New Africa

New Africa


I posted YouTube for all of you that want to see a video similar to this story.


Andrea Lee


This story takes place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the 1960’s and is about a very religious family, whose religious values drive them to pray in church every Sunday. Sarah, a young black girl shows her rebellious nature to the church and the way the rest of the family prays during her brother, Matthew’s baptism at the New African church. While her father Reverend Phillips is baptizing her brother, Aunt Betsy tells Sarah to go on down where Matthew is so she can be baptized for next week. Sarah not having the same feelings the rest of her family has of Jesus does not want to follow the family’s acceptance of Jesus and the religion. She finds it old fashion and boring. Although Sarah has taken the opposite belief of the family and truly shows her individualism, the elders in Sarah’s family did not get mad at her. They respected her beliefs and let her make her decisions. Sarah continues to be bored but shows respect for her family and goes to church until the death of her father. At that point she feels released of her obligations and never goes to church again.















Here is a similar picture of a priest baptizing
someone.


Theme
The theme of this strory is that you should stay true to your own convictions of life. Even though Sarah's entire family and ancestors had this deep religious c
conviction and practiced it every Sunday, she would not allow them to push her into their habits. She stood by her convictions and maintained her integrity even though they were the direct opposite of the family. She wanted to live her life not theirs.

Characters
Sarah
Matthew
Reverend Phillips
Aunt Betsy
Aunt May
Aunt Ema
Aunt Lily

Response...
I thought this book was very interesting because Sarah did not want to be like her elders or siblings. She wanted to eb an individual and stand up for what she wants to do as she said " No I'm not!" in reference to not going up and accepting Jesus.








An actual baptism...



http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6115727135655560088&q=baptism&total=6451&start=20&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=9

Zoo Island

Zoo Island

By Tomas Rivera




Summary

This is a story about Jose, a young migrant worker who works the fields with his hands and finds a way not to think about how boring the job is by redirecting his thoughts. He does this by taking a census of the population of the workers that work and live on the land with him. Jose includes his friends, Jitter and Hank in helping him take the census of the population of the people living on this land in their chicken coops. He finds a special sense of self-esteem and importance in having people identify the names of their family’s and how many people are in it. Jose goes on to compare the community of people that he lives with to another community of people. In this comparison he notices the standard of living of the people of the town that he is comparing his community to, is much higher. They have many more public areas (churches, food stores, ect.). He makes note of the fact that his “Pa” feels the people of the other town come in and make fun of his village because of their low standard of living. The census that Jose Hank and Jitter took gave the poor people of the village a sense of power and the understanding that they have more people in their population then did the more-privileged people in the town. They gained a sense of strength in their numbers. In a most interesting conversation with Don Simon, somewhat of a loaner in the group of eighty-eight people he suggested they name their community “Zoo Island” an interesting name because just like a zoo that had a collection of various types of animals, only they were humans not animals, all special in their own way. The naming of the community gave them all a special sense of identity. The entire village of eighty-eight took a proud picture, in front of the sign that named their village- “Zoo Island”.

Theme

The theme of this story is hwo young Jose and his friends realized through taking a census of their village that they and the people of the village had a special identity and qualities. Although they realized they were poor, they still had greater numbers than the more fortunate people living in the town. This made them feel important and powerful; with the naming of th community it caused a common bond among the residents.

Characters

Jose

Hank

Jitter

Don Simon

Response

I found the book most interesting, it showed me how a young man found productivity from his boredom and through his productivity he gained self- esteem and a common bond for the whole village he lived in.

Here is a game of differrent zoo animals in relating to the book "Zoo Island."

MySpace Games

I posted Youtube her so you can search videos about this book or the author.

Miriam

Miriam
By Truman Capote
















Miriam, Mrs. H. T. Miller, is an elderly widow living in a Manhattan apartment, who smokes an occasional cigarette. She ventures out one night to a movie where she meets a young girl also named Miriam. Later that evening the little girl shows up at Mrs. Miler's apartment unannounced. Miriam aggressively asks to be invited into her apartment because she is hungry. She becomes an un-welcomed visitor and has to be given a cameo, a valuable piece of jewelry given by her husband, in order to leave her apartment. The next morning she goes shopping and sees an older gentleman that smiles quite strangely at her. Miriam comes to visit again that same day and is at the door waiting impatiently, demanding to move in. Mrs. Miller goes to her neighbors for help with he little girl, the neighbor comes back and says she could not find any person in the apartment. It is only then that Mrs. Miller realizes that her mind has made up the whole hallucination. There was no girl, only a fantasy of one thought.

Theme

This is a story about a lonely personn who has fantasize relationships that help her remember her husband and go on with life. She enters a make- beileve world, because that is the world she has.

Characters

Miriam

Mrs. H. T. Miller

Response

I thought this story was a very up tempo story with a terrific mystery plot. It was amazing how the author made Miriam seem so real until the neighbor could not find her. It was only when the twisted theme explained itself, that Miriam was just a fantasy.

http://www.ilovewavs.com/Holidays/Halloween/SoundEffects/Psycho%2002.wav





Here is a movie that shows a description of his life.






http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1000047189531808874&q=truman+capote&total=151&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4

Three Short Stories

I am writing about three short stories in the book " Junior Great Books". The stories are Miriam, Zoo Island, and New Africa, all great short stories.

About me
I am Dylan, a student that goes to Miami Country Day School and I am writing a blog for my English class referring to these short stories.