Contemporary American Literature Junior Academic Research Paper - Mrs
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Contemporary American Literature Junior Academic Research Paper - Mrs. Smith Author Title Call No. Description Albom, newspaper columnist and radio broadcaster, is, of course, best known as the author of the astonishingly successful Tuesdays with Morrie . This is his first novel. With an appropriately fable-like tone, Albom tells the story of Eddie, "an old man with a barrel chest." But for us, Eddie's story "begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun"--at Ruby Pier, an amusement park by the sea, where he spent most days, for despite his advanced years, he worked as a maintenance man on the rides. He dies on his eighty-third birthday trying to save a little girl from an accident. Eddie wakes up in heaven, where he is The Five People You Meet in FIC informed that "there are five people you meet in heaven. Each . was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is Albom, Mitch Heaven ALBOM what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth." And, not surprisingly, this is what the novel is about: Eddie coming to appreciate his 83 years of mortal life; the novel's "point" is that apparently insignificant lives do indeed have their own special kind of significance. A sweet book that makes you smile but is not gooey with overwrought sentiment. This is the unparalled adventure and ordeal of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew, stranded on the Antarctic ice for 20 months, then forced to row a 22-foot boat 850 miles across storm-ravaged seas. In 1914, Shackleton sailed to Antarctica with 27 men in hopes of being the first to cross the continent. But his ship, the Endurance, was trapped, then crushed, by ice in the Weddell Sea, propelling the party into a nightmare of cold and near starvation. Alexander, relying extensively on journals by crew members, delivers a spellbinding story of human courage in the face of daunting odds. She captures the character The Endurance: Shackleton's 919.8 Alexander, Caroline of the men and of the terrible land and seascape they crossed toward salvation. Included are 170 previously unpublished photos by the expedition's Legendary Antarctic Expedition ALE photographer, Frank Hurley: stark, artfully composed tributes to the savage beauty of the ice and to the fortitude of the men and their dogs. Not one of the men died during their sojourn in a freezing hell; as Alexander makes clear in her gripping, emotionally resonant book, this incredible fact bears witness not only to Shackleton's leadership but to the strength of the human spirit. With wrenching pain and wry humor, the talented Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, presents contemporary life on the Spokane Indian Reservation The Lone Ranger and Tonto FIC through 22 linked stories. These tales, though sad, are often lyrically beautiful and almost always very funny. The author depicts with fierce determination Alexie, Sherman all the elements of modern Native American life, from basketball and alcoholism to powwows and the unexplained deaths of insignificant people. Humor Fistfight in Heaven ALEXIE and tragedy exist side by side. During the last days of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, three young women, members of a conservative, pious Catholic family, who had become committed to the revolutionary overthrow of the regime, were ambushed and assassinated as they drove back from visiting their jailed husbands. FIC Thus martyred, the Mirabal sisters have become mythical figures in their country, where they are known as las mariposas (the butterflies), from their Alvarez, Julia In the Time of the Butterflies ALVAREZ underground code names. Alvarez has fictionalized their story in a narrative that starts slowly but builds to a gripping intensity. Each of the girls speaks in her own voice; their surviving sister, Dede, frames the narrative with her own tale of suffering and dedication to their memory. The sisters endure the arrests of their husbands, their own imprisonment and the inexorable progress of Trujillo's revenge. Alvarez captures the terrorized atmosphere of a police state, in which people live under the sword of terrible fear and atrocities cannot be acknowledged. As the sisters' energetic fervor turns to anguish, Alvarez conveys their courage and their desperation, and the full import of their tragedy. B Maya Angelou continues her life story in Gather Together In My Name. She candidly describes her experiences being a young mother, experimenting with Angelou, Maya Gather Together in My Name ANGELOU the temptations life presents, and her mistakes. She is a confused, culturally lost teenager with a child and has experienced little besides rejection for her entire young life. She is very much an innocent girl with a growing resentment of the world around her but with a trusting optimism and an over-developed faith in her own worth, all of which combine to make her quite vulnerable to those who would prey upon her. Contemporary American Literature Junior Academic Research Paper - Mrs. Smith In her third autobiographical volume Angelou relates the experiences of her show business career, her failed marriage to a white man, her experiences as a mother, her relationship with her son, and her suspicion of the white world. To support herself and her son, Maya gets a job in a record shop run by a white woman, where she is confused by the attention of a young white customer. The relationship grows into love and marriage. But a permanent relationship is not to be, and she must again find work. She finds a job as a dancer in a bar. Her talent brings her attention of a different kind, and soon she Singin' and Swingin' and B Angelou, Maya is singing in a popular nightclub. From there, she is called to join the cast of Porgy and Bess, just about to begin another tour abroad. This portrayal of one Getting' Merry Like Christmas ANGELOU of the most exciting and talented casts ever put together, and of the encounters between these personalities and audiences who had rarely seen black people before, makes a hilarious and poignant story. The excitement of the journey is dampened only by Maya's guilt that she has again abandoned the person she loves most, her son. Back home, driven by guilt and concern, she takes her son to Hawaii, discovering that devotion and love, in spite of absenc Angelou's fourth autobiographical volume proceeds from her departure from California through her years in Harlem and the civil rights movement, to London and Cairo and the breakup of her marriage. It takes us through one of the most exciting and formative periods of her amazing life: her beginnings as a writer and an activist in New York. Angelou has a happy knack of attracting the best and the brightest into her orbit, and this book offers a veritable cornucopia of black luminaries in its pages. Singer Billie Holiday, writers John Ellins and Paule Marshall, jazz musicians Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, B and actors Godfrey Cambridge and James Earl Jones -- Maya meets and learns from them all. Political activism follows as she first organizes a theatrical Angelou, Maya The Heart of a Woman ANGELOU benefit for the Reverend Martin Luther King and then becomes the director of the New York Southern Christian Leadership Conference office. Her involvement in the civil rights movement eventually brings her into contact with African freedom fighters Oliver Tambo and Vusumzi Make, whom she marries and follows to Africa. Her story is as honest, painful, funny, and outrageous as Angelou herself. Angelou gives readers something to cheer about an People around the world have found inspiration in the story of Lance Armstrong, a world-class athlete nearly struck down by cancer, only to recover and win the Tour de France, the multiday bicycle race famous for its grueling intensity. Armstrong is a thoroughgoing jock, and the changes brought to his life It's Not About the Bike; My B Armstrong, Lance by his illness are startling and powerful, but he's not interested in wearing a hero suit. While his vocabulary is a bit on the he-man side, his actions will melt Journey Back to Life * ARMSTRONG the most hard-bitten souls: a cancer foundation and benefit bike ride, his astonishing commitment to training that got him past countless hurdles, loyalty to the people and corporations that never gave up on him. There's serious medical detail here, which may not be for the faint of heart, and athletes and coaches will benefit from the same extraordinary detail provided about his training sessions. It's Not About the Bike is the perfect title for this book about life, death, illness, family, setbacks, and triumphs, but not especially about the bike. Bacigalupi has written a fast-paced postapocalyptic adventure with this tale of class imbalance on the Gulf Coast. Teenage Nailer scavenges ships with his crewmates, eking out a poverty-filled existence while avoiding dangers that range from giant "city killer" hurricanes to his vicious, drug-addicted father. After a brutal hurricane passes over, Nailer and his friend Pima stumble upon the wreck of a luxurious clipper ship. It's filled with valuable goods-a "Lucky Strike" that could make them rich, if only they can find a safe way to cash it in. Amid the wreckage, a girl barely clings to life. If they help her, she tells FIC Bacigalupi, Paolo Ship Breaker them, she can show them a world of privilege that they have never known. But can they trust her? And if so, can they keep the girl safe from Nailer's drug- BACIGALUPI addicted father? Nailer manages both to infuriate members of his camp (including his father) and to become embroiled in upper-class trade disputes that he barely comprehends.