GEN104 Week 3 Reading Notebook v.02.03.

2020

Week 3 Reading Notebook

Annotating a Narrative Text

This activity will give you practice with annotating less formal, more creative works, such as books and
essays. Below are three passages from various essays/books. Use the margin to make annotations.
Answer the questions following the third passage.

From Isabel Allende, “Short Story.”

Isabel Allende. In: Journal of Modern Literature. 20(1):21-28; Indiana
University, 1996. Language: English, Database: JSTOR Journals

5 years ago
Let me try to answer this question. Five hundred years ago, when the
Spaniards and the Portuguese conquered the vast continent that is
now called Latin America, two cultures collided against each other. 5 YEARS Spaniards and the
On one hand, the Christian monarchies of Europe, and on the other, Portuguese conquered the vast
the Indian theocracies of America. The men who came after continent Call Latin America
Christopher Columbus were responsible for the greatest genocide in
history. Millions died in slavery; their cities were destroyed; their
gods were humiliated. During the following centuries, all the races of
the planet came to our land. Black slaves, Nordic adventurers, Arab Christopher Columbus were
merchants, Asian immigrants, thousands of refugees escaping from responsible for the greatest genocide
violence or poverty. They brought their traditions, their languages, in history
their memories, and their sufferings. And they mixed with the
Millions died in slavery; their cities
indigenous population in pain, hatred, and love-giving birth to a
were destroyed;
people marked by a tragic destiny with a wild imagination. We are all
called Latin Americans, but we are not a homogeneous society. Our
continent is a cake of many layers. Outsiders often get confused.
traditions, languages, memories, and
Some tourists return home with a pack of photographs, and they can't
their sufferings. And they mixed with
remember where they were taken, if in Colombia or maybe Bolivia.
the indigenous population
Probably the reason is that we do have something in common-the
outstanding continuity of our culture. Where politicians and generals
have failed, the artists have succeeded. Writers, painters, musicians,
poets-each one imagining reality and
re-inventing the past in original ways-have been able to invent a
choir of diverse but harmonious voices. They narrate and explain
Latin America to the world, and they narrate and explain us to
ourselves.

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 GEN104 Week 3 Reading Notebook v.02.03.2020

Text to Read – excerpt from Thomas More’s Utopia Use the below spaces to take notes
 More, Thomas, Sir, Saint. Raleigh, NC : Alex Catalogue, 2001. 69 as you read:
p. Language: English, Database: Ashford University Library eBook
Collection

If these metals were laid up in any tower in the kingdom, it

would raise a jealousy of the Prince and Senate, and give birth
to that foolish mistrust into which the people are apt to fall,  If the metals were placed in
a jealousy of their intending to sacrifice the interest of the public to the tower jealousy and
their own private advantage. If they should work it into mistrust would rise.
vessels or any sort of plate, they fear that the people might  The people might grow too
grow too fond of it, and so be unwilling to let the plate be run fond of the vessels and if a
down if a war made it necessary to employ it in paying their war comes about, they
soldiers. To prevent all these inconveniences, they have fallen would not be able to
upon an expedient, which, as it agrees with their other policy, employ it.
so is it very different from ours, and will scarce gain belief  To prevent all these things
among us, who value gold so much and lay it up so carefully. from happening they have
They eat and drink out of vessels of earth, or glass, which make an expedient.
an agreeable appearance though formed of brittle materials:  They eat and drink from
while they make their chamber-pots and close-stools of gold the earth which make an
and silver; and that not only in their public halls, but in their agreeable appearance
private houses: of the same metals they likewise make chains through formed of brittle
and fetters for their slaves; to some of which, as a badge of materials.
infamy, they hang an ear-ring of gold, and make others wear  While other nations focus
a chain or coronet of the same metal; and thus they take care, on the loss of gold and
by all possible means, to render gold and silver of no esteem. silver as if they lost a body
And from hence it is that while other nations part with their part; the Utopians treat it as
gold and silver as unwillingly as if one tore out their bowels, if they lost a penny.
those of Utopia would look on their giving in all they possess  When they find jewels on
of those (metals, when there was any use for them) but as the their coast, they clean them
parting with a trifle, or as we would esteem the loss of a penny. and give them to their
They find pearls on their coast, and diamonds and carbuncles children who later discard
on their rocks; they do not look after them, but, if they find it as they get older.
them by chance, they polish them, and with them they adorn
their children, who are delighted with them, and glory in them
during their childhood; but when they grow to years, and see
that none but children use such baubles, they of their own accord,
without being bid by their parents, lay them aside; and
would be as much ashamed to use them afterward as children
among us, when they come to years, are of their puppets and
other toys.

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 GEN104 Week 3 Reading Notebook v.02.03.2020

From Notes of a Native Son. By: Baldwin, James, Literary

Cavalcade, 00244511, Apr2000, Vol. 52, Issue 7

He was, I think, very handsome. I gather this from photographs and

from my own memories of him, dressed in his Sunday best and on his
way to preach a sermon somewhere, when I was little. Handsome,  The man was handsome
proud, and ingrown, "like a toenail," somebody said. But he looked to and dressed in his best, but
me, as I grew older, like pictures I had seen of African tribal he looked more African
chieftains: he really should have been naked, with war paint on and than Baldwin expected.
barbaric mementos, standing among spears. He could be chilling in  The man was bitter, but he
the pulpit and indescribably cruel in his personal life and he was exuberated power; he was
certainly the most bitter man I have ever met; yet it must be said that a contradiction proud of his
there was something else in him, buried in him, which lent him his skin color, but it had
tremendous power and, even, a rather crushing charm. It had caused him humiliation in
something to do with his blackness, I think--he was very black--with his life,
his blackness and his beauty, and with the fact that he knew that he  He was an old man now
was black but did not know that he was beautiful. He claimed to be and had faced many
proud of his blackness but it had also been the cause of much obstacles in his life.
humiliation and it had fixed bleak boundaries to his life. He was not a
young man when we were growing up and he had already suffered
many kinds of ruin; in his outrageously demanding and protective

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way he loved his children, who were black like him and menaced,
like him; and all these things sometimes showed in his face when he  His own children feared
tried, never to my knowledge with any success, to establish contact him and when he helped
with any of us. When he took one of his children on his knee to play, them with their homework
the child always became fretful and began to cry; when he tried to it usually ended in a fit of
help one of us with our homework the absolutely unabating tension rage.
which emanated from him caused our minds and our tongues to  He always brought home
become paralyzed, so that he, scarcely knowing why, flew into a rage the wrong surprise
and the child, not knowing why, was punished. If it ever entered his  He did not like people and
head to bring a surprise home for his children, it was, almost his popularity as a minister
unfailingly, the wrong surprise. I do not remember, in all those years, diminished a lot
that one of his children was ever glad to see him come home. From  When he died, he had not
what I was able to gather of his early life, it seemed that this inability seen his friends for years
to establish contact with other people had always marked him and and as a bitter man.
had been one of the things which had driven him out of New Orleans.
There was something in him, therefore, groping and tentative, which
was never expressed and which was buried with him. One saw it
most clearly when he was facing new people and hoping to impress
them. But he never did, not for long. We went from church to smaller
and more improbable church, he found himself in less and less
demand as a minister, and by the time he died none of his friends had
come to see him for a long time. He had lived and died in an
intolerable bitterness of spirit and it frightened me to see how
powerful and overflowing this bitterness could be and to realize that
this bitterness now was mine.

Review the text and complete these statements after reading the passage.

1. I was confused by….

 I was confused by the wording in the first two reading and their languages. It was a bit
defect for me to figure out but after reading it a few times I finally understood it.

2. After reading the passage, I learned…

 After reading the first passage I learned a lot about Christopher Columbus and how
unfairly he treated the Native Americans. In the second passage I learned that some

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GEN104 Week 3 Reading Notebook v.02.03.2020

places do not value gold and jewels as much as we do, and they might be better of for it.
In the final passage I learned a lot about the struggles that African Americans faced in the
past and that it took a vary harsh toll on them.

3. I agree with….
 I agree with Isabel Allende, the Native Americans were treated horribly by the
Europeans. They destroyed their homes, temples and their entire culture just for personal
gain and it was very wrong.

4. I disagree with…
 I disagree with James Baldwin; I am not sure who he was talking about in his passage,
but it sounded like this person went through a lot. Therefore, they paid a price mentally it
took a toll on them and as a result they died all alone.

5. This passage reminds me of…

- The passages kind of reminded me of those life lesson books because in each passage
a story was told where we could learn something from it.

6. Write down your guide questions and answer them here.

Content from Excelsior University OWL adapted in this activity