...Truths of the Ghetto Imagine growing up in a place you’re never destined to leave. For most growing up in the ghetto, this is what happens. As a result, those on the outside don’t get the chance to hear what really goes on in the inside. Instead, the outsider’s perception of life on the inside is made up from what they can see. However, some people, like rapper Lupe Fiasco, manage to escape the ghetto and tell the truths of the inside. Lupe Fiasco is widely considered to be one of the best rappers when it comes to lyrical content. His subject matter is deeper than most rappers and he is very passionate when it comes to his music. Having escaped the ghetto, he is able to provide a first hand experience of what really goes on in the inside. This results in a unique situation because his music is essentially the meeting ground for two different cultures. Mary Louise Pratt, author of the essay, “Arts of the Contact Zone”, describes this meeting ground as a place where cultures “…meet, clash, and grapple with each other” (Pratt 501) or more simply put, a place she calls the contact zone. The contact zone consists of many elements and is most prominent in certain types of text. One particular text, an autoethnographic text, can be seen in some of Lupe Fiascos music. One specific example of this is a song by Lupe Fiasco titled “Chopper”. This song is such a good example of this particular text because he has both the perspective of the inside of the ghetto and the outside...
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...Holocaust Essay The Holocaust is one of the worst tragedies in our history. Millions of people had died and thousands were left with mental or physical disabilities. All of this was simply because of intolerance and hatred towards Jews and other “minorities” The Holocaust is a very significant part of our history. It gave us an example of how prejudice our society can be. Today we are taught that we shouldn’t discriminate other people based on their religion, race or gender. Most countries don’t have dictators anymore, but instead give the power to their people. Discrimination, prejudice and racism are often frowned upon these days. Those are just a few examples on how the Holocaust has really affected us in ways that we haven't really given...
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...Baldwin’s essay entitled “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” focuses on the physical and mental state of poverty, displayed in the Harlem neighborhood in which he grew up. Is it possible to be poor mentally as well as physically? It is indeed possible to be in a “poor state of mind” in addition to living poorly. Baldwin mentioned there were are in his old neighborhood that had been “rehabilitated”. However, there were areas that appeared the same as when he grew up there in the early 1900’s. There were also people; such as the neighborhood shoe repairmen, who were still there sadly going about the same daily routine that he’s witnessed since childhood. These are a couple of reasons why I feel that Baldwin’s main idea is the physical and mental state of poverty on Fifth Avenue, Uptown Harlem. The intended audience for this writing would be a general audience, particularly ones unfamiliar with what it is like being an African American growing up in a poverty stricken ghetto. His descriptions are so profound and detailed, that it seems as if he is painting a picture for people who may not have ever witnessed such things. This is why I feel the intended audience is those who can be enlightened by his...
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...inhumanity articulated by the Nazis. The diaries of both Chaim Kaplan and Dawid Sierakowiak are first hand accounts of not only the atrocities committed by the Nazis, but accounts of Jewish leadership in the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos. Both authors paint a vivid picture about the Jewish leadership, the Judenrat or the Jewish Council. Each author has their own viewpoints on their specific leader and, throughout the diary, their perspectives on their leaders transform. Regardless of the leader, the diaries provide disturbing tails of Jewish governance and leaders oppressing other Jewish victims of Nazi persecution during World War II. In many ways, the diaries of Sierakowiak and Kaplan are very similar. In terms of...
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...8th, 1945 with the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest camp in Nazi territory and the one where most deaths took place; but for those who were lucky enough to survive, the effects of the war would remain with them for the rest of their lives. Not only were the Jews stripped of all their belongings and identity, but they were also forced to betray their own ethical codes. As survivors tried to assimilate back in to every day life, the memories of the family they had lost and the brutal events they witnessed kept resurfacing, leaving long-term psychological effects such as: anxiety, depression, psychosomatic disorders, survival guilt, isolation, and sleep disturbances. Not only did the survivors themselves experience these effects, but their children and grandchildren would as well. Victor Frankl’s memoir Man Search for Meaning, Lawrence Langer’s memoir Holocaust Testimonies: The...
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...The book ¨Night¨ by Elie Wiesel is a nonfiction essay about his own personal life during the Holocaust and death march, which he both lived and survived through until his liberation. When the Germans first invaded Romania in 1940 Elie and his Family of his mother, father,and 3 sisters)were living there during that time period. The Germans would go on to persecute and dehumanize the Jewish people along with other groups such as Homosexuals,Gypsies,and the Jehovah’s witnesses. The Germans´ first thing on the agenda to accomplish after invading Romania was to create a separation of the Jewish people into what was referred as ghettos. On Page 11 of Night, the writer gives us a description of the Ghetto they were put into. For instance, Elie comments, ¨Little by little, life returned to ´Normal´ ¨The barbed wire that encircled us like a wall did not fill us with fear.¨ This act shows to the Jewish people that they do not belong to the “normal” part of society and the barbed wire just symbolizes their separation this can really make them question themselves as if people and the religion that they worship. Another example of how Germans showed a separation between the Jewish people and the ¨Other People¨ was on the night of Kristallnacht Nov 9, 1938-Nov 10.The night of Kristallnacht is a night in which Jewish businesses, homes,and places of worship (Synagogues) were vandalized looted and in some cases burnt to the ground....
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...yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.” (Woodson) This essay will analyze the significant importance of the main idea in regards to the short story “The Lesson” written by Toni Cade Bambara. There are many ways that the main idea of “The Lesson” could be...
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...In the 1930’s, a wave of Jewish refugees fled to Shanghai to escape the horrors of an impending Holocaust. Although at first comfortably ensconced in the city the Japanese army soon forced the Jewish community to live in a ghetto. In an effort to transplant and sustain their culture in Shanghai, the Jewish population, mostly from Central Europe, established their own businesses in the area. This area eventually became “Little Vienna” because it appeared to be an Austrian-style street in the Jewish ghetto. After World War II, most of the Jews emigrated from Shanghai and soon after “Little Vienna” ceased to exist. In recent years, the opening of the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum and the influx of immigrants into the city have led to a rebirth...
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...to persecution in school. Many of their friends who were not Jewish began not socializing with them and even began to treat them in prejudice ways. This was soon followed with the announcement that, "German Jewish children were prohibited from attending German schools (www.mtsu.edu/.baustin/children.html). The life of children had quickly become as torn apart as their parents. However, there were more efforts to help the children escape the grips of the Nazi rule. Before 1939, several thousand children were able to escape in "Kindertransports to the Netherlands, Great Britain, Palestine, and the United States (www.mtsu.edu/.baustin/children.html). Those who were not able to escape were placed in ghettos and transit camps. These ghettos and transit camps served as the foreground to the death and slave labor camps that would soon follow. It was written in a Jewish diary, A Jewish ghetto in the traditional sense is impossible; certainly a closed ghetto is unconceivable (Dwork, p.155). Infact many of these ghettos were "closed meaning that the Jews that occupied the ghettos were forbidden to leave the area. Within the ghettos, there was belittlement of life. The segregated streets often had no working stores and closed places of worship. This left the isolated inhabitants subject to starvation, disease, and early death. Next came the death...
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...Night Essay Night, a memoir written by a holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, is a horrific, almost unbearable story of a boy who lived through the nightmares of the Auschwitz camps. Elie and his family lived in Sighet, Germany, where they were taken to live in a fraction of the town strictly for Jewish people called Ghettos. The Ghettos were meant to isolate the jews from the Germans. The German guards went through all the ghettos and began evacuating all the people. They detained and transported the Jews to concentration camps, where most of the time they did not survive. Elie’s life was forever changed as he lived through the various parts of the Auschwitz concentration camps. There he was separated from his mother and sister, tortured, starved...
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...“Bias is a shortcut your brain makes so it doesn’t need to evaluate every situation from scratch” said by Bitsy Bentley in an essay addressing her own racism toward African Americans. Bentley describes her experience with stereotyping people; specifically black men, which can be related to Brent Staples’ essay Just Walk On By. Brent Staples is an educated author and editor for the New York Times and in Just Walk on By, he explains his experience with being stereotyped as a dangerous black man throughout his life. In Just Walk On By, Staples relies on his persona and emotional appeal in order to convey the message that other people’s fears and stereotyping results in him having to carry the burden around nearly everywhere that he goes. Staples...
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...“Facing poverty with a rich girl’s habits” by Suki Kim, this essay was about a young lady who moved from South Korea to the United States. She is trying to transition her life from being wealthy to poor, being raised on a “hilltop mansion with an orchard and a pond and peacocks” to a “two-family brownstone in Woodside” which was owned by family friends. Her world came crashing down when her father went bankrupt, in their country that is punishable by jail time, so Kim and her family fled to America penniless. Unfortunately, this move was very hard due to the fact that her and her family were used to living a catered life with chauffeurs and butlers. After arriving they ended up with a Korean family in Harlem NY. Life of poverty was not so easy being classified as “f.o.b, (fresh off the boat)” knowing little English was hard to communicate and make friends. When it came to school it was strange having to take public transportation and doing homework without governess. In America Kim says the students were very ‘disrespectful in the eyes of Korean schools “were they were taught to bow to a teacher.” In America students did not really pay the teachers any mind and in the “ghetto” were they did search and police guarded doors. In her ESL (English as second language) class there was more peace were she could actually be with others like herself speaking and acting in their culture. But easily found out that they “had nothing in common” due to the “hierarchy of Korea’s class that...
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...commit a crime themselves. This is where the negative effect on the youth comes into play. Youth who were interviewed in the article stated that life was more difficult because of the constant fear of being a victim of crime. In order to cope with this fear, many youth turn to ruthless behavior, drug use, or gun violence. This very claim was depicted in the film Boyz N the Hood. As shown in the movie, “Doughboy” was a perfect example of how the urban planning issues negatively affected the youth. Doughboy validates the accuracy of the article statement, since throughout the film, he develops a drinking addiction, and participates in heavy gun violence. In the beginning of the movie, when he is a kid, he realized that...
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...Essay summary: Suki Kim’s “Facing Poverty with a Rich Girls Habits” Facing Poverty with a Rich Girls Habits is an insightful essay published in New York by the author Suki Kim. In this essay, she shares various challenges that she had to overcome in order to adapt to a new life of poverty and cultural diversity in New York after leaving behind her affluent and luxurious life in South Korea. This article discusses the author’s point of view as 13-year-old Korean immigrant who moved to United States out of desperation and financial tragedy rather than in search of a better life. The author’s main idea in this essay is to convey the message that the foundation of divided immigrant groups, cultural differences and generation gap are so deeply rooted even in the United States that it is impossible to eradicate them from the mindset of people. The author emphasizes on the fact that her wealthy and sheltered background in Korea created confusion. Thus, making it difficult for her to identify with people’s perception of her race in America “One new fact that took more time to absorb was that I was now Asian, a term that I had heard mentioned only in social studies class”, stated author Suki Kim in her article. She continued, “In Korea, yellow was the color of the forsythia that bloomed every spring along the fence that separated our estate from the houses down the hill. I certainly never thought of my skin as being the same shade.” The author struggled to accept the fact that...
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...the presence of white folks, never being outperformed in school or in public by white students and most importantly, always remembering that no matter what, white folks will do anything to get you. ...Mama's antidote to being born a black boy on parole in Central Mississippi is not for us to seek freedom; it's to insist on excellence at all times...There ain't no antidote to life, I tell her. How free can you be if you really accept that white folks are the traffic cops of your life? Mama tells me that she is not talking about freedom. She says that she is talking about survival." From:"How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance” An Essay By: Kiese Laymon I will not lie. I never go to the website that I found this essay on because most of the news I follow is only available through technological sites. It was fortunate for me that not only did I see the link on a dear friend's Facebook page, I became so engrossed after the first few sentences that I opened the link and read the powerful story of a man's experience growing up black in the south. I read that entire essay maybe six or seven times and though the entire thing excited me, it was those two small paragraphs that spoke to me... I am and always have been an interracial woman of Philadelphia. I don't claim to be otherwise unless someone asks me where I'm from then I'm free to speak the truth and say "I'm from Bayside New York”. When I get tired of hearing, "What are you?” I will lie...
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