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• Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia. She was born into a poor sharecropper family, and the last of eight children.
• At the age of 8 she was accidentally shot in the eye by her brother and was blinded on one eye until she the age of 14 when she got an operation and regained some of her sight.
• This experience made her very secluded and reserved. She thought a lot about suicide but found comfort in writing. She became an observer rather than a participator in everyday life.
• Alice Walker herself has said: “I believe it is from this period – from my solitary, lonely position, the position of an outcast – that I began really to se people and things, really to notice relationships and to learn to be patient enough to care about how they turned out...”
• She was one out of only six black students at the Sarah Lawrence College in New York where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1965.
• AW has had some problems of her own; she was very depressed after an abortion in senior year at college. She slept with a razor under her pillow for three nights as she wanted to commit suicide. Instead she turned to writing and in a week she wrote the story “To Hell with Dying”. She only stopped writing to eat and sleep.
• AW always turned to writing when she was depressed, in these periods she got the greatest inspiration to her stories.
• AW and her ex-husband Melvyn Leventhal were the first legally married interracial couple to live in the state of Missisippi (married in 1967, divorced in 1976). They had a daughter, Rebecca. She later remarried fellow editor Robert Allen.
• AW was active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. She has spoken for the women’s movement, the anti-apartheid movement, for the anti-nuclear movement and against female genital mutilation.
• AW calls herself “a womanist “, her term for a black feminist. She is one of the female Afro-American writers founding the concept “New Black Renaissance” .
Style
• AW’s work is deeply rooted in oral tradition; in the passing on of stories from generation to generation in the language of the people. To AW the language had a great importance. She uses the “Slave language”, which by others is seen as “not correct language”, but this is because of the effect she wants the reader to understand.
Oprah Winfrey was born on January 29th, 1954 in Kosciusko, Mississippi to a unmarried teenage mother. Her mom and dad are Vernita Lee and Vernon Winfrey, her father is a coal miner, turned into a barber, turned into a city councilman who had been in the armed forces when oprah was born. After Oprah was born, her mother traveled north and oprah spent her first 6 years living in rural poverty with her maternal grandmother. Oprah was so poor that
Capote delineates Perry's attachment to his past while tracing how its tendrils creep into his present habits, formulating the concept that one's past can shape one's future. From the very beginning of the novel and from the reader's first glimpse at Perry, Capote calls attention to Perry's boxes filled with memorabilia that constitute his worldly possessions. In his early thirties, Perry still clings to his childhood dreams of becoming "Perry O'Parsons" and a deep-sea-diver (14). Perry's friendship with Dick depends on him being "totally masculine...
Throughout his nonfiction novel In Cold Blood, Truman Capote continuously contrasts the kindheartedness and innocence of the Clutters to the malicious, manipulative demeanor of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith to emphasize the cold, cruel nature of their crime. By harshly interrupting peaceful, endearing images of Nancy Clutter baking a pie with descriptions of Dick and Perry planning the town darling’s very murder, Capote consistently juxtaposes good and evil. His tactic descriptions of the seemingly discordant yet parallel occurrences in different settings and employment of strong imagery and pathos throughout the novel prove effective in not only developing characterization and appealing to the reader’s emotions but building the contrast between good and evil that
Susan B. Anthony was born in 1820 on a farmhouse in adams massachusetts and went to a private school that her father had founded. In 1826, the anthony family moved to Battenville N.Y., and Susan began teaching Canajoharie Academy in 1846.
When first describing Dick and Perry, Capote describes dick as “an athlete constructed on a welterweight scale. The tattooed face of a cat, blue and grinning, covered his right hand…More markings…ornamented his arms and torso.” The metaphor comparing Dick to a welterweight athlete gives the perception that Dick is a mean looking guy. Basically, what a stereotypical criminal looks like; and that is exactly what Dick is. At the end of the passage, after describing Dick’s car colli...
In the novel, In Cold Blood, written by Truman Capote, there is an abundant amount of character development with the two murderers, Perry Smith and Richard (Dick) Hickock. Capote, as an author, has the ability to include or omit whatever details he wishes. With this power, an author can sway the reader’s opinion towards whatever he wants it to be. The power of manipulation, as used by authors, can be used to not only show bias but to kick start the creation of emotions that are contrary to the feelings of the public. This can be clearly seen in the description of the events that took place on the night that Smith and Hickock murdered four members of the Clutter family. In this section, Capote talks about both men having given a statement but only includes the details of Smith’s
Because he is forced to accept that his beliefs have been messed with and realizes that he has sent people to their deaths, he loses faith in the law and questions his faith in God. Arthur Miller put many events into the story and tells about Hale’s mindset. In the middle of Act I, Hale comes and what he is called by the townspeople “The truth seeker”. Hale is called upon to determine what sort of witchcraft is going on. Hale arrives admired by the people who wants him to calm this nonsense of witchcraft down. He understands he being led toward the conclusion of witchcraft by the town’s wrong doings. He also begins to see a weakness in the position of the townspeople of Salem and tries to not let common things be the support for his
In 1968, Francine Prose graduated from Radcliffe college. She graduated with summa cum laude honors with a Bachelors degree in English. Soon after she graduated in 1969, Prose went on to begin a masters degree program at Harvard University(Carrigan). Prose soon realized that she was not cut out for grad school(Bolicks). Francine Prose left the Harvard program not that long after she joined in the year 1971 (Carrigan). She soon embarked on a trip to Mumbai, India ...
Although they may not be “normal” people, they are human beings. He turned what people believed to be horrible, vial, grim, and desolate beasts into human beings who are unable to control how they act or feel. The expression, “never read a book by it’s cover” somewhat applies to the story of Dick and Perry. They were convicted killers who murdered an innocent family --- a crime no “human” could commit. So people automatically assumed they are not human; they must be beats. However, Capote uncovers their life stories to look deeper, and eventually one could see that Dick and Perry aren’t beast after all. Capote was able to humanize the beasts that everyone thought weren’t
Storytelling has a special importance in culture throughout the African continent; Anansi the spider in Ghana, is one great example of an African fable that teaches children important lessons including respect for elders, the importance of wisdom, and the importance of culture. These stories have been retained and perpetuated by oral tradition, despite the western emphasis on written records; African tribes have preserved history and culture well thorough oral historians. The translator, D.T. Niane, explains the validity of oral history well by stating that written text can contain inaccuracies as well (xv). The importance of the oral aspect of djelis method relays the information in a personal manner, as Djeli Mamoudou Kouyate states, “writing lacks the warmth of the human voice,” therefore by creating a written text of an oral story it “does violence” to it (xvi). I was raised in an African community, here in DC and was lucky enough to attend Djeli performances by family friend, Djimo Kouyate, and later his son Amadou. Although I do not speak Manding, Djeli Djimo Koyate, performed the music in such a way that I was able to relate and...
Overall, these two passages are just an illustrative representation of Capote’s consistent characterization of Dick and Perry. What makes Capote’s methods of characterization so different is that he does not merely state facts of each in random order. Each detail included or excluded is done with a specific purpose to manipulate the mind of the reader into sharing the same opinions of each character as
Critical Essays on Alice Walker. Ed. By Ikenna Dieke. Greenwood Press, Westpoint, Connecticut, London, 1999
A crucible is a severe test as of patients or belief, a trial. The play The Crucible is a journey through the trials of many townspeople caused by the superstitious belief of witchcraft. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller progresses and evolves the outlooks and views of the townspeople of Salem and shows how events, people, and catastrophes cause the characters to change their views on whether the people prosecuted were guilty or innocent of witchcraft. Reverend John Hale changes his view, more and more drastically as the play advances, as a result of the events that he underwent and the experiences he had. Soon he had total belief in the innocence of all those convicted and hung in Salem.
She published around seventy-five poems before beginning college (“Biography” 1). Brooks graduated college from Wilson Junior College in 1936 (“Biography” 1). Three years later, at the age of 22, she married Henry Lowington Blakely II (Shuman 199). They married and moved into a small kitchenette apartment which would later be used as an inspiration to some of Brooks works. Blakely and Brooks later separated in 1969 and then reconciled in 1974 and stayed together (Shuman 199). While developing as a poet, Brooks became a secretary to support herself and her husband (“Biography” 2). Brooks and Blakely had two children, Henry and Nora (“Biography” 2). After the birth of their two children, Brooks began a teaching career (“Biography” 2).She started out teaching at Chicago’s Columbia College in 1963 this is where she received an honorary doctorate (Shuman 199). Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago State University, Columbia University, and the University of Wisconsin were all colleges Brooks taught in (“Biography” 2). During her teaching career, Brooks continued to write and publish many poems (“Biography”2). Brooks decided to stop teaching after suffering a small heart-attack in 1971 (Shuman
Point of View in Alice Walker's Everyday Use. Alice Walker is making a statement about the popularization of black culture in "Everyday Use". The story involves characters from both sides of the African American cultural spectrum, conveniently cast as sisters in. the story of the. Dee/Wangero represents the "new black," with her natural.