I have to write this paper for my AP Lang and Comp class and it is supposed to be based of Indian Education which is where a Native American man ties the theme of overcoming racism and seeing how white people see him to each grade and an event that happened in it. So here is my rough draft. It needs work. I missed the day of peer editing. Be my critics.
Third Grade
All of the kids in our neighborhood played outside at the same time just before dinner and right after lunch. Riding bikes, digging holes, and making war. I was alone one day and walking on the sidewalk three houses down the street from our newly built house. Our house was new and clean and very white. It hadn't been broken in yet. I felt safer outside in the dirt with my feet cut from running around barefoot over the sand and pebbles the snow trucks had left behind from the icy winter like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs. That is where I found myself, playing in the sand, when the boy across the street road up on his shiny trick bike. He told me to lay down on the sidewalk. He usually liked to play these games in the privacy of my basement where the walss resembled the concrete bricks of a jail cell. Learning early on that listening to the older kids granted me certain access to various clubs, I settled myself with my head in the grass and my body stretching across the cement. He towered above me with all his authority and without a word peddaled his bike over my ribs. The compressing of my skin and my muscle and my bones sounded like a steak being tenderized for supper. The wet meat being pounded in with a wooden mallet. I begged for mercy, but I didn't have the power of innocence. Once more, he turned his bike and rode over me again, my stomach meat becoming softer. When I could finally open my eyes again, I saw my savior. A soft white light shone around a hazy silohuette that blocked away the sun. A hand that no god could have reached towards me, picked me up from the ground. No adult could understand how to save me from my unwillingness to get off the sidewalk where rocks bore into my back. I ran with my bare feet up the street to my clean house, never looking back. I'd heard the sounds of him avenging me before and I could hear them again in my mind. The sound of wind and the sound of meat being tenderized.
I can still hear the meat of another sounding so much juicier than my own.
Tenth Grade
The cirlces under my eyes started on one Friday night full of sweet smoke and hot, dewy skin. I went home late and hid the evidence under my clothes. While I was in the shower trying to scrub the dirt and sweat from my pores, I leaned my head directly under the stream of water and cupped my bruised hands around my ears and listened to the water roar. The grandeur of the noise becoming thunder rolling just under my skull over the vast sky of my brain. The water streamed down my face making it hard for me to breath but I couldn't let the sound disappear. Not yet. I let the thunder pound away every thought and every noise. In one second, I lost my breath and had to step forward. The water changed. It sounded like the Pop Rocks we used to eat. The snapping and the crackling of the little candy sitting on our tounges and how when we parted our lips we let the sound out, making it loud enough for eachothers ears. I slammed the shower off before I had to listen to much more.
Later, we ate Pop Rocks in the shower and almost went deaf.
2 comments:
Hmmm...well I'm assuming this will be longer when near finished and thus will have more to evaluate. But I'll start with outlining what I think the assignment was b/c I might be wrong. There is a piece you read called Indian Education and your assignment is inspired by that story. Just wanted to put that out there b/c I think my comments will make more sense if you know what I was assuming. Overall, you know I'm a fan of your writing but this piece is a bit all over the place, like a collage of phrases, sensations, and events without anything that links those pieces into an actual story.
It is clear this kid of a victim of bullying and your word choices "usually liked to play these games in the privacy of my basement..." is also suggestive of sexual abuse which I don't think you meant. What isn't clear is that the bullying is perpetuated by other races or that his race plays into any of this. I also think that expressing racism only through physicality is potentially limiting. Judgement and persecution based on anything is so much more layered than that. I think you should explore that.
You don't have to know racism to know how it feels to be an outsider, to be shunned, avoided, belittled, ignored, misunderstood, feared.
I think more than creating scenes, which you do well, you have to create characters so that we know who these people are and who we should be rooting for. It's not clear in what you have so far that he's overcoming anything. It just looks like he's getting the crap beat out of him but not really coming out of it with any revelatory insights about him or the people who torment him.
Example:
Third Grade
Our house was new and clean and very white. It was perfect, no bikes in the front walk, no fading paint or loose gravel from the rock garden spilling onto the sidewalk, we were so very proud to live there. But outside barefoot in the dirt still felt more like home and so that's where I found myself running around in the sand and pebble snow truck debris left over from our icy winter. All of the kids in our neighborhood played outside at the same time,right after lunch and just before dinner. Riding bikes, digging holes, and making war. So I went outside after dinner to see if I could find someone to play with. Most of kids stared at me for some time and then ignored me, one kid ran up to me rubbed my arm to see if the brown would rub off of me or on to him and then ran back to his waiting friends who had dared him to do that. I didn't know that wasn't nice, I just knew it made me feel different in a way that wasn't special. I tried again that night to see if I could rub the brown hard enough to make white appear from underneath. My mother was mortified at the sight of my raw red arm the next morning.
The next evening, I was excited when the boy across the street rode up to me while I entertained myself running on the sandy pebbles. He told me to lay down on the sidewalk and I obeyed, not only because he was older but because he was talking to me and was actually going to play with me. He towered over me with all his authority....
Not suggesting that you co-opt this language at all...it's just an example of setting the story up so the reader knows what we are talking about, e.g., racism.
-what do you mean by "but I didn't have the power of innocence?"
-it doesn't seem like the bicycle can be both compression and pounding unless you have the boy bounce the bike on his ribs or try to jump over him and land on his ribs. also ribs and stomach are different and i think the sensations would be different. riding across my stomach meat, i think would make me piss my pants, throw up, knock the wind out of me, hit at least one of my hip bones, whereas tires across ribs would feel a little bit like malicious CPR, cracking, compression, fear that my chest would cave in, my heart would be crushed, again with the wind being knocked out, pinching the outside of my upper arm as the tire rolled down over my chest and onto the ground, maybe a pedal grazing my chin, or the smell of his shoe leather as he rode over me again...
Okay enough, I'm rambling. I do hope this helps some. Good luck!
I kinda agree with my sister about this piece being kinda all over the place. And while it is well-written, I think that it may be tough to correlate some of these experiences to overcoming the obstacle of racism.
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