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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. The poem presents one part of a dialog. What questions or
statements would elicit the responses that are given in the poem?
Complete the dialogue with a group mate.
2. “Yeah it was awful what you guys did to us” — what is meant
by this phrase? Give examples from history.
3. What characteristics of the Native American culture can be
found in the poem?
4. What stereotypes of Native Americans are reflected in the poem?
5. Is the tone of this poem similar to that of A Haircut? Explain.
6. “A man should be proud of what he is.” How is this line from
the story A Haircut represented in the poem?
TEXT 7
THE NEW FACE OF RACE
by Jon Meacham
Every day, in every corner of America, we are redrawing the color
lines and redefining what race really means. It’s not just a matter of
black and white anymore; the nuances of brown and yellow and red
mean more — and less — than ever. The promise and perils ahead.
For Carlos Aguilar, growing up in Birmingham, Ala., isn’t a matter
of black and white. At 17, his mind is mostly on life at Hoover High
School, the largest in the state, and on getting ready for the next
track season. The son of Peruvian immigrants who started a
construction business in Birmingham in the early 1980s, Aguilar is
coming of age in what was perhaps the most segregated city in the
nation just a generation ago. “I have lots of black friends, lots of white
friends, Mexican friends, everything,” says Aguilar, who’s dated
Latinas, whites and Indians and listens to rock, R&B and hip-hop.
History is thick here, but to the young the violent clashes between
Bull Connor and Martin Luther King Jr. can seem as distant as the
Western Front. An eighth-grade field trip to Birmingham’s Civil
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Rights Institute, where exhibits chronicle snarling police-dog attacks
on black school-children, left Aguilar puzzled. “It’s just a whole
different world in there,” he recalls thinking. “A lot of it I look at and
wonder, ‘How stuff happen?’” Aguilar’s America is a very different
place, but it is still far from the Promised Land. One day when Carlos
was little, another child asked him: “Did you come here riding on a
donkey?” Aguilar was upset, and there was a small scuffle. The family
still remembers the flap. “People think if you have black hair you
must be Mexican or illegal,” says his mother, Ada. “But my father,”
she proudly adds, “was of Spanish descent.”
America is busy writing new chapters every day. We are now in an
age of color in which the nuances of brown and yellow and red are as
important, if not more so, than the ancient divisions of black and
white. With their precise distinctions about their own Peruvian
bloodlines, the Aguilars are on the cutting edge of the nation’s
redefinition of race — a quiet, daily revolution that is raising urgent
questions about who we are, what we call ourselves and how we deal
with one another.
In 1860, just before Fort Sumter, there were only three Census
categories — white, black and “quadroon.” This year there are thirty,
from Asian Indian to Other Pacific Islander, and there are 11
subcategories under “Hispanic ethnicity.” Last week white
Californians became a “minority,” at 49.9 percent; two other states
(Hawaii and New Mexico) and Washington, D.C., are also “majorityminority”. Florida and Texas will reach the same tipping point before
the decade is out. The definitions of race and ethnicity have rarely
been more fluid, the promise greater, the possible perils more
pronounced.
This is not a futuristic vision; it’s here. The young, in fact, are
already living in a new country. An entire generation has grown up in
prosperity, attended schools with people of mixed backgrounds and
set out to work in the New Economy, where there are few walls and
little hierarchy. By 2010, Latinos will outpace blacks as the nation’s
largest minority population. By 2020 the number of people of Asian
descent will double, from 10 million to 20 million. By 2050 whites
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will make up a slim majority — 53 percent. Last week the Bureau of
Labor Statistics announced that the number of foreign born workers
has hit 15.7 million, the highest level in seven decades.
CULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS
Look up the following entries in the Dictionary of U. S. Life and
Culture (Жизнь и культура США: Лингвострановедческий
словарь) or other dictionaries and encyclopedias:
Census
Fort Sumter
Hispanic
Latinas
COMPREHENSION CHECK
1. What does the Age of Color in this article mean?
2. What kind of “quiet, daily revolution” is going on in America?
3. When did the question of majorities and minorities first emerge?
4. How have the census categories changed with time?
5. What will the number of the people with mixed backgrounds be
in the nearest future?
6. What, according to the author, is happening with the definitions
of race and ethnicity in the U.S.A.?
7. How has the attitude of people towards race and ethnicity
changed in the United States?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. How is the notion of the ‘melting pot’ reflected in the text?
2. Have you heard of any recent examples of racial discrimination
in the U.S.A.?
3. What is the situation with race and ethnicity like in Russia?
4. Is there any racial or ethnic discrimination in Russia?
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MOVIES
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Ragtime
Save the Last Dance
SONGS
We Shall Overcome
If I Had a Hammer
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Unit 5
GENDER ISSUES: BEING A WOMAN
PREREADING
1. What do you understand by gender issues? What is the
difference between the terms “sex” and “gender”?
2. Do you think that women in the U.S. are liberated and the days
of discrimination at work and in the family are over? Prove your point
of view.
3. Do gender issues have the same relevance in Russia? Give
examples.
TEXT 1
THE STORY OF AN HOUR
by K. Chopin
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great
care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her
husband’s death. It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken
sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband’s
friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the
newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was
received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed.” He
had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second
telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender
friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same,
with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once,
with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm
of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would
have no one follow her. There stood, facing the open window, a
comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a
physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into
her soul. She could see in the open square before her house the tops of
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trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious
breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying
his wares. The notes of a distant song which someone was singing
reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the
eaves. There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through
the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west
facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair,
quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook
her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its
dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke
repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare
in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those
patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather
indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it,
fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive
to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her
through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to
recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was
striving to beat it back with her will — as powerless as her two white
slender hands would have been.
When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped
her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath:
“free, free, free!” The vacant stare and the look of terror that had
followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her
pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every
inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that
held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the
suggestion as trivial.
She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind,
tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with
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love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter
moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her
absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in
welcome.
There would be no one to live for her during those coming years;
she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending
hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they
have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind
intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she
looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him — sometimes. Often she had not. What
did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face
of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as
the strongest impulse of her being!
“Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the
keyhole, imploring for admission. “Louise, open the door! I beg; open
the door —you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise?
For heaven’s sake open the door.”
“Go away. I am not making myself ill.” No; she was drinking in a
very elixir of life through that open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring
days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own.
She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only
yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s
importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she
carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her
sister’s waist, and together they descended die stairs. Richards stood
waiting for them at the bottom.
Some one was opening the front door, with a latchkey. It was
Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly
carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of
accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed
at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’ quick motion to screen him
from the view of his wife.
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But Richards was too late.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease —
of joy that kills.
COMPREHENSION CHECK
1. What was wrong with Mrs. Mallard’s health?
2. Who broke the news about Brently Mallard’s death to Mrs.
Mallard?
3. What was Mrs. Mallard’s immediate reaction to the news? How
did she behave?
4. What could she contemplate sitting in the comfortable roomy
armchair facing the open window?
5. How is Mrs. Mallard described in the story?
6. What did she feel staying in the room by herself?
7. How did the realization of freedom fill her body? How does the
author describe this process?
8. How did Mrs. Mallard change her perception of life having
accepted the idea of being free?
9. What were her feelings for her husband?
10. What made her leave the armchair and open the door?
11. Why did Mrs. Mallard behave like “a Goddess of Victory”?
12. What was everybody’s reaction to Mr. Mallard’s unexpected
arrival?
13. How did the story end? Did you expect such an outcome?
ACTIVE VOCABULARY
to afflict (v) ― (often passive) to cause pain, trouble or distress to
somebody: to be afflicted with arthritis; to be afflicted by mounting
debts
to break the news ― to tell somebody about the recent event(s):
You’d better break the news to her gently that her daughter has left
home.
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to abandon (v) ― 1. to leave completely and forever, desert: He
abandoned his wife and children. 2. to give up or bring to an end
(something), esp. without finishing it or gaining the intended
result: abandon all hope
abandonment (n)
exhaustion (n) ― the state of being tired out: She dropped from
exhaustion.
to haunt (v) ― 1. (of ghosts) to visit a place regularly: The ghost of a
headless rider haunted the vicinity. 2. (esp. of something
unpleasant) to return repeatedly to somebody’s mind 3. to visit or
spend time in a place frequently
monstrous joy
monstrous (adj) ― extremely bad, improper, immoral, or
shocking; disgraceful: monstrous cruelty; a monstrous accusation
2. of unnaturally large size, strange shape, etc.
to bend somebody’s will ― to break somebody’s power of the mind
persistence (n) ― stubborn and enduring continuance
to persist (v) in/with ― 1. to continue in a course of action or way
of behaving, firmly and perhaps unreasonably, in spite of
opposition or warning: If you persist in causing trouble, we’ll have
to fire you. 2. to continue to exist: The bad weather will persist all
over the country.
persistent (adj): persistent rumors; a persistent cough
self-assertion (n) ― the act of demanding recognition for oneself or
of insisting upon one’s rights, claims, etc.
to implore (v) something/for something ― to ask or beg for
something in a serious way: She implored his forgiveness.
to run riot ― to become violent and uncontrollable
riot (n) ― a wild or violent protest by a crowd of people
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feverish (adj) ― 1. having or showing a slight fever: You’re a bit
feverish, you should go to bed. 2. caused by fever: feverish dreams
3. extremely active or excited: feverish haste
shudder (n) ― a shaking movement (with cold or fear)
to shudder (v) ― to shake uncontrollably for a moment, esp. from
fever, cold, or strong dislike: He shuddered at the sight of the
alligator. I shudder to think how big the bill will be.
to clasp (v) ― to take and hold firmly: He clasped the child in his arms.
Compare clasp, grasp, and grip. Clasp means “to take and hold
firmly inside your hands or arms”: The little girl was clasping a
large doll. Grasp means “to catch onto and hold firmly, esp. with
your hands”: He grasped a rope. Grip means “to take and keep a
very tight hold of something, esp. with your fingers or with a tool”:
He gripped my arm in fear.
unwittingly (adv) ― not knowing; unintentionally
to be travel-stained
stain (n) ― 1. a dirty mark or patch of color which is difficult to
remove; 2. a thing that damages a person’s reputation
EXERCISES
I. Translate the following sentences into Russian paying
attention to the active vocabulary:
1. The weeds are running riot in the garden.
2. She is afflicted with arthritis.
3. The very thought of it sends shudders up my spine.
4. He was pale and had a haunted look on his face.
5. It is clear that, wittingly or unwittingly, he had offended her.
6. His self-assertion was very disturbin
g to the neighbors.
7. He made quite an appearance – came home travel-stained and
shivering from cold.
8. For days he has been haunted by the fear to be found out.
9. The flowerbeds were a riot of color.
10. Inflation is running riot and prices are out of control.
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