Week 3 Reading Notebook Annotating A Narrative Text: From Isabel Allende, "Short Story."
Week 3 Reading Notebook Annotating A Narrative Text: From Isabel Allende, "Short Story."
2020
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.
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.
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
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.
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.