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Michelle Hopson How would you feel when you meet an entirely different person than yourself? Would you feel critical? Appreciative? Upset? Warm-hearted? To answer this question it would be appropriate to say it depends on how you interact with that person. In Paule Marshall’s short story //To Da-Duh, in memoriam// Da-duh, the Grandmother, and her granddaughter meet for the first time on the island of Barbados. Their relationship strives to gain a complete understanding of each other’s environment through words and images but on the cusp to achieving this goal it becomes too late. Bonding between relatives can be difficult because society is continually transforming, and society molds the upcoming generation to roots that are not connected to their homeland. The older generation wants to impart to them their real roots. Roots that want to recognize as having value and worth because that is where their beginnings lie.

Carlos flores “To Da-Duh, in Memoriam” by Paule Marshall, is a great story. Da-Duh is a grandmother meeting her granddaughter for the first time. They both come from different worlds. Da-Duh is from Barbados, and her granddaughter from New York. You can tell both grew up very differently. The grandmother worked hard for everything she has. She had to struggle and go through hard times. The granddaughter even though young, has had an easier life. Even though both come both come from different parts of the world. They both have the same blood running there their veins.

Kiah Rothschild Power and inequality can be reflected in society based on the language being spoken by individuals within a community. The language used in a community can be changed very quickly in the need of shifting or hiding ones meaning. In addition, Standard English has presented itself as the oppressor’s language by creating boundaries upon those who are foreign speakers. When people speak diverse languages in a predominantly European English speaking community, often we see fear set in from white people who wish to understand every individuals conversation if necessary. As Africans experiences inequality they together had to find a way to gain power back in their new surroundings, after being stripped of what they knew.   There are many different kind of languages spoken in this world. For some people it is hard to learn new language and for others it is easy. People have different accent to speak another language than their main language. Some people can not prononunce some words. In the article “ // Language: Teaching New World/NewWorld // ” By Bell Hooks, described how hard for African Americans to say and learn some English words. Harpreet Sahota

Benjamin Gonzalez Race, Race Relations and White Folks. The language of Ebonics was construed as a result of African people being unable to pronounce certain words. As bell hooks states in her writing titled Teaching New Worlds/ New Words, “…to witness their language rendered meaningless with a colonizing European culture, where voices deemed foreign could no be spoken, were outlawed tongues, renegade speech.” She is clearly stating that because there was hostility towards natives and their means of communication, being their language. The easiest thing to do was to outlaw anybody speaking any language other than English.

Anthony Martinez “Language” also elaborates on the trauma caused from the white folks by making those of other descent feel so alienated and ashamed to speak there own languages and to be who they were, because it wasn't a part of the Western Civilizations norms of living. It states, “ where voices deemed foreign could not be spoken, were outlawed tongues, renegade speech (p. 168).” This reminds of what many minorities still face today, especially in work places. Many workplaces will try to tell there employees that they can't speak there native languages at work, amongst co-workers. I guess the oppressor's language is the only language accepted in White America. I agree with Adrienne Rich, “ It's not the English language that hurts me, but what the oppressor's do with it (p.168).”

Romi Jawanda The short story, To Da-Duh, in Memoriam, written by Paule Marshall had great aspects of generational difference, progress change and white folk racism. One of the quotes that deeply touched on generational difference was when the young girl tells her grandmother about all the technological things they have back in New York. “Over the weeks I told her about refrigerators, radios, gas stoves, elevators, trolley cars, movies, airplanes, subways….ect.” (pg. 280). This is completely new to Da Duh, compared to her generation where she grew up and is living, it is a different image for her to picture how New York is. In Barbados, where her grandmother is from, there were buses, bicycles and donkey carts; and women carrying huge baskets on their heads. We can imagine this era and location is more older and has not had much progress as there is in New York.

In the article “ //Language: Teaching New World/NewWorld//” By Bell Hooks, the reading shows the importance of finding oneself in language and how language helps creates not just a person’s identity but also cultures core. She writes about how Standard English has replaced other languages, making it the, “oppressor’s language”(pg. 168), because many cultures had to fall in order for the English language to become dominate. “ It is the language of conquest and domination: in the United States”(pg.168). It was a way for masters to strip identities from their slaves in order to make them feel helpless and embed fear into their lives. “ The very sound of English had to terrify”(pg.169). Many slaves had to meet in secret in order to speak their language; they did so in order to hold on to a piece of themselves, their identity. By: Georgina Garza

John Edgar Wideman has integrated identity and religion into his short story Damballah. In this story, we can read that Orion’s people whom are slaves no longer practice their African religion because they have become Americanized by the white folk. He, Orion or Ryan as they called him in American, was decapitated because he would not let go of his own religion and become Christian, Christian like the white folks. By: Ana I.

Jorge Gomez (Jorge, I cut it down a little, but thanks for posting! ~Dr. Schettler)

One way to kill a culture is to kill its language. African Americans have an arsenal of diverse languages. Even “grunts or gibberish was indeed language, it is difficult not to hear in standard English always the sound of slaughter and conquest,” (Hooks 169). By forcing another culture to learn a language that is not familiar to them, the use of communication is thereby obsolete and one’s intellectual skills will not improve. “What oppressors do with language, how they shape it to become a territory that limits and defines, how they make it a weapon that can shame, humiliate, and colonize,” (Hooks 168). Committing such cruel and cowardly acts was the norm at the time, where even the federal government was in favor of Jim Crow laws. Yet again, African Americans were mentally tortured because they were segregated and thus could not receive the education needed to resist. “By possessing a shared language, black folks could find again a way to make community, and a means to create the political solidarity necessary to resist,” (Hooks 170). Since blacks were forced to become adapted to a new language, they indeed learned to speak English and then began to receive more power, yet inequality was still in existence. Even with the indigenous cultures. Native Americans were put into California missions to learn Christianity. As the Native Americans wanted to resist, genocide resulted in the dramatic decrease in population for the culture. Besides mental torture, the dominant party also resorts to the use of physical violence to gain the upper hand.

Tyre Miles

Anyone can be strong, but very few actually have strength. The difference between the people that have strength and the people who are strong is the amount of courage and will that they have. Slavery in the world went on for centuries, and they chose specific slaves because they were strong enough to complete the long arduous tasks that the slave owners needed them to accomplish. It was only allowed to continue until the slaves got the strength to rise up and rebel against this unfair and inhumane treatment. The mistreatment of black people was supposed to have ceased in December of 1865 when the Thirteenth amendment went into effect completely abolishing slavery in the United States. The process really began on January 1, 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln issued the executive order known as the emancipation proclamation. Sadly, even with two years to prepare for what was assumed to be complete freedom from mistreatment and oppression, it continued on for another hundred years. There are not that many accounts of how slaves felt during their time under the rule of the men who took them from their native land and families, but there are much more accounts of how people felt during the time after when things like the Jim Crow Laws were still causing grief for African Americans. The overwhelming theme I have noticed in these accounts is strength, fight and overall courage to say we will no longer let this continue like it has.

Success as Defined by...(Ruft Draft) By: Derek Webber Success is defined in the Webster’s dictionary as “the favorable or prosperous termination of anything attempted; the attainment of a proposed object; prosperous issue” ([|www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/success]). Success is determined by an individual’s personal goals. A great example of this view regarding success can be heard from an unlikely source in hip/hop rap extraordinaire, Drake in his song “Successful.” Drake is a 24 year old black male actor turned singer, and rapping sensation over night. “Successful” became one of his many pop chart hits. In the chorus of the song, R&B artist Trey Songs states, “I just wanna be, I just wanna be successful” (Successful by Drake) numerous times before and after Drakes hard hitting versus on his definition of success. One verse that summarizes the tone of success is where Drake says “Nickels in my thoughts, dimes in my bed” (Successful by Drake). In other words, he wants more money than can spend and attractive women in his bed. For some reason, he states dimes, which means more than one woman. Referring to women as dimes also takes away the idea she is a human being and instead makes her seem like an inanimate object one could have whenever he wants. Drake's ideas on success may be different from another individual's thoughts or ideas on success. Another example of differences in the interpretation of success can be read in the short story “__To Da-Duh, in Memoriam__” by Paule Marshall, which focuses on the relationship between a young woman living the fast life in New York City and her grandmother, Da-Duh, living rural life in a more traditional way. The traditions Da-Duh tells her granddaughter about make her feel proud and a sense of success and accomplishment, while the young woman may feel working someday in a skyscraper buildings will show to the world her success. For many African-Americans, moving from rural environments with farms to working in industries in the west made them feel a sense of entitlement, thus making them successful in one’s own opinion. Success depends largely on a person’s environment and one’s own sense of achievement.

Aundrane Fletcher*** =) The relationship between Dah-Duh and her granddaughter reminded me a lot about the relationship we have today between young people and the elderly. Totally from different generations, but because of our similar ethnic background we always find common ground. Dah-Duh world was different from her granddaughters in critical ways. Dah-Duh was from Barbados and her granddaughter from New York. She was very old-fashioned, didn’t have much, and didn’t need anything fancy. The granddaughter mentions this in the story, she notices, “Perhaps she was both, both child and woman, darkness and light, past and present, life and death---all the opposites contained and reconciled in her.”(276) The granddaughter saw Dah-Duh as something foreign at first something different, something of her family’s past.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">D. Kolen <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Da-Duh lives in a more agriculutural environment where they are self sufficient, and as for her granddaughter their food items are imported and shipped to them. I believe that by Da Duh showing this land to her granddaughter, she wants her to know that she too can depend on herself whether it be through produce or her own hard work. However, she is also doing this to show that she wants to build a relationship with her granddaughter by sharing something that she finds important in her life. Passing down traditions and hobbies is quite often found in the African American community. It is how we keep our culture alive and I believe that is what To Da Duh is trying to show her granddaughter.

D. Wilson Malcom X said “ A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything”. Orion held strong not only within the physical aspect, taking all the punishment that was bestowed upon him yet, he was mentally strong. He endured a lot of pain and heartache. "Strength does not come from physical capacity, It comes from an indomitable will" -Mahatma Gandhi. The Indomitable will that Gandhi is talking about is what is deep inside you that helps you hold strong to what you have put your mind to. Will power to endure any and everything that may come your way.

Annalisa V
===The power of language is very sensitive yet powerful enough to be feared. It also has the power to bring peace and tranquility. Yet it can bring destruction and grief to whomever crosses its path. Language is a way to show each other’s thoughts and beliefs, no matter how good or bad it is. Simply saying one word can alter peace and war.===

Rosiland Duffey <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">John Edgar Wideman wrote a story about how a young African American boy, whom was just coming into manhood, have became curious about a man name Orion (Ryan) that had recently came to the plantation that acted differently than any other man he had contact with on the plantation. Orion stilled practiced the forbidding religion that he had learned from his native land called Damballah and refuse to convert to Christianity. According to Wideman, Orion knew that his actions would lead him into trouble and evidently would lead to the Master making the decision to kill him (422) if he continues to refuse to convert to the ways of white society. With this feeling deep down inside him, Orion knew that there was a very short time spanned to find someone whom he would be able to pass down the religion of Damballah to.

Steven Pope

<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">The feelings of healing I believe actually took place when they found their voice. And by that I mean that they could communicate how they felt through song where the majority of the people could actually communicate. “…black people created an intimate speech that could say far more than was permissible within the boundaries of standard English…It is absolutely the essential that the revolutionary power of black vernacular speech cannot be lost in contemporary culture.”(171). This is the healing, they found their way to communicate and preserve their language by how they express how they feel in English, characteristics of their language was also preserved in that they were able to express through song how they felt and it caught people by the eye.

Raymond Mitchell

African American culture is unique in its own way during the times of slavery intertwining the old African cultures with the newly develop customs established in the New World. The African slaves were forced to adopt a new language, religion, and even a new way of thinking that robbed them of their human rights while others steadily held onto their African cultures and passed them onto later generations. In this process the different African cultures that did not survive in the New world would be forgotten by their people forever. In John Edgar Widman’s “Damballah” and Paule Marshall’s” Du-Duh” there are several accounts of differences between the New World cultures of African American and the Old African slaves. Therefore not having a culture to belong to leaves the question to be asked “Who are we and Where do we come from”.

Monica Silva

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;">In the short story “To Da-Duh”, there are family ties, generational differences, and many images of nature and land. This story is about a granddaughter and her grandmother meeting for the first time after many years and learning the differences of each other’s lives. Da Duh is the young girl’s grandmother who lives and is from Barbados, while her granddaughter is from New York. Meeting her grandmother for the first time wasn’t as pleasant, because the grandmother would rather have a grandson than a granddaughter.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Cindy Vang-My grandma asks to use the phone. I hand her my sister’s new iPhone 4. My grandma looks completely lost and confused. She asks me to help her use it. I had forgotten that my 87 year old grandma doesn’t even own her own cell phone and still uses her house phone which is connected to a cord. There was a generational difference between us, so my grandma had no idea that smart phones like these even exist. I had totally forgotten that my grandma didn’t grow up with these kind of technology. That is exactly what happened in “To Da-duh, in Memorian” by Paule Marshall. Da-duh is and elderly women who is amazed when her granddaughter explains how the city life is like in New York. Compared to Dad-duh’s small countryside life, she is in disbelief. Generational differences affected both Da-duh and the narrator.

“Language” by bell hook focuses on several issues, but at the same time it expresses a message to the reader about how black people suffered to be successful and identify with each other in an unknown country and the obstacles Africans overcame to learn the language of conquest and domination; the standard English. Learning the language of conquest for people from other countries was a goal that they all wanted to achieve, so they could identify themselves. Africans modified language through generations by speaking the language and breaking it apart. New generations were adding and taking away words of the language, transforming it into a new diverse culture that distinguishes it from others. Juan Gastelum