Read the excerpt from Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban . The sunset flares behind a row of brownstones, linking them as if by a flaming ribbon. Lourdes massages her eyes and begins walking with legs that feel held by splints. “I’m glad to see you, Lourdes. Thank you for everything, hija , the hat, the cigars. You buried me like an Egyptian king, with all my valuables!” Jorge del Pino laughs. Lourdes perceives the faint scent of her father’s cigar . . . “Where are you, Papi?” The street is vacant, as if a force has absorbed all living things. Even the trees seem more shadow than substance. “Nearby,” her father says, serious now. The author uses magic realism by
Read the two excerpts about Pilar from Dreaming in Cuban . Excerpt 1: They called me brujita , little witch. I stared at them, tried to make them go away. Excerpt 2: Another woman, an elderly mulatta, claimed that her hair was falling out from the menacing stares the baby gave her. Which statement is the best synthesis for the two excerpts?
Read the excerpt from Leslie Marmon Silko’s story "The Man to Send Rain Clouds." Leon knocked at the old carved door with its symbols of the Lamb. While he waited he looked up at the twin bells from the king of Spain with the last sunlight pouring around them in their tower. What does the image of the Lamb above the priest’s door symbolize?
Read the excerpt from Leslie Marmon Silko’s story "The Man to Send Rain Clouds." The sun was approaching the long mesa where it disappeared during the winter. What type of figurative language is included in this passage?
Which best describes the purpose of this passage?
Read the excerpt from “Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry.” For me, reading has always been a path toward liberation and fulfillment. To learn to read is to start down the road of liberation, a road which should be accessible to everyone. No one has the right to keep you from reading, and yet that is what is happening in many areas in this country today. There are those who think they know best what we should read. These censors are at work in all areas of our daily lives. Which best describes how Anaya uses rhetorical appeal to convince readers that censors want to limit what people can read?
Read the excerpt from “Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry.” In other cases, the censoring has been direct and brutal. On February 28, 1981 the morning newspaper carried a story about the burning of my novel, Bless Me, Ultima . The book was banned from high school classes in Bloomfield, New Mexico, and a school board member was quoted as saying: “We took the books out and personally saw that they were burned.” Which type of rhetoric used most shows how the powerful use censorship to silence the powerless?
Read the excerpt from "Mother Tongue." Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother’s English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It’s my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world. Which best summarizes the central idea of the excerpt?
Read the excerpt from "Mother Tongue." I am a writer. And by that definition, I am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language—the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade. And I use them all—all the Englishes I grew up with. How does Tan build a central idea of her story in the excerpt?
Read the excerpt from Amy Tan’s essay “Mother Tongue.” I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s “limited” English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect. What is the purpose of this text?
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