Shared Themes Across Cultures

STEP ONE: Choose ONE of the following pairs of text to consider:

1) On the Rainy River + War
2) Girl + "Hanging Fire"
3) A Celebration of Grandfathers+ "Those Winter Sundays"
4) "Still I Rise" + A Short Manic Time in the NFL
STEP TWO: Use the top two boxes to describe the cultural background of each of your texts. Remember, cultural background goes beyond race/ethnicity to traditions,
settings/locations, time periods in history, gender/orientation, habits/customs, and socioeconomic status. What is significant about the background of the author or the characters in
your text? You can explain in sentences or a bulleted list.
STEP THREE: Explore topics that the texts have in common (ex: Family, Coming-of age, etc.) Then, write a theme statement in the center circle that the two text share (like we did
last week in our Venn diagram on the bubble map).
STEP FOUR: In the bottom two boxes, explain how the plot, characters, or other text evidence supports the theme statement you came up with. You can explain in sentences or a
bulleted list.
STEP FIVE: On the next page, use the sentence stems provided to write a short paragraph explaining how the cultural background of an author or character shapes a story’s
message.

Title of text 1 Title of text 2

"Still I Rise" A Short Manic Time in the
NFL

Cultural Background Cultural Background

Shared Thematic
This story is about a woman that Statement
This story was about survival and
has it rough but she fights threw it making it out of a bad situation.
They are both having
herself.
a hard time and they
both have to try and
How the text supports the theme survive the critisims
How the text supports the theme

Did you want to see me broken? Everyone's a critic. I take a dozen practice kicks.
Bowed head and lowered eyes? When I connect from 35 yards, special-teams
coach Ronnie Bradford says that if head coach
Shoulders falling down like Mike Shanahan summons me to kick in front of the
team, "that's going to be your distance." Ronnie's
teardrops, tone is different from the stand-around-and-
schmooze banter that characterizes our usual
Weakened by my soulful cries? languid kicking routine. He's dead serious.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Now, pick ONE of the two texts from above and write a short response using the sentence stems below:

"The author's cultural perspective is a woman that has it rough but she fights through it in Still I Rise the theme is keep going even if people try and
bring you down. Their background impacts the story by telling us the true meaning of the story.

The main character's point of view/beliefs/values(pick one) shape the piece by showing how tough you can be when u dont care about others
opinions.