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1. Why do people share their stories?

I think that the reason people share their stories is because they want others to learn more about them while also trying to influence them to try and make them try to change for the better. People tend to want others to learn more about them while also trying to help others from making mistakes that they have made before. It also helps people to find others who have experienced similar experiences and if the experiences were bad and the person sharing the story was able to get through fine, then they are able to get help from them to get through the experience themselves. It also helps for people to try and learn why a certain person acts the way they do because some past experiences can shape the way they act today. I believe that it is good to share stories because it allows for you to learn more about others and be able to see a different side of life while also trying to learn how someone should act to try and make the best life for themselves. It also allows for people to start a conversation on something that both people have experienced which could help you connect to someone better. Learning about someones past can help you become more emphatic towards others when you learn about their past.

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Choose 1 Psychological Lens Questions to respond to. Your responses should thoroughly respond to the prompt in at least three sentences.

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1. What forces are motivating the characters?

Some of the big forces that are motivating the character to make something of themselves would be their family and happiness. I believe that these were the big motivating forces because the brothers and sisters of James McBride all tried their hardest when it came to school and other things of the sort because they wanted to make a better and happier life for themselves and their family. I think this because their family grew up poor and so the older children wanted to be able to go far in life so that they could take care of their mom and the younger children too since their mom was the one who pushed them into their education so that they could live better lives.

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Find a quote in this chunk that stood out to you. Please also include a picture or GIF to further describe this quote.

Give context for your quote. What was happening in the story that made this quote significant? Who was speaking?

Why did this quote stand out to you?

After learning more about his mom's life and hearing all of these details about her life James says to himself "There's such a big difference between being dead and alive, I told myself, and the greatest gift that anyone can give anyone else is life. And the greatest sin a person can do to another is to take away that life"(McBride 229). James started to contemplate a lot of his life and then after some thinking he realized what life really is and that he doesn't want to live it the way that others live theirs. This quote really stood out to me because it gave me a different view on life and really helped me appreciate my life that I am currently living and how lucky I am to have it.

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Choose 1 Social Class Lens Questions to respond to. Your responses should thoroughly respond to the prompt in at least three sentences.

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Choose 3 Reader Response Lens Questions to respond to. Your responses should thoroughly respond to the prompt in at least three sentences.

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1. What was the work’s original intended audience? To what extent are you similar or different from that audience?

I think that the work's intended audience was just people who don't know enough about the situations that African Americans had to go through in the 1900s. This was probably his intended audience because he wanted more people to learn about his life struggles. I am similar to the audience because I want to learn more about the struggles African Americans had to go through and compare it to issues going on now.

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2. How might readers in different time periods or of different ages interpret the text?

If readers from the 1800s were to read this book they would see everything that happened in this book to be normal because they were inherently racist compared to people who would read it now in 2024. The people in the 1800s would see the things mentioned in the book as regular while people currently would interpret the book as something horrible that should be talked about more.

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1. How are class differences presented in the work? Are the characters aware or unaware of the economic and social forces that affect their lives?

One way class differences were presented in the work was when we learn that James started to work at a white family called the Dawson's house in return for them paying for his trip to Europe. We see how differently white family's tried to raise their children because we see Mrs. Dawson who was paying for James trip try to teach him proper etiquette and different music trying to make him into a better person since that's the way she was probably brought up and wants James to act the same. James and his family are definitely aware of their economic situation because we see James has to get money from a stranger for his trip because he knew his mom didn't have the money. We also see that when James is saying goodbye to his mom on his way, the mom gives him a few dollars because that's all she had and she still wanted to give him something although she lacked money, and James knew this which is why he began to tear up when she gave him all of the money she had.

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3. How does the meaning of a text change as you reread it?

The more you reread something the more likely you are to see the text in a different light and think the text means something different if you were to read further ahead and learn more about the situation.

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Find a quote in this chunk that stood out to you. Please also include a picture or GIF to further describe this quote.

Give context for your quote. What was happening in the story that made this quote significant? Who was speaking?

Why did this quote stand out to you?

Halfway through reading the book we get to a certain part where James tells his mom of something he read in a book and when his mom heard it she got mad and then James asked her a question "Am I black or white?” “You’re a human being,” she snapped. “Educate yourself or you’ll be a nobody!” “Will I be a black nobody or just a nobody?” “If you’re a nobody,” she said dryly, “it doesn’t matter what color you are”(McBride 92). This quote really stood out to me because it shows how little the mom actually cared about race. This also helped enforce the idea that the mom really wanted her kids to completely ignore race and see everyone as the same so that they can live the best lives that they possible can.

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Find a quote in this chunk that stood out to you. Please also include a picture or GIF to further describe this quote.

Give context for your quote. What was happening in the story that made this quote significant? Who was speaking?

Why did this quote stand out to you?

Halfway through our reading we learn that James's mom started to send him away to his older sister to try and set him straight and before he came back to New York for his junior year of high his sister Jack left him with this message "You have to choose between what the world expects of you and what you want for yourself," my sister Jack told me several times. "Put yourself in God's hands and you can't go wrong" (McBride 161). This quote was really interesting after learning everything we do about James and how his life went off track because he got addicted and how some very simple words from a family member were all it took to set him back on a proper life which eventually led to him going back to school and eventually getting into college because of his new found motivation. This just shows that if people care about you, you will try to change your life to make them actually be proud of you and that if more people cared about their children and their family members the world could become a lot better if people tried to work harder because of their family members.

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Choose at least one of the following social issues that were present in this reading chunk. Discuss how this social force was present in a characters life. (Your response should be at least 5-6 sentences).

Social Class

Race/Ethnicity

Religion

Education

Culture

Health

Political Landscape

Social Class

Throughout our reading of the book we are able to see different social classes being present in the book. We see the difference in social class when we are introduced to the Dawson family and how differently their life was compared to James's life. We see how somebody who comes from money wants their children to be smart, have good etiquette and act like a proper individual which is never really shown in James's family, their mom only really focused on their education and religion and never taught her kids other things. We also see how the rich were able to just throw money around since the Dawson family was giving random kids money to go on an overseas trip in return for them working for them but James's mom isn't able to do things like this for her own family since she has money and when she does she barely has any of it. In conclusion differences in social classes were definitely a big topic talked or described in the book that has influenced the way that James lives his life when he has seen different types of social classes.

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Choose 3 Formalist Lens Questions to respond to. Your responses should thoroughly respond to the prompt in at least three sentences.

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1. Is there a relationship between the beginning and the end of the story?

In the beginning of the story we learn about McBride's mom and her family, and at the end of our reading we learn more about her family and what she went through early in her life.

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2. Are there any gaps you'd like the author to fill in, or pieces of information you think were missing?

I would want to learn the exact reason why James's mom left her family and if there was an exact event that occurred that pushed her away.

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3. Choose a significant event that occurs in your reading. What do you think the author's purpose was in telling that part of the story?

At the end of chapter 4 we see James be influenced by the media when he finds out that a man who is a Black Panther was next to his mom and thought that he was gonna hurt her and so he tries to tell her but she can't hear so he punched that son of the Black Panther. The author's purpose in telling this part of the story was to inform how easily it was for the media to influence the youth since he thought that the black panther was gonna kill his mom just because she was white since he saw it on TV.

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Find a quote in this chunk that stood out to you. Please also include a picture or GIF to further describe this quote.

Give context for your quote. What was happening in the story that made this quote significant? Who was speaking?

Why did this quote stand out to you?

In chapter 4 we learn about an activist movement called the black panthers through the media which scared James and during this section of the book we hear him say "But there was a part of me that feared black power very deeply for the obvious reason. I thought black power would be the end of my mother. I had swallowed the white man's fear of the Ne***, as we were called back then, whole"(McBride 26-27). This was important because he changed his whole perspective on black people just because of what he saw on the TV. This quote stood out to me because it shows how badly the black activists groups were portrayed by the media.

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Choose at least one of the following social issues that were present in this reading chunk. Discuss how this social force was present in a characters life. (Your response should be at least 5-6 sentences).

Social Class

Race/Ethnicity

Religion

Education

Culture

Health

Political Landscape

Race was a big part of this chunk of this story that we read. They kept bringing up the issues between white and black people and how badly both hated each other in the area that they lived in. In the story we also find out that the media kept portraying the black race as bad. James was so influenced that he thought that they would hurt his mom. James and his family were all questioning their moms race and other things of that sort.

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In what ways was this chunk a window or a mirror? Use the following questions to guide your response, but really we want to hear your personal thoughts and reactions to this chunk!

What experiences do you share with the characters?

My family has also pushed me to do well in school so that I could have a good future.

In what ways is your family similar or different from those in the book?

My family focuses on work and school more than everything else just like the family in the book.

What did you learn about a character or group of people that you have not personally experienced?

I learned that black people in the mid 1900s had to live through really bad lives and were constantly struggling living their day to day.

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In what ways was this chunk a window or a mirror? Use the following questions to guide your response, but really we want to hear your personal thoughts and reactions to this chunk!

What experiences do you share with the characters?

In what ways is your family similar or different from those in the book?

What did you learn about a character or group of people that you have not personally experienced?

This chunk of the book was a window because I was able to learn of the struggles of pursuing a higher education when you lack the money to do so. We learned that James had to get money from a rich family in order to do things like get through college and go on school trips since his family lacked the means to do so for him. We also see how people are more than happy to help out people who are in need if they receive something in return which is very interesting to me since you would think that those that have more money than they actually need would be more than willing to give some away but that isn't true in this world. My family is different from a family like the Dawson family in the way that the parents teach the children differently than the way that my parents teach me. My parents like to teach me things that will help me in my life while the parents in the book tend to tech their children of ways to act properly.

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Choose at least one of the following social issues that were present in this reading chunk. Discuss how this social force was present in a characters life. (Your response should be at least 5-6 sentences).

Social Class

Race/Ethnicity

Religion

Education

Culture

Health

Political Landscape

Education was mentioned a lot throughout the book. We learn about how the mom worked hard to send her kids to college and make sure they persue a higher education. The mom was able to get all of the eldest children into college and they went onto getting a good education and really good jobs. It is also mentioned that the mom sent her children to white school that was further away than the black school since the white school had better tools. We see that the main character James was bullied at school and seen differently compared to everyone else just because he looked different.

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In what ways was this chunk a window or a mirror? Use the following questions to guide your response, but really we want to hear your personal thoughts and reactions to this chunk!

What experiences do you share with the characters?

In what ways is your family similar or different from those in the book?

What did you learn about a character or group of people that you have not personally experienced?

This chunk of the book was a window into a person's life that I have learned a lot from. I learned just how big religion is to so many different people while to others it doesn't mean as much. My family is pretty different compared to that in the book in the way that my family isn't deeply religious while those that we have seen or heard about in the book definitely are. It really interested just how much learning about someone's past life can impact yourself as a person which I might want to do learn more about so that I can hopefully also have my life changed for the better. All together this chunk of the book was a real eye opener, I learned how people view religion differently and even if you are a religious person you can see why people don't follow the same religion. I also learned that someone else's life can change the way you live your own and how shocking it was to learn that the people in the book didn't care enough to help James grandmother when they already knew what his grandfather was doing.

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In what ways was this chunk a window or a mirror? Use the following questions to guide your response, but really we want to hear your personal thoughts and reactions to this chunk!

What experiences do you share with the characters?

In what ways is your family similar or different from those in the book?

What did you learn about a character or group of people that you have not personally experienced?

I don't really share many experiences with the character during this chunk of the story but what I do is how every single person just like in my life is going through their own problems and need the help of family to get through it. My family tends to help one another out whenever they need it just like the family in the book. I learned that people are constantly called names by other or even mentioned in books that should not be said to anyone and its really sad knowing that things like this still go on to this day.