Selected Poems of Langston Hughes

As part of my English class for this semester I was required to read Selected Poems of Langston Hughes. I never thought in my life I would read a whole book of poems, mainly because of my attention span, but I got through it. The interesting part about this collection is that Hughes himself put this collection together, and decided what poems should be in the book. In the book he divides the section up into different categories of poems. The most interesting section to me was the "Montage of a Dream Deferred" section. What I did not know about the section is that the whole section is to be read as one big poem. When it is actually read like that it makes sense with how it flows, and the overall theme of the poems. What I liked about Hughes's work is that he brought up a lot of topics that were being addressed and pushed under the rug all at the same time. The topics of segregation in America. Through out his poems it can be seen that he talks about the ways that black people are being used socially and economically. It is from these threats to society that the motif of dreams comes through in the black population in Hughes' work. For someone like me who is not very good at reading between the lines of poetry, I really enjoyed reading his. Hughes does a great job of talking about the issues in ways that people can understand on the surface, but talking about so much more underneath. If you don't want to read the whole body of Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, I highly recommend reading a few of them and really thinking about what he is trying to say in this poem. Until Next Time, Keep Turning the Pages 90s Born Reader

Cane, Jean Toomer

This year I'm taking an English Literature class called, Modernism in Black Literature. Let's all remember that I am not English major, and I have finished my English requirements, so I'm truly taking this class for fun and out of an interest. The first novel that we read this semester was Cane by Jean Toomer. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Cane was very interesting in the fact that Toomer breaks it up first in big chunks, of the southern portion and the northern portion, and then goes on to make the "chapters" of the book individual stories. In the southern portion of the book the individual stories takes a look into the lives of different black individuals and what they go through being black in the south. He tells about the highs and the lows, what it's like to be part of race that is feared and hated, and what it's like to be part of the southern injustices.When the second half of the novel starts the location has shifted to the north where the treatment of blacks is a little bit different. There's not as many injustices or problems, but there is always the feeling of being different than the rest of the world. The feel of the north comes through as the characters experience different clubs and also there is some integration. In a lot of the stories Toomer uses the view point of women, which is also very different in the fact that women at this time still don't get much of a say.Not only are women telling the stories, but they are also the object of many of the stories when a man is telling the story. This book to me was sometimes hard to get through. It had high points and low points, but I do believe that it is worth reading. It's not something that I would have picked up on my own, but I'm glad that I had to read it. Until Next Time, Keep Turning the Pages 90s Born Reader

Red Riding Hood, Sarah Blakley-Cartwright, Cathrine Hardwicke

Grandma, what big eyes you have! The better to see you with my dear… Grandma, what big ears you have! The better to hear you with my dear… Grandma, what big teeth you have! The better to EAT YOU WITH my dear!

Sarah Blakley-Cartwright's Red Riding Hood brings us down from the fairy tale world and back to where the original story of all of our beloved story time memories come from. Blakley-Cartwright puts a dark twist on the story of Little Red Riding Hood while also making it a love story. Valerie, Red Riding Hood, is caught in the middle of a love triangle she has a man who she is in love with, a man who is in love with her, and then the wolf who wants her. In her small village, terror strikes along with death as the werewolf attacks her sister, killing her as the first human victim. As the village wants revenge the hunt for the werewolf comes to the forefront of everyone's mind. The only problem for Valerie is that her and the werewolf have a bond that makes the werewolf want Valerie without remorse. Because of this Valerie has to make a decision of who to be married to or who to spend the rest of her life with. After I finished this…in one day, I wasn't quite sure how I felt about the book. It was great at bringing out the suspense and making the reader suspicious of all the characters to who the werewolf could possibly be, but in the end I was left unsatisfied and wanting to know more, and did not get my answers. I have not seen the movie, so I cannot make a comparison to the two, but it definitely grounds you to how the original fairy tales were told children, and not the sugar coated versions we tell today. Until next time. Keep Turning the Pages, 90s Born Reader

The Help Movie vs. Book

I already did a post talking about The Help and what the book is about, but this is one is to compare the movie and the book. Once again I read the book before I went to the movie, but this time with a bit more separation in between. I think that the makers of The Help the movie did a very good job of staying close to the book without it changing a lot of other notions. The only complaint that I had with the movie was that it took out some of the hard core matters that dealt with the African American community, like the murders, or Louvenia's grandson, but most importantly with Constantine's daughter. In the movie they made her black. That was a huge story in the book of how Constantine's daughter was born with white skin, and that's why she had to be sent away to Chicago. It was then her arrival to the Flinn's house where she confused everyone into thinking she was white was how Constantine lost her job. Of course all of that was in a nutshell, but in the book it is a pretty big deal, and it was a constant question on Skeeter's mind of why Constantine was fired, or quit as put by her mother. I was overall pleased with the movie, but it was just that giant miswrite that to me made it not an amazing movie, and one to truly rant and rave about. Until next time, Keep turning the pages 90s Born Reader

Check out my wordpress blog!

I'm not going to lie, I forgot that I have this blog. Well not my 90s Born Reader blog, but the Blogger version haha. I'm going to try and do a lot better about that starting.......... now. So please check out my blog on Wordpress. I have so many posts on there and some more coming almost every Sunday at 5pm. It's filled with my own thoughts about things, and the books that I love to read and have read. Thanks in advance!!