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The Power of Words:

Memoir UnitPersonal Narratives, Diaries,

Autobiographies, and Other Written Accounts

7th Grade ELA

Name:

"...to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all..."

— Elie Wiesel

“Learning to Read” excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X

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Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, Malcolm X was one of the most articulate and powerful leaders of black America during the 1960s. A street hustler convicted of robbery in 1946, he spent seven years in prison, where he educated himself and became a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam. In the days of the civil rights movement, Malcolm X emerged as the leading spokesman for black separatism, a philosophy that urged black Americans to cut political, social, and economic ties with the white community. After a pilgrimage to Mecca, the capital of the Muslim world, in 1964, he became an orthodox Muslim, adopted the Muslim name El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and distanced himself from the teachings of the black Muslims. He was assassinated in 1965. In the following excerpt from his autobiography (1965), published the year of his death, Malcolm X describes his self-education.

Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something I’ve said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade. This impression is due entirely to my prison studies.

It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made me feel envy of his stock of knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversations he was in, and I had tried to emulate him. But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn’t contain anywhere from one to nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese. When I just skipped those words, of course, I really ended up with little idea of what the book said. So I had come to the Norfolk Prison Colony still going through only book-reading motions. Pretty soon, I would have quit even these motions, unless I had received the motivation that I did.

I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary—to study, to learn some words. I was lucky enough to reason that I should try to improve my penmanship. It was sad. I couldn’t even write in a straight line. It was both ideas together that moved me to request a dictionary along with some tablets and pencils from the prison’s school.

I spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary’s pages. I’d never realized so many words existed! I didn’t know which words I needed to learn. Finally, just to start some kind of action, I began copying.

In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks.

I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I’d written on the tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.

I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words—immensely proud to realize that not only had I written so much at one time, but I’d written words that I never knew were in the world. Moreover, with a little effort, I also could remember what many of these words meant. I reviewed the words whose meanings I didn’t remember. Funny thing, from the dictionary first page right now, that “aardvark” springs to my mind. The dictionary had a picture of it, a long-tailed, long-eared, burrowing African mammal, which lives off termites caught by sticking out its tongue as an anteater does for ants.

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I was so fascinated that I went on—I copied the dictionary’s next page. And the same experience came when I studied that. With every succeeding page, I also learned of people and places and events from history. Actually the dictionary is like a miniature encyclopedia. Finally the dictionary’s A section had filled a whole tablet—and I went on into the B’s. That was the way I started copying what eventually became the entire dictionary. It went a lot faster after so much practice helped me to pick up handwriting speed. Between what I wrote in my tablet, and writing letters, during the rest of my time in prison I would guess I wrote a million words.

I suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of books with a wedge. Between Mr. Muhammad’s teachings, my correspondence, my visitors, and my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.

The Norfolk Prison Colony’s library was in the school building. A variety of classes was taught there by instructors who came from such places as Harvard and Boston universities. The weekly debates between inmate teams were also held in the school building. You would be astonished to know how worked up convict debaters and audiences would get over subjects like “Should Babies Be Fed Milk?”

Available on the prison library’s shelves were books on just about every general subject. Much of the big private collection that Parkhurst had willed to the prison was still in crates and boxes in the back of the library—thousands of old books. Some of them looked ancient: covers faded; old-time parchment-looking binding. Parkhurst, I’ve mentioned, seemed to have been principally interested in history and religion. He had the money and the special interest to have a lot of books that you wouldn’t have in general circulation. Any college library would have been lucky to get that collection.

As you can imagine, especially in a prison where there was heavy emphasis on rehabilitation, an inmate was smiled upon if he demonstrated an unusually intense interest in books. There was a sizable number of well-read inmates, especially the popular debaters, Some were said by many to be practically walking encyclopedias.

They were almost celebrities. No university would ask any student to devour literature as I did when this new world opened to me, of being able to read and understand.

I read more in my room than in the library itself. An inmate who was known to read a lot could check out more than the permitted maximum number of books. I preferred reading in the total isolation of my own room.

When I had progressed to really serious reading, every night at about ten P.M. I would be outraged with the “lights out.” It always seemed to catch me right in the middle of something engrossing.

Fortunately, right outside my door was a corridor light that cast a glow into my

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room. The glow was enough to read by, once my eyes adjusted to it. So when “lights out” came, I would sit on the floor where I could continue reading in that glow.

At one-hour intervals the night guards paced past every room. Each time I heard the approaching footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep. And as soon as the guard passed, I got back out of bed onto the floor area of that light-glow, where I would read for another fifty-eight minutes—until the guard approached again. That went on until three or four every morning. Three or four hours of sleep a night was enough for me. Often in the years in the streets I had slept less than that.

The teachings of Mr. Muhammad stressed how history had been “whitened”—when white men had written history books, the black man simply had been left out...I never will forget how shocked I was when I began reading about slavery’s total horror. It made such an impact upon me that it later became one of my favorite subjects when I became a minister of Mr. Muhammad’s. The world’s most monstrous crime, the sin and the blood on the white man’s hands, are almost impossible to believe...I read descriptions of atrocities, saw those illustrations of black slave women tied up and flogged with whips; of black mothers watching their babies being dragged off, never to be seen by their mothers again; of dogs after slaves, and of the fugitive slave catchers, evil white men with whips and clubs and chains and guns...

Book after book showed me how the white man had brought upon the world’s black, brown, red, and yellow peoples every variety of the sufferings of exploitation. I saw how since the sixteenth century, the so-called “Christian trader” white man began to ply the seas in his lust for Asian and African empires, and plunder, and power. I read, I saw, how the white man never has gone among the non-white peoples bearing the Cross in the true manner and spirit of Christ’s teachings—meek, humble, and Christlike…

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.

Questions to consider:

1. Why do you think Malcolm X writes about this experience?2. What can readers learn from this passage?3. How did Malcolm X’s education affect him?

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Excerpt from A Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Anne was born in Frankfurt, Germany on 12th June, 1929 to Otto and Edith Frank, who were Jewish. In 1933/4 Anne and her family moved to from Germany to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. They moved there to escape growing hostility and persecution in Germany inspired by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party. For her 13th birthday, Anne received a diary. A month later, her sister Margot received a call-up card, which meant she had to report for relocation to a work camp. Otto and Edith would never send their daughter away, so Otto put into place a plan he had organized. The family went into hiding in rooms above and behind Otto’s business. The family spent two years and one month in hiding with four other people. During this time, Anne wrote down her thoughts, experiences, dreams and fears in her diary, which she named Kitty. One day in August 1944, the eight people in hiding

were discovered and were arrested by a Nazi officer and Dutch policemen. They were transported from the Netherlands to concentration camps in the East. Seven months later, Margot and Anne died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp of typhus. Anne was 15. Out of all the eight people in hiding, only Anne’s father survived the camps. Otto decided to print Anne’s diary.

The married couple with the torch would probably have warned the police: it was Sunday evening, Easter Sunday, no one at the office on Easter Monday, so none of us could budge until Tuesday morning. Think of it, waiting in such fear for two nights and a day! No one had anything to suggest, so we simply sat there in pitch-darkness, because Mrs. Van Daan in her fright had unintentionally turned the lamp right out; talked in whispers, and at every creak one heard “Sh! sh!”

It turned half past ten, eleven, but not a sound; Daddy and Van Daan joined us in turns. Then a quarter past eleven, a bustle and noise downstairs. Everyone’s breath was audible, otherwise no one moved. Footsteps in the house, in the private office, kitchen, then . . . on our staircase. No one breathed audibly now, footsteps on our staircase, then a rattling of the swinging cupboard. This moment is indescribable. “Now we are lost!” I said, and could see us all being taken be the Gestapo that very night.

Twice they rattled at the cupboard, then there was nothing, the footsteps withdrew, we were saved so far. A shiver seemed to pass from one to another, I heard someone’s teeth chattering, no one said a word.

There was not another sound in the house, but a light was burning on our landing, right in front of the cupboard. Could that be because it was a secret cupboard? Perhaps the police had forgotten the light? Would someone come back to put it out? Tongues loosened, there was no one in the house any longer, perhaps there was someone on guard outside.

Next we did three things: we went over again what we supposed had happened, we trembled with fear, and we had to go to the lavatory. The buckets were in the attic, so all we had was Peter’s tin wastepaper basket. Van Daan went first, then Daddy, but Mummy was too shy to face it. Daddy brought the wastepaper basket into the room, where Margot, Mrs. Van Daan, and I gladly made use of it. Finally, Mummy

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decided to do so too. People kept on asking for paper – fortunately I had some in my pocket! The tin smelled ghastly, everything went on in a whisper, we were tired, it was twelve o’clock. “Lie down on the floor then and sleep.” Margot and I were each given a pillow and one blanket; Margot lying just near the store cupboard and I between the table legs. The smell wasn’t quite so bad when one was on the floor, but still Mrs. Van Daan quietly brought some chlorine, a sea towel over the pot serving as a second expedient. Talk, whispers, fear, stink, flatulation, and always someone on the pot; then try to go to sleep! However, by half past two I was so tired that I knew no more until half past three. I awoke when Mrs. Van Daan laid her head on my foot. “For heaven’s sake, give me something to put on!” I asked. I was given something, but don’t ask what – a pair of woolen knickers over my pajamas, a red jumper, and a black skirt, white oversocks and a pair of sports stockings full of holes. Then Mrs. Van Daan sat in the chair and her husband came and lay on my feet. I lay thinking till half past three, shivering the whole time, which prevented Van Daan from sleeping. I prepared myself for the return of the police, then we’d have to say that we were hiding, they would either be good Dutch people, then we’d be saved, or N. S. B. – ers (The Dutch National Socialist Movement), then we’d have to bribe them! “In that case, destroy the radio,” sighed Mrs. Van Daan. “Yes, in the stove!” replied her husband. “If they find us then let them find the radio as well!”

“Then they will find Anne’s diary,” added Daddy. “Burn it then,” suggested the most terrified member of the party. This, and when the police rattled the cupboard door, were my worst moments. “Not my diary; if my diary goes, I go with it!” But luckilyDaddy didn’t answer.

There is no object in recounting all the conversations that I can still remember;so much was said. I comforted Mrs. Van Daan, who was very scared. We talked about escaping and being questioned by the Gestapo, about ringing up, and being brave. “We must behave like soldiers, Mrs, Van Daan. If all is up now, then let’s go for Queen and Country, for freedom, truth, and right, as they always say on the Dutch News from England. The only thing that is really rotten is that we get a lot of other people into trouble too.

Questions to consider:

1. What is Anne Frank’s main message in this passage?2. What words does Anne Frank use to create a feeling of suspense?3. What was it like to live in hiding?4. Why do you think Anne Frank’s diary became so popular?

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Excerpts from Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo by Zlata Filipovic

In November 1991, Zlata Filipovic, not quite eleven years old, started to write a diary. She lived with her parents in Sarajevo, Bosnia, part of the old Yugoslavia, and her life was quite ordinary. Zlata wrote about herself, her friends, her holidays, parties and all the little things that made up her life – until April 5, 1992, when her life was turned upside down. The war that had started over the break-up of Yugoslavia spread to Sarajevo. Her diary changed dramatically as she began to record the horrors of war – the fear during bombing, hiding in the cellar, the gradual disintegration of life in a city without food, electricity or water and worst of all, the death of her best friend in a bomb attack. Just before Christmas 1993, Zlata was airlifted to safety in Paris where she began to study at the International School. Her diary has ensured that the children of Sarajevo will not be forgotten. It was originally published in Croat but has now been translated into over twenty

languages and published across the world.

Sunday, April 12, 1992

“I keep thinking about the march I joined today. It’s bigger and stronger than war. That’s why it will win. The people must be the ones to win, not the war, because war has nothing to do with humanity. War is something inhuman.”

Monday, June 29, 1992

“That’s my life! The life of an innocent eleven-year-old schoolgirl!! A schoolgirl without school, without the fun and excitement of school. A child without games, without friends, without the sun, without birds, without nature, without fruit, without chocolate or sweets, with just a little powdered milk. In short, a child without a childhood. A wartime child. I now realize that I am really living through a war, I am witnessing an ugly, disgusting war. I and thousands of other children in this town that is being destroyed, that is crying, weeping, seeking help, but getting none. God, will this ever stop, will I ever be a schoolgirl again, will I ever enjoy my childhood again? I once heard that childhood is the most wonderful time of your life. And it is. I loved it, and now an ugly war is taking it all away from me.”

Monday, March 15, 1993

“There are no trees to blossom and no birds, because the war has destroyed them as well. There is no sound of birds twittering in springtime. There aren’t even any pigeons—the symbol of Sarajevo. No noisy children, no games. Even the children no longer seem like children. They’ve had their childhood taken from them, and without that they can’t be children. It’s as if Sarajevo is slowly dying, disappearing. Life is disappearing. So how can I feel spring, when spring is something that awakens life, and here there is no life, here everything seems to have died.”

Thursday, November 19, 1992

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“I keep wanting to explain these stupid politics to myself, because it seems to me that politics caused this war, making it our everyday reality. War has crossed out the day and replaced it with horror, and now horrors are unfolding instead of days. It looks to me as though these politics mean Serbs, Croats and Muslims. But they are all people. They are all the same. They look like people, there’s no difference. They all have arms, legs and heads, they walk and talk, but now there’s ‘something’ that wants to make them different.”

Saturday, July 17, 1993

“Suddenly, unexpectedly, someone is using the ugly powers of war, which horrify me, to try to pull and drag me away from the shores of peace, from the happiness of wonderful friendships, playing and love. I feel like a swimmer who was made to enter the cold water, against her will. I feel shocked, sad, unhappy and frightened and I wonder where they are forcing me to go, I wonder why they have taken away my peaceful and lovely shores of my childhood. I used to rejoice at each new day, because each was beautiful in its own way. I used to rejoice at the sun, at playing, at songs. In short, I enjoyed my childhood. I had no need of a better one. I have less and less strength to keep swimming in these cold waters. So take me back to the shores of my childhood, where I was warm, happy and content, like all the children whose childhood and the right to enjoy it are now being destroyed.”

Monday, December 28, 1992

“...I look over at Mommy and Daddy. ... Somehow they look even sadder to me in the light of the oil lamp. ... God, what is this war doing to my parents? They don’t look like my old Mommy and Daddy anymore. Will this ever stop? Will our suffering stop so that my parents can be what they used to be—cheerful, smiling, nice-looking?”

Saturday, July 10, 1993

“I’m sitting in my room. Cici is with me. She’s enjoying herself on the armchair—sleeping. As for me, I’m reading through my letters. Letters are all I’ve got left of my friends. I read them and they take me back to my friends.”

Monday, August 2, 1993

“Some people compare me with Anne Frank. That frightens me, Mimmy. I don’t want to suffer her fate.”

Questions to consider:

1. Why do people consider Zlata to be the “Anne Frank of Sarajevo”?2. What metaphors does Zlata use, and why?

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Excerpt from Night by Elie Wiesel

Born September 30, 1928, Eliezer Wiesel led a life representative of many Jewish children. Growing up in a small village in Romania, his world revolved around family, religious study, community and God. Yet his family, community and his innocent faith were destroyed upon the deportation of his village in 1944. After surviving Auschwitz, Buna, Buchenwald and Gleiwitz, and finally being liberated in 1945, Wiesel has since dedicated his life to ensuring that none of us forget what happened to the Jews. He also believes that it is the moral responsibility of all people to fight hatred, racism and genocide. He has since published over thirty books and earned the Nobel Peace Prize.

At four o’clock in the afternoon of the same day, as usual the bell summoned all the heads of the blocks to go and report.

They came back shattered. They could only just open their lips enough to say the word: evacuation. The camp was to be emptied, and we were to be sent farther back.

Where to? To somewhere right in the depths of Germany, to other camps; there was noshortage of them.

“When?”

“Tomorrow evening.”

“Perhaps the Russians will arrive first.”

“Perhaps.”

We knew perfectly well that they would not.

The camp had become a hive. People ran about, shouting at one another. In all the blocks, preparations for the journey were going on. I had forgotten about my bad foot [Note: Wiesel had recently had an infection on the sole of his foot drained]. A doctor came into the room and announced:

“Tomorrow, immediately after nightfall, the camp will set out. Block after block. Patients will stay in the infirmary. They will not be evacuated.” This news made us think. Were the SS going to leave hundreds of prisoners to strut about in the hospital blocks, waiting for their liberators? Were they going to let the Jews hear the twelfth stroke sound? Obviously not.“All of the invalids will be summarily killed,” said the faceless one. “And sent to the crematory in a final batch.”

“The camp is certain to be mined,” said another. “The moment the evacuation’s over, it’ll blow up.”

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As for me, I was not thinking about death, but I did not want to be separated from my father. We had already suffered so much, borne so much together; this was not the time to be separated.

I ran outside to look for him. The snow was thick, and the windows of the blocks were veiled with frost. One shoe in my hand, because it would not go onto my right foot, I ran on, feeling neither pain nor cold.

“What shall we do?”

My father did not answer.

“What shall we do, father?”

He was lost in thought. The choice was in our hands. For once we could decide our fate for ourselves. We could both stay in the hospital, where I could, thanks to my doctor, get him entered as a patient or a nurse. Or else we could follow the others.

“Well, what shall we do, father?”

He was silent.

“Let’s be evacuated with the others,” I said to him.

He did not answer. He looked at my foot.

“Do you think you can walk?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Let’s hope that we shan’t regret it, Eliezer.”

I learned after the war the fate of those who had stayed behind in the hospital. They were quite simply liberated by the Russians two days after the evacuation. …

[The next day]

Two o’clock in the afternoon. The snow was still coming down thickly. The time was passing quickly now. Dusk had fallen. The day was disappearing in a monochrome of gray. The head of the block suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to clean out the block. He ordered four prisoners to wash the wooden floor. . . .An hour before leaving the camp! Why? For whom?

“For the liberating army,” he cried. “So that they’ll realize there were men living here and not pigs.”

Were we men then? The block was cleaned from top to bottom, washed in every corner.

At six o’clock the bell rang. The death knell. The burial. The procession was about to begin its march.

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“Form up! Quickly!”

In a few minutes we were all in rows, by blocks. Night had fallen. Everything was in order, according to the prearranged plan.

The searchlights came on. Hundreds of armed SS men rose up out of the darkness, accompanied by sheepdogs. The snow never ceased. The gates of the camp opened. It seemed that an even darker night was waiting for us on the other side.

The first blocks began to march. We waited. We had to wait for the departure of the fifty-six blocks who came before us. It was very cold. In my pocket I had two pieces of bread. With how much pleasure could I have eaten them! But I was not allowed to.

Not yet.

Our turn was coming: Block 53 . . . Block 55. . .

Block 57, forward march!

It snowed relentlessly.

Questions to consider:

1. Why does Wiesel include the information about the weather?2. What is the symbolic meaning of night?3. Did the Nazis consider the Jews to be human? Explain your answer.4. How is Wiesel’s description of the Holocaust different from Anne Frank’s?

How is it similar?

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Excerpt from A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

There may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s, in more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. He is one of the first to tell his story in his own words. In his memoirs, Beah, now twenty-six years old, tells a riveting story. At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. Eventually released by the army and sent to a UNICEF rehabilitation center, he struggled to regain his humanity and to reenter the world of civilians, who viewed him with fear and suspicion. This is, at last, a story of redemption and hope.

As evening approached, people started arriving from the mining area. Their whispers, the cries of little children seeking lost parents and tired of walking, and the wails of hungry babies replaced the evening songs of crickets and birds. We sat on Grandmother’s verandah, waiting and listening.

“Do you guys think it is a good idea to go back to Mogbwemo?” Junior asked. But before either of us had a chance to answer, a Volkswagen roared in the distance and all the people walking on the road ran into the nearby bushes. We ran, too, but didn’t go that far. My heart pounded and my breathing intensified. The vehicle stopped in front of my grandmother’s house, and from where we lay, we could see that whoever was inside the car was not armed. As we, and others, emerged from the bushes, we saw a man run from the driver’s seat to the sidewalk, where he vomited blood. His arm was bleeding. When he stopped vomiting, he began to cry. It was the first time I had seen a grown man cry like a child, and I felt a sting in my heart. A woman put her arms around the man and begged him to stand up. He got to his feet and walked toward the van. When he opened the door opposite the driver’s, a woman who was leaning against it fell to the ground. Blood was coming out of her ears. People covered the eyes of their children. In the back of the van were three more dead bodies, two girls and a boy, and their blood was all over the seats and the ceiling of the van. I wanted to move away from what I was seeing, but couldn’t. My feet went numb and my entire body froze. Later we learned that the man had tried to escape with his family and the rebels had shot at his vehicle, killing all his family. The only thing that consoled him, for a few seconds at least, was when the woman who had embraced him, and now cried with him, told him that at least he would have the chance to bury them. He would always know where they were laid to rest, she said. She seemed to know a little more about war than the rest of us. The wind had stopped moving and daylight seemed to be quickly giving in to night. As sunset neared, more people passed through the village. One man carried his dead son. He thought the boy was still alive. The father was covered with his son’s blood, and as he ran he kept saying, “I will get you to the hospital, my boy, and everything will be fine.” Perhaps it was necessary that he cling to false hopes, since they kept him running away from harm. A group of men and women who had

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been pierced by stray bullets came running next. The skin that hung down from their bodies still contained fresh blood. Some of them didn’t notice that they were wounded until they stopped and people pointed to their wounds. Some fainted or vomited. I felt nauseated, and my head was spinning. I felt the ground moving, and people’s voices seemed to be far removed from where I stood trembling.

The last casualty that we saw that evening was a woman who carried her baby on her back. Blood was running down her dress and dripping behind her, making a trail. Her child had been shot dead as she ran for her life. Luckily for her, the bullet didn’t go through the baby’s body. When she stopped at where we stood, she sat on the ground and removed her child. It was a girl, and her eyes were still open, with an interrupted innocent smile on her face. The bullets could be seen sticking out just a little bit in the baby’s body and she was swelling. The mother clung to her child and rocked her. She was in too much pain and shock to shed tears.

Junior, Talloi, and I looked at each other and knew that we must return to Mattru Jong, because we had seen that Mogbwemo was no longer a place to call home and that our parents couldn’t possibly be there anymore. Some of the wounded people kept saying that Kabati was next on the rebels’ list. We didn’t want to be there when the rebels arrived. Even those who couldn’t walk very well did their best to keep moving away from Kabati. The image of that woman and her baby plagued my mind as we walked back to Mattru Jong. I barely noticed the journey, and when I drank water I didn’t feel any relief even though I knew I was thirsty. I didn’t want to go back to where that woman was from; it was clear in the eyes of the baby that all had been lost.

Questions to consider:

1. What tone does Beah use when he writes this? What words does he use?2. Why does Beah write about this scene in so much detail?3. Do you think that a baby can see “that all had been lost”? Why or why not?4. How did this experience shape Beah?

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“HOW I BECAME A WRITER” excerpt from Boy by Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl was born in Wales in 1916. He had a fairly unhappy time at boarding school, which provided some of the inspiration for his later stories. After leaving school, he worked for an oil outbreak in Africa until he signed up with the Royal Air Force. Unfortunately. he was injured during WWII and eventually returned home as an invalid. He was then sent to Washington, DC to work where, almost by accident, he started his writing career. It was not until Dahl became a father that he started writing stories for children successfully. From this came the stories of James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He went on to write 21 children’s books, including Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, The BFG, Matilda, and The Witches, all of which have been made into films. Boy is his autobiography.

I have still got all my school reports from those days more than 50 years ago, and I've gone through them one by one, trying to discover a hint of promise for a future fiction writer. The subject to look at was obviously English Composition. But all my prep-school reports under this heading were flat and non-committal, excepting one.

The one that took my eye was dated Christmas Term. I was then 12, and my English teacher was Mr. Victor Corrado. I remember him vividly, a tall, handsome athlete with black wavy hair and a Roman nose (who one night later on eloped with the matron, Miss Davis, and we never saw either of them again).

Anyway, it so happened that Mr. Corrado took us in boxing as well as in English Composition, and in this particular report it said under English, "See his report on boxing. Precisely the same marks apply." So we look under Boxing, and there it says, "Too slow and ponderous. His punches are not well-timed and are easily seen coming." But just once a week at this school, every Saturday morning, every beautiful and blessed Saturday morning, all the shivering horrors would disappear and for two glorious hours I would experience something that came very close to ecstasy.

Unfortunately, this did not happen until one was 10 years old. But no matter. Let me tell you what it was. At exactly 10.30 on Saturday mornings, Mr Pople's infernal bell would go clangetty-clang-clang. This was a signal for the following to take place: first, all boys of nine and under (about 70 all told) would proceed at once to the large outdoor asphalt playground behind the main building. Standing in the playground with legs apart and arms folded across her mountainous bosom was Miss Davis, the matron. If it was raining, the boys were expected to arrive in raincoats. If snowing or blowing a blizzard, then it was coats and scarves. And school caps, of course - grey with a red badge on the front - had always to be worn.

But no Act of God, neither tornado nor hurricane nor volcanic eruption was ever allowed to stop those ghastly two-hour Saturday morning walks that the seven-, eight- and nine-year-old little boys had to take along the windy esplanades of Weston-super-Mare. They walked in crocodile formation, two by two, with Miss Davis

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striding alongside in tweed skirt and woollen stockings and a felt hat that must surely have been nibbled by rats.

The other thing that happened when Mr. Pople's bell rang out on Saturday mornings was that the rest of the boys, all those of 10 and over (about 100 all told) would go immediately to the main Assembly Hall and sit down. A junior master called SK Jopp would then poke his head around the door and shout at us with such ferocity that specks of spit would fly from his mouth like bullets and splash against the window panes across the room.

"All right!" he shouted. "No talking! No moving! Eyes front and hands on desks!" Then out he would pop again.

We sat still and waited. We were waiting for the lovely time we knew would be coming soon. Outside in the driveway we heard the motor-cars being started up. All were ancient. All had to be cranked by hand. (The year, don't forget, was around 1927/28.) This was a Saturday morning ritual. There were five cars in all, and into them would pile the entire staff of 14 masters, including not only the Headmaster himself but also the purple-faced Mr Pople. Then off they would roar in a cloud of blue smoke and come to rest outside a pub called, if I remember rightly, The Bewhiskered Earl.

There they would remain until just before lunch, drinking pint after pint of strong brown ale. And two and a half hours later, at one o'clock, we would watch them coming back, walking very carefully into the dining-room for lunch, holding on to things as they went.

So much for the masters. But what of us, the great mass of 10-, 11- and 12-year-olds left sitting in the Assembly Hall in a school that was suddenly without a single adult in the entire place? We knew, of course, exactly what was going to happen next. Within a minute of the departure of the masters, we would hear the front door opening, and footsteps outside, and then, with a flurry of loose clothes and jangling bracelets and flying hair, a woman would burst into the room shouting, "Hello, everybody! Cheer up! This isn't a burial service!" or words to that effect. And this was Mrs. O'Connor.

Blessed, beautiful Mrs O'Connor with her whacky clothes and her grey hair flying in all directions. She was about 50, with a horsey face and long yellow teeth, but to us she was beautiful. She was not on the staff. She was hired from somewhere in the town to come up on Saturday mornings and be a sort of baby-sitter, to keep us quiet for two and a half hours while the masters went off boozing at the pub.

But Mrs. O'Connor was no baby-sitter. She was nothing less than a great and gifted teacher, a scholar and a lover of English Literature. Each of us was with her every Saturday morning for three years (from the age of 10 until we left the school) and during that time we spanned the entire history of English Literature from AD 597 to the early 19th century.

Newcomers to the class were given for keeps a slim blue book called simply “The Chronological Table,” and it contained only six pages. Those six pages were filled with a very long list in chronological order of all the great and not so great

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landmarks in English Literature, together with their dates. Exactly 100 of these were chosen by Mrs. O'Connor and we marked them in our books and learned them by heart.

Mrs. O'Connor would then take each item in turn and spend one entire Saturday morning of two and a half hours talking to us about it. Thus, at the end of three years, with approximately 36 Saturdays in each school year, she would have covered the 100 items.

And what marvelous exciting fun it was! She had the great teacher's knack of making everything she spoke about come alive to us in that room. In two and a half hours, we grew to love Langland and his Piers Plowman.

The next Saturday, it was Chaucer, and we loved him, too. Even rather difficult fellows like Milton and Dryden and Pope all became thrilling when Mrs O'Connor told us about their lives and read parts of their work to us aloud. And the result of all this, for me at any rate, was that by the age of 13 I had become intensely aware of the vast heritage of literature that had been built up in England over the centuries. I also became an avid and insatiable reader of good writing.

Dear lovely Mrs O'Connor! Perhaps it was worth going to that awful school simply to experience the joy of her Saturday mornings.

Questions to consider:

1. How does Dahl hook the reader into this section?2. What is Dahl’s tone throughout the passage?3. How did Dahl feel about his boarding school? Use text evidence to explain

your answer.4. Why does Dahl write about this memory?

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From Red Scarf Girl: Memoirs of a Cultural Revolution by Ji-li Jiang

In 1966, Ji-li Jiang was twelve years old. An outstanding student and leader in her school, she had everything: brains, ability, the admiration of her peers - and a shining future in Chairman Mao's New China. But all that changed with the advent of the Cultural Revolution, when intelligence became a crime and a wealthy family background invited persecution or worse. For the next few years Ji-li and her family were humiliated and reviled by their former friends, neighbors, and colleagues and lived in constant terror of arrest. At last, with the detention of her father, Ji-li was faced with the most dreadful decision of her life: denounce him and break with her family, or refuse to testify and sacrifice her future in her beloved Communist Party.

“I borrowed that book,” Ji-yong1 said.

He pointed toward a pile of books that the man was going to carry away. The young man turned around and looked down at Ji-yong.

“I borrowed that book and I need to return it,” Ji-yong said.

The young man pulled the book out of the pile. The Wild Animals I Have Raised. The man looked at the book and then looked back at Ji-yong. “Do you know what kind of book this is? This book is a translation from the bourgeois west.”

“I borrowed it and I have to return it tomorrow,” Ji-yong said.

“How dare you plead for this damned book,” he said. “You little black bastard.”

He held the book in front of Ji-yong’s face and began to tear the cover over very slowly.

Ji-yong rushed toward him and grabbed the book. The man grabbed Ji-yong’s collar and pulled my brother toward him, and then suddenly pushed away. Ji-yong staggered several steps backward and fell on a heap of clothes. He tried to stand up and rush at the man again, but Ji-yong and I jumped on him and held him down.

“He hit me!” he screamed. His eyes were filled with tears. I could feel him gasp for air against my face.

Six-Fingers bustled in, right in the middle. He pulled Thin-Face into a corner and whispered to him. Thin-Face watched us like a hunter watches animals in a trap. Ji-yong stopped fighting and I straightened up. I felt an intense rush of heat, as if my whole body were flushed. I shivered. Ji-yong grasped my shirt and buried her face in my back. Thin-Face’s head was only inches from mine. His bloodshot eyes bulged out so much that I could only see the white in his eyes. His skin was red with rage. He looked savage, and I was sure that he was going to hit me. I shut my eyes and clenched my teeth.

1 Ji-yong is Ji-li’s younger brother

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My heart pounded.

I waited.

Nothing happened.

I opened my eyes.

Questions to consider:

1. How does Jiang hook the reader into this section?2. What words does Jiang use to describe the fight? Is it an effective

description?3. Why does she write the last four lines in simple, short sentences?4. Why did Jiang decide to write a memoir?

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HERE: Memoir from Oral Histories book

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“The Mess Hall Bells” excerpt from Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston was 7 years old when her father, a fisherman in Ocean Park, Calif., was taken away without explanation by the FBI immediately following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Several months later, his family learned he was imprisoned in a federal prison in Fort Lincoln, N.D. Jeanne, the youngest of 10 children, was interned with her family in Manzanar, a bleak, barren camp of tar paper shacks in California's Owen Valley desert.

Papa never said more than three or four sentences about his nine months at Fort Lincoln. Few men who spent time there will talk about it more than that. Not because of the physical hardships: he had been through worse times on fishing trips down the coast of Mexico. It was the charge of disloyalty. For a man raised in Japan, there was no greater disgrace. And it was the humiliation. It brought him face to face with his own vulnerability, his own powerlessness. He had no rights, no home, no control over his own life. This kind of emasculation was suffered, in one form or another, by all the men interned at Manzanar. Papa's was an extreme case. Some coped with it better than he, some worse. Some retreated. Some struck back.

During that first summer and fall of sandy congestion and wind-blown boredom, the bitterness accumulated, the rage festered in hundreds of tarpapered cubicles like ours. Looking back, what they now call the December Riot seems to have been inevitable. It happened exactly a year after the Pearl Harbor attack. Some have called this an anniversary demonstration organized by militantly pro-Japan forces in the camp. It wasn't as simple as that. Everything just came boiling up at once.

In the months before the riot the bells rang often at our mess hall, sending out the calls for public meetings. They rang for higher wages, they rang for better food, they rang for open revolt, for patriotism, for common sense, and for a wholesale return to Japan. Some meetings turned into shouting sessions. Some led to beatings. One group tried to burn down the general store. Assassination threats were commonplace.

On the night of December 5, Fred Tayama, a leader in the Japanese American Citizens League and a "Friend" of the administration, was badly beaten by six men and taken to the camp hospital for treatment. Tayama couldn't identify anyone precisely, but the next day three men were arrested and one of these was sent out of the camp to the country jail at Independence, ten miles away. This was a young cook well known for his defiance and contempt for the authorities. He had been trying to organize a Kitchen Workers' Union and had recently charged the camp's chief steward, a Caucasian, with stealing sugar and meat from the warehouses to sell on the black market. Since sugar and meat were both in short supply, and since it was rumored that infants had died from saccharin mixed into formulas as a sugar substitute, these charges were widely believed. The young cook's arrest became the immediate and popular cause that triggered the riot.

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I was too young to witness any of it. Papa himself did not take part and he kept all of us with him in the barracks during the day and night it lasted. But I remember the deadly quiet in the camp the morning before it began, that heavy atmosphere threat of something about to burst. And I remember hearing the crowds rush past our block that night. Toward the end of it, they were a lynch mob, swarming from one side of the camp to the other, from the hospital to the police station to the barracks of the men they were after, shouting slogans in English and Japanese.

"Idiots," Papa called them. "Bakatare. They want to go back to Japan."

"It is more than going back to Japan," Mama said. "It is the sugar. It disappears so fast..."

"What do they think they will find over there?"

"Maybe they would be treated like human beings," Mama said.

"You be quiet. Listen to what I am saying. These idiots won't even get to the front gate of this camp. You watch. Before this is over, somebody is going to be killed. I guarantee it. They might all be killed."

The man who emerged as leader of the rioters was Hawaiian born Joe Kurihara. During the First World War he had served in the U.S. Army in France and in Germany, and he was so frustrated by his treatment at Manzanar he was ready to renounce his citizenship and sail to the old country. Kurihara's group set up microphones and speakers near the cook's barracks and began a round of crowd-stirring speeches, demanding his release, charging that Tayama and the administration had used this beating to cover up the sugar fraud and saying it was time to get the inus once and for all.

That afternoon the authorities agreed to bring the young cook back into camp. But this wasn't enough. By 6:00 PM 2,000 people were looking for blood. The Internal Security Force, made up of internees like the demonstrators, had evaporated in the face of such a mob. For a while they had the camp to themselves.

They split into two groups, one heading for the police station to free the cook, the other heading for the hospital to finish off Tayama, who had been concealed under a hospital bed. A vigilante party searched the corridors. When they failed to find their man, this half of the crowd moved off in search o others on their "death list."

Meanwhile the mob heading for the police station had been met by a detachment of military police carrying submachine guns and M-1s. When an army captain asked the mob to disperse they stoned him. Now they were hooting "Banzai!, jeering threats at the MPs and singing songs in Japanese The MPs started lobbing tear gas bombs, and then, with no announcement or command to shoot, while the mob swirled frantically to escape the gas, several soldiers opened fire.

This instantly cleared the street, and the riot was over. Only the dead and the injured remained. Ten were treated in the hospital for gunshot wounds. One young man was killed on the spot. Another nineteen-year-old died five days later.

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What I recall vividly are the bells that began to toll late that night. After dispersing, some of the demonstrators organized shifts, and kept them tolling all over camp. With the bells and the MP jeeps patrolling up and down the streets, I was a long time getting to sleep. Against Papa's orders I kept sneaking looks out the window, and I saw something I had only seen once before. The searchlights. They operated every night, but I never saw them because I went to bed so early and our block was well in from the perimeter. From the guard towers the lights scanned steadily making shadows ebb and flow among the barracks like dark, square waves.

The next morning I awoke long after sunup. The lights were gone. Shadows were sharp and fixed. But the bells were still ringing. It was the only sound in camp, the only sound in Owens Valley, the mess hall bells, their gongs echoing between the Inyo Range and the nearby Sierra, their furthest ripples soaking into dry sand. They rang till noon.

Questions to consider:

1. Why does the author spend so much time describing one, short incident?2. Do you think her father was a coward? Or was he wise?3. How does Wakatsuki Houston feel about the riot?4. How does the experience of the Japanese in the internment camps compare

to the Jews in the concentration camps?

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Excerpt from Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston

In April 2003, climber Aron Ralston entered Utah's Bluejohn Canyon only to become trapped when an 800-pound (360-kilogram) boulder shifted, crushed his hand, and pinned him to the canyon wall. For six days, Ralston struggled to free himself while warding off dehydration and hypothermia. Trapped and facing certain death, Ralston chose a final option that later made him an international sensation: Using a multitool, the climber amputated his right hand, then rappelled to freedom.

Just below the ledge where I'm standing is a chockstone the size of a large bus tire, stuck fast in the channel between the walls, a few feet out from the lip. If I can step onto it, then I'll have a nine-foot height to descend, less than that of the first overhang. I'll dangle off the chockstone, then take a short fall onto the rounded rocks piled on the canyon floor. Stemming across the canyon at the lip of the drop-off, with one foot and one hand on each of the walls, I traverse out to the chockstone. I press my back against the south wall and lock my left knee, which pushes my foot tight against the north wall. With my right foot, I kick at the boulder to test how stuck it is. It's jammed tightly enough to hold my weight. I lower myself from the chimneying position and step onto the chockstone. It supports me but teeters slightly. After confirming that I don't want to chimney down from the chockstone's height, I squat and grip the rear of the lodged boulder, turning to face back upcanyon. Sliding my belly over the front edge, I can lower myself and hang from my fully extended arms, akin to climbing down from the roof of a house.

As I dangle, I feel the stone respond to my adjusting grip with a scraping quake as my body's weight applies enough torque to disturb it from its position. Instantly, I know this is trouble, and instinctively, I let go of the rotating boulder to land on the round rocks below. When I look up, the backlit chockstone falling toward my head consumes the sky. Fear shoots my hands over my head. I can't move backward or I'll fall over a small ledge. My only hope is to push off the falling rock and get my head out of its way.

The next three seconds play out at a tenth of their normal speed. Time dilates, as if I'm dreaming, and my reactions decelerate. In slow motion: The rock smashes my left hand against the south wall; my eyes register the collision, and I yank my left arm back as the rock ricochets; the boulder then crushes my right hand and ensnares my right arm at the wrist, palm in, thumb up, fingers extended; the rock slides another foot down the wall with my arm in tow, tearing the skin off the lateral side of my forearm. Then silence.

My disbelief paralyzes me temporarily as I stare at the sight of my arm vanishing into an implausibly small gap between the fallen boulder and the canyon wall. Within moments, my nervous system's pain response overcomes the initial shock. Good Christ, my hand. The flaring agony throws me into a panic. I grimace and growl a sharp "F***!" My mind commands my body, "Get your hand out of there!" I yank my arm three times in a naive attempt to pull it out. But I'm stuck.

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Anxiety has my brain tweaking; searing-hot pain shoots from my wrist up my arm. I'm frantic, and I cry out, "Oh no, oh no, oh no!" My desperate brain conjures up a probably apocryphal story in which an adrenaline-stoked mom lifts an overturned car to free her baby. I'd give it even odds that it's made up, but I do know for certain that right now, while my body's chemicals are raging at full flood, is the best chance I'll have to free myself with brute force. I shove against the large boulder, heaving against it, pushing with my left hand, lifting with my knees pressed under the rock. I get good leverage with the aid of a twelve-inch shelf in front of my feet. Standing on that, I brace my thighs under the boulder and thrust upward repeatedly, grunting, "Come on...move!" Nothing.

I rest, and then I surge again against the rock. Again nothing. I replant my feet. Feeling around for a better grip on the bottom of the chockstone, I reposition my upturned left hand on a handle of rock, take a deep breath, and slam into the boulder, harder than any of my previous attempts. "Yeearrgg...unnnhhh," the exertion forces the air from my lungs, all but masking the quiet, hollow sound of the boulder tottering. The stone's movement is imperceptible; all I get is a spike in the already extravagant pain, and I gasp, "Ow!"

I've shifted the boulder a fraction of an inch, and it's settled onto my wrist a bit more. This thing weighs a lot more than I do -- it's a testament to how amped I am that I moved it at all -- and now all I want is to move it back. I get into position again, pulling with my left hand on top of the stone, and budge the rock back ever so slightly, reversing what I just did. The pain eases a little. In the process, I've lacerated and bruised the skin over my left quadriceps above the knee. I'm sweating hard. With my left hand, I lift my right shirtsleeve off my shoulder and wipe my forehead. My chest heaves. I need a drink, but when I suck on my hydration-system hose, I find my water reservoir is empty.

I have a liter of water in a Lexan bottle in my backpack, but it takes me a few seconds to realize I won't be able to sling my pack off my right arm. I remove my camera from my neck and put it on the boulder. Once I have my left arm free, I expand the right strap, tuck my head inside the loop, and pull the strap over my left shoulder so it encompasses my torso. The weight of the rappelling equipment, video camera, and water bottle tugs the pack down to my feet, and then I step out of the strap loop. Extracting the dark gray water bottle from the bottom of my pack, I unscrew the top, and before I realize the significance of what I'm doing, I gulp three large mouthfuls of water and halt to pant for breath. Then it hits me: In five seconds, I've guzzled a third of my entire remaining water supply.

"Oh, dude, cap that and put it away. No more water." I screw down the lid tight, drop the bottle into the pack resting at my knees, and take three deep breaths.

"OK, time to relax. The adrenaline's not going to get you out of here. Let's look this over, see what we got." Amazingly, it's been half an hour since the accident. The decision to get objective with my situation and stop rushing from one brutish attempt to the next allows my energy to settle down. This isn't going to be over quickly, so I need to start thinking. To do that, I need to be calm.

Questions to consider:

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1. Why does Ralston write his dialogue, when he’s only talking to himself?2. What can the reader learn from Ralston’s story?3. What moment stands out the most to you? Why?