ESSAY CEMETERY

Rosa lives in Miami, Florida in a decrepit hotel for which Stella pays rent. She is retired after having axed her own junk shop vusiness. She writes letters to Stella to remain on good terms with her, and to Magda. She imagines Magda is alive. She writes her in Polish which she considers far superior to either English or Yiddish. She finally leaves her room to do some laundry at a Laundromat, where she meets Simon Persky, a Jew who left Poland before the War. She feels she is superior to him because he speaks Polish and English. He insists on courting her even though she behaves nastily towards him. She gets a package that she assumes is Magda's shawl, sent her by the reluctant Stella who has been taking psychology classes and regards Rosa's attachment to the shawl as unhealthy. Instead, it is a book sent her by Dr. Tree, a psychologist doing research on Holocaust survivors. Rosa resents being treated as a clinical subject rather than a human being. Rosa thinks Persky has taken...

Summary Renata/Rindy DeMarco is in her apartment thinking of Vic who does drugs and cooks. She is an aspiring jewelry designer but works in sales. Her father comes from Verona to drop off a turkey for thanksgiving. Her apartment is small. They are Italians. Her dad was a minor league catcher. Her father's father is a second-generation immigrant which makes her dad third and her fourth. Vic is self-involved. Renata and Carla, her younger sister, changed their names to Rindy and Cindi in junior high. Vic is Italian. Dad's recently retired and Mother's concerned about him. Dad feels lost because he never felt right about his profession working in an office. Vic stole the deck chairs from a restaurant or store. For much of her life, Rindy's mother stayed at home because it was a nice change from mountain village life. She now is starting to find herself and takes classes. Her dad wants to talk about this. Her mother was always earthy and open but not vulgar. Cindi got marri...

Summary Mr. Bhowmick wakes up early for work and his wife with him to make him breakfast. His agnostic wife works for an insurance company. His daughter, 26, is an electrical engineer. He is sorry he can't afford a whole room like his mother had in Indian for worship but he took woodworking classes and built a shrine for the family goddess Kali-Mata (and the goddess herself I think). His wife complains that he prays so much that he doesn't have time for all the Indian activities they do, and that he prays to shut her out. She reads psychology magazines and feels he doesn't share enough. She and his daughter were more American somehow. They were right, he didn't want to talk about the sickness he felt that was not of physical origins. He felt that there was something in the dark that could make things happen which his wife would dismiss as paranoia. He thinks the statue of Kali changes on its own. Husband, wife and daughter nag each other over breakfast and discuss techn...

Reflection on life She was an old woman now, and her life had become memories. Attention to the elements (of nature) Thinking of the past and future Weaving Denial/ misunderstanding/spirituality? It wasn't like Jimmie died. He just never came back [...] White people distinguished as "the white man" Nature is relaxing The sun warmth relaxed her and took the fear and anger away. She lay back on the rock and watched the sky. It seemed to her that she could walk into the sky, stepping through clouds endlessly. Danny played with little pebbles and stones, pretending they were birds’ eggs and then little rabbits. Ella sat at her feet and dropped fistfuls of dirt into the breeze, watching the dust and particles of sand intently. Ayah watched a hawk soar high above them, dark wings gliding; hunting or only watching, she did not know. The hawk was patient and he circled all afternoon before he disappeared around the high volcanic peak the Mexicans called Guadalupe. Emotions associ...

PDF of Tony's Story: Link   (Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with this link) Army men returning to the reservation I wondered why men who came back from the army were troublemakers on the reservation. The fantastic (Todorov) I looked back and saw the red light on top of the car whirling around, and I could make out the dark image of a man, but where the face should have been there were only the silvery lenses of the dark glasses he wore. How could just speaking about something make it more real? But I knew that cop was something terrible, and even to speak about it risked bringing it close to all of us; so I didn’t say anything. There's some more abstract fear that haunts Tony than the cop, something others can't see Leon glanced in the rear-view mirror. "He's following us!" My body began to shake and I wasn't sure if I would be able to speak. "There's no place left to hide. It follows us everywhere." Tony refers to the cop as "it" ...

Very strong language When I start to hurt and then my stomach start moving and then that little baby come out my pussy chewing on it fist you could have knock me over with a feather. Education is important He got only three children though. He seen Nettie in church and now every Sunday evening here come Mr.___.I tell Nettie to keep at her books. Dreaming of a different life Shug Avery was a woman. The most beautiful woman I ever saw. She more pretty then my mama. She bout ten thousand times more prettier then me. I see her there in furs. Her face rouge. Her hair like somethin tail. She grinning with her foot up on somebody motocar. Her eyes serious tho. Sad some. I ast her to give me the picture. An all night long I stare at it. An now when I dream, I dream of Shug Avery. She be dress to kill, whirling and laughing. Protective of Netti I ast him to take me instead of Nettie while our new mammy sick. But he just ast me what I'm talking bout. I tell him I can fix myself up for him. I...

Celie, fourteen years old, is raped by her mother's boyfriend (her father?) and has his baby. She lies to her mother and says she doesn't know the father. The father kidnaps and kills the baby in her sleep. Her mother dies. She has another baby and thinks this time he has sold it. He marries a girl her age, "the new mammy", and brings her home and takes her frequently. Celie loves school but the first time she became pregnant Pa took her out, saying she was too dumb.  Her little sister Nettie has a suitor, Mr. _____, but He won't let her marry him because Nettie is too young. He says he will let him have Celie instead. Finally, he decides to marry Celie, after the woman who took care of his kids left and on the condition that the cow they have comes too. He has three children. Celie finds comfort in a picture of Shug Avery, Mr. ____'s sweetheart. She is black, beautiful, sophisticated and well dressed. She gets married. The oldest boy, twelve years old, is opp...

Lots of scripture and historical, particularly American, precedents to back up his rhetoric and arguments Addressed to whites - "you" refers to heads of white churches or the white moderate Echoes A Model of Christian Charity by John Winthrop “Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ.” Calling on American discourse. Interestingly, he does so on the past and not the future "We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -and yet out of a bo...

Gish Jen's 1991 novel Typical American tracks the progress of Ralph Chang, Theresa Chang, and Helen, who emigrate from China to America in the middle of the 20th century. In New York, they move from home to home, guided by circumstances, financial need or aspirations for a better life. The structure, quality, and contents of their apartments and houses, as well as the frequency of their relocation, are reflective of their optimism, pessimism, and the degree of their acclimatization in America.  Several months after his arrival in New York, Ralph forgets to renew his visa. To avoid discovery, he leaves graduate school discreetly and moves out of his "rooming house" (29) to an office building converted into tenement units. He finds that he misses the house's "stack of predictable halls… [and] its schedules" (30). Of his new neighbors, he says: "everyone seems to be missing something. There was a family with no mother, a couple with no furniture, a man wit...

Mukherjee calls America a myth. Mukherjee is a naturalized citizen and had to prove her worth to become one. She was born in Calcutta, India and never expected to naturalize, but to return home to marry the man her father picked for her. When she first arrived in Iowa for two years to study it was very homogeneous but now, 35 years later, it is so diverse that there's a cultural   or identity crisis regarding foreigners. In India this was unheard of, because classification matters above all and decrees precisely who each person is. Mukherjee herself was defined by her ancestry, caste and homeland. One day she spontaneously married her Canadian husband. For ten years she felt like an expatriate, and wrote a book that was an expression of this. After 14 years in Canada she decided to become an immigrant instead of an expatriate and moved to America with her family. Canada was hard because it was very racially exclusivist. America on the other hand held the appeal of its egalitari...

This short story is summarized in bullet points for no good reason. Events ·        It's a hot dry summer. Tony's friend Leon comes back from the army. He is drinking. ·        A state cop punches Leon in the face ·        Leon is admitted to the hospital with broken teeth and get stitches ·        Tony dreams about the cop who has white round eyes on a ceremonial black mask instead of a face ·        Leon gets better but wants revenge and Tony tries to dissuade him ·        Tony sees the cop in a gas station store and Leon says he is just as good as the cop ·        The cop follows them and they pull over. He makes them get out of the car. ·        Tony knows he can't look at the cop's eyes. He tries not to but then looks at ...

The story is comprised mostly of the main character's thoughts, which I decided were more easily summarized in bullet points. Ayah (an old Indian) sits outside in the snow immersed in nature reflecting on the past and the future Her son Jimmie was a soldier She thinks of her mother, grandmother and herself preparing wool and weaving blankets She thinks of Jimmie's birth She recalls when she was informed of Jimmie's death Chato- Ayah's husband? She recalls how: She mourned Jimmie She signed papers that allowed her children Ella and Danny to be taken away by doctors without understanding what she signed, but then ran away with the children The next day Chato, Ayah’s husband, explained that the children had inherited a disease from Ayah's grandmother and she had signed an agreement to treat them The children were taken away She had had other children who died but it was bearable because they were with her Back to the present: It starts snowing Ch...

Buddy and his half brother and his mother Albertine American Horse are in the woodshed, hiding from the cops. One of them is Officer Harmony, a tribal policeman who is tough on Native Americans. Buddy knows something horrible is coming, something metal from the sky with barbs and hooks, to kill them. He enjoys watching his mother sleep. His mother regrets her experiences with men but not Buddy. She hates men. Two policemen and a social worker Vicky Koob come. Buddy hugs his mother close and relishes the contact despite the fear. The brown dog barks at them viciously so one of the policemen draws his gun on him and it retreats. Uncle Lawrence, in strange garb, opens the door. Harmony tells him they have papers that allow them to take Buddy. The other officer, Brackett, warns Lawrence that they'll take him too if he doesn't cooperate. They handcuff him and start searching the house and shed. Koob is eager to find Buddy "to salvage him". She catalogues all of the...

This post contains a summary of sections 1-5 out of 6. 1 Race has had no or very little bearing on the course of literary theory in 20 th century. The literary canon is now considered to contain works which reflect on the general human condition and not particular groups. This has not always been so: in the 19 th century literary theory was interested in historical perspectives in literature. Literature was interpreted according to the period in which and the people by whom it was written. Race was important in criticism. It was considered to be the origins of man, the truths, ideas and ideals held by the author as part of the race. These were expressed implicitly and explicitly in the work. Race spans the history of the race and subsequent connected elements resulting from this long history. Texts were considered important which elevated the historical/racial element. Blacks and whites in America, for instance were seen as irreconcilably different. Even though in...