Eng 343 by https://padlet.com/kamtoen/vm6s68ik4g9q en-us 2017-02-06 19:23:35 UTC 2017-04-25 16:37:37 UTC hello@padlet.com "Summertime" by Gershwin in "When History Sleeps" kamtoen https://padlet.com/kamtoen/vm6s68ik4g9q/wish/151954152 On the second page of "When History Sleeps" the author, Robin D.G. Kelley is talking about what it was like to grow up in New York City back in the day. He is talking about the way things went and how is mother always told him and his siblings to be better than the stereotypes and to treat every being with the same respect despite the way people around them treated people. Then he talks about how his mother would be all happy and up beat while singing a song called "Summertime" by Gershwin. Upon reading this I was curious what this song was all about. So I looked it up and listened to it, and surprisingly there were no words in this song, so I am not really sure how his mother sang this song in the story. However upon listening to the song I found that it was a very happy uplifting sounding song. I fell like the point the author was trying to make by adding this part in the narrative to ensure kind of a sense of "everything is going to be ok," things will work out and the world will be a happy place. The use of such a happy song in a part of the narrative where they are talking about so many cheery things though almost makes it seem like he is telling people to ignore the problems that are happening right in front of them like they have for so long, this could also be a call to action from the author. He may be telling people to stop acting like everything is fine and dandy and cheery when indeed things are quite the opposite.

Citation:

watch?v=PVUOtLLGv2w

]]> 2017-02-06 19:44:27 UTC https://padlet.com/kamtoen/vm6s68ik4g9q/wish/151954152 Legionnaires' Disease in "There It Is" by Jayne Cortez kamtoen https://padlet.com/kamtoen/vm6s68ik4g9q/wish/155230934 In the fifth stanza of the poem by Cortez she makes mention of "legionnaire's disease" stating that " They will spray you with a virus of legionnaire's disease." Legionnaire's disease is a severe type of pneumonia The "they" that she is referring to here is the ruling class that she mentions earlier in the poem, she also makes another comment about this ruling class a little later saying that they will " try to pump all the resources of the world into their own veins" referring to the fact that they don't really care what happens to anyone but themselves, they want all the benefits no matter who it is hurting. The allusion she uses here is to Legionnaire's though and the author uses it in such a way to emphasize how little people were cared about black in these days. She even goes a step further to say that that they will "spray the virus" which is the only way to spread the virus, through a mist. Many times it is spread through air conditioner condensers. The author takes this little event of spreading pneumonia which can happen in a daily interaction and turns it into this vicious, horrible thing that the ruling class would do just to be able to rule a little more.

Citation:
Mayo Clinic Staff. Legionnaires' Disease. Mayo Clinic. 24 September 2016. Accessed 22 February 2017.]]> 2017-02-21 17:28:48 UTC https://padlet.com/kamtoen/vm6s68ik4g9q/wish/155230934 Uncle Tom in "Message to Grass Roots" by Malcom X kamtoen https://padlet.com/kamtoen/vm6s68ik4g9q/wish/161560857 Malcolm X uses an allusion to the story "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in his piece of writing titled "Message to Grass Roots." The quote reads "Just as the slavemaster of that day used Tom, the house Negro, to keep the field Negroes in check, the same old slavemaster today has Negroes who are nothing but modern Uncle Toms, 20th century Uncle Toms, to keep you and me in check, keep us under control, keep us passive and peaceful and nonviolent." We all know the story of Uncle Tom, the story of a slave that created many of the stereotypes of slavery that we have today. He uses this allusion very well, to talk about how some of the things that happened in the story still happened in the time he wrote the piece. The story of Uncle Tom made its way around quite a bit, of how Tom was used as an example, and he sort of went through more than the rest of the slaves. The key reason Malcolm uses this story in his piece is because he is trying to say that this is how he was being treated now. The treatment some slaves went through to try and get a change was similar to the struggle he was having himself. He felt, as he says, that black people were nothing but modern day slaves, that people were trying to keep them in their places and to keep them peaceful so that their little perfect world can stay "perfect."]]> 2017-03-21 16:10:33 UTC https://padlet.com/kamtoen/vm6s68ik4g9q/wish/161560857 Minister Farrakhan in "Freedom Time" by Lauryn Hill kamtoen https://padlet.com/kamtoen/vm6s68ik4g9q/wish/166281005 In the last verse of her song "Freedom Time," Lauren Hill makes a statement about a Minister Farrakhan. I was intrigued to know who exactly this man was. He is actually the leader of the nation of Islam. The way she uses this man's name in her song is also very interesting. "Where there's no repentance there can be no remission And that sentence, more serious than Vietnam The atom bomb is Saddam and Minister Farakkhan," is how she includes him into her song. This is three lines from the song where Hill uses this minister. She is talking about 9/11 she is saying that if the United States would retaliate for the attacks on the World Trade Center, that there would be no way to make up for that, because these people would not feel bad for the things they did there's no remission, or forgiveness for their sins. The way that she uses the minister in her song though is because minister Farrakhan wrote multiple letters to George W. Busch urging him not to retaliate because it would not accomplish anything. This is revolutionary because that is not what Americans normally do, we retaliate, we make them pay for what they do. So i feel like chose this to include to prove that just because something happens sometimes you have to let it go, because it does not do anything it will not do anything to these other people.

Citation:

THE HONORABLE MINISTER LOUIS FARRAKHAN: NATIONAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE HONORABLE ELIJAH MUHAMMAD AND THE NATION OF ISLAM, NationOfIslam.org, NOI , 2017

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