The lead character is Sun herself as a drama teacher who has been hired with grant money to direct a class in performing a play at their school. She has picked Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenberger, about convicts from Britain arriving in Australia in 1788 who perform a version of George Farquhar’s 1706 The Recruiting Officer. No Child begins with a conversation between Ms. Sun, the drama teacher, and her landlord. She tells him that she has a new job and can pay her back rent. The all-too-typical pleading that poor New York City artists often do once a month is carried off with a grace and humor that endears us to the play immediately. Sun reminds us of the stark social inequality in New York when she travels to her new job from 59th Street in Manhattan, in the richest congressional district in the …show more content…
At times Sun hits on a social type perfectly. The principal, Ms. Kennedy, for example, is like so many of the heads of inner-city schools: pragmatic, tough, with little regard for elementary rights, but in her own fashion devoted to educating her students. No doubt the popularity of Sun’s one-woman play among teachers is attributable in part to the fact that she depicts the people inside school buildings honestly. In contemporary American culture, such types are almost never depicted at all, or when they are, it is done through stereotypes. Nilaja Sun portrays each of her characters compassionately, with nearly flawless transitions as she changes from one to the next. To a certain extent Nilaja Sun is striking out on her own, and so for all its honesty, No Child inevitably has serious limitations. In particular, it is satisfied with too little. A teacher shakes up the routine oppression of the poorest youth by using the theater. But the play does not suggest the possibility of hoping for more than this. How has life in the city schools come to this? The problems of the characters fail to exist in time, with a past and a
She begins her book by giving a scenario of a high school cafeteria in which there is and “identifiable group of Black students sitting together” (para. 1) this scenario is a situation that is witnessed in almost every cafeteria of racially diverse schools across the country. Tatum’s use of the word “we” introduces a conversational and personable tone; this allows the reader to feel more involved in her writing. In addition to Tatum’s tone, she also uses emotionally charged words and repetition to also add to the effectiveness of her book. For example, her use of the words “stereotype” and “segregation”, which both have negative connotations, force the reader to think about the depth of the
“Raisin in the Sun” is a play set in the 1950s written by Lorraine Hansberry about a struggling African American family living in Chicago. Following the death of of a person who held a key role in their family, they try to determine what to do with the notable insurance money left to them upon their loved one’s death. Beneatha, a daughter and sister in the family, aspires to be a doctor. Hansberry calls attention to the struggles African Americans and women had to face during these times. The prejudice working against Beneatha caused many obstacles to be placed in her path. Beneatha has risen above this prejudice encircling her gender by tearing down the negative stigma that surrounds it.
The play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, takes place in the late 1940s, a time of much racial and gender discrimination. The Youngers, an extended, financially struggling african american family, are living in a small apartment together. At a certain point in the play, Lena, the grandmother and matriarch of the family, receives a check for $10,000 after her husband passes away. Each person in the family has a different dream of using the money, and antagonism builds between the various family members. Beneatha, the twenty year old daughter of Lena, wants to use the money to go to medical school to become a doctor. Successfully becoming a doctor was an extremely strenuous act for a female during this
The play Sisters, by Wendy Lill, is set in 20th century Nova Scotia at an Indian Residential School. The play focuses on a hopeful 17-year-old farm girl named Mary who was dating Louis at the time. Along with the present Mary who is currently in interrogation with, the duty counsel, Stein. She has been accused of torching down the Residential School, the place where she worked for fifteen years. There are various factors contributing to the impulsive reasoning behind Sister Mary’s act of burning down the Residential School such as, the actual truth to why she committed the sin, the contrast relationships with others that reflected upon her actions, and the overall punishment she should receive.
Hester La Negrita, a homeless, black single mother to five fatherless children. At its core, the play is a powerful allegorical treatise, social commentary and criticism of America’s welfare system and its treatment of the poor. It exposes the double standards, brutality, prejudice, and sexual persecution of those whom are branded morally bereft and, therefore, most vulnerable to victimization and subjugation.
...h School ten years later, Shamus Rahman Khan discovers that the school that claims to have become more diverse still has a lot of inequality in it. The way to succeed in this school is to master the art of being at ease with different things, from students’ own behavior to forming relationships across different classes and cultures. If this does not happen, then the students are not privileged and will not succeed or go off to a good college. The illusion of equality is ripped into snippets because of Khan’s different reasoning behind why only the elite are succeeding.
...eral topic of school. The sister strives to graduate and go to school even though she is poor while her brother blames the school for him dropping out and not graduating. “I got out my social studies. Hot legs has this idea of a test every Wednesday” (118). This demonstrates that she is driven to study for class and get good grades while her brother tries to convince her that school is worth nothing and that there is no point in attending. “‘Why don’t you get out before they chuck you out. That’s all crap,’ he said, knocking the books across the floor. ‘You’ll only fail your exam and they don’t want failures, spoils their bloody numbers. They’ll ask you to leave, see if they don’t’” (118). The brother tries to convince his sister that school is not a necessity and that living the way he does, being a drop out living in a poverty stricken family is the best thing.
Imagine having to choose between paying bills and sending your children to college. Visualize risking your life to attempt to create better-living situations for your family, who depend on you to keep them alive, having to sacrifice a potential child to feed the ones you already have. This is the exact situation that Walter and Lena Younger face in the play, “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry. As the Younger family has been trapped within their current economic and social status, they work hard to stay alive, all while trying to improve their lives as they deal with another baby on the way, a bratty child going through college, and difficulties in their occupations. The Youngers are poor African Americans in the south. They’re struggling
In the play written by A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, severe times are upheld when an African-American is surrounded by segregation and discrimination. The Younger family result in this problem because they live poorly and are not rich like white people. Another problem is that the Younger’s are needy for money. They have long waited for the check since the beginning of the story, but the problem is resolved, Mama fixes it by putting a down payment on a house. The house was cheap for them, but it was in a white neighborhood and had more than their
The play revolves around Baby and her daughter, Ligaya, who is finally reuniting with her mother in the United States after fourteen years. Set around the 1990s, Baby always wrote letters and sent pictures to Ligaya. Baby had no choice but to leave her daughter, going overseas to find work and sending remittances back to the Philippines. She has another job, being a crier for Chinese funerals. When finding out her mother is crier, Ligaya is also
Mary is introduced as impassive; conforming to what is accepted by her fellow trustees, and unable to express her own opinions. As Mary saw a “brilliant and original,” professor lose his job for expressing his own ideas, Mary becomes confined to the traditional teaching ways. She makes sure she is accepted by all and avoids any situation or ideas that may portray her as scandalous or show protest against the common beliefs. She portrays herself in a way that not only fools her colleagues, but also herself. Although Mary follo...
In the play, A Raisin In The Sun, Mother tries to keep everything under control because she believes in her children and their dreams, yet understands that they still need to learn and strengthen their value's as they begin to realize their own aspirations. She is the head of the family around whom the conflicts arise and are resolved.
A Raisin in the Sun is a thoughtful and realistic play that brings into consideration an African-American family that struggles for equality within a mainstream society and how their different dreams differed under pressure of both racism and prejudice. The author talks about “the Younger” to highlight the theme but not only championing the relationship between the family members but also the inherent conflicts. However, among the five family members, the most conspicuous character is Mama due to forces, nature and personality difference. Thus, the aim this review is to analyze Mama’s personality.
The way a child or student views or even how they associate a teacher can reflex their age, naivety and attitude, both Carol Anne Duffy and Seamus Heaney use this to their advantage by creating an image around the teachers during the begging of both the plays, and how that view changes as a child moves forwards into adolescence. As a child the way you picture both school and your teachers is a lot different from how you se it as a teen or adolescent; where you have more to worry about and the naivety you held when you were younger had been tarnished by the world. That’s why when one hears or reads the line from Duffy’s poem, ‘In Mrs Tilscher’s Class,’ “You could travel up the Blue Nile with your finger, tracing the route while Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery.” Which has much the same effect that, “Miss Walls would tell us how
The public schools system did not promote success. Instead, it protected an academic breakdown in the academics system. This encouraged parents lean toward charter schools even more. It was shocking to know that out of 55,000 teachers only 10 teachers were fired out the entire Harlem school district. The movie didn’t elaborate much about bad teachers, but it shared stories about teachers that worked in the public school system. In one case, a teacher who had worked two years as a fifth-grade teacher noticed her students with a reading deficiency at a lower grade level. Unfortunately, she lacked the support of the administration for providing help for these students. This is evidence of teachers who care about the welfare of students’ academic success. Surprisingly, community protesters marched against charter schools and felt threatened by them. Teachers and Harlem Success Parents were spokespersons who wanted better schools for