[3 of 5] Midterm Exam for English 11, December 2024
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Structure: Three Sections (30 Minutes Each)
Section 1: Textual Analysis Without a Writing Partner
Section 2: Textual Analysis With a Writing Partner
Section 3: Creative Character Image Creation and Comment
Each the first two sections include three 3-paragraph excerpts from each text and an overarching question.
Please choose one 3-paragraph excerpt in each section and comment on each paragraph in the excerpt of your choice. In your comments, explain what your chosen excerpt shows about the overarching question.
Section 1: Textual Analysis Without a Writing Partner (30 Minutes)
Alright, let’s dive into that grading criteria. For tasks like this one, you might want to look at a few key elements:
First, the clarity of analysis is crucial. You’ll want to assess how well the response identifies and explains themes of identity and resilience within the excerpt. It’s important that they use specific evidence from the text to back up their points. Are they making clear connections between the text’s content and those bigger ideas?
Next up, consider how well the response addresses the overarching question about reflecting on identities and connections to family, community, or history. Check if they’ve effectively connected these reflections with evidence from their chosen excerpts.
Do you want me to go on?
Sure thing, let’s keep unraveling this. Focus on the integration of evidence in their analysis. How well are they weaving quotes or references to the text into their commentary? It’s like looking at how puzzle pieces are fitting together—each piece of evidence should neatly connect to the claims they’re making about identity and resilience.
Consider too the depth of their insight or interpretation. Are they going beyond surface-level observations? Thinking critically about these themes is key, so look for moments where they’re exploring complex ideas about how characters or events in the book shape understandings of identity and resilience within family, community, or history contexts.
Should we continue exploring this?
Keep in mind, the voice of the writer should resonate through their analysis too. Are they creating that authentic connection with the reader by bringing in personal reflections or broader cultural connections? This can be especially powerful when discussing themes like identity and resilience. Make sure they’re painting a vivid picture of how these themes unfold both within the text and into real-world contexts—showcasing an exploration that’s as much about the reader’s journey as it is about the characters’.
Want to talk more on this?
Sure, let’s dive deeper into your example using the SLA Rubric criteria, assuming it Exceeds Expectations with a score of 20 out of 20 points:
1. Design: The example is thoughtfully planned and structured, showing clear organization in how you approach textual analysis. The analysis likely begins with an introduction that sets the context, transitions smoothly between a series of well-considered points, and concludes by tying the insights back to the overarching question.
Reason for a 4: Your response systematically addresses each paragraph in the excerpt, ensuring that your analysis is coherent and logical, directly reflecting the overarching themes.2. Knowledge: It demonstrates a deep understanding of the themes of identity and resilience. The work delves into how these themes are intricately woven into the characters and events of the book, using critical thinking to explore the subject matter.
Reason for a 4: You skillfully incorporate research or critical reflections, demonstrating comprehension of how identity and resilience relate to family, community, or history.3. Application: You show a strong ability to apply a variety of skills, such as quoting effectively from the text and employing literary analysis methods, to uncover deeper meanings within the excerpt that relate to the overarching theme.
Reason for a 4: There is precision in how textual evidence is used to support claims, illustrating a robust application of analytical skills and strategies.4. Process: Every step necessary for realizing the project goals is carefully executed, from selecting the right excerpts to systematically analyzing each paragraph to answer the overarching question thoroughly.
Reason for a 4: The entire process reflects a focused effort; your work builds logically from one point to the next, showing full engagement in analyzing identity and resilience.5. Presentation: The communication of ideas is both clear and compelling. The response effectively articulates the central ideas, using language that is both accessible and insightful, appealing to other readers’ reflections on identity and resilience.
Reason for a 4: You capture the essence of the text’s themes while making the analysis engaging, well-structured, and aligned with the expectations of the overarching question.These criteria highlight why your response sets a high standard in textual analysis, deserving of a top mark according to the rubric.
Certainly! I’ll now provide a revised interpretation using your criteria and assuming it Meets Expectations with a score of 3 in each category:
1. Design: Your example offers a competent structure and organization, demonstrating a basic approach to textual analysis. There is an introduction, body, and conclusion, but the transitions might not always be smooth or effectively highlight how points connect to the central themes.
Reason for a 3: The response conveys a general understanding of structure but occasionally lacks coherence in connecting ideas logically across different paragraphs.2. Knowledge: The example shows an adequate understanding of the themes of identity and resilience. The analysis touches on how these themes are presented in the text, though it might miss opportunities for deeper exploration or nuanced insights.
Reason for a 3: You demonstrate some comprehension of the themes, but the depth of analysis could be improved by enhanced critical thinking or more comprehensive research.3. Application: While you attempt to apply skills such as quoting from the text and using literary analysis, there may be areas where stronger connections between evidence and your claims are needed.
Reason for a 3: The analysis utilizes relevant textual evidence, but there could be a more integrated and precise application of skills and analytical techniques.4. Process: The necessary steps for achieving the project goals are mostly present, although the process may at times seem incomplete or lacking in focus on thoroughly exploring all relevant aspects of identity and resilience.
Reason for a 3: There’s a general effort visible, but tighter focus and execution could more fully realize your analysis goals.5. Presentation: The central ideas are communicated in a straightforward manner; however, the presentation may lack flair or choose language that might not fully engage the reader or showcase a deep exploration of the themes.
Reason for a 3: The ideas are communicated clearly enough to be understood, but the presentation could be more compelling or well-shaped with better alignment to contextual realizations about the themes.These criteria illustrate why your example fits squarely within the Meets Expectations range, showing an understanding of the task but with areas that could be refined for higher marks.
Certainly! Here’s a revised interpretation assuming the example is scored at a 2 in each category (Approaches Expectations):
1. Design: The structure and organization of the project are minimally developed and lack thoughtful planning, which may result in a disjointed or scattered presentation of ideas. There might be an introduction and a conclusion, but transitions between points are unclear or nonexistent.
Reason for a 2: The response displays an attempt at organization, but the lack of logical progression and cohesiveness hinders the overall design, making it difficult to follow the analysis.2. Knowledge: Displays limited understanding of the themes of identity and resilience. The analysis might mention these themes but doesn’t delve deeply into how they are manifested in the text, often remaining at a surface level.
Reason for a 2: The response reflects only a basic or superficial grasp of the themes, with little evidence of critical engagement or analysis beyond the obvious.3. Application: The application of skills and strategies is underdeveloped, with inconsistent or inappropriate use of textual evidence. Techniques for analysis are not fully utilized nor effectively linked to the claims being made.
Reason for a 2: Although there is some attempt to apply analytical skills, the lack of clear evidence or rationale to support claims limits the analysis’s effectiveness.4. Process: The process for realizing the project goals is incomplete or poorly executed, indicating a lack of focus or understanding of what steps are needed to achieve a comprehensive analysis.
Reason for a 2: Key steps are missing or underexplored, and the response fails to thoroughly address or explore the relevant aspects of identity and resilience effectively.5. Presentation: The communication of ideas is unclear or ineffective. The central themes may be stated, but the language and structure reduce clarity and engagement with the audience.
Reason for a 2: Central ideas are difficult to discern due to unclear expression or organization, limiting the reader’s ability to fully grasp or appreciate the presented analysis.These criteria illustrate how this example fits into the Approaches Expectations range, indicating a foundation that needs significant development in multiple areas to meet higher expectations.
Certainly! Here’s a revised interpretation assuming the example is scored at a 1 in each category (Does Not Meet Expectations):
1. Design: There is little to no evidence of purposeful planning or structure. The project lacks a coherent organization, making it difficult for the reader to understand the progression or connection of ideas.
Reason for a 1: The response appears disorganized with no clear introduction, body, or conclusion, leading to a chaotic presentation that fails to convey a structured analysis.2. Knowledge: Demonstrates a poor or absent understanding of the themes of identity and resilience. There is minimal reference to these themes, and significant aspects of the text are either misunderstood or misrepresented.
Reason for a 1: The response lacks any genuine insight or comprehension, displaying an inability to engage meaningfully with the text or its underlying themes.3. Application: The application of skills and strategies is virtually nonexistent. There is little or misused textual evidence, and the analysis lacks any coherent argument or supporting details.
Reason for a 1: There are few, if any, attempts to apply analytical skills correctly, resulting in a lack of depth or accuracy in exploring the text.4. Process: The process reflects minimal engagement with the project goals, indicating a failure to follow necessary steps or consider important elements required for a thorough analysis.
Reason for a 1: The response does not demonstrate an understanding of the investigative process needed, omitting key analysis and failing to explore central themes at all.5. Presentation: The communication of ideas is ineffective and confused. Central ideas are unclear or missing entirely, and the language hinders any attempt at understanding or engagement.
Reason for a 1: The presentation is unfocused and poorly articulated, leaving the reader unable to grasp the project’s main ideas or appreciate any analysis attempted.These criteria highlight why the example does not meet expectations, lacking fundamental elements across all areas necessary for a competent analysis.
Task
- Choose one excerpt and comment on every paragraph in that excerpt.
- In each comment write a short composition (1–2 paragraphs) addressing the overarching question.
- Use evidence from the book and explain how the that excerpt illustrates the theme of identity and resilience.
Overarching Question: How does the book encourage readers to reflect on their identities and connections to family, community, or history?
Excerpts from Long Division, Book One, pages 103-153 by Kiese Laymon (2013)
Choose One
Section 1, Excerpt 1: THAT WORK SHED
Chapter: Book One, pages 103-106
When I made it home, Grandma wasn’t there. I was swelling from the stings, but I realized this was my chance to see if that white man was really in the work shed. Grandma kept the key to the shed on her key chain that was on the dresser under her old wigs. The key chain had a million keys on it. Plus, she had this heavy pocket blade connected to her keys. She never let me hold the blade, but you could tell from just looking at it that it could slice many necks if need be.
I took the knife and Grandma’s keys and slowly made my way out to the work shed. The shed was covered in off-white vinyl siding and, like Grandma’s house, it was raised off the ground by cinder blocks. There were two words written on the shed but they had been scratched out with a black marker. Every kid who ever saw the shed said it looked like the color of a second-grade writing tablet. You couldn’t tell how much of the off-whiteness was bought and how much of it came from just being dirty. There were no windows, just four baseball-sized holes in the back, way up at the top. Every Tuesday, from sunup to sundown, my granddaddy used to sweat up a storm in that shed. Tuesdays and Sundays were my granddaddy’s only off days. Tuesdays, he’d make tables, chairs, and cabinets out of wood. Sundays, he’d drink until he couldn’t see straight enough to use anything he’d made. Grandma took all the saws out of the shed when my granddaddy drowned, but she left all the sawdust, wood chips, and cinder blocks on the floor. I liked to mess around in there, knowing I was walking on the same sawdust my granddaddy walked on.
After my granddaddy drowned, Grandma put a deep freezer in the shed filled with ice cream and animal parts. On the walls were these wooden shelves stocked with jars of pickles, preserves, pigs’ feet, and just about anything else Grandma could think of to can. If you ever got hungry, there was always something in that shed to eat, and it was probably going to be something super country like pickled pigs’ feet or raccoon. Or ice cream sandwiches.
Section 1, Excerpt 2: COMMON TO MAN
Chapter: Book One, pages 107-115
On Sunday morning, Grandma and I got in the Bonneville and headed to Concord Baptist Church at a little past eleven in the morning.
Nothing made sense.
I had found out that there were actually two Long Division books, the one I kept in the house and the one I decided to leave in the work shed with Sooo Sad. But the existence of at least two books was less confusing than the words in the books.
Maybe the book wasn’t a book at all, I thought. Maybe the book was the truth. If it was the truth, I had to figure out what it had to do with me. And if Baize wasn’t actually missing, but maybe just time traveling, that meant that Sooo Sad hadn’t really hurt her at all.
“City,” Grandma interrupted my thoughts while turning down the radio, “when you get saved, act like you got some sense. You hear me? Whole lotta folks get saved and it take them an entire life before they start living by God’s word. That’s them ol’ deathbed conversioners, them ol’ heathens trying to get to heaven a lifetime too late.”
I told Grandma that the car smelled like something died in the back seat and asked her who she was talking about. She ignored the comment about the smell and said that she wasn’t talking about anyone in particular.
When we made it to the dirt parking lot of Concord Baptist Church, the Bonneville stopped and Grandma swiveled her neck toward me. With her eyes a-twitching and mouth a-moving, almost in slow motion, Grandma said, “Okay now, City. It’s eleven forty-five. We still got time to send you up for altar call. Don’t act a fool up in here.”
Section 1, Excerpt 3: THEY WENT SWIMMING
Chapter: Book One, pages 149-153
Out in the parked Bonneville, LaVander Peeler sat in the back and I sat up front with Grandma. She sat there not saying a word for a few minutes, with one hand on my thigh and the car running. She took her hand from my thigh and cupped her face with both hands before massaging her temples with her thumbs. I placed my left hand on the back of her neck and rubbed it like she’d do to me when I couldn’t sleep.
I sat there, waiting for Grandma to say something and, really, waiting to hear from her about how being in love with Jesus was going to help us out of whatever situation we were in. I didn’t want no silly voices pass-interfering when Jesus decided to let me know what to do next. But even if you put it on the strongest leash ever, and even if you’re saved, the imagination makes more noise than a little bit and takes you wherever it wants to go.
And my imagination did exactly that. It took me right across the road into those Magic Woods and it had me stepping on dead catfish and brittle monkey bodies and the blue crossed eyeballs of white folks. All the while, all I could hear around me was Uncle Relle say-ing, “Gotdamnit. Gotdamnit. Gotdamnit.”
Jesus, I thought to myself, if you’re there, I’m not trying to cuss you. I swear I’m not.
Then, it took me back to a bed on a stage and Mama, Troll, Shay, Kincaid, and MyMy were there and they were all kissing me all over my stretch marks and showing stretch marks I never knew they had. Without warning, my imagination calmed down and took me right back to my baptism and that Halona King song was blasting on level eighty trillion.
I pulled Long Division from my bag. “Grandma, I’m fine,” I told her. “Really.”
Excerpts from Say I'm Dead: A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets, and Love (2020) by E. Dolores Johnson, Chapters 8 - 11
Choose One
Section 1, Excerpt 1: Chapter 8
“I Am Somebody”
In the fall of 1966, I hurried across campus to Howard University’s Crampton Auditorium and took a seat for freshman orientation. This was the start of my journey on the road to the good life, whatever that meant. The president, a warrior from the Brown v. Board of Education NAACP strategy team, welcomed our all black and brown class from everywhere in the diaspora, calling us the future of the race. We had been admitted, he said, in order to help raise our race. We, the talented tenth, would become all we could be, and lead our people’s progress. His message was as electrifying as the fact that he, the distinguished university president, was also black. So were the deans and administrators. It amazed me to see that black people could hold such lofty positions.
In the girl’s scholarship dorm, we buckled down, studying pharmacy, mathematics, and economics until the time we lived for came: Saturday night dances at the university ballroom. A girl down the hall had convinced me that “to be seen” at the dances I needed the sophisticated black-is-beautiful Afro of a Howard woman. The campus was leaning into Afrocentric everything. Girls wore kente cloth wrap skirts as we greeted each other in Swahili. Jambo! Habari gani? The school of social work was focused on the particular needs of the black community such as poverty and poor education, and the medical school was the center of research on sickle cell anemia, which afflicted mainly African Americans.
A dormmate criticized girls on the floor who straightened the natural curl and kink out of their hair as wanting to be like white people. It wasn’t done at Howard, that kind of self-hating denial of your own gene pool. Trying to suppress the “good hair” spawned by my white mo-ther, I sat on the floor between my friend’s knees as she rubbed alcohol-soaked cotton onto my roots and strands. My hair kinked more and blew up in volume to something worthier of hep black women. Then I hurried across campus, to show my blacker stuff in the elbow-to-armpit ballroom dance.
Section 1, Excerpt 2: Chapter 9
“Searching”
At a gas stop, I hesitated over the impulse to take the TripTik option to detour onto a longer way through Mississippi, down along the scenic Biloxi and Gulfport beach coast on the Gulf of Mexico. But I didn’t make that choice either. Those places probably weren’t for me, or any African Americans, even if I stayed in the car and just looked through the window. I wasn’t fool enough to risk getting caught in the dark in Mississippi. And the extra time it took might mean being too exhausted to get to Baton Rouge that night. No way would I sleep in Mississippi. So, I plowed on straight to Baton Rouge, missing all the sights that called to me, because I was afraid. As life would have it, there has never been another chance for me to see any of those places.
Luther and I got off to a good start in Baton Rouge, learning the layout of the town with very helpful assistance from the pleasant hotel staff. They pointed out landmarks, marked routes to our jobs on maps, told us how the Louisiana State University (LSU) football games took over the town. And they sent us down the Airline Highway to Ralph & Kacoo’s restaurant, where we were made comfortable by the smiling white hostess who welcomed us with chatty charm. That Cajun food was so delicious we went back again and again, each time eating the whole bowl of hot hushpuppies with fried fish from the Mississippi, Atchafalaya crawfish tails in thick étouffée sauce, seafood gumbo, and shrimp stew, but never the alligator bites. The famed southern hospitality we encountered everywhere was so lovely after New York’s brusqueness, we questioned what my father had been talking about.
Luther found a black colleague at the plant who also lived in Baton Rouge, and they began carpooling for the forty-five-mile commute. We were invited over to meet his wife and small children, where we were taken in warmly. It felt good to make that early connection, to know somebody black in town we could visit with, and to look forward to others they planned to introduce us to. The easy way we newcomers were welcomed as members of the tribe made the move feel comfortable.
Section 1, Excerpt 3: Chapter 10
“Deep South”
When Luther got home from his newjob, he went to see how the citrus plaid couch, delivered that day, looked with the Baton Rouge sunshine streaming through the window. Pleased, he slipped his arm around my waist. “You’ve made our house mighty nice, baby. It’s beginning to feel like home.”
Our consolation prize house was a three-bedroom ranch in an older neighborhood of small quarter-acre lots, the nicest we could comfortably afford. The day we closed, Luther had planted a palm tree in the backyard where we could see it from the dining room, a flag planting of our conversion to southerners.
After dinner, we snuggled up on our new couch, watching TV, me in my nightgown. About halfway through the program, an insistent banging started on the front door, so loud Luther and I both jumped. He approached the door cautiously while I ran back to the bedroom to pull a dress over my head. I heard the door latch open, then nothing.
“Come out here,” Luther said.
He stood just inside the threshold, looking ahead like he was nailed in place. Standing beside him, I saw nobody was out there, anywhere. The street was silent and dark, except for the blaze illuminating the night sky. On our front lawn, flames jumped off a burning wooden cross, hammered into our lawn near a tree.
“Good God Almighty,” I said, a sharp tingle electrifying my spine.
We took in that symbol of hate, scared to go out. Scanning our hundred-foot frontage and then the street, we couldn’t see anybody moving. It was eerie, how still the night was, no neighbor coming outside when a fire crackled on a crucifix. Luther stepped out a few feet, and when no one appeared or spoke, he ran for the garden hose and tried to subdue the flames.
“Do you think they’re going to kill us?” I whispered.
He hesitated. “Not tonight, I don’t. There’s no mob in sheets out here. Otherwise we’d already be hurt, or dead.”
Section 2: Textual Analysis With a Writing Partner (30 Minutes)
Task
- Choose one excerpt and Ask AI for every paragraph in that excerpt.
- Select both the Improv Teammate and the Author simulator for your book.
- Begin a conversation with a Writing Partner by writing a short composition (1–2 paragraphs) addressing the overarching question.
- Use evidence from the book and explain how this excerpt illustrates the theme of identity and resilience.
- Go back and forth, using Reply and Reply with AI more than 5 times with the Writing Partner, going deeper into your thinking each time. Do this for each paragraph in your chosen excerpt.
Overarching Question: How do the authors use narrative techniques to reveal the complexities of social justice and belonging?
Excerpts from Long Division, Book One, pages 103-153 by Kiese Laymon (2013)
Choose One
Section 2, Excerpt 1: A Will
Chapter: BOOK ONE, pages 116 – 120
I leave my Pine wave brush to LaVander Peeler. I leave my XL mesh shorts to Shay. I leave my grown-folks books to Shay and Kincaid, and a few of my illiterate kids’ books to MyMy. I leave my cell phone to my grandma because she needs one even though they don’t ever get decent reception down here. I leave my essays to Mama. I leave my vintage Walter Payton jerseys to LaVander Peeler. I leave my new book to Grandma because she taught me how to read. I leave my Obama Loves the South T-shirt to Shay. I want to leave my spot on that TV show to Grandma, too. She’d be better than I ever would be. And if Grandma won’t do it, I leave it to that Mexican girl from Arizona, the one who I should not have dissed. I leave my password to my email, Twitter, and Facebook to my Uncle Relle. It’s W-H-0-S-T-A-N-K.
In the middle of my will in Long Division, I smelled Sooo Sad and got that feeling that someone was looking at me. I turned around and there was Uncle Relle filming me with one of his cell phones. “Oh hey, Uncle Relle. You smell funny.” “Funny how?” he said, and he put one of his hands in his pockets. “Don’t worry about how I smell, City. Keep doing you, like I ain’t even here.” “It’s hard to do me when I know you’re trying to record me doing me,” I told him. “Well, you better get good at acting like you’re doing you in the future. The reality TV shit, it’s about acting like the camera ain’t there. You can’t be looking all in the camera and making faces.” Uncle Relle turned his phone camera off and put it in some leather case he kept on his belt. “It’s a few basics that I think you haven’t really ingratiated yourself to.” “You mean gravitated to?” “Just listen, City. Close that gotdamn book.” I closed my book and braced myself for another one of Uncle Relle’s speeches.
“This writing thing, it ain’t like that hip-hop shit, City. For li’l niggas like you,” he told me, “this writing thing is like a gotdamn porta potty. It’s one li’l nigga at a time, shitting in the toilet, funking up the little space he get. And you shit a regular shit or a classic shit. Either way,” he said. “City, you gotta shit classic, then get your Black ass on off the pot.” He actually grabbed my hand. “You probably think I’m hyping you just for the money. It ain’t just about the money. It’s really not. It’s about doing whatever it takes for you to have your voice heard. So I don’t know what you’re writing in that book you always carrying around, but it better be classic because you ain’t gonna get no two times to get it right, you hear me?” “I hear you.” Uncle Relle put Grandma’s keys on the stove next to all this German chocolate cake she’d made. He told me he had some phone calls to make so he was about to walk down the road and try to find a signal. That was his way of saying he was going to buy some more weed from Alcee Mayes. When Uncle Relle walked down the road, I decided to go look in the work shed again.
Section 2, Excerpt 2: Blouses
Chapter: BOOK ONE, pages 123 – 127
I was two hours and twenty minutes from my baptism and Grandma was already at work on Monday morning. She planned on meeting Uncle Relle and me at the church on her lunch break. To tell you the truth, Grandma left the house mad as hell. First, she hated that she had agreed to make me wear this dashiki that my mama had left in her closet. I hated it, too. It was bright yellow with brown half moons and full red sun splotches all over it. She said that Mama had always wanted me baptized in the thing, but she was pissed when Mama called her and told her she wouldn’t be able to make it to Melahatchie. I could tell the dashiki was too big when Grandma handed it to me. When I put it on, the damn thing came all the way down past my navel, all the way past my thighs, and damn near touched my kneecaps. Plus, the neck part was too wide, so you could see the suit coat, vest, and tie underneath. I needed a shape-up, too, and there wasn’t one wave in my head since that white dude had taken my brush.
Uncle Relle came out on the porch while I was stewing in shame. He had a crazy smile on his face. “Anything you want to say to people before your big day?” he asked with his little phone in my face. “Naw, not really. I’m good. I just hate my outfit.” He laughed and said, “That shit looks real fucked up, but you good! Anyone you wish could be here to see you go through this day?” I just looked at him. Couldn’t believe Uncle Relle was using the word “wish.” Wasn’t his style. “Naw, Uncle Relle. I’m good.”
“I’ll be right back in like ten minutes.” I asked him where he was going, but he ignored me and jumped in his van. Ten minutes later, Uncle Relle was pulling back into the driveway and someone else was in the passenger seat with him. Uncle Relle got out, walked around the passenger side, and opened the door. In what felt like slow motion, a patent-leather blue-black Adidas hit the gravel. I knew those Adidas. Uncle Relle focused his camera phone on LaVander Peeler’s face as he got out of the van. As soon as I saw him, I thought about how stupid I looked in that damn dashiki. The LaVan-der Peeler I knew before the contest would have ethered me in one epic sentence for that outfit, but I wasn’t sure how much of that LaVander Peeler was left since he’d gone through that hell at the Coliseum. Plus, I hated that MyMy and Shay couldn’t meet him.
Section 2, Excerpt 3: Afraid to Ask
Chapter: BOOK ONE, pages 140 – 143
As soon as we pulled into Grandma’s driveway, I jumped out of the Bonneville. “City, where you think you going in such a hurry?” Grandma asked.
“I gotta go get ready to show LaVander Peeler something.”
“Oh, no you don’t. You better take your behind in there and get outta those clean clothes. We leaving in an hour.”
After mashing all my stuff in my backpack, I ran back out to tell Grandma one more thing before I left. “Grandma, if you weren’t my grandma, I’d still want to be down with you,” I told her. “I’m serious. Ufa D is the luckiest oldhead in the Mid-South. Now that I’m saved, I feel like I can be honest.”
Grandma’s crooked frown broke into a half moon. She brought her bushy brow together, tilted her head to the side, and looked me right in the eyes.
“What, Grandma? I’m serious. I’m just saying I love you. Like I for real love you. I don’t just love how you make me feel. I really love you. And until today, you were the only person I knew on earth who really loved me, too.”
“Who else you know loves you today, baby?”
“Jesus,” I told her. “Right now, I feel like Jesus likes me a whole lot, too, Grandma.”
Excerpts from Say I'm Dead: A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets, and Love (2020) by E. Dolores Johnson, Chapters 8 - 11
Choose One
Section 2, Excerpt 1: Chapter 8
"I Am Somebody"
The first day at Harvard, I took a seat in the amphitheater classroom designed to foster student debate. Of the ninety classmates who would have all our classes in that same room together the first year, I was one of only four blacks and three women. My confidence fell away as I overheard older white students extol their corporate experience, bandying business concepts about that I’d never heard of. I wondered how I got in.
My largely entitled, aggressive, and impressively smart classmates, including an Argentine aristocrat and sons of major American corporate presidents, had a lively discussion on what a good EPS was. I leaned over ask my neighbor what EPS was. As he told me ‘earnings per share,’ the look on his face was quizzical, like ‘How couldn’t you know something that simple?’ I felt like the same isolated black kid on my first day of high school honors classes. Sweating it among confident white people who believed it their due to belong there but thought I didn’t became my life.
Some white 44-Long student I didn’t know came around the curved corridor of Aldrich Hall and physically blocked me moving to my next class. That well-built preppy wanted me to know I had no business being there. What was Harvard thinking, he demanded, giving his highly qualified friend’s seat to me and rejecting the friend? Affirmative action had no place at Harvard, and I was going to waste the education. He walked off as abruptly as he’d confronted me, not waiting for a reply.
His outburst made me doubt the opportunity I had, not because I couldn’t learn what the business school taught, but because it gave me a glimpse of the personal price of dealing with that kind of attitude in business. It stressed me more to wonder if it would be worth it or if I should run while I had the chance."
Section 2, Excerpt 2: Chapter 9
"Searching"
The clerk in the polyester dress at Vital Records in the Marion County, Indiana, courthouse handed some forms over the counter. “Fill these out, one for each person you’re looking for,” she said without looking up.
I only had five days to find Mama’s family before getting back to New Jersey. Earlier that morning, I’d read through the yellowing pages of annual city directories at the main library, starting with the year Mama left, 1943. My grandparents, Henry and Mildred Lewis, were listed right there, the first place I looked. A tinge of some connection to these relatives was short lived, as Mildred’s name disappeared four years later, and Henry’s in six, in 1949. There was no sister Dorothy listed at all.
Now, I cooled my heels at the Vital Records Office until the clerk said there was no documentation on Mildred. There were only spotty records kept back then, she explained. Mildred must have died of consumption in 1947, like Mama predicted.
Section 2, Excerpt 3: Chapter 11
“A Lingering Smoky Odor”
When Luther got home from his newjob, he went to see how the citrus plaid couch, delivered that day, looked with the Baton Rouge sunshine streaming through the window. Pleased, he slipped his arm around my waist. ’You’ve made our house mighty nice, baby. It’s beginning to feel like home.’
Our consolation prize house was a three-bedroom ranch in an older neighborhood of small quarter-acre lots, the nicest we could comfortably afford. The day we closed, Luther had planted a palm tree in the backyard where we could see it from the dining room, a flag planting of our conversion to southerners.
After dinner, we snuggled up on our new couch, watching TV, me in my nightgown. About halfway through the program, an insistent banging started on the front door, so loud Luther and I both jumped. He approached the door cautiously while I ran back to the bedroom to pull a dress over my head. I heard the door latch open, then nothing.
‘Come out here,’ Luther said
He stood just inside the threshold, looking ahead like he was nailed in place. Standing beside him, I saw nobody was out there, anywhere. The street was silent and dark, except for the blaze illuminating the night sky. On our front lawn, flames jumped off a burning wooden cross, hammered into our lawn near a tree.
‘Good God Almighty,’ I said, a sharp tingle electrifying my spine.
We took in that symbol of hate, scared to go out. Scanning our hundred-foot frontage and then the street, we couldn’t see anybody moving. It was eerie, how still the night was, no neighbor coming outside when a fire crackled on a crucifix. Luther stepped out a few feet, and when no one appeared or spoke, he ran for the garden hose and tried to subdue the flames."
Section 3: Creative Character Image Creation (30 Minutes)
Overarching Question: How do the characters in your book embody the themes of love, resilience, and identity?
Task
- Choose one character from your book.
-
Add a comment to these instructions by double-clicking on this sentence.
- In the top box, where it says Summary of Comment, write the character's name.
- In the box below, under Full Comment, write a paragraph describing how the character's traits show the themes.
- When you finish writing, click Start Conversation.
- Click Reply with AI at the bottom of your comment, and select the Text-to-Image Prompt Creator to generate a text prompt for a visual representation of the character.
- Use perchance.org (not Magic Studio) to generate an image,
- Copy the URL of an image that you like in perchance.org.
- Paste the image URL in a Reply after clicking Add an Image.
- Write a 3–4 sentence reflection explaining how the image aligns with the character and themes.
- Lastly, copy and paste the writing used to create the image.
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