Aldo's Tales from Uni English

     Both Booker T. Washington and Malcolm X were influential figures in the fight for civil rights. Separated by the better part of a century, they still took similar paths through life. They began in dangerous and demoralizing conditions, but fixated in their adolescence on learning to read and educating themselves despite numerous barriers. Both used this skill to develop an understanding of the problems facing Black people in their times, and eventually both became prominent advocates for the whole of their race. But within these general periods of their early lives, their individual experiences varied significantly, taking their beliefs, goals, and tactics in two very different directions. Booker T. Washington felt that racism could be eventually beaten through forgiveness, incremental change, and programs which worked "inside the system," like vocational training, while Malcolm X argued that significant change would never occur without constant, aggressive activism ...

     It is widely known that conditions in the Jim Crow-era South were viciously oppressive and harmful to Black people, as well as anyone else without white skin. Even today, many ideologies of this time, like the idea that giving other people rights "costs you yours," continue to actively hurt the same communities as they did nearly 100 years ago. And throughout history, natural disasters have only further shown the effects of systems of discrimination through the disproportionate harm they cause to marginalized communities. In "Down by the Riverside," Richard Wright places a fictional yet realistic Black farmer, Mann, in the real and deadly Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 , mainly to protest the immense inequality in the South under Jim Crow. But also, at several points, he uses Mann's thoughts to present his idea of a world free of the racism that caused the story's violence and injustice in the first place.     One such passage where these goals are app...

The African-American vernacular tradition — the system of oral and literary expression developed by Black people in the United States and exemplified by their folk tales, religion, music (blues, jazz, spirituals) and unique dialect of English — is at the core of much of the literature we have read so far in this class. These elements of the vernacular tradition are frequently used both directly in our texts and alluded to, contributing to an interesting, authentic, and uniquely Black style of literature. In an era where slavery was still within living memory for many of its most prolific writers, this field gave Black people a kind of voice they never had before and allowed them to share and relate to each other's experiences and further their culture. But before the literacy rate of African-Americans skyrocketed following the Civil War, their vernacular tradition was mostly driven by oral expression, like folk tales, sermons, and especially music. Multiple influences combined to f...

Never in Lee Harvey Oswald's childhood, the story of which is told in Don DeLillo's Libra , does he have a father, or even father figure, who is around long enough to matter. His mother's first husband, Edward, walked out on her when she was pregnant with Lee's half-brother John Edward Pic; his biological father Robert died suddenly of a heart attack during her pregnancy with Lee; and her last husband, Edwin, cheated on her. (4-5) Furthermore, Lee rarely gets much recognition, respect, or validation. In the South, he is viciously harassed for his "Northern" speech, while in the North people mock his perceived Texas accent with a variety of colorful nicknames. Without engaged or supportive parents to help him with any of his trauma, he becomes isolated, sad, and even aggressive, and is sent to a youth home after he begins skipping school. Because of his constantly changing childhood and adolescence, Lee seems to feel lost an...