English stuff

Part 1: Author Study- Maya Angelou

Before reading:

1. What do you know about the civil rights movement?
   The Civil Rights Movement was a movement in the 1900s where African Americans and other Minorities bonded together and protested against discrimination and general unfairness due to their skin color

2. Look up Jim Crow and collect ideas about what it is? How do you feel about it? How do you think people who experienced it felt? 
   I feel ashamed that a country would be able to allow such laws to be put in place whist being such an economic powerhouse. Affected people must have had a hard-time living with racism being a big part of american laws

3. Look up Maya Angelou and write down facts about her?
   She was a leader in the civil rights movement. She was a poet and won many awards including the Presidential Medal Of Freedom

4. What is a memoir? What is an autobiography? 
   A memoir is a historical account, and an autobiography is a book about one’s self

5. What does it mean to be free?
   To be able to live freely without rules or regulation dictating what you should do.

6. How do some types of freedom lead to other forms of liberty? 
   When one race or people become free, other people would naturally want to become free

Vocab needed before reading:

1. Civil Rights: Rights given to each and every citizen. Enjoyed by every citizen regardless of race. ex: Freedom of speech, decent healthcare, education, housing, shelter, voting, fair trial, have a job, right to bear arms

2. Jim Crow Laws: A set of laws that segregated people. It was made under the guise of equality, however it intended to discriminate against people. They did not enjoy the same facilities in terms of equality.

3. Maya Angelou: She is an American poet, memoir, and writer. She is a civil rights activist and she is renowned for her style in writing auto biography’s

4. Memoir: An autobiographical writing about a specific period of time. Events are not listed chronologically, writer talks about and writes about their emotions.

5. Autobiography: About the entire life of the author, they (events) are listed chronologically. Writers talk about and write about their emotions

Interpret the following quote, and explain your interpretation

“If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat,”

When a person who is displaced knows that they are displaced, they would naturally act against the displacement. Due to the resistance the person caused, they would be displaced more by the people who have displaced her.

Read the following passages, and then answer the following questions

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. Her professional name came from a childhood nickname. Her brother, Bailey, would call her “my-a sister,” and the name Maya stuck. Angelou had a difficult childhood. After her parents separated, she went back and forth between her mother’s home in St. Louis and her grandmother’s home in Stamps, Arkansas. She dealt with poverty and racism throughout her childhood and had to attend segregated schools. As a young girl, she was sexually abused, and the events that followed led her to stop speaking to anyone but her brother for five years. When she grew up, Angelou turned her pain into art. She wrote about her struggles in a series of autobiographies that show her resilience, or ability to bounce back from difficult situations.

Which of the following is the best summary of this passage?

1. Maya Angelou’s parents separated when she was very young. That’s why she never got married as an adult.

2. Maya Angelou wasn’t named Maya Angelou when she was born. Her name was Marguerite Annie Johnson.

3. Maya Angelou went through many struggles as a child, but she later used her experiences in her writing. This passage is mostly about Maya’s difficult childhood and how she wrote about her experiences as an adult.

4. Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri.

Maya Angelou was known for including figurative language in her books and poems. Figurative language is language that means something other than its literal meaning. It adds color and vividness to writing. Similes are one type of figurative language. Similes compare two things using the words “like” or “as.” For example: “His shirt was pure white like freshly fallen snow.” Other types of figurative language include metaphors, in which two unlike things are compared without using “like” or “as,” and imagery, or very vivid, descriptive language.

Which of the following contains a simile?

1. A ripple in a pond looks similar to the rings of a tree trunk. They’re both made up of concentric circles.

2. In that moment, Steph’s face was a mirror of her mother’s.

3. On the inside, Ravi felt nervous, but on the outside, he looked as cool as a cucumber. The passage states,

4. The frog croaked so loudly that it scared away all the birds and butterflies.

In addition to being an author and a poet, Angelou held many jobs throughout her life. While she was living in San Francisco as a young woman, she became the city’s first black female cable car conductor. She was a successful singer, dancer and actress, releasing music albums and performing in Broadway and Off Broadway plays and musicals. Angelou worked as an activist with her friends Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X during the Civil Rights movement. She was also a successful screenplay writer and director and became the first black woman to have her screenplay produced.

According to the passage, which of the following is not a job that Maya Angelou had?

1. Dancer

2. Activist

3. Director 

4. Psychologist 

Angelou’s first memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was published in 1969. It was an instant bestseller and won the National Book Award in 1970. It even became a part of the English and Language Arts curriculum at many high schools. However, not everyone thinks the book should be studied in school. Critics claim that it encourages profanity and is too sexually explicit. Other people think Angelou portrays the white characters in the book in an unfavorable way. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has become one of the most challenged and banned books in the country.

Based on the passage, some people criticize using Angelou’s first memoir in classrooms because they believe it

• 1. contains overly mature material for students.

• 2. was written a long time ago and is too dated.

• 3. is too long to assign to students.

• 4. doesn't tell a true story.

Angelou never received a college degree, but she was awarded more than 50 honorary degrees from schools including Smith College, Howard University, Columbia University and Boston College. She was appointed a professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. At the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1993, Angelou read an original poem, becoming the second poet ever to do so. In 2010 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, from President Barack Obama. Angelou died on May 28, 2014 at her home in North Carolina. Her legacy includes seven autobiographical novels, several collections of poetry and three books of essays. She had been working on a new book when she passed away.
What can you infer from the passage?

• 1. Bill Clinton was Angelou’s favorite president.

• 2. Angelou stayed busy and productive even later in life.

• 3. Angelou discovered that teaching was her true passion.

• 4. Barack Obama was not a fan of Angelou’s work but felt pressured to give her an award.

Part 2: I know why the Caged Bird SingsMatch the word with its meaning, and match the word to its sentence.

1. Since it was difficult for an African American woman to get a job in 1903, Annie Johnson’s future looked ominous.

2. When the crops were sparce, the workers could not earn enough money to support their families.

3. Annie prepared her meat pies meticulously, and the workers eagerly bought them.

4. The team suffered a calamitous defeat yesterday.

5. Annie Johnson’s careful planning was a sign of her resolve.

6. The cotton pickers were not affluent and had trouble paying off their debts.

Answer the following questions and read the text.

Maya Angelou begins the following section of her autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by describing the trip she and her brother, Bailey, made to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother, The African American community in the small rural town of Stamps suffered both from poverty and racism. In the 1930s, when the events in this selection take place, people all over the country were suffering from the effects of the Great Depression, a severe economic decline. The poor were made even poorer, and farmers were particularly hurt. During this time, Jim Crow laws throughout the South maintained racial segregation in public transportation, schools, parks, theaters, and restaurants. These laws remained in effect until the 1960s

What you think the title of the book, I know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a metaphor for?

I think it is a metaphor for speaking out, even if you are locked up. The caged bird represents the people who spoke out against racism. The cage represents the illegality of anti-racism activities, and police who locked up people who spoke out

When I was three and Bailey four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed—“To Whom It May Concern”—that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson. Our parents had decided to put an end to their calamitous marriage, and Father shipped us home to his mother. A porter had been charged with our welfare—he got off the train the next day in Arizona—and our tickets were pinned to my brother’s inside coat pocket. I don’t remember much of the trip, but after we reached the segregated southern part of the journey, things must have looked up. Negro passengers, who always traveled with loaded lunch boxes, felt sorry for “the poor little motherless darlings” and plied us with cold fried chicken and potato salad. Years later I discovered that the United States had been crossed thousands of times by frightened Black children traveling alone to their newly affluent parents in Northern cities, or back to grandmothers in Southern towns when the urban North reneged on its economic promises. The town reacted to us as its inhabitants had reacted to all things new before our coming. It regarded us a while without curiosity but with caution, and after we were seen to be harmless (and children) it closed in around us, as a real mother embraces a stranger’s child. Warmly, but not too familiarly.

Why do you think Angelou makes a connection between her trip to her grandmother’s home and the experiences of other African American children during this time period?

Angelou makes a connection between her trip to her grandmother’s home and the experiences of other African American children during this time period because these children have also been displaced.

Identify a figure of speech in this paragraph and explain it.

Simile (“As a real mother embraces a strangers child, warmly, but not to familiarly”): Comparing the town to a mother who hugs a strangers child

We lived with our grandmother and uncle in the rear of the Store (it was always spoken of with a capital s), which she had owned some twenty-five years. Early in the century, Momma (we soon stopped calling her Grandmother) sold lunches to the sawmen in the lumberyard (east Stamps) and the seedmen at the cotton gin (west Stamps). Her crisp meat pies and cool lemonade, when joined to her miraculous ability to be in two places at the same time, assured her business success. From being a mobile lunch counter, she set up a stand between the two points of fiscal interest and supplied the workers’ needs for a few years. Then she had the Store built in the heart of the Negro area. Over the years it became the lay center of activities in town. On Saturdays, barbers sat their customers in the shade on the porch of the Store, and troubadours on their ceaseless crawlings through the South leaned across its benches and sang their sad songs of The Brazos while they played juice harps and cigar-box guitars. The formal name of the Store was the Wm. Johnson General Merchandise Store. Customers could find food staples, a good variety of colored thread, mash for hogs, corn for chickens, coal oil for lamps, light bulbs for the wealthy, shoestrings, hair dressing, balloons, and flower seeds. Anything not visible had only to be ordered. Until we became familiar enough to belong to the Store and it to us, we were locked up in a Fun House of Things where the attendant had gone home for life. Each year I watched the field across from the Store turn caterpillar green, then gradually frosty white. I knew exactly how long it would be before the big wagons would pull into the front yard and load on the cotton pickers at daybreak to carry them to the remains of slavery’s plantations. During the picking season my grandmother would get out of bed at four o’clock (she never used an alarm clock) and creak down to her knees and chant in a sleep-filled voice, “Our…”

Identify and explain the metaphor in this paragraph.

“Each year I watched the field across from the Store turn caterpillar green, then gradually frosty white.“ Comparing the color green to a caterpillar, and white to frost

What does it suggest about Angelou’s and Bailey’s initial experience of living with their grandmother?

The children took a lot of time to get accustomed to the new life. With time they started to consider her as a parental figure

Part 3: I know why the caged bird sings 2 (featuring Dante from devil may cry)

1. What do you know about life in the rural south in the 1930’s? In pairs, look up some information about it, and collect 5 facts.
   life was horrible due to the great depression, there was a drought that hurt economic growth terribly, there was slight technological improvement but nothing too major, People were still farmers for a lot of reasons, and farmers asked for crop and animal loans.

2. What is the difference between diction and dialect? Why do you think writers use dialects in their writing? 
   Diction refers to using clearer words that a majority of English speakers can understand, while dialect is a lesser clear, more informal way of speaking that is shared by people in close proximity to each other (example: O block, Chicago)

3. What is imagery? Why is it important? Identify the 5 types of imagery?
   Imagery is vividly describing things, it is important so that readers can better imagine and visualize what happens in the story. The 5 types correlate to the 5 senses

4. What is direct and indirect characterization?
   Direct: When it is explicitly mentioned (Katie likes animals)
   Indirect: When it is not explicitly mentioned (Katie runs the Animal Shelter)

Read the text and answer the questions

During the picking season my grandmother would get out of bed at four o’clock (she never used an alarm clock) and creak down to her knees and chant in a sleep-filled voice, “Our Father, thank you for letting me see this New Day. Thank you that you didn’t allow the bed I lay on last night to be my cooling board, nor my blanket my winding sheet. Guide my feet this day along the straight and narrow, and help me to put a bridle on my tongue. Bless this house, and everybody in it. Thank you, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, Amen.” Before she had quite arisen, she called our names and issued orders, and pushed her large feet into homemade slippers and across the bare lye-washed wooden floor to light the coal-oil lamp. The lamplight in the Store gave a soft make-believe feeling to our world which made me want to whisper and walk about on tiptoe. The odors of onions and oranges and kerosene had been mixing all night and wouldn’t be disturbed until the wooded slat was removed from the door and the early morning air forced its way in with the bodies of people who had walked miles to reach the pickup place. “Sister, I’ll have two cans of sardines.” “I’m gonna work so fast today I’m gonna make you look like you standing still.” “Lemme have a hunk uh cheese and some sody crackers.” “Just gimme a coupla them fat peanut paddies.” That would be from a picker who was taking his lunch. The greasy brown paper sack was stuck behind the bib of his overalls. He’d use the candy as a snack before the noon sun called the workers to rest. In those tender mornings the Store was full of laughing, joking, boasting and bragging. One man was going to pick two hundred pounds of cotton, and another three hundred. Even the children were promising to bring home fo’ bits and six

1. What was the operation of the Wm. Johnson General Merchandise Store?

   To sell commonly needed goods to people

2. Angelou’s use of dialect is a hallmark of her style. What do these few short lines of dialogue contribute to the text? 

   To show African Americans had their own dialect, this renders the characters more real

3. Instead of making direct statements about her grandmother, Angelou relies on indirect characterization to show, rather than tell, what she is like. What do her grandmother’s action suggest about her? 

   She is shown to be religious, stern, a hard worker, welcoming, dedicated, and intelligent

The champion picker of the day before was the hero of the dawn. If he prophesied that the cotton in today’s field was going to be sparse and stick to the bolls like glue, every listener would grunt a hearty agreement. The sound of the empty cotton sacks dragging over the floor and the murmurs of waking people were sliced by the cash register as we rang up the five-cent sales. If the morning sounds and smells were touched with the supernatural, the late afternoon had all the features of the normal Arkansas life. In the dying sunlight the people dragged, rather than their empty cotton sacks. Brought back to the Store, the pickers would step out of the backs of trucks and fold down, dirt-disappointed, to the ground. No matter how much they had picked, it wasn’t enough. Their wages wouldn’t even get them out of debt to my grandmother, not to mention the staggering bill that waited on them at the white commissary downtown. The sounds of the new morning had been replaced with grumbles about cheating houses, weighted scales, snakes, skimpy cotton and dusty rows. In later years I was to confront

1. What observations about the store customers does Angelou make at the beginning of the day and by the end ? 

   She observed that before work, they were optimistic about work, but after a bad day at work, they were miserable

2. Identify imagery in this passage? Why does Angelou use imagery in this part of the text? 

   “If the morning sounds and smells were touched with the supernatural, the late afternoon had all the features of the normal Arkansas life“

   She uses this piece of imagery to show the mood of the workers after a long day at work

The sounds of the new morning had been replaced with grumbles about cheating houses, weighted scales, snakes, skimpy cotton and dusty rows. In later years I was to confront the stereotyped picture of gay song-singing cotton pickers with such inordinate rage that I was told even by fellow Blacks that my paranoia was embarrassing. But I had seen the fingers cut by the mean little cotton bolls, and I had witnessed the backs and shoulders and arms and legs resisting any further demands. Some of the workers would leave their sacks at the Store to be picked up the following morning, but a few had to take them home for repairs. I winced to picture them sewing the coarse material under a coal-oil lamp with fingers stiffening from the day’s work. In too few hours they would have to walk back to Sister Henderson’s Store, get vittles and load, again, onto the trucks. Then they would face another day of trying to earn enough for the whole year with the heavy knowledge that they were going to end the season as they started it. Without the money or credit necessary to sustain a family for three months. In cotton-picking time the late afternoons revealed the harshness of Black Southern life, which in the early morning had been softened by nature’s blessing of grogginess, forgetfulness and the soft lamplight

1. How did the storyteller feel about the cotton picker’s lot in life?
   The story teller felt angry that the cotton pickers were suffering all because of their skin colour

2. Why do you think Angelou, as an adult, describes her reactions to the stereotypical view that the cotton pickers were happy? What point is she making? 

   She wanted people to realize the racism that was so prominent back there, she wanted to show people how much people had suffered because of racism

3. According to the autobiography, what role does the Store play in the African American community? 

   The store plays as a safe haven, offering a place for people to rest and replenish after a days work

part44444 SKATE 4 SKATE 4: Caged Bird

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind   
and floats downstream   
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and   
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   
with a fearful trill   
of things unknown   
but longed for still   
and his tune is heard   
on the distant hill   
for the caged bird   
sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams   
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream   
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied   
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   
with a fearful trill   
of things unknown   
but longed for still   
and his tune is heard   
on the distant hill   
for the caged bird   
sings of freedom.

1. What does the caged bird sing for in Angelou’s poem?

   The caged bird sings for freedom

2. Pick the line that shows the caged bird is in a deplorable situation. 
   Stanza 5

3. The speaker says that the caged bird sings with a ‘fearful trill.’ Why do you think she uses the word ‘fearful’ here?
   To show how the caged bird is afraid of the unknown because he has never been outside

4. In the poem how do the lives of the caged bird and the free bird differ? What part of humanity does each bird represent? 
   One bird is free and the other is encaged, the free bird enjoys his environment, while the caged bird is blinded by his anger of being confined

5. Identify the refrain (repeated lines in a poem/song) in the poem. How does Angelou’s use of this device contribute to the poem’s theme and sound? 
   Stanza 3 & 6, It emphasizes the caged birds suffering

6. The poet uses powerful metaphors in this poem. What is meant by these metaphors?

<html> <p> Caged bird : colored people, free bird : white, cage : imprisonment/culutral and historical opression, Music/singing : allusion to black spirituals </p> </html> 

Part 5: New directions:

1. What do you recall about Maya Angelou’s grandmother? Refer to Maya’s description and characterization of her. 

   Hardworking, and religious woman. She helped out cotton pickers by giving them a place to shop from.

   Read the sentences and match the words to their definitions.

2. 1. The party for my five-year- old niece was disastrous- half of the young guests cried the entire time. 

   2. The balmy breeze from the ocean created a comfortable environment for Scarlett’s afternoon wedding.

   3. After accepting several jobs, Lily realized it was burdensome for her to try to juggle all of those jobs.

   4. The purpose of the final exam is to assess how much information students have acquired throughout the semester

   5. Most customer service agents are amicable people who are good at settling disagreements.

   6. Angela conceded that Mary was the better tennis player after Mary beat her three games in a row. 

      1.  to admit something is true or to admit defeat in a contest = conceded

      2. enjoyable and gentle = balmy

      3. to judge or evaluate the state or value of something = assess

      4. tough to fulfill or carry out = burdensome

      5. showing a polite and friendly desire to avoid disagreement and argument = Amicable

      6. catastrophic; devastating = Disasterous

In 1903 the late Mrs. Annie Johnson of Arkansas found herself with two toddling sons, very little money, a slight ability to read and add simple numbers. To this picture add a disastrous marriage and the burdensome fact that Mrs. Johnson was a Negro.

When she told her husband, Mr. William Johnson, of her dissatisfaction with their marriage, he conceded that he too found it to be less than he expected, and had been secretly hoping to leave and study religion. He added that he thought God was calling him not only to preach but to do so in Enid, Oklahoma. He did not tell her that he knew a minister in Enid with whom he could study and who had a friendly, unmarried daughter. They parted amicably, Annie keeping the one-room house and William taking most of the cash to carry himself to Oklahoma. 

Annie, over six feet tall, big-boned, decided that she would not go to work as a domestic and leave her “precious babes” to anyone else’s care. There was no possibility of being hired at the town’s cotton gin or lumber mill, but maybe there was a way to make the two factories work for her. In her words, “I looked up the road I was going and back the way I come, and since I wasn’t satisfied, I decided to step off the road and cut me a new path.” She told herself that she wasn’t a fancy cook but that she could “mix groceries well enough to scare hungry away and keep from starving a man.” 

1. What do you know about the time and place in which Annie Johnson lived?

   She lived in Stamps, Arkansas in 1903

2. Why might Angelou have chosen to begin the essay by presenting these particular details? 

   To give the reader an overview of Annie’s background and she’d shed light on how hard her life was

3. Think about what options Annie has. What “new path” do you think she will take? 

   She will make a store to provide for the workers of stamps Arkansas

She made her plans meticulously and in secret. One early evening to see if she was ready, she placed stones in two five-gallon pails and carried them three miles to the cotton gin. She rested a little, and then, discarding some rocks, she walked in the darkness to the sawmill five miles farther along the dirt road. On her way back to her little house and her babies, she dumped the remaining rocks along the path. 

That same night she worked into the early hours boiling chicken and frying ham. She made dough and filled the rolled-out pastry with meat. At last she went to sleep. 

The next morning she left her house carrying the meat pies, lard, an iron brazier, and coals for a fire. Just before lunch she appeared in an empty lot behind the cotton gin. As the dinner noon bell rang, she dropped the savors into boiling fat and the aroma rose and floated over to the workers who spilled out of the gin, covered with white lint, looking like specters. 

Most workers had brought their lunches of pinto beans and biscuits or crackers, onions and cans of sardines, but they were tempted by the hot meat pies which Annie ladled out of the fat. She wrapped them in newspapers, which soaked up the grease, and offered them for sale at a nickel each. Although business was slow, those first days Annie was determined. She balanced her appearances between the two hours of activity.

1. Why are the time and place at which Annie sells her meat pies important to the success of her business? 

Time: Would have been right at lunch time, so workers would be hungry

Place: near the workers so they didn’t need to go far to buy the meat pies

So, on Monday if she offered hot fresh pies at the cotton gin and sold the remaining cooled-down pies at the lumber mill for three cents, then on Tuesday she went first to the lumber mill presenting fresh, just-cooked pies as the lumbermen covered in sawdust emerged from the mill. 

For the next few years, on balmy spring days, blistering summer noons, and cold, wet, and wintry middays, Annie never disappointed her customers, who could count on seeing the tall, brown-skin woman bent over her brazier, carefully turning the meat pies. When she felt certain that the workers had become dependent on her, she built a stall between the two hives of industry and let the men run to her for their lunchtime provisions. 

She had indeed stepped from the road which seemed to have been chosen for her and cut herself a brand-new path. In years that stall became a store where customers could buy cheese, meal, syrup, cookies, candy, writing tablets, pickles, canned goods, fresh fruit, soft drinks, coal, oil, and leather soles for worn-out shoes. 

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead, and those over which we have traveled, and if the future road looms ominous or unpromising, and the roads back uninviting, then we need to gather our resolve and, carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable,3\ without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that as well.

1. Think about what Annie has done so far. What do you predict will happen to her business? 
   It will continue to grow.

2. How do Annie’s action help her become the person she wants to be? 
   She wanted to be an Independent, strong woman, and her choise of job was a job taht required her to be both strong and independent

3. What idea about life does Angelou reveal in this passage? 
   To take risks and to not be afraid of change