Book Review of Slam by Walter Dean Myers This past semester I read the book Slam by Walter Dean Myers. The setting is in a run down part of town in a big city that was un-ginven. The story line is that Slam the main character is going to a new school that is a white school where he once went to a predominately was black and so is he. He is a senior going into a new school because of his grades; he also came from a school where he was one of the best basketball players. His friend was the best player for his old school. He also has a girl that he likes and the start going out. His dad does not work well not all the time his grandma is dying. The main characters are Slam, Goldy. One of the big parts in this book in when he makes the team. When tryouts came he was not look on that well mainly because he was black and he had an atitude. He played the coach one on one and he slammed on him and blocked him. But he did make the team. Then he lost the camera that he borrowed from the media center for a project. In his first game he didn't start and didn't play in the first half. He got really mad a Goldy calmed him down. They were tied at half time and at the end they beat them by 11. And that is how many points that Slam had in the game after the first half. He went out with his friend Ice and two other girls and he made out with one of them. The other girl told his girlfriend that they were kissing and she got all mad and the sort of broke up. Then he played one of the best teams in the league and this white guy tore him up so that got his confidence down. After that his friend Ducky was standing up for Slam because two of the other kids on the team didn't like Slam and the ended up getting in a fight. They never got along because Nick the guy that he fought was talking about how he was getting scouted and that Slam wasn't. Slam knew that he was better that him that he was not getting the chances that Nick was.
He explains all his difficulties through his senior year in Cidal college, in South Carolina. His abusive parents, his teammates, his coach all which lead him to become a powerful person. His memoir about his basketball career and the affects he had amongst people caused him to have a magnificent book revealing the insides he had with his teammates. Don Conroy, his abusive father, wasn’t there to keep him going but only held him back from going too far. His coach and his father were people who brought him down into believing there is no good in the world. He had a rough time growing up , but he knew he had to keep proving them all wrong. Fighting through his troubles in life, Pat only did not become a great basketball player but a great writer. This memoir, remembering all the extravagant memories he had in college with his friends, yet he did have hard times but pushed through it. Not complaining he didn’t just push himself, but he also pushed his teammates into becoming something greater. In the end, he will forever remember all his fights and great memories he had with his special teammates at Cidal college, it led him into becoming a great leader at the end of
This book is about a twelve-year-old boy named Nick Hall. Nick Hall loves to play soccer, but he can only play if he reads his dad’s dictionary which he thinks is boring. Nick Hall has a best friend Coby Lee. Coby and Nick have been friends almost their whole life, they also have always been on the same soccer team accept this year. Nick also takes dance clubs with the girl he likes named April who also goes to his school. So far Nick’s life is going well, The only bad thing in Nick’s life is that he gets bullied by these twins named Dean and Don, but they soon get expelled from school so he doesn’t have to see them every day now. So now Nick’s is going even better until one day Nick’s parents announce that they’re getting a divorce because
Outcasts United by Warren St. John is a wonderful book about a community of refugees who live in Clarkston, Georgia and their struggles to adapt with foreign environment of the United States. The book tells the stories of refugees that come from different background and countries in which they are connected together by an American- educated Jordanian woman called Luma Mufleh. Despite their difficulties in establishing new identity, they found their passion in soccer and with Luma Mufleh as their coach they create a soccer team called Fugees. In the early chapters of the book, it illustrates the difficulties to make a group of kids from different background unite and work together but later, Luma’s program become popular throughout the neighborhood. Children are happy to spend their spare time playing soccer while parents are glad they can keep the children off the streets when they are working. Regardless their effort to bring together the children into a team, they have to face bad sentiments from the local residents when they are kicked out from the training field and forced to occupy other place as their training field. The Fugees team also have little supporter as their parents are working and become a subject of humiliation. Nevertheless, Luma is able to maintain the team spirit and expanded her program to include tuition for the soccer team. Throughout the stories, some kids stay while others give up the program due to influence of gang and other incidents but the remaining members who stay are able to achieve recognition and find new opportunities for better living in the community.
Having a big ego and too much self confidence can ruin a person’s ability to see the consequences of their actions, and make good choices in life. The book Slam is a book about a boy who switches schools and has to learn how to fit into his new school. He has a hard time keeping his grades up and getting along with the teachers, students, and coaches. In the story, Slam!, by Walter Dean Myers, Slam doesn’t foresee the consequences of his actions because of his ego, his immatureness, and his self confidence.
Andy goes back to school and talks to his basketball coach about how he feels about Rob's death and how his fiends and family feel about the accident. In addition, they discuss Andy's sentence because Andy keeps punishing himself for Rob's death. Everybody at school was crying during Rob's memorial service. Grief Counselors from downtown come to the school to try to get the kids to share their feelings.
A Gathering of Old Men by Earnest J. Gaines is a great novel about race relations in the south. The novel begins with a child narrator who relates the report that there has been a shooting on a Louisiana plantation, and a white, Cajun farmer Beau Boutan, is dead. He has been killed in the yard of an old black worker, Mathu. Because of the traditional conflict between Cajuns and blacks in South Louisiana, the tension in the situation and the fear of the black people is immediately felt in the novel. I would definitely recommend this book to someone else.
In conclusion, in Conley’s memoir he focuses on his experience of switching schools, while in the third grade, from a predominantly African American and Latino school to a predominantly caucasian elementary school. His memoir focuses on the differences in his experiences at each school and how race and class further separated the similarities between his two schools. Conley focuses equally on race and class and how they both influenced and shaped his life, but class was the primary influence on Conley’s
In the book, the authors detail the lives of the players and those around them. The impact of being away from family also takes center stage, from dealing with the death of parents and siblings to coping with changes in family dynamics. The game of basketball also helped the girls get away from the Indian Wars and the Dawes Act that had occurred before the boarding school was founded. For many of the girls, basketball was a grounding force that continued to foster an important sisterhood among team members.
This book is about a girl name Ellen Foster who is ten years old. Her mother committed suicide by over dosing on her medication. When Ellen tried to go look for help for her mother her father stopped her. He told them that if she looked for helped he would kill them both. After her mother died she was left under her fathers custody. Her father was a drunk. He would physically and mentally abuse her. Ellen was forced to pay bills, go grocery shopping, cook for herself, and do everything else for herself. Ellen couldn't take it any more so she ran away her friends house. Starletta and her parents lived in a small cabin with one small bathroom. One day at school a teacher found a bruise on Ellen's arm. She sends Ellen to live with Julia the school's art teacher. Julia had a husband named Roy. They were both hippies. Julia and Roy cared a lot about Ellen. After Ellen turned 11 years old she was forced to go live with her grandmother. Ellen didn't want to leave Julia and Roy but her grandmother had won custody. Her grandmother was a cruel old lady. Ellen spends the summer with her grandmother. Living with her makes her very unhappy. Since her grandmother owns farmland she forces Ellen to work on the field with her black servants. Ellen meets a black woman named Mavis. Mavis and her become good friends. Mavis would talk about how she knew Ellen's mother and how much Ellen resembled her mother. Her grandmother didn't think the same. She thought that Ellen resembled her father. She also hated that man. Her grandmother would often compare her with her father. Her grandmother would torture her because she wanted revenge from her father. Her grandmother also blames her for the death of her mother. While Ellen was staying with her grandmother her father died. When her father died she didn't feel sad because she had always fantasized about killing her father. Ellen just felt a distant sadness. Ellen cried just a little bit. Her grandmother was furious because Ellen showed some emotions. She told her to never cry again. After that Ellen becomes scarred for a long time. One day her uncle Rudolph bought the flag that had been on Ellen's father's casket. Her grandmother turns him away. Later that day she burned the flag.
Joes High School’s total enrollment consisted of sixteen girls, and twenty boys. Ten of the boys that had enrolled there played basketball. All of the boys were over six feet tall. Lane Sullivan, the new coach of the basketball team, had never even touched a basketball before he started coaching. Sullivan had never coached anything at all before he started coaching the Joes basketball team. In order to gain knowledge about the sport, he got a book about it. He started coaching in 1927, but before the 1928 basketball season, Joes High School didn’t even have a gym. Instead, they’d practice outside on a dirt court, and two times a week they’d take a bus to the nearest gym, which was ten miles away. In order to play home games, the boys had to play in the local dance hall. The “court” was nowhere near regulation size, and the ceiling was so short that the boys couldn’t shoot an arched shot. The people who attended these basketball games had no place to sit and watch the game, the all stood around the edges of the court and on the small stage. Joes High School finally got their own gym around Christmas time because the people of Joes donated their time and material in order to make it happen.
After all the trouble Allen got to choose to return to his old high school Bethel. He didn’t go back to his school and decided to work with a tutor to earn his high school diploma. While this was going on his mother contacted georgetown university coach, John Thompson and convinced him that her son would be the best player for him. He was conceived and set up a meeting with Allen. John was impressed with talking to him and also watching him in workouts. That he put down a scholarship on the table. Allen took this scholarship and arrived on campus for a fresh start.
One of the most painful things about the book is that the kids believed that they needed to begin acting like they were the elite. Neely Crenshaw, widely considered to be one of the best players to ever come out of Messina, was just a kid who loved his childhood sweetheart and had an abnormal talent for football. The standards of society told him that he needed to portray his role. In order to be the
This book is about two greasers named Bryon and Mark. Mark whose parents died when he was a young age went to live with Bryon. This book is in first person, and takes place behind the eyes of Bryon. The book first starts out by introducing the other characters in the novel: Charlie, a bartender who allows Mark and Bryon to come in to his bar, but wont let them buy booze. M&M a small longhaired child who always seems to be munching on M&Ms, and he lends Bryon and Mark money all the time. After their rendezvous with M&M the boys visit their mother in the hospital, and while their Bryon meets Cathy who is M&Ms sister who just came back from medical school. After a conversation, Bryon invites Cathy to go on a date with him, and Cathy accepts. Soon Bryon talks Mark into double dating with him, then he proceeds to borrow Charlie’s car. The next night Angela, who is Bryon’s ex sends someone to attack him, and who ends up attacking Mark. Mark is sent to the hospitable, but recovers in a day or two. The story then resumes with Bryon continuing to date Cathy, and Mark seems to become more and more jealous. One night Mark, Bryon, Cathy, and M&M decide to drive up and down the Ribbon to get M&M cheered up because his dad was ridiculing him for his long hair. The Ribbon is a long stretch of road that teens hang out. While driving along M&M gets out and walks away with a group of other long haired children, but because you cant stop on the ribbon on a green light all they could do is watch him go away. For the next few days Cathy and Bryon are searching the Ribbon while Mark mysteriously brings in large sums of money to pay for his mothers hospitable bill. Bryon notices this, but never asked Mark where he is getting the money. The next day Mark says he might know where M&M is. Mark discloses a hippy hangout, and that is where Mark goes, but without Cathy. Bryon finds that M&M had been there, but was not around that day. The next day Bryon and Cathy go to the hangout and find M&M, and he was really bad.
Published in 2016, Blackass, a novel by A. Igoni Barrett, is a story set in present-day Lagos, Nigeria. The main character, Furo Wariboko, a chronically unemployed college graduate, is shocked to wake up with white skin, barring the one exception: his black behind. Furo rushes to his salesperson interview, and upon seeing his skin, an executive, Arinze, offers him a more lucrative position. Furo, broke and unable to face his family, then meets Igoni, a writer who secretly takes interest in his story and his family’s quest to find him. Furo also meets Syreeta, who invites him stay with her. After they develop a sexual relationship, Furo discovers that Syreeta, who lives a comfortable life, is supported by a married man. The narrative shifts
“Black Like Me” written by John Howard Griffin is an excellently written novel, based on factual events experienced by the author himself. It is based in the 1950s, a time when racism was widespread throughout America. The basic outline of the story is the following of one man (Griffin) as he embarks on a journey that takes him to the ‘other side’. Griffin is a middle-aged white man, and decides to personally experience the life of a Negro. He achieves this by literally changing the pigmentation in his skin so that he is no longer white. Griffin moves to the deep southern states of America where he is subject to harsh racist treatment by the whites. By doing so, he experiences first hand the reality of racism and prejudice, almost to the point of disbelief. The story focuses on the lives of Negroes: restricted, brutal and harsh. “My skin was dark. That was sufficient reason for them to deny me those rights and freedoms without whi...