• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

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.

• 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.

• 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.