It was a cold winter night and an expected mother is sleeping on a mattress that is lying on the floor. The room has brown paint on the walls and the plaster is breaking. Lying next to the woman is a box on the box is a bottle of beer and a gram of coke. The woman is addicted to cocaine and an alcoholic. You can hear the rats chewing in the walls. There are so many holes in the walls it looks almost like someone came in with a gun and shot up the walls. Margret wakes feeling so wet nothing can describe how much pain she is in. She realizes that she is in labor. The apartment building she grew up in was in the South Bronx, Margret Blackwood’s mother never provided for her. There apartment had a coach it was brown and had tan stuffing coming out the side. Her mother April was very skinny because she was addicted to cocaine. Her mother’s hair was short and black. To make money to buy drugs April Margret’s mother was a prostitute. Margret slept on the floor with no pillow and no blanket. Her mother used to beat her every day because she hated her daughter. Margret’s pain became so intense, but she just laid there and continued to go into labor. She just kept thinking about her childhood. Her mother died when she was seven years old. She really didn’t give a care about her. When she was young she just used to play in the hall all day long. She remembered her young friend and her snuck outside one afternoon and she saw him get murdered. He got shot in the head and Margret saw it. That day changed her it took her innocence away, she was no longer a child. She began to push the baby out on the pea stained mattress. She whaled as she continued to push the baby out in the small brown room with broken plaster. The baby finally came out... ... middle of paper ... ...n the street and it didn’t take long for her to start using again. She ended up living in a crack house. That’s how she ended up in that brown room with the broken plaster. She goes back every year on her birthday to the lot where the crack house use to be. Margret Blackwell loves her son and always thinks of him first know. She got out of the hospital, but just before she left she got to see her son. He had a full of hair and he was still being whined off the drugs, but he was beautiful. She went to jail and the judge later ruled that she should go to rehab for the possession. Also she got to be in her son’s life. Her son got adopted by a lovely man and women that always took good care of him. Margret ended up staying clean and know gives speech’s at local high schools, she finished high school and she even wrote a book about her life.
In “Westbury Court,” author Edwidge Danticat tells the readers about how one drastic event in her childhood can completely change her whole life. Danticat grew up in an apartment in a seemingly unprivileged area called Westbury Court in Brooklyn, New York. One day after school, she came home with her younger brother and immediately turned on the television to watch her favorite show. Suddenly, she and her show were interrupted by an abrupt knock on the apartment’s door. Apparently, there was a deadly fire coming from the apartment across from theirs. By then, Danticat realizes the importance of the phrase that her mother told her after the tragedy, “Sometimes
To the urban lifestyle of growing up in the ghettos and the hardships. She depicts the usages of drugs, gang, crime, poverty, teen pregnancy and mostly how it effects the community. But also shows how the outside violence comes into the home and can devastate the natural order of the household.
She returns to her grandmother’s house with the baby, and since there are no kids allowed where her grandma lives, she has to be extra careful that the baby doesn’t cry. The reason that she went to her grandmother’s house is because that’s where she lives. Her mother left her a long time ago. Anyway, she spends the whole night taking care of the baby by feeding it with the formula provided in the bag, and changing its diapers. She soon gets really sick of it.
Until she sees a woman creeping behind the pattern one night tempting her to go see if the wallpaper is actually moving which is when her husband catches her. He always seems to talk down to her treating her like a child in this particular instance calling her “little girl”. In spite of this she sees this as an opportunity to talk to let him know her concerns informing him that she is not getting better as he so adamantly believes. Nevertheless, her attempts are futile for he dismisses her once more putting his supposed medical opinion above his wife’s feelings. The story takes a shocking turn as she finally discerns what that figure is: a woman. As the story progress she believes the sole reason for her recovery is the wallpaper. She tells no one of this because she foresees they may be incredulous so she again feels the need to repress her thoughts and feelings. On the last night of their stay, she is determined to free the woman trapped behind bars. She begins to tear strips of the wallpaper and continues to all night by morning yards of the paper are stripped off. Her sister in law Jennie offers to help but at this point the narrator is territorially protective of the wallpaper. She locks herself in the room and is determined to strip the wall bare. As she is tearing the wallpaper apart she sees strangled heads in the pattern shrieking as the wallpaper is being torn off. At this point, she is furious and even
...ism and segregation, it is what will keep any society form reaching is maximum potential. But fear was not evident in those who challenged the issue, Betty Jo, Street, Jerry, and Miss Carrie. They challenged the issue in different ways, whether it was by just simply living or it was a calculated attempt to change the perspective of a individual. McLurin illustrated the views of the reality that was segregation in the South, in the town of Wade, and how it was a sort of status quo for the town. The memories of his childhood and young adulthood, the people he encountered, those individuals each held a key in how they impacted the thoughts that the young McLurin had about this issue, and maybe helping unlock a way to challenge the issue and make the future generation aware of the dark stain on society, allowing for more growth and maximum potential in the coming years.
The stories that the author told were very insightful to what life was like for an African American living in the south during this time period. First the author pointed out how differently blacks and whites lived. She stated “They owned the whole damn town. The majority of whites had it made in the shade. Living on easy street, they inhabited grand houses ranging from turn-of-the-century clapboards to historics”(pg 35). The blacks in the town didn’t live in these grand homes, they worked in them. Even in today’s time I can drive around, and look at the differences between the living conditions in the areas that are dominated by whites, and the areas that are dominated by blacks. Racial inequalities are still very prevalent In today’s society.
The story also focuses in on Ruth Younger the wife of Walter Lee, it shows the place she holds in the house and the position she holds to her husband. Walter looks at Ruth as though he is her superior; he only goes to her for help when he wants to sweet talk his mama into giving him the money. Mama on the other hand holds power over her son and doesn’t allow him to treat her or any women like the way he tries to with Ruth. Women in this story show progress in women equality, but when reading you can tell there isn’t much hope and support in their fight. For example Beneatha is going to college to become a doctor and she is often doubted in succeeding all due to the fact that she is black African American woman, her going to college in general was odd in most people’s eyes at the time “a waste of money” they would say, at least that’s what her brother would say. Another example where Beneatha is degraded is when she’s with her boyfriend George Murchison whom merely just looks at her as arm
The role of women in a black society is a major theme of this novel. Many women help demonstrate Hurston's ideas. Hurston uses Janie's grandmother, Nanny, to show one extreme of women in a black society, the women who follow in the footsteps of their ancestors. Nanny is stuck in the past. She still believes in all the things that used to be, and wants to keep things the way they were, but also desires a better life for her granddaughter than she had. When Nanny catc...
The award-winning book of poems, Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson, is an eye-opening story. Told in first person with memories from the author’s own life, it depicts the differences between South Carolina and New York City in the 1960s as understood by a child. The book begins in Ohio, but soon progresses to South Carolina where the author spends a considerable amount of her childhood. She and her older siblings, Hope and Odella (Dell), spend much of their pupilage with their grandparents and absorb the southern way of life before their mother (and new baby brother) whisk them away to New York, where there were more opportunities for people of color in the ‘60s. The conflict here is really more of an internal one, where Jacqueline struggles with the fact that it’s dangerous to be a part of the change, but she can’t subdue the fact that she wants to. She also wrestles with the issue of where she belongs, “The city is settling around me….(but) my eyes fill up with the missing of everything and everyone I’ve ever known” (Woodson 184). The conflict is never explicitly resolved, but the author makes it clear towards the end
Mary had very loving and caring parents whose names were Sam and Pasty McLeod. Her father, Sam, often worked on the farm that they owned. Her mother, Pasty delivered and picked white people’s laundry. Mary often got to come along and play with the mother’s daughter. Once, Mary got into a fight with a little white girl who said that Mary couldn’t read at that time in South Carolina, it was illegal to teach a black person. This made Mary mad, and she wanted to do something about it.
Because of the laws against colored people, Rosaleen, as a black woman, lives with constraints in her life. For example, she cannot live in a house with white people (Kidd, p.8), she cannot represent Lily at the charm school (Kidd, p.19), or even travel in a car with white people (Kidd, p.76). The media is also influenced by racism, and constantly shows news about segregation such as the case of Martin Luther King, who is arrested because he wants to eat in a restaurant (Kidd, p.35), the “man in Mississippi was killed for registering to vote” (Kidd, p.44), and the motel in Jackson, that closes, because the owners don’t want to rent rooms to black people (Kidd, p.99).... ... middle of paper ...
...cts of the mother and the descriptions, which are presented to us from her, are very conclusive and need to be further examined to draw out any further conclusions on how she ?really? felt. The mother-daughter relationship between the narrator and her daughter bring up many questions as to their exact connection. At times it seems strong, as when the narrator is relating her childhood and recounting the good times. Other times it is very strained. All in all the connection between the two seems to be a very real and lifelike account of an actual mother-daughter relationship.
Segregation in the southern states is very prominent during that time period. For instance, Lily’s housekeeper Rosaleen could not live in the same house as Lily, nor could she worship in the same church. Lily finally had enough of her abusive father T. Ray and decided to run away along with their housekeeper Rosaleen, who she broke out of jail. The only place she desired to go was the town, as written on one of her mother’s pictures. On the back of a photograph of a black version of Mary Lily’s mother writing the town of Tiburon.
Once a slave, Nanny tells of being raped by her master, an act from which Janie’s mother was brought into the world. With a
The story leads the reader on an exploratory journey to witness the neglect by Emily's extremely guilty mother. This is described by the children's cry when they are left with strangers, lacking attention and love due to the fact she is a single parent at a time where this was not commonly accepted in the community, causing a lot of emotional distress.