The first section of Tayari Jones’s Leaving Atlanta contains instances of child-like paraphernalia that are realized through the characters’ voices. The descriptions of the voices are not phrases commonly used. When talking about the fictional creature with Tasha, DeShaun says “‘You could tell me. I won’t tell anybody.’ DeShaun’s voice collapsed like a house made…
When I was younger, I watched TV programs immediately coming home from school. A naïve thought I had was that the Disney and Nickelodeon shows I watched were in real-time or that they filmed a new episode every week. How do they get from place to place in that short amount of time? This inquiry…
Tayari Jones’s Leaving Atlanta explores, among many things, trusting adults. What is also explored is how communities react to abducted children. Parents in Atlanta mobilized when more children vanished. Tasha’s mother sends Tasha to a house after school filled with children, so she and DeShaun would not be home alone while Mama and Daddy are…
YOUR NAME: ___________________________________ Describe the arc of your experience completing the project (beginning, middle, and end): Describe the knowledge and/or skills you gained and/or strengthened while working on this project? What aspects of the project did you find most challenging? What aspects did you find most rewarding? Which part(s) of your final product do you…
Reflection on Content Describe a few of the connections you see between your different entries? As you reflect on your entries, do you find any contradictions between one entry and another? Or even within one entry? Compare your first entry, your 5th entry, and your last entry. Are their similarities to the types of questions…
The following is an imagined letter written by Hilda to Mrs. Fitzhugh. This letter performs the relationship that binds Hilda to Mrs. Fitzhugh, and the way in which Hilda must speak in a way that pleases Mrs. Fitzhugh if Hilda wants the checks to continue rolling in which finance Sassafrass’s education. In Hilda’s letters to…
As of now, what is your central question? (Your central question is the question that each of your takes will take up and to which your project as a whole will respond.) How do we see a physical presence influence an attitude or tone in the novels we’ve read, specifically Leaving Atlanta? Does physical presence…
Over the course of Ntozake Shange’s novel, Sassafrass, Cypress, & Indigo, the main characters continuously break away from the demands and traditions of the patriarchal social system. The three sisters, Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo are determined to find their own journey of expression and creativity, despite their mother’s (Effania) attempts to remind them that it…
In my 7th grade Reading Language Arts class, I will be teaching Brown Girl Dreaming this year. In the memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, Black author Jacqueline Woodson details her experience growing up in two places: South Carolina and New York and coming of age in the peak of the Civil Rights movement. Woodson’s memoir is…
In many cultures, particularly Native American and West African, it is understood that a woman’s cycle is deeply interconnected with the water and the moon. For example, in the West African Yoruba religion, Yemoja is goddess who is associated with the moon, rivers, and motherhood. The goddess, Oshun, patron saint of the Osun river in…