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History grade 12- Cuban missile crisis
History grade 12- Cuban missile crisis
History grade 12- Cuban missile crisis
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Recommended: History grade 12- Cuban missile crisis
The short story “Snow” is set in New York City in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The main character, Yolanda, must try and adapt to her new life and the American culture that she is not yet familiar with. She lives in a new apartment, in a new town, and attends a new school. She tries to familiarize herself with her surroundings and the people. The people, however fear for their lives as they live in distress of a potential bomb strike directed towards them. Yolanda learns enough English to understand what is happening but must depend on the people around her to fully grasp the situation. Alvarez argues that although each of us is different, we can still come together as one, to help one another, especially in times of need. In the …show more content…
Her family has just moved to an apartment in the city where she attends a Catholic school nearby taught by the Sisters of Charity. The sisters are dressed in black clothing that, to Yolanda, make them appear, “peculiar, like dolls in mourning.” (Alvarez, 83.) Although Yolanda likes all of the sisters, she is particularly fond of her teacher, Sister Zoe, whom she refers to as, “grandmotherly.” (Alvarez, 83.) Sister Zoe compliments Yolanda when she tells her what a lovely name she has and even has her teach the other students how to pronounce it. Being the only immigrant in her class makes her quite different than the other students. She is designated a seat, separate from them, in order to learn without causing a distraction. Sister Zoe gives Yolanda extra attention and teaches her words such as: “laundromat, cornflakes, subway, snow” (83); words that one may consider knowing when moving to a place such as New York. Sister Zoe helps make Yolanda’s transition a little easier but as the story continues Alvarez exhibits how the scare of the Cuban Missile Crisis effects her learning and understanding of her new …show more content…
Sister Zoe explains to the classroom of fourth graders what is going on in Cuba and how their home was a possible target for a Russian missile strike. The town worries as President Kennedy explains the possibility of going to war against the Communists. At home, Yolanda and her family say prays for world peace. At school, she practices air-raid drills and is taught new words to better understand her circumstances; words such as: “nuclear bomb, radioactive fallout, bomb shelter” (83). Words that only someone who lives within the borders of destruction would be concerned with knowing. Sister Zoe explains to the curious students how the bomb attack would happen. She goes on to draw a picture of a mushroom on the board and a flurry of chalk marks; the mushroom representing the bomb and the flurries representing the dusty fallout. Those little chalk marks would be the death of them
In “The Coldest Winter Ever” by Sister Souljah, her overall purpose in writing this book. Was to show the reader the real “ghetto” life and answer questions many of her loyal readers had. But to also represent the honest truth about living in the ghetto. This type of literature is an urban fiction novel, and the main point
We dread the thought of school because to us it is a chore, it’s a hassle, it’s something that messes with our sleep schedule, it is something that gets in the way of lounging around and binge watching Netflix. Pashtana doesn’t take her school and education for granted because she does not have the same liberties we do. While we enjoy driving into the city and shopping over the weekend, Pashtana unwillingly makes wedding arrangements with her cousin. While we complain about our mom nagging us to clean our room, Pashtana is getting beaten by her father because she wants to learn more about the world. While we have stocked fridges and pantries and
In the book “The Boys of Winter” by Wayne Coffey, shows the struggle of picking the twenty men to go to Lake Placid to play in the 1980 Olympics and compete for the gold medal. Throughout this book Wayne Coffey talks about three many points. The draft and training, the importance of the semi-final game, and the celebration of the gold medal by the support the team got when they got home.
After her relationship with Rudy ends on a sour note, Yolanda mentions how “[She] became more and more of a recluse, avoiding our old haunts for fear of running into him” (Alvarez 99). Although the relationship ended, Rudy still holds some control over Yolanda even though he is not physically there. Not only did Rudy change her life, but he influenced her decisions and tried to manipulate her cultural values in order to get what he wanted, which was sex. As Rudy failed at changing Yolanda’s views, he left her and moved onto another college girl that would conform to his requests. Not only did this leave Yolanda in shambles because of her past male partner, but she had to find a way to control her -life again without the influence of Rudy. Northampton Review is a class at Smith College studying literary works by Latinas. One student Jen Calabrese mentioned how “Yolanda, finds her romantic relationships complicated by her linguistic and cultural background” (Calabrese paragraph 2). Through the timeline of the novel, Yolanda struggles to connect with the men she finds in America because of the different values she has as a woman from Dominican culture. Her cultural differences led to her Rudy wanting to change Yolanda in order to get the satisfaction he wanted from her. Not only that, but as a result of Rudy’s pushiness towards the idea of having sexual intercourse leads Yolanda
Often the change and transition to middle is a difficult one for students, so it is no surprise that a student of Juanita’s caliber would be having trouble as well. Her regular middle school teachers were not going above and beyond to make sure Juanita succeed, if anything it seemed as if Juanita was a burden to them. If it was not for the Ms. Issabelle’s effort, Juanita would have failed the 6th grade, and possibly fell through the cracks of the education system.
“The Cold Embrace” by Mary E. Braddon is a wonderfully tragic short story of a young man’s denial and guilt till the end of his life. Braddon accomplishes this by using Omniscient narration to not only showing us his guilt, denial, and struggle; but also able to present his spiral into a depression filled with delusions and guilt that eventually lead him to lose his mind and perish from outside a first person perspective.
The story of Snow Falling on Cedars was set on a fictional island called San Piedro, somewhere in the Puget Sound area. The island had a thick history of generations of prejudice disguised by immigrant strawberry farmer life. The island was home to descendents of German, Swedish, English, and Japanese ancestry. When the Second World War arose, the people immediately panicked and reacted poorly to the Japanese American citizens. The story follows the lives of these Japanese Americans through their painful internment by the American government for what they termed the 'good of the union.' The story is also centered on several other subplots, including a biracial romance between a young couple, as well as the death of a white island fisherman named Carl Heine, Jr., and the trial of the Japan...
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson The novel Snow Falling on Cedars, written by David Guterson, revolves around the.. around a racially charged court case involving an innocent Japanese man accused of the murder of a German fisherman. The author explores the human traditions of war and social division and the inevitability of decay, suffering and death, using the murder trial of Kabuo. Miyamoto as a focal point. Guterson investigates the way in which personal ethics can transcend the conspiring effects of ‘fate’.
Wintergirls is a book related to eating disorders. The author’s purpose of writing this book is to inform readers what a person with an eating disorder. It depicts the inner and outer conflicts that characters like Lia and Cassie face with disorder. It all began with a competition between two characters of who can be the skinniest. Cassie dies in the attempt of winning the game. Lia, the main character in this novel, always keeps track of her food consumption. For example, one breakfast morning, Lia said she didn’t want “a muffin (410),…orange (75),…toast (87),…waffles (180)” (Anderson 5). Lia constantly keeps track of the calories she eats. Unlike Cassie who follows the path of bulimia, Lia inhibits herself from eating, therefore not getting the proper nutrients. This allows the readers to know how a person with a disorder like Lia can restrain herself from eating foods that we’re used to eating in our regular lives. Her ultimate goal frequently change, getting lower and lower each time. Lia strives for a “five hundred calories a day” (Anderson 189). Her constant change of goals allows the readers to know the struggles a girl with such a mindset may feel.
In both “Hungry” and “On Being Educated,” Joy Castro uses “academic” prose through her use of emotional, descriptive, and explanatory words and sentences. It is through her experience and lense that she is able to connect such little things to such major historical occurrences and creations. When telling a story, Castro does not leave it at one short explanation, but she furthers the conversation. Instead of simply stating that when she moved in with her birth father she ate lots of food and bought lots of clothes, Castro chooses to say that she was “devouring tuna, wheat bread, peanut butter, putting on weight, putting on the clothes [her father and his wife] bought for [her] in bulk at the outlet store, since [she’d] run away with nothing”
...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.
I think that reading this poem is perfect timing. We are starting to see and feel this transition from beautiful fall to a change in the surroundings to cold snowy winter. In the poem, "First Snow", Mary Oliver is describing this transition of knowing the moment that fall is over and winter is taking over. And with this transition of the darkening of fall to the bright snow, I feel like it is a transition on one’s own questions, because you are moving from that darkness of the unknown to the light of knowing you have found the answers.
Eventually, hurricane Santa Clara hit and damaged the entire area forcing her mother to get a job at a factory as a seamstress. One day when Santiago was in charge of the kids, her brother Raymond while riding a bike with his cousin Jenny got his foot stuck in a bicycle chain. Ramona takes Raymond, along with the remainder of the children to New York. She seeks a foot specialist to check her son out because the doctor’s in Puerto Rico are continuing to talk about amputating his foot. When they got to New York, Santiago at first did not like the area. She describes it as “dark, forbidding, and hard” (218). However, the more she was there, the more accustom she got, and she found herself inside of a performing arts school where she excelled, and then accepted at the University of Harvard where she graduated with honors. This story gave me vivid imagery that helped me understand the landscape and the scenery of the different areas throughout the
Julia Alvarez. “Snow”. Portable Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Ed. Lauren G, Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. 8th ed. Boston, Wadsworth 2011. 75-76. Print
The setting of the story is in different parts of the Dominican Republic. On her way to her family’s home in the north, she stops at a cantina where she meets this lady and a young boy named Jose. The way the cantina is described shows how humble and different from what she is accustomed. The writer describes the place as a “cluster of houses on the side of a road” and goes to say that the cantina has a “thatched roof”. When she sees this difference between where she comes from and the way people live on the island, she feels that Dominicans are prisoners of a social hierarchy. The places she is describing, for example, the cantina where she stops and where she goes to pick up the guavas, helps the reader to understand the conditions of the place and how her status of a ‘wealthy American girl’ affects her interactions with people as well as her. Her descriptions of her surroundings convey the idea of what Yolanda is trying to do in the Dominican Republic. She is trying to find herself and her identity. Find a place to belong to that is unknown to her. The place she goes to, Altamira in the north, also drives the