Jason’s English Blog

 Today in class we began to read “The Rockpile”, by James Baldwin. So far I kind of relate to this book because, like Roy, I couldn’t really go outside and play. But unlike Roy, I could go outside and play basketball in my driveway or play in the backyard so it wasn’t too bad. I also related to when John let Roy go outside to play without telling their mother; when my parents were out my older brother sunk a girl in the house, I’m not going to lie, I told, but I was young and I wasn’t expecting my brother to get in trouble. I also had an incident in my neighborhood similar to the one in the story; one time while my family and I were leaving to go somewhere, we saw 3 people run out of our next door neighbor’s house after they robbed it. It was crazy seeing them run into the woods behind our houses, and I don’t think the police ever caught them.

 Today we took a test on the poems we been going over in class. I did worst than I expected. I had all the notes and everything I don’t know how I got such a bad grade. But after going over the missed questions I was more mad because I found out that I switched from the correct answer twice and missed a question for not reading it properly. I think I just wasn’t locked in today and I’m really disappointed with my performance. Next time I’m going to take extra time to really break brown the questions and really refer to my notes more.

Mr. Rease was out today so we had to answer some questions on “Mother to Son”, by Langston Hughes. It was an easy assignment although number 8 kind of stumped me. I didn’t quite get what it meant by, “what complex account does this create?”The notes that we took made it easier to answer the questions and I finished the work with some time in class.

 Today in class we read the poem “I, Too” by Langston Hughes and analyzed it. The message of the poem is that everyone is created equal. He brings up that he’s a “darker brother” (black) and when food it brought out he’s not allowed to sit at the kitchen. This shows that he’s discrimination by the color of his skin. Later in the poem it says, “Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table when company comes”, meaning that in the future he’ll no longer be discriminated based off his skin and have equal rights.

Today in class we answered 10 questions about The Negro Speaks of Rivers. Many of the questions were asking about the connection of rivers and African Americans. I had to rush to finish like the last 2 questions so I couldn’t really give a full response. I liked analyzing this poem because I like how Langston Hughes talks about how the rivers changed the speaker and how important the rivers are to the speaker and how he compares them to human veins.

 Today we went over our answers for our homework about our first thoughts of different races, sexes, sexualities, etc. For me it was pretty challenging because you could also put your negative thoughts as well. I’m going to be honest I didn’t really put anything negative for some things because I didn’t want to make people mad. Overall it was a interesting experience because I had to think about multiple things that made me come up with my answers.