Ruby Malcom is a single mother of three, Maria (16), Irene (14), and John (13). Ms. Malcom has been attending counseling with social worker, Sandra Kaplan, for the past four months for treatment to address anxiety related to family stress. Ms. Malcom was referred to the Urban Family Services by her oldest daughter’s pediatrician. Ms. Malcom’s daughter, Irene, is experiencing increased and escalating behavioral issues at home and school. Ms. Malcom is of Haitian- American decent and has receives supports form her co-workers, church members and her parents; who live in the building adjoining hers. Ms. Malcom strives to take a different approach to discipline than that of her parent and not practice the use of corporal punishment to correct Irene’s behaviors, but instead has sought collaboration from various agencies.…
Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption follows the story of Louie Zamperini, a rebellious child who grew up to become one of the fastest runners of the 1930s. He competed as an Olympic track runner in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The future was looking bright for Zamperini before World War II began, which resulted in the Olympics being cancelled and Louie being drafted into the Army Air Forces as a bombardier. Midway through 1943, his B-24 crash landed in the Pacific Ocean. For weeks, Louie and two other men drifted westward across a seemingly endless ocean, accompanied by a pack of sharks and surviving on scraps of bird and fish meat and the occasional rainfall. Eventually, he arrived in Japanese…
In the book, The First Part Last, Angela Johnson describes mostly in the book “Coming of age.” She uses many symbols that represent coming of age, and how Bobby went from being a child to a semi-man. He has matured majorly, but he is just not fully there yet with becoming a full man. Bobby overcomes constant obstacles while trying to conquer coming of age. He gives up playing basketball all the time, spending all day at the arcade with his friends, and being able to have fun, and live his life the way he wants to live it. Becoming a man Bobby is forced with constant obstacles, but he knows and is ready to face the reality with them.…
In the memoir The Glass Castle, the Walls family faces many discriminations from the outside world due to their life in poverty. The one who is most impacted by this is Jeanette. During this time, Jeanette is in the fifth grade, and is being treated differently from the other kids due to her life in poverty. After lunch time, the grade goes outside, and this is the perfect opportunity for kids to pick on others. Jeanette is targeted by a group of girls who don’t see eye to eye. After they completely surrounded Jeanette, after a disagreement and the first punch thrown, the girl had seen that Jeanette had no buttons on her coat. After the girl said, “This girl ain’t got no buttons on her coat!”(p.139), she felt obligated to persist in the one-sided…
While reading the novel, 'My Antonia', one can very quickly notice that author, Willa Cather has much admiration for the character, Antonia. Throughout 'My Antonia', readers can conclude that Antonia is a very optimistic and inteligent girl who grows into an independent young woman. Due to such characteristics, many people could very easily find themselves admiring Antonia.…
Readers are enlightened by a true story about the relationship between a black boy and his white mother and how it all unfolds. In the novel, “The Color of Water,” by James McBride, he tells his story about growing up in an interracial household. Although they had a rocky relationship McBride looks up to his mother in some ways. Of the many things that occur, James’s mother Ruth never tells him the truth about her back round, Ruth holds a lot inside herself from him, and James becomes very rebellious toward his mother after his step-father dies.…
The Mammy, Matriarch, Breeder, and Jezebel. These images haunt black women wherever they go. They have, for a long time, inhibited them from reaching their full potential. Black women have fought for generations to overcome these images. Maria del Guadalupe Davidson, using many points from Patricia Hill Collin’s Black Feminist Thought, provides a great insight to these four stereotypes. Though the stereotypes are not as prevalent in our society as they were during the time of Their Eyes Were Watching God, black women continue to fight against…
Stephanie Stewart is being escorted by her mother, Sara Stewart. Stephanie is on student council and plays the trumpet. She also enjoys acting and has been in several community plays. The things that Stephanie is most looking forward to in High School are playing volleyball, theater class, and seeing old friends.…
In the book “When You Reach Me”, written by Rebecca Stead, twelve-year old Miranda is the main character, she also is a dynamic character. At the end of the book Miranda has a totally different mindset than she had in the beginning of it. Her best friend, Sal, who is also the dynamic character, started to go away from Miranda, and she was sad about that. Later on she found out he was just noticing that he had no other friends besides Miranda, and he wanted to change that. After Sal stopped talking to Miranda, she found a new friend, Annemarie. Annemarie is a dynamic character because she changes her friends. She is always a happy girl, but she has a health condition called epilepsy. Marcus, otherwise known as the laughing man, he is always…
In The New England Nun the main character, Louisa Ellis deals with conflict of changing her way of life. Louisa Is due to marry Joe Daggot after 14 years of waiting. Through imagery, you see the life of order and regiment Louisa has created to deal with loss in her life. She finds the first excuse to appropriately end the engagement instead of accepting a change in her daily.…
As seen by many different mothers in the novel Sula by author Toni Morrison, mothers play an important part in kid’s life, shaping how they view different beliefs in the world and setting up values in their child. Every individual’s life is shaped by personal relationships they have with others. The mother and child relationship greatly affects the identity development in the kid. As seen in the racist community in the novel, the mother and kid relationship is important in the sense that the mothers and children share understanding of the sexist oppression, intertwining their lives together even more than they already were. As seen in different mother and daughter relationships including, Eva and Hannah Peace, Sula and Hannah Peace, and Helene and Nel Wright, readers come to terms that mothers and their children represent the connection between future and past.…
Initially, before entering adolescence, Lauren and her daughter had a very good relationship, she called this the “golden era” between them. There seemed to be no conflict and Lizzie and her would spend a lot of time together doing activities that they both seemed to enjoy. Lauren began to notice a change in her daughter when she was no longer interested in spending time with her; their new relationship now consisted of the both of them getting into constant arguments with each other. There were certain periods in their “new” relationship where Lizzie’s mother believed to have made some progress with her but, Lizzie’s temper changed drastically. This could be seen when they both of them went to the mall to get Lizzie a pair of jean and shoes that she wanted, she seemed to be very content with the purchase, therefore in a good mood.…
Isabel is a young girl. Isabel is a slave. Isabel is a girl who is constantly juggling new problems that are thrown at her. In Laurie Halse Anderson’s book Chains, people walk right over Isabel without even a thought. Isabel still gets back up. Three quotes that I think resemble Isabel’s situations are; “Life is tough my darling, but so are you”, “You have brains in your head, feet in your shoes, you can steer yourself in any direction you choose”, and “Hope is the little voice in your head that whispers ‘maybe’ when it seems the whole world is shouting ’no’”.…
The personal novel I chose was called “Daisy Miller” by Henry James. The publishers were Harper & Brothers, which was published in 1879. There are a total of 43 pages. The way James’ novels are structured is that he begins it with a situation and a character. James would then, in effect, sit back and simply observe what would happen when a character was confronted with this new situation. This allowed him more freedom and allowed him the opportunity of "getting to know" his character by observing him in a series of scenes.…
She does not mother Kevin because of a strong love bond between them but out of a model that intensively pervades Western culture. She exposes with her attitude the constructedness of the maternal, making vivid the gap between aspiration and practice. Eva’s attempts to play the mother’s role generate an increasing awareness of mothering as an artificial performance, and of the child as an abstract concept that the reality often contradicts. Parenting emerges not as a natural ability but as a learned skill. Lacking any instinctual emotional connection to her son, Eva decides to follow the maternal role by the book, hoping that those fulfilling feelings will appear. Adapting to her new role, Eva exposes the constructedness of maternal love as integral to women’s identity emphasised by Badinter. Mother’s affection towards the child can be faked in order to conform to contemporary standards. Instead of rebelling against this fraud, she decides to perform her task dutifully until Thursday, hiding her feelings of mistrust and anger from her husband and her son. In trying to adhere to the role of good mother she turns in fact into a bad one. Being unable to love Kevin, she treats him as a stranger, according to useless models which cause great consternation as sites of maternal failure. Eva's mothering experience involves a daily if not hourly confrontation with her failure. Since Kevin behaves properly when he is with Franklin, her husband is lead to think that Eva does not like their son because he does not ‘square’ with her. Kevin does not seem to conform or…