Lou Gehrig

Like all the bright little colored boys and girls whom I knew when I was growing up in the 50's, I wanted to be a doctor. More accurately, my mother raised me to be a doctor. In a thousand ways, some subtle and some not so subtle, my mother implanted the idea that the sole calling worthy of the name was that of the physician.
I do not use that word ''calling'' lightly. For my mom, physicians -- those masters of the cabalistic mysteries of universes seen and unseen -- were not only the most richly endowed among us, but they would, accordingly, be richly rewarded both in this life and the hereafter. If God had a true representative on Earth, it was the physician, the healer, the medicine man, master of pain and its relief. And so it was that I came, early on, to fasten on a career in medicine.
My love of science and math made such a career choice seem natural. That I loved literature, that I loved to read, and that I loved to listen to my father's mischievous stories -- bone-shaking, funny stories (''lies'' my mom called them) about people we knew (especially my mom's nine brothers and two sisters) and people we didn't -- did little to unsettle my determination to become a doctor. No, literature was my avocation, something I engaged in for sheer pleasure, and for the way it conjured a world even larger and more various than Piedmont, W.Va.

Books were magic carpets, transporting me through space and time into worlds of love and yearning and betrayal, worlds of Gothic cathedrals and Victorian manor houses, worlds of the fiercest ideological passions and, eventually, when I became a teenager, worlds of sensual women and lusting men. Books brought me to these worlds, and these worlds to me. Not to worry: doctors could afford lots of leisure time; I would practice medicine in the day, and I would read at night.
But it was not these worlds of fantasy -- brought into our two-bedroom cottage in the Allegheny Mountains courtesy of the school library or the bookmobile -- that diverted me from what had seemed my destiny, I realize now; it was, of all things, my mother's example.
No one would have thought of her as our family's principal storyteller; that role my father occupied, famously. If he was our bard, our local storyteller, our very own family historian, it was my mother who was our writer, our biographer, and colored Piedmont's very own sepia scribe. For my mother had the task of writing the obituaries that appeared in our town's weekly newspaper when its colored citizens died; it was she who read expanded versions of these eulogies at funerals held in one of Piedmont's three black congregations: the lighter-complexioned Methodists, the darker Baptists, and most formidable of all, the gut-bucket Pentecostalists who spoke in unknown tongues down at Back Street's Church of God in Christ where, I was convinced, the Holy Ghost himself descended in black face each week with all the somber regularity of Sunday morning itself.
I would watch my mother, with her left hand, write her eulogies at our little red kitchen table, but I tried to be discreet. I'd pretend to be transfixed by our 13-inch TV and the wonders that Miss Frances was creating on ''Ding Dong School.'' What fascinated me was that she had managed somehow to learn to write ''straight up and down,'' despite being left-handed.
After what seemed to me an interminable wait, it would be time to go to church to hear my mother read. Not even the magic of her majestic script could rival the way she read at those funerals.
She would be dressed to kill; I, not yet 5 years old, dressed merely to maim. After a lot of whooping and hollering, moaning and crying, it would be my mother's time. I can't ever remember her rising from our pew to walk to the altar where she would read; I remember only the lilting fluency with which her words flowed.
My mother beatified them all. She could make a bad-tempered drunkard sound like St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. She knew what we were meant to be, even if it wasn't what we had become. And her words were raiments of gold: not only did they describe the dearly departed, they transfigured them as well. It seemed an act of God.
I have always felt a twinge of remorse that I never became the doctor my mother hoped I'd be. But if I drifted from that path, it was because of her: the music of her words, the radiance beaming from her face as she read, and, most of all, the sound of her voice. I hear it still.
1st page:
Gates is trying to magnify the point that literature will always overrule over what his mother wanted him to do. Although his mother’s way of him was towards a career in medicine, it is obvious that a strong passion for literature is prominent in their family. With his mother writing countless amounts of profound eulogies, he is inspired and also knows that literature is his true passion. In this, Gates is extremely successful in expressing his true inner desire opposed to medicine. His use of diction was incredible in his writing. Every word tied in with his own style and I was very entertained throughout the whole piece. Gates helps readers understand that although there is a path set out for you, the true genuine drive inside humans will overpower the cliché route.

2nd page:
This piece would connect to AP Lang because the words in literature play a prominent role in giving the emotional appeal towards readers. Language is extremely important in writing because without proper words, messages that we desire to express cannot be delivered. In our lives, we have cases where certain words must be used and ones that must be avoided. Whether we must say “I do” to finalize and confirm one’s love or “you have been accepted” to bring a new student to the school, every word that is carefully placed into a sentence is vital to bring its meaning. If I were to write an autobiography, I would talk about the battle that I had to fight between my passion for music or to follow the path that my dad set out for me. My dad, a successful owner of many small businesses, wanted me to follow his success in his stores but unfortunately, my desire was elsewhere. I would talk about how he encouraged my further learning of the arts but never allowed me to pursue it as a career.