s maybe also a biography on Toni Cade Bambara. So far I have only read through the story, but I will have to look through the BMCC Database later on this week. 

Flannery O’Connor produced a few works in her short lifetime of 39 years. She was considered one of the most important short story writers of the twentieth century because of her interesting characters. O’Connor was the only child of wealthy parents she went high school in Milledgeville, Georgia. Her father Edward Francis O’Connor died when she was sixteen from Lupus, that same disease later took her life. In college she majored in Social Sciences and edited and wrote for school publications. She later received a master’s degree in writing from Iowa State university in 1947. After completing graduate school, she attended the prestigious Yaddo writer’s colony in upstate New York then moved to Connecticut to live with her good friends Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. She wrote steadily through the 1950s. She won three o. Henry memorial awards for her short stories, a ford foundation grant, a national institute of arts and letters grant in literature and two honorary doctor’s degrees during her lifetime. http://”A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Short Stories for Students, edited by Kathleen Wilson, vol. 2, Gale, 1997, pp. 97-114. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX2694900016/GLS?u=cuny_mancc&sid=bookmark-GLS&xid=92e4a36c. Accessed 24 Oct. 2022.