More than sixteen years have passed since the initial publication of In Search of April Raintree. Because it has been used as teaching text in junior and senior high schools and for university-level undergraduate and graduate courses in literature, women's studies, and Native studies, the story is well known. Due to their parents' alcohol abuse, Cheryl and April Raintree, two Metis sisters growing up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, are separated from each other and their family. Life in a variety of foster homes is typified by neglect, ill treatment, and shame at their Native heritage. Throughout much of the narrative, Cheryl maintains pride in her ancestry, but early on, April decides to deny her Native self as much as is possible.
Now the truth is, Ever's journey begins a bit before that, when she still had her family with her. Ever was the only one to survive a car accident that took the lives of her mom, dad, little sister, and their dog. After the accident Ever goes to live with her aunt Sabine and is left with psychic abilities which she sees as a punishment. She is able to hear thoughts, get life stories by touch, see auras, and see her dead sister which is why she blocks things out. She blames herself for her family's death throughout the book until the end when she learns the truth.
Seeland 1 Camilla Seeland Miss Sutton 12th November 2011 English 1010 Independent novel pre-IB English 10 A complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews, is a novel that portrays the complications that Nomi Nickel experiences growing up in the Mennonite community. It is set in a total isolated Mennonite community in the east of Canada that lives of tourism. The author’s setting gives the reader a better impression of what the main character, Nomi’s experience. Growing up in this town and the religious views have affected her points of view and development. All of these factors are very clearly described on the first pages of the book, to grab the readers’ attention.
Daisy never meets her father, Cuyler Goodwill, until she is reunited with him due to the unforeseen death of Mrs. Flett. The novel is the story of Daisy Goodwill, a woman who wanders through life by the forces of time, never quite settling into place. Her life unfolds through a series of chapters pertaining to some of life’s most profound moments however; many are missing the elements of a life that one would expect to find in chapters titled: “Childhood”, “Love”, “Marriage”, “Motherhood” and “Sorrow”. The Stone Diaries, in which Shield’s offers several examples of life that all trace back to the death of Mercy and the birth of Daisy, creates a lot of interplay between freewill and chance. Although free will plays into some aspects of the lives of the characters, it is chance and especially inopportune deaths in the novel that dictate a life’s trajectory.
The story centers mainly around a young Grace Marks, who has worked since her childhood to sustain her family and to earn a living on her own. The Canadian government convicted her at the age of sixteen of plotting with James McDermott to murder their employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his mistress and housekeeper. However, she had no recollection of the murders, as she claimed to be unconscious at the time, despite numerous accounts from McDermott and the press that she was fully awake and even helped to strangle Nancy. Simon Jordan travels to Canada in hopes of jogging her memories and tries to figure out if she played an instrumental role in the murders. By creating a story around an actual event in history, one can create a surprisingly believable novel.
The classic book Diary Of a Young Girl is the haunting diary of Jewish teen Anne Frank, who hid from the Nazis for two years and whose promising talent was cut short by her death after she was captured by the Nazis in 1945 at the age of only fifteen. During her two years in the secret annex in which she hid with her family and another Jewish family, Anne changed and matured physically, psychologically, and emotionally from a friendly, but somewhat shallow child into a philosophical, mature young woman. Her changing thoughts and inner feelings reflect this change, propelling her into adulthood. Her diary is a window into her soul. Over the course of her two years in hiding, the “outer” and “inner” Anne, which were once one and the same, intertwine and differentiate until she forms a stoic outer shell to keep her increasingly dark, conflicted and self-aware thoughts secret.
“A Worn Path” (Welty, 1941) is a short story telling about the journey that a “very” old black woman takes on Christmas Eve to pick up medication for her grandson’s throat. The third person omniscient narrative, providing a good characterization study, allows the reader to “know” her and observe her actions and words through other’s eyes (Clugston, 2010). Through this point of view, the reader has personal knowledge of the woman and her ability to handle the struggles she encounters and has encountered in her long life. Her name, Phoenix, describes well how she has dealt with life so far—rising from ashes, making something out of nothing. The simple description of her smallness allows the reader to envision her as frail at first, but the reader quickly learns that she is resilient and tough.
The part that captured my attention was her two years spent in solitary confinement in the basement of a male prison. Within the article she discusses how it played a role on her mental freedom not being able to socialize and challenge her mind. In Common’s song he describes the experience as weakening her soul, but in the end it made her stronger and gave her a new outlook on freedom. I think he accurately showed the struggles Assata went through. His lyrics paint a mental picture of the New Jersey Turnpike incident, and the physical abuse done to her by the police.
This event pulled her deeper into depression and it was very evident in her writing and in everything… In 1960, Sylvia Plath's first collection of poems, The Colossus was published. Shortly thereafter, she and Ted Hughes moved "to an English country village in Devon" ("Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)"). In 1960, their first child, a daughter named Frieda, named after Sylvia's beloved paternal aunt, was born, and in 1962, their son Nicholas was born. Sylvia also suffered several miscarriages before and between the births of her children (Neurotic Poets 5-6), and "less than two years after the birth of their first child their marriage broke apart ("Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963" 1) One can only speculate about the volume and the quality of future work that Sylvia Plath, already a seasoned and much
Can religion help the parent forgive it’s own flesh, blood and bone – their child – any given crime? After four years of imprisonment Kenny returns home to stay with his mother, Myrna. For all these years Myrna has forced herself not to think about her son or his crime, but with Kenny’s return she finds herself in a very unpleasant position. In the first couple of months of Kenny’s imprisonment she visits him whenever she can, always asking him the same question: “But why?” (page 3, line 54) and getting the same response: “He knew he’d done wrong,” (page 3, line 56) but the response changes after a few weeks to complete silence. When Myrna gets sick the visits are put to an end.