Object: American Culture

Prof. Thomas Angell

Name: Valentina Briscioli

Poem
See the week 3 content folder for the PDFs for the following assignment. The poems include:

Women Work
Harlem (Dream Deferred)
I Too
Mother To Son
Read and annotate the poems. After you do that type a response to the following questions
and submit to this assignment:

1. Pick one poem to summarize in your own words, and explain why it was the poem you
selected. (1 paragraph)

a. Questions to consider answering in your summary:

What is happening in the poem?
What might the characters be feeling?
Who might they be speaking to?
What was the author's purpose for writing
Who was the intended audience?
2. What surprised or interested you about the poem? Was there a line that stuck out to you in
particular, why?

3. How might this poem relate to, or show an element of culture?

4. Be creative! Write your own poem based off an experience from your past. This poem
should relate to at least one element of culture. (Length of your poem should be similar to the
poem you selected to read/summarize)

1. The poem I chose is from mother to son. This poem, as the title says, is a poem about
a mother talking to her son, who shows us how she wants to teach her son that life is
not easy, referring to the glass stairs and that we will always find different obstacles,
but we must never give up because we can always find a light that illuminates us and
show us some way to not get stuck and thus be able to continue. For me the purpose
of the author is that people who feel stuck in life can have some hope of getting out of
that feeling and for me he wrote this for a mother to teach her son that in life you
never have to give up and there is always some light or hope to continue trying. Also
if we thought in another interpretation for this poem, we can thing in the
discrimination against African American because the author of the poem was part of
the community, so maybe he was explaining all the obstacles that they had and also
teaching them how to continue and never give up.
2. What interests me about the poem is that the mother, despite having gone through
many adversities or conflicts, continues to fight and at the same time teach her son
Object: American Culture
Prof. Thomas Angell
Name: Valentina Briscioli

and also shows the inequality or the difference in rights that existed before.The world
is an incredible place. The line that caught my attention is "life for me ain't not been
no crystal stair" because although life is resistant, obstacles often appear that leave us
stagnant or break this staircase.
3. This poem could be related to values ​and you grew up because being African
American and this in the American culture means that they do not have the same
rights and opportunities, so you have to work harder to achieve it. and I can also relate
it to the family role because the woman is more than clean or turned on the different
values ​to her children.

Never grow up
4. The world is an incredible place
When we are still a child,
Butterflies flys,
And everybody can be a pirate,
All seems like rainbows
All too well,
But Suddenly we grow up.

And the childhood things

Disappear like mist
In the winter,
Starting the next chapter with
The doubt assaulting us
Question everything we are,
What were we made for?