Homework Helper

Mama Day by Gloria Naylor is a novel that relies on Magical Realism to construct a narrative that weaves together folklore and contemporary literature. Focusing on the relationship between George, who was raised in a white-thinking, patriarchal orphanage, and Cocoa, raised by two emphatically African-American culture and lore oriented mother figures, the novel comes to a head with the intersection of a logical, “real” world and a mythical one. Ultimately, Cocoa is so tied to the South (and thus Willow Springs) due to strong folkloric traditions. It is these traditions that epitomize the gap of understanding between her and George--and ultimately leads to his death. From the beginning eight pages of the book, written in third person, Naylor established what author Trudier Harris calls a “porch connection” in her book The Power of the Porch: The Storyteller’s Craft in Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, and Randall Kenan. Harris argues that this “porch voice” is what invokes a “Southe

Violence and Kindred (Prompt 2) The novel Kindred by Octavia Butler depicts a story of a slave plantation through the eyes of a modern black woman--a story that is driven by violence, racism, misogyny, and pain. Violence works as a key motif, motivator, and catalyst throughout the novel. Violence develops characters in different ways, ultimately deciding whether it will make or break them, and it functions as the cause for every action in the novel. From the beginning of the novel there are ever present examples of terror and pain inflicted on the 17th century slave people, creating a contrast between Dana’s life in the 20th century. Butler packs her novel with examples of violence such as forced labor, rape, and whippings to signify the ever present fear that African Americans were forced to live in. Dana lived her life before Rufus relatively free of pain, learning about the violence that slaves faced but never able to imagine how it truly felt to live in a society like that.

Key terms: Universal Declaration of Human Rights A declaration adopted by the UN in 1948 http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ “Common standard of achievement for all peoples and nations.   It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected. ” RIGHTS TO WHICH ALL HUMANS BEINGS ARE ENTITLED Promotes development of friendly relations between nations- universal respect Genocide UN convention on genocide: any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such: A. Killing members of the group; B. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; C . Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; D. Imposing measures intended to restrict births within the group; E. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.