Double-Entry Journal for AP Language and Composition (11th Grade) Double Entry Journal for (title) Between the World and Me _____________________________________________by (author) Ta-Nehisi Coates Student’s Name: __Trinity Evans____Period: ___A2___ Date: _____9/11/21_________ DOUBLE JOURNAL ENTRY Note: 1. Provide four quotes for each Book––Book I, II, and III––(each quote should not exceed three complete sentences). 2. Use MLA guidelines (use quotations and a page number). 3. You need a minimum of four complete sentences for each comment: Use the present tense, strong verbs, active voice, and transitional words. 4. (Avoid using repetition). Exemplar Quote and citation (p. #) 0. “[…] the elevation of the belief in being white, was not achieved through wine tastings and ice cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land. […] to deny you and me the right to secure and govern our own bodies” (8). Note: Do not use this exemplar in your response. Comments, thoughts, and analysis: Use the following sentence stems: Comments, thoughts, and analysis: 0. Coates, the speaker, underscores the belief in being white in American, and he juxtaposes how to be a black man in America. Coates highlights the corrosive of the country’s prevailing sentiment in the supremacy of whiteness. The speaker brings to the fore the truth about the making of American civilization and progress, which only a few enjoy at the expense of people of color. Therefore, Coates denounces the harsh reality endured by “minorities” over the years at the hands of the white oppressor. ● ● ● ● This passage illustrates... Here, the speaker highlights… The dialogue here captures… The speaker juxtaposes… 1 Double-Entry Journal for AP Language and Composition (11th Grade) Double Entry Journal for (title) Between the World and Me _____________________________________________by (author) Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me--Book One (5-71) Quote and citation (p. #) Observations, thoughts, and analysis: 1. ‘Good intention’ is a hall pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the Dream”.(33) 2. “It began to strike me that the point of my education was a kind of discomfort, was the process that would not award me my own especial Dream but would break all the dreams, all the comforting myths of Africa, of America, and everywhere, and would leave me only with humanity in all its terribleness.”(52) 3. America makes no claim to the banal. America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation to ever exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and the terrorists, despots, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization 1. Coates discusses his experiences as a child in the school system. Coates sees the streets and the schools as two arms of the same beast. If a kid slips up on the streets, he will get hurt. If he fails in the schools, he will get suspended and then sent back to the streets, where he will get hurt. Then, society can give up on him without guilt and say he should have stayed in school. Observations, thoughts, questions, and analysis: Use the following sentence stems: ● ● ● ● This passage illustrates... Here, the speaker highlights… The dialogue here captures… The speaker juxtaposes… 2. After spending innumerable days in the library trying to find answers to all his questions, he realizes that his questions cannot be answered at all. The process of learning, often, just leads to more questions, theories, and opinions. Coates enters the library believing that if he could just read enough, he will find a streamlined explanation of black history starting in Africa and concluding with how white America is destroying black culture. Instead, Coates finds the authors arguing with each other, and it puts him in a state of mental chaos. 3. Countries throughout history have oppressed groups of people for arbitrary reasons, but not all of them claimed the mantle of exceptionalism that America does. America consistently touts its glorious, 2 Double-Entry Journal for AP Language and Composition (11th Grade) Double Entry Journal for (title) Between the World and Me _____________________________________________by (author) Ta-Nehisi Coates democratic heritage; it waves flags, lights fireworks, quotes from the Constitution and 4. The crews walked the blocks of the Bill of Rights, imposes its will on the the neighborhood, loud and rude, world. It compares itself to other countries because it was only through their and finds them wanting. If a country does loud rudeness that they might feel these things and generally considers itself any sense of security and pow(22) the grandest and most enlightened country in the world, then it ought to be able to withstand the scrutiny and questions levied at it. Coates's discussion of Baltimore is both illuminating and deeply sympathetic. The young men in the streets who wear flashy jewelry and low-slung pants, swagger, play loud music, carry and shoot guns, sell drugs, and embed the streets with intricate codes of behavior are not "thugs." They are human beings whose marginalized existence has led to their sartorial choices and out-sized physicality, which stands in for any actual sort of power or security. Between the World and Me--Book II (76-132) Quote and citation (p. #) Observations, thoughts, and analysis: 3 Double-Entry Journal for AP Language and Composition (11th Grade) Double Entry Journal for (title) Between the World and Me _____________________________________________by (author) Ta-Nehisi Coates 1. I believed, and still do, that our bodies are our selves, that my soul is the voltage conducted through neurons and nerves, and that my spirit is my flesh.(79) 2. 1. Coates remembers Prince Jones’ funeral. The pastor prays for forgiveness for the killer, but Coates thinks about how the police officer is not Prince’s only killer. Coates believes that it is America’s opinion that the nation has the right to destroy black bodies and has been doing it for a long time. Therefore, it is the whole country that has killed Prince because the officer is merely a product of his nation’s systemic racism. Observations, thoughts, questions, and analysis: Use the following sentence stems: ● ● ● ● This passage illustrates... Here, the speaker highlights… The dialogue here captures… The speaker juxtaposes… Here is what I would like for you to know: in America, it is traditional to destroy the black body – it is heritage.”(103) 3. They had worked two and three jobs, put children through high school and college, and become pillars of their community. I admired them, but I knew the whole time that I was merely encountering the survivor(110) 4. so that America might justify itself, the story of a black body's destruction must begin with his or her error, real or imagined...(96) 2. Coates is thinking about slavery and how it was the central point of the Civil War. He imagines George Pickett’s men charging Abraham Brian’s free black community, believing that it was their birthright to steal those black men. The white soldiers believed it was their right because they had been told and shown that it was. It was traditional for them. He also thinks about how the government stole black bodies in order to monetize them. 3. The older people Coates encounters in Chicago by all accounts are very inspiring. 4 Double-Entry Journal for AP Language and Composition (11th Grade) Double Entry Journal for (title) Between the World and Me _____________________________________________by (author) Ta-Nehisi Coates They've worked hard and managed to eke out a decent, sometimes even prosperous, life. They are the examples to aspire to. People, both black and white, may look at them and think that if they can do it then anyone can. 4. Almost any time a black person is victimized, their error is put out there for the world to debate. The policemen and angry whites who destroyed black bodies are never held accountable. Their backgrounds are not raided; their demeanor, gestures, voice volume, and clothing are not dissected. Instead, black people are seen as "deserving" of what happened to them. They were wearing hoodies, playing loud music, selling cigarettes, carrying a toy gun, etc. Between the World and Me--Book III (135-152) Quote and citation (p. #) Observations, thoughts, and analysis: Observations, thoughts, questions, and analysis: 5 Double-Entry Journal for AP Language and Composition (11th Grade) Double Entry Journal for (title) Between the World and Me _____________________________________________by (author) Ta-Nehisi Coates 1. Plunder has matured into habit and addiction; the people who could author the mechanized death of our ghettos, the mass rape of private prisons, then engineer their own forgetting, must inevitably plunder much more”(150) 2. Through the windshield I saw the mark of these ghettos - the abundance of beauty shops, churches, liquor stores, and crumbling housing - and I felt the old fear. Through the windshield I saw the rain coming down in sheets. (152) 1. He thinks about how both Dr. Jones and Malcolm X believed that the white plunderers who have destroyed black people are doomed and will reap what they sow. Coates disagrees. He thinks black people will also reap what white people have sown. To plunder meaning to take and destroy something that is not yours is a choice. But as Coates has tried to show Samori, white plundering of black people had become so deeply ingrained in American life that Americans are now still having to actively unlearn even the smallest prejudicial thoughts. The resulting problems, like racial targeting, police beatings of black people, and mass incarceration, will take years to abate, if they will heal at all Use the following sentence stems: This passage illustrates... Here, the speaker highlights… The dialogue here captures… The speaker juxtaposes… 3. They made us into a race. We made ourselves into a people. 2. Coates does not end his letter on a happy note. In these last lines as he drives through Chicago, he brings the letter back to his difficult upbringing in Baltimore. He reminds Samori about the bleak and unfair life of black people in America. It seems unlikely that this will change 6 Double-Entry Journal for AP Language and Composition (11th Grade) Double Entry Journal for (title) Between the World and Me _____________________________________________by (author) Ta-Nehisi Coates 3. 7
