Lucille L.

In “The Lesson” by Toni Cade it discusses a lady by the name of Ms.Moore that take the children in her neighborhood on a trip and teach them a “lesson” which was showing them the socioeconomic difference that they are not used to. Teaching them this lesson is very important because it causes the children to be aware of  how unequal money distribution is. Now prior to this lesson the children were not too fond of Ms.Moore. However, what I want to highlight is how the use of language and how it helps develop the story. The language and use of AAVE give the story a sense of familiarity and relatability to me because we can see how close minded the narrator was originally to her eventually grasping the lesson at hand. The narrator uses insults and explicit language to get her irritation across which helps the readers understand the narrators emotions and annoyance. The title I would give this essay is “AAVE and Economic Disparity”.

“Salvation” by Langston Hughes is a coming of age story about a boy having an experience in church that changed his whole perspective on faith. Young Langston and his family go to church and his aunt tells him he would be saved when he saw the light and Jesus comes into your life. After Langston sits in church waiting for this miracle to happen he realizes it won’t “And I kept waiting serenely for Jesus, waiting, waiting – but he didn’t come. I wanted to see him, but nothing happened to me. Nothing! I wanted something to happen to me, but nothing happened” (Hughes). I personally relate to this because growing up my parents were not heavily religious but we still were involved in some practices. We were Catholic so we went to church on Easter, Communion, and we were baptized. As I got older and I started learning about history and how Christianity was used against Black people it caused a lot of questions about religion, how I view it and where I stand in having a relationship with God. I am still discovering that relationship and defining it everyday.

Hello. I really liked the story “The Most Handsome Drowned Man” and how you (the professor) broke it down and ask questions to really make sure we understand what’s going on. I also like how we had to think from the characters perspective when it came to how they felt throughout the story duration.. I think you might have assigned this as the first story to show how far imagination can take you. Imagination is a factor that develops the plot. In the story we can see the small village go from finding a random body to using that imagination to build a story for this man without knowing him. The story ends up causing everyone to have sympathy for this man (Esteban) and even leads to them feeling inspired. Without the imagination of this story for Esteban the town would’ve stayed the same and they would’ve never tried to improve the village in memorial of him.