Black Boy by Richard Wright

Journal Title Description

Journal 1: Introduction Introduction Notes

Journal 2: Goals a. a goal for this yearb. what you want to do after high school

(college, job, travel, volunteer, etc.)c. how you plan to achieve those goals.

Journal 3: Chapter 1 1. How does Richard make money to survive? (19-22)2. How does Richard first learn about race? (23-25)

Journal 4: Chapter 2 1. Why does Richard love to read? (40)2. What happens to Uncle Hoskins? (53)

Journal 5: Descriptive Writing Describe your morning commute in a few paragraphs. Add similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, vivid sensory imagery.

Journal 6: Bloody Sunday Speech How does Obama characterize America in his speech on the 50th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”?

Journal 7: Chapter 5 Why does Richard willfully avoid eating?Explain how Richard unwittingly becomes an agent for pro-Ku Klux Klan literature?

Journal 8: Chapter 6 Find a passage/excerpt from chapter 6 that stands out to you. Write a paragraph reflection explaining why. Make sure to cite the page or actual text if it isn’t too long.

Journal 9: Chapter 7 and 8 What is the “white death”?How do Richard’s family and friends react to his publication?

1. Log into Google2. Go to Google Drive3. Create a New Folder4. Title it “FirstName LastName BB Journals”5. Create a New Document in that folder6. Title it “Journal 1: Introduction” and take notes in this journal on the following information7. Create a new Document in that folder and title it “Journal 2: Goals”

a. a goal for this yearb. what you want to do after high school

(college, job, travel, volunteer, etc.)c. how you plan to achieve those goals.

“Journal 2: Goals”a. a goal for this year

b. what you want to do after high school

(college, job, travel, volunteer, etc.)c. how you plan to achieve

those goals.

Journal 3: Chapter 1

• Respond to both questions in paragraph form with direct textual evidence

• Title the new document: Journal 3: Chapter 1– How does Richard make money to survive? (19-

22)– How does Richard first learn about race? (23-25)

Biography• Wright was born on a plantation in Mississippi on September

4, 1908• His father left the family in when Richard was 6• Richard’s mother raised him and his younger brother, but she

struggled to make enough money. Much of Richard’s childhood was characterized by hunger.

• During his time in the south, Richard lived through WWI and the Jim Crow Era

• Wright loved to read but was not always able to attend school due to his family’s severe poverty

• He was a member of The Communist Party as an adult and wrote for their publications

• He wrote Black Boy in 1945 and moved to Paris in 1946

Black BoyMemoir: an account of one portion of a person’s life, as told by that person; similar to an autobiography, but a

memoir covers a smaller time period

Part 1:Southern Night

• Jim Crow south• 1908-1927• Wright’s childhood• Hunger• First experiences and

growing understanding of prejudice and poverty

Part 2:The Horror and The Glory• Chicago• 1930s• Communist Party• Searching for the

philosophical reasons behind prejudice

Questions

• How does Wright learn about prejudice?– How did you?

• Why does Wright want to become a writer?• What is the relationship between education and

oppression?– Does this same dynamic exist today?

• What does Communism represent to Wright?• How is America “adolescent”?– Is American still “growing” and “maturing”? How?

• Is the “American dream” real or fictional?– Do you believe the “American dream” is real? Why or why

not?

Themes

• Art and its redemptive abilities in times of struggle or adversity

• The damaging effects of racism• The relationship between oppression and

education

Anchor: March 2, 2015

Log into your journal folder on Google. Create a new document in that folder and title it:

Anchor 1: First Impressions

In this new document, you are responding in a paragraph with your first impressions of the

memoir. Consider how you felt, things that shocked you, connections you can make, etc.

Journal 4: Chapter 2Read the first half of this chapter (pages 36-55). Then

respond to the two questions in your journal.

1. Why is Richard fascinated by the story? (39-41)

2. What happens to Uncle Hoskins? (53)

Share Folder:Can Edit

msramsayenglish@gmail.com

Anchor: Log into your folder and open last night’s journal response.

1. Let’s reread 39-40. As we reread, consider how you can use this evidence to strengthen your answer to question 1.

2. Add to the answer why he has a complex relationship with reading.

3. Revise your answer by copying it and pasting it below. Title the new version: Revision.– Cut “to be” verbs in half (if you have 4, make it 2)– Using a new quote implementation strategy where you utilize

less of Wrights text and more of your own analysis– Elaborate more

Infinitive to be

Present am, is, are

Past was, were

Present Participle being

Past Participle been

Present Subjunctive be

Past Subjunctive were

Imperative be

Eliminating “to be” verbs

• The reason Richard likes reading is because it makes him feel better.

• Richard enjoys reading because it makes him feel better.

• Richard was empty…• Richard felt empty…

Using stronger quote implementation strategies

• Wright wrote, “I hungered for the sharp, frightening, breathtaking, almost painful excitement that the story had given me” (40).

• Wright craved hearing the story because it gave him something he felt was missing; he yearned “for the sharp, frightening, breathtaking” feeling that the imaginative and twisted story gave him. He describes the oxymoronic feeling as “painful excitement” (40) to exaggerate the complex effect the story had on his “new ears” (39).

“I wanted to understand these two sets of people

who lived side by side and never touched, it seemed, except in violence.” (47)

Types of descriptive language• Simile:

– I wanted to fly home but, as in a dream, I could not move– Their fee pounding the earth like someone beating a vast drum

• Metaphor:– The men were a wave that parted, poured, and flooded around him

• Detail: old knife, mustard-colored clothing• Adjectives: bareheaded, barefooted• Syntax: long, lengthy sentences for effect• Onomatopoeia: “beat” “pound” “hissing” “tolling” “grunt”• Senses:

– Taste: smoke in their food– Smell: “tarlike smell”– Feeling: crowded and chaotic with the smoke

Chapter 4

• Let’s see how Richard describes himself on page 104 in contrast to his new classmates:“[The pupils] were claimed wholly by their environment and could imagine no other, whereas I had come from another plane of living, from the swinging doors of saloons, the railroad yard, the roadhouses, the street gangs, the river levees, an orphan home; had shifted from town to town and home to home; had mingled with grownups more than perhaps was good for me”

• In Journal 5: Descriptive Writing, try to mimic this style in describing your own past and the perspective it influenced– What makes you unique?– What about your past has influenced you?– How can you describe that creatively?

Chapter 4

• What internal conflict does Richard face when Aunt Addie accuses him of eating in class?

• RaTaTa 107-113• Why does Richard refuse to be beaten by Aunt

Addie a second time?• What does Richard tell Granny to ease the

pressure of her campaign to save his soul? How is the situation ironic?

Journal 7: Chapter 5

• Why does Richard willfully avoid eating?

• Explain how Richard unwittingly becomes an agent for pro-Ku Klux Klan literature?

Anchor 2: Illiteracy and Daydreaming(136-141)

• How is illiteracy handicapping?– Consider this in Richard’s story first.– Consider how many times you need to read or

write to progress in your own life. Would that handicap you today just as much?

• Is daydreaming always “futile”? Expain.

Journal 8: Chapter 6

• Find a passage/excerpt from chapter 6 that stands out to you. Write a paragraph reflection explaining why. Make sure to cite the page or actual text if it isn’t too long. Consider:– Dialogue– Vivid sensory imagery– Style– Unique descriptions

Journal 9: Chapters 7 and 8

• How do Richard’s friends and family react to the story that Richard gets published in a local black newspaper?

• What is the “white death”?

Conflict

• What conflicts (internal and external) are present so far in Black Boy?– Record in your homework from last night.

Descriptive Writing: Options

• Pull a line from your journal entry last night• Continue one of your previous stories• Random first line– He opened the door to find her standing there,

crying.– The little boy's idea of heaven was– As he took in the view from the twentieth floor,

the lights went out all over the city

ConflictInternal External

WorthlessDaydreaming: is it futile?Outside/excluded/”the other”-because of religion, because he can’t work, because he’s poorDo I run away?Limited!His family says it is sinfulSociety doesn’t think he should be able to do itSpeech: he wants to speak the truth; he doesn’t want to use someone else’s word; he doesn’t have the freedom to say his own wordsIndividual’s desires vs. societal expectationsConformity vs. rebellion

Physical hunger (starving)Forces he deals with that stop him from writing (his dream)Family membersPovertyReligion – he doesn’t believe and he’s chastised for that

“As I walked down the block, I felt scared.”

• How do you know you’re scared?• What happens to your body?• How does the way you view the world change

when you are afraid?