African American motifs: Identify two categories you see present:
-Pg 7: "Mrs. Paul was ahead of her time in that way. I don't remember any of my other elementary school teachers ever mentioning a mumbling word about our Black culture, writers, or history."
The African American motif I found in this selection is #16: Identity and Belonging. Because it is a sense of pride in black culture, identity and black past.
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3.
(A) 1945-1960's
(B) In Knoxville Tennessee
(C) The writer shows me the importance of this place through her descriptions and feelings about this place.
For example you can tell that she loved going to the library to read fairy tale novels such as Snow White and Rose Red. She also mentions "I never watched the clock or got impatient to go home because once there, I would go row by row, stack by stack, to find my beloved fairy tale stories. Eventually, I read every one in the library." This tells me that she enjoyed going to the library because it was one of the only colored libraries in Knoxville.
(D) Memories the writer/narrator gives about this place is the mid sized town of Knoxville. How she grew up in her first house on Mee Street on the Black side of town, in it was directly in front of the Austin Homes housing projects. But when she moved to a house in a not so busy street she remembers the address and knew the only other two black families who lived in this neighborhood as well as the middle class lily white people.
(E) Yes, she does. On pg. 7 the last paragraph, the writer explains that people do need to remember things, because they tell a story, and it marks who you are. The Knoxville she grew up in is no longer around but it still lives in her stories and remembering's.
(F) The impression I have of the place the reader described to me is that it is clear the mid sized town in Tennessee is divided in half between the whites and the blacks, not only in the neighborhoods but in the city as well, for example the buses and the library. She also mentions when she lived in her first house on Mee Street that she lived in the black side of town.
