“If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: No more water, the fire next time!”
James Baldwin
The Fire Next Time (1963)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
“Go Tell It on the Mountain: The first novel (1953) of the black US writer James Baldwin (1924-1987). The book has autobiographical undertones, and the climax is the religious conversion of a 14-year-old Harlem boy. At the center of the book are the boy’s troubled relations with his stepfather, a preacher of the storefront Temple of the Fire Baptized. Aspects of the slave era and of life in a dysfunctional family are recounted in flashbacks. The phrase ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain’ appears in the refrain of an African-American spiritual:
‘Go, tell it on the mountain,
Over the hills and everywhere
Go, tell it on the mountain,
That Jesus Christ is born’”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
His premature death robbed the world of a keen, compassionate intellect. Since reading The Fire Next Time in my early twenties, my eyes have been wide open to his genius. If you want to know more about James Baldwin, I cannot recommend highly or often enough Raoul Peck’s magisterial documentary “I Am Not Your Negro.”
So, this Cultural Literacy worksheet on James Baldwin does not do the man justice, but it might serve as an introduction to him for your students.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Who was the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize in literature? Gwendolyn Brooks, in 1950, for Annie Allen.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
“Consider the history of labor in a country in which, spiritually speaking, there are no workers, only candidates for the hand of the boss’s daughter.”
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Rounding out this morning’s labors will make this the tenth post I’ve published on this Monday in late July. So, here is a reading on gender identity and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
Did Alice Walker start out by writing fiction or poetry? The first published work of the poet and novelist was a book of poetry: Once: Poems (1968). She followed up soon after, however, with a novel: The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970).
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Before Pride Month 2019 slips away, I want to post this reading on the Stonewall Riot and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it. Stonewall was a key moment in United States History and LGBTQ history, so these documents are core materials. They have been, in my classrooms, of very high interest to LGBTQ students.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
I don’t want to let Women’s History Month 2019 pass without posting something related to Alice Walker. To that end, here is a reading Ms. Walker’s novel The Color Purple and a vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet to accompany it. These, I was pleased to see, were of no small interest to the young women in the classes I currently teach.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review
Moving right along with Women’s History Month 2019, here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on Gwendolyn Brooks (and if you like this, the good folks at Education World will give you a yearlong supply of them).
Also, here is a PDF of Ms. Brooks’ linguistically elegant poem “We Real Cool.”
 | A Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
 | markstextterminal on Cree |
 | panzer046a139293db on Cree |
| markstextterminal on Cree |
Mark's Text Terminal 
You must be logged in to post a comment.