Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was an American poet, activist, novelist, and playwright. He is also considered one of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance, which was the cultural, social, and artistic movement of black artists that took place in Harlem between the end of World War I and the mid-1930s. Skill Focus: In this lesson, you’ll practice analyzing an author’s use of figurative language. This means paying attention to similes and metaphors. As you read, take notes on the metaphor and the message it reveals about dealing with challenges. The Harlem Renaissance is important to this poet and may influence his poetry. What is the Harlem Renaissance?

cultural, social, and artistic movement of black artists that took place in Harlem

a fun dance, popular among youth and adolescents

a mass relocation of people from the South to the North and West

Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

Oliver Twist begins in a workhouse in 1830s England, in an unnamed village, where a young woman, revealed to be Oliver's mother, gives birth to her son and promptly dies. The boy, lucky to survive, is raised until the age of nine in a "farm" for young orphaned children, and then is sent to the local workhouse again, where he labors for a time, until his innocent request for more food so angers the house's board and beadle, Mr. Bumble, that the workhouse attempts to foist Oliver off as an apprentice to some worker in the villager. Oliver is eventually given over to a coffin-maker named Sowerberry. Oliver works as a "mute" mourner for Sowerberry, and must sleep at night among the coffins. After a fight with Noah, another of Sowerberry's apprentices, over Oliver's unwed mother (whom Noah insults), Oliver runs away to London, to make his fortune. Near London, Oliver meets a well-dressed young boy who introduces himself as the Artful Dodger, a thief under the employ of a local crime boss named Fagin. The Dodger takes Oliver to Fagin, who promises to help Oliver but really holds him hostage, and forces him to go on a thieving mission with the Dodger and Bates, another young criminal. Bates and Dodger try to steal the handkerchief of an old man, who notices Oliver (an innocent onlooker), and believes him to be the thief. Oliver is caught and hauled to jail, only to be released into the old man Brownlow's company after Brownlow sees that Oliver had nothing to do with the crime. Brownlow nurses Oliver for a time and vows to educate him properly. But after sending Oliver out to return some books and money to a bookseller, Brownlow is shocked to find that Oliver does not return—Oliver has been picked up by Nancy, an associate of Fagin's, and taken back to the criminal gang.

The Story of Ramayana by Maharshi Valmiki Long ago, Dasharatha, the wise king of Ayodhya of Sarayu, India had three wives. Though the King had three wives, he didn’t have any children with them. The Chief priest Vasishta advised the king to make fire sacrifice to obtain a blessing from the gods. After the gods were pleased, one of them appeared out of the flame and handed him a pot full of nectar. The god told the king to share the nectar with his three queens namely Kausalya, Kaikeye, and Sumitra. While the nectar had been shared, the three queens gave birth to sons: Kausalya had Rama; Kaikeye had Bharatha; and Sumitra had twins Lakshmana and Shatrughna. A sage took the boys out to train them in archery. In a neighboring city, the ruler's daughter was named Sita. When it was time for Sita to choose her bridegroom, at a ceremony called a Swayamvara, the princes were asked to string a giant bow. No one else could even lift the bow, but as Rama bent it, he did not only string it but also broke it into two. Sita indicated that she chose Rama as her husband by putting a garland around his neck. The disappointed suitors were watching. 6 CO_Q3_English8_Module 4 King Dasharatha, Rama's father, decided it was time to give his throne to his eldest son Rama and retired to the forest to seek moksha. Everyone seems pleased. This plan fulfilled the rules of dharma because an eldest son should rule and, if a son can take over one's responsibilities, one's last years may be spent in a search for moksha. In addition, everyone loved Rama. However, Rama's stepmother, the king's second wife, was not pleased. She wanted her son, Bharata, to rule. Because of an oath Dasharatha had made to her years before, she got the king to agree to banish Rama for fourteen years and to crown Bharata even though the king, on bended knee, begged her not to demand such things. Broken-hearted, the devastated king could not face Rama with the news that Kaikeyi must tell him. Rama, always obedient, was as content to go into banishment in the forest as to be crowned king. Sita convinced Rama that she would always be at his side and his brother Lakshmana also begged to accompany them. Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana set out to the forest. Bharata, whose mother's evil plot had won him the throne, was very upset when he found out what had happened. Not for a moment he did consider breaking the rules of dharma and becoming king in Rama's place. He went to Rama's forest retreat and begged Rama to return and rule, but Rama refused. "We must obey father," Rama says. Bharata then took Rama's sandals saying, "I will put these on the throne, and every day I shall place the fruits of my work at the feet of my Lord." Embracing Rama, he took the sandals and returned to Ayodhya. Years passed and Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana were very happy in the forest. Rama and Lakshmana destroyed the rakshasas (evil creatures) who disturbed the sages in their meditations. One day a rakshasa princess named Shurpanakha tried to seduce Rama, and Lakshmana wounded her and drove her away. She returned to her brother Ravana, the ten-headed ruler of Lanka (Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon), and told her brother, who is always attracted to beautiful women, about lovely Sita. Ravana devised a plan to abduct Sita. He sent a magical golden deer which Sita desired Rama to hunt. A long time had passed, but Rama didn’t return. Thus, Lakshmana went off to find his brother. Before leaving Sita, Lakshmana drew a protective circle around Sita and warned her that she would be safe if she would stay within the circle. As they went off, Ravana, who could change his shape, appeared as a holy man begging alms. The moment Sita stepped outside the circle to give him food, Ravana grabbed her and carried her off to his kingdom in Lanka. Rama was broken-hearted when he returned to the empty hut and could not find Sita. A band of monkeys led by Hanuman offered to help him find Sita. Ravana carried Sita to his palace in Lanka, but he could not force her to be his wife. So, he put her in a grove and alternately sweet-talked her and threatened her in an attempt to get her to agree to marry him. Sita would not even look at him but thought only of her beloved Rama. Hanuman, the general of the monkey band could fly since his father was the wind, and he flew to Lanka and found Sita in the grove, comforted her, and told her Rama would come soon and save her. 7 CO_Q3_English8_Module 4 Ravana's men captured Hanuman, and Ravana ordered them to wrap Hanuman's tail in cloth and to set it on fire. With his tail burning, Hanuman hopped from house-top to house-top, setting Lanka a fire. He then flew back to Rama to tell him where Sita was. Rama, Lakshmana, and the monkey army built a causeway from the tip of India crossing over to Lanka. A mighty battle took place. Rama killed several of Ravana's brothers and then Rama confronted ten-headed Ravana. Rama finally killed Ravana and freed Sita. After Sita gained her freedom from Ravana, she proved her purity through the trial by fire. Then, they returned to Ayodhya and Rama became the king. As Rama became the king, he ruled Ayodhya with Ramrajya - an ideal time when everyone does his or her duties and responsibilities

Smallpox epidemics had struck the tribes of the Upper Missouri at least twice before the terrible epidemic of 1837. The earlier epidemics of 1781 and 1801 took the lives of thousands of Mandans, Hidatsas, and Arikaras and forced them to move north to re-build their villages near the mouth of the Knife River. However, not long after the earthlodge villages became established on the Knife, they experienced the worst smallpox epidemic ever. Fort Clark was a fur-trading post that had been built in 1823 just a few miles south of the mouth of the Knife River on the west bank of the Missouri River. One-quarter mile from the fort was the Mandan village of Mitu'tahakto's (meh TOOT ah hahnk tosh). Within 15 miles of the post were several more Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa villages. Earlier epidemics and inter-tribal conflict had forced the earthlodge peoples north to the Knife River. The Yanktonais, Crows, Assiniboines and other tribes traveled to Fort Clark bringing buffalo robes and furs to trade for tobacco, guns, cloth, and other goods. Fort Clark was a busy, densely populated center of international trade. On June 18, 1837, the steamboat St. Peters approached Fort Clark. In addition to supplies, the St. Peters brought Andrew Jackson Chardon, the two-year-old son of Fort Clark’s superintendent, Francis Chardon. Chardon met the boat some 30 miles downstream. He removed his son from the boat and heard the news that people on the boat were infected with smallpox. When the steamboat landed at Fort Clark, people came and went from the boat to the fort and the villages. Workers from the boat and the post unloaded goods and loaded bales of furs. All of the activity took place in less than 24 hours amid a “frolick” of singing and dancing and celebration. Once loaded, the St. Peters headed upstream to Fort Union carrying the deadly virus. On July 14, 1837, Chardon noted in his journal that a Mandan man had died of smallpox in the village. (See Document 2.) Chardon knew that smallpox would become an epidemic and that many more would die, but the extent of the epidemic stunned him. He recorded the deaths of important village leaders including the highly-respected second chief of the Mandans, Four Bears. He heard, probably second-hand, the death-speech of Four Bears (See Document 2, entry for July 30.) and recorded it in his journal. Chardon was unable to keep track of the number of deaths: “they die so fast that it is impossible,” he wrote. Survivors swore revenge against Chardon for bringing death to their villages. There were murders and threats of murder as the deeply despairing Mandans tried to avenge the deaths of their families and friends. Some people, sick with smallpox or feeling desperate from the loss of every member of their family, committed suicide. Suicide was unknown among the Mandans and Hidatsas before the epidemic. Before the disease reached the post, Chardon sent his oldest son downriver to Fort Pierre. The boy was sent on to his grandparents’ home in Pennsylvania. The younger son, Andrew Jackson, remained with Chardon (the boy’s mother had died in April before the epidemic). When the disease finally penetrated the walls of the fort, Andrew Jackson sickened and died as did many other young children of the post employees. When the disease reached Fort Union, more people, both Indians and non-Indians, were exposed and suffered. The superintendent at Fort Union tried to inoculate as many people as he could. Many tribes fled the area and probably saved many lives in doing so. The disease however, continued to spread across the northern Great Plains where the Indians had been denied access to the 1832 federal vaccination program. The Mandan people suffered the greatest losses in the epidemic. Frequent, close contact among the people of the villages and the fur trade post helped to spread the disease quickly. About 2,000 Mandans lived in the Knife River villages in the spring of 1837. By October, 138 people remained alive. The survivors moved from the village at Fort Clark to other villages. The Arikaras, who had lost perhaps two-thirds of their population, moved into Mitu'tahakto's. They harvested the Mandans’ garden crops that year and remained in the village near Fort Clark.

Solomon was the son of David. His mother’s name was Bathsheba. He became king after King David. He was the third king of Unified Israel. When he became king, he prayed to God for wisdom to rule the people of Israel. God responded to Solomon’s prayer for wisdom by granting Solomon wisdom, riches, and honour, as a result, he became a great leader and was the wisest man who ever lived. Knowledge consists of facts or ideas acquired by study, observation, or experience. Wisdom refers to the ability to make good decisions based on knowledge. James 1:5-6 states that anyone who lacks wisdom should ask God for it because He gives generously to all who ask in faith. Godly wisdom is more valuable than earthly riches and treasures. Solomon wrote proverbs so that people could learn godly wisdom, discipline, and discernment. Simply knowing the difference between right and wrong is not enough. A person must also listen to God, act on knowledge and godly wisdom, and choose to obey God. Psalm 111:10 teaches that fearing the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom becomes part of a believer's life once he or she learns to fear and revere the Lord. Applying God's Word to everyday life is the foundation for wise living. Solomon wrote 3,000 proverbs and composed 1,005 songs; he was a scientist with great knowledge of many plants and animals.

She went by the name of Belisa Crepusculario, not because she had been baptized with that name or given it by her mother, but because she herself had searched until she found the poetry of "beauty" and "twilight" and cloaked herself in it. She made her living selling words. She journeyed through the country from the high cold mountains to the burning coasts, stopping at fairs and in markets where she set up four poles covered by a canvas awning under which she took refuge from the sun and rain to minister to her customers. She did not have to peddle her merchandise because from having wandered far and near, everyone knew who she was. Some people waited for her from one year to the next, and when she appeared in the village with her bundle beneath her arm, they would form a line in front of her stall. Her prices were fair. For five centavos she delivered verses from memory, for seven she improved the quality of dreams, for nine she wrote love letters, for twelve she invented insults for irreconcilable enemies. She also sold stories, not fantasies but long, true stories she recited at one telling, never skipping a word. This is how she carried news from one town to another. People paid her to add a line or two: our son was born, so-and-so died, our children got married, the crops burned in the field. Wherever she went a small crowd gathered around to listen as she began to speak, and that was how they learned about each others' doings, about distant relatives, about what was going on in the civil war. To anyone who paid her fifty centavos in trade, she gave the gift of a secret word to drive away melancholy. It was not the same word for everyone, naturally, because that would have been collective dece it. Each person received his or her own word, with the assurance that no one else would use it that way in this universe or the Beyond. Belisa Crepusculario had been born into a family so poor they did not even have names to give their children. She came into the world and grew up in an inhospitable land where some years the rains became avalanches of water that bore everything away before them and others when not a drop fell from the sky and the sun swelled to fill the horizon and the world became a desert. Until she was twelve, Belisa had no occupation or virtue other than having withstood hunger and the exhaustion of centuries. During one interminable drought, it fell to her to bury four younger brothers and sisters, when she realized that her turn was next, she decided to set out across the 2 plains in the direction of the sea, in hopes that she might trick death along the way. The land was eroded, split with deep cracks, strewn with rocks, fossils of trees and thorny bushes, and skeletons of animals bleached by the sun. From time to time she ran into families who, like her, were heading south, following the mirage of water. Some had begun the march carrying their belongings on their back or in small carts, but they could barely move their own bones, and after a while they had to abandon their possessions. They dragged themselves along painfully, their skin turned to lizard hide and their eyes burned by the reverberating glare. Belisa greeted them with a wave as she passed, but she did not stop, because she had no strength to waste in acts of compassion. Many people fell by the wayside, but she was so stubborn that she survived to cross through that hell and at long last reach the first trickles of water, fine, almost invisible threads that fed spindly vegetation and farther down widened into small streams and marshes. Belisa Crepusculario saved her life and in the process accidentally discovered writing. In a village near the coast, the wind blew a page of newspaper at her feet. She picked up the brittle yellow paper and stood a long while looking at it, unable to determine its purpose, until curiosity overcame her shyness. She walked over to a man who was washing his horse in the muddy pool where she had quenched her thirst. "What is this?" she asked. "The sports page of the newspaper," the man replied, concealing his surprise at her ignorance. The answer astounded the girl, but she did not want to seem rude, so she merely inquired about the significance of the fly tracks scattered across the page. "Those are words, child. Here it says that Fulgencio Barba knocked out El Negro Tiznao in the third round." That was the day Belisa Crepusculario found out that words make their way in the world without a master, and that anyone with a little cleverness can appropriate them and do business with them. She made a quick assessment of her situation and concluded that aside from becoming a prostitute or working as a servant in the kitchens of the rich there were few occupations she was qualified for. It seemed to her that selling words would be an honorable alternative. From that moment on, she worked at that profession, and was never tempted by any other. At the beginning, she offered her merchandise unaware that words could be written outside of newspapers. When she learned otherwise, she calculated the infinite possibilities of her trade and with her savings paid a priest twenty pesos to teach her to read and write, with her three 3 remaining coins she bought a dictionary. She poured over it from A to Z and then threw it into the sea, because it was not her intention to defraud her customers with packaged words. One August morning several years later, Belisa Crepusculario was sitting in her tent in the middle of a plaza, surrounded by the uproar of market day, selling legal arguments to an old man who had been trying for sixteen years to get his pension. Suddenly she heard yelling and thudding hoofbeats. She looked up from her writing and saw, first, a cloud of dust, and then a band of horsemen come galloping into the plaza. They were the Colonel's men, sent under orders of El Mulato, a giant known throughout the land for the speed of his knife and his loyalty to his chief. Both the Colonel and El Mulato had spent their lives fighting in the civil war, and their names were ineradicably linked to devastation and calamity. The rebels swept into town like a stampeding herd, wrapped in noise, bathed in sweat, and leaving a hurricane of fear in their trail. Chickens took wing, dogs ran for their lives, women and children scurried out of sight, until the only living soul left in the market was Belisa Crepusculario. She had never seen El Mulato and was surprised to see him walking toward her. "I'm looking for you," he shouted, pointing his coiled whip at her, even before the words were out, two men rushed her -- knocking over her canopy and shattering her inkwell -- bound her hand and foot, and threw her like a sea bag across the rump of El Mulato's mount. Then they thundered off toward the hills. Hours later, just as Belisa Crepusculario was near death, her heart ground to sand by the pounding of the horse, they stopped, and four strong hands set her down. She tried to stand on her feet and hold her head high, but her strength failed her and she slumped to the ground, sinking into a confused dream. She awakened several hours later to the murmur of night in the camp, but before she had time to sort out the sounds, she opened her eyes and found herself staring into the impatient glare of El Mulato, kneeling beside her. "Well, woman, at last you've come to," he said. To speed her to her senses, he tipped his canteen and offered her a sip of liquor laced with gunpowder. She demanded to know the reason for such rough treatment, and El Mulato explained that the Colonel needed her services. He allowed her to splash water on her face, and then led her to the far end of the camp where the most feared man in all the land was lazing in a hammock strung between two trees. She could not see his face, because he lay in the deceptive shadow of the leaves and the indelible shadow of all his years as a bandit, but she imagined from the way his 4 gigantic aide addressed him with such humility that he must have a very menacing expression. She was surprised by the Colonel's voice, as soft and well-modulated as a professor's. "Are you the woman who sells words?" he asked. "At your service," she stammered, peering into the dark and trying to see him better. The Colonel stood up, and turned straight toward her. She saw dark skin and the eyes of a ferocious puma, and she knew immediately that she was standing before the loneliest man in the world. "I want to be President," he announced. The Colonel was weary of riding across that godforsaken land, waging useless wars and suffering defeats that no subterfuge could transform into victories. For years he had been sleeping in the open air, bitten by mosquitoes, eating iguanas and snake soup, but those minor inconveniences were not why he wanted to change his destiny. What truly troubled him was the terror he saw in people's eyes. He longed to ride into a town beneath a triumphal arch with bright flags and flowers everywhere, he wanted to be cheered, and be given newly laid eggs and freshly baked bread. Men fled at the sight of him, children trembled, and women miscarried from fright, he had had enough, and so he had decided to become President. El Mulato had suggested that they ride to the capital, gallop up to the Palace, and take over the government, the way they had taken so many other things without anyone's permission. The Colonel, however, did not want to be just another tyrant, there had been enough of those before him and, besides, if he did that, he would never win people's hearts. It was his aspiration to win the popular vote in the December elections. "To do that, I have to talk like a candidate. Can you sell me the words for a speech?" the Colonel asked Belisa Crepusculario. She had accepted many assignments, but none like this. She did not dare refuse, fearing that El Mulato would shoot her between the eyes, or worse still, that the Colonel would burst into tears. There was more to it than that, however, she felt the urge to help him because she felt a throbbing warmth beneath her skin, a powerful desire to touch that man, to fondle him, to clasp him in her arms. All night and a good part of the following day, Belisa Crepusculario searched her repertory for words adequate for a presidential speech, closely watched by El Mulato, who could not take his eyes from her firm wanderer's legs and virginal breasts. She discarded harsh, cold words, words 5 that were too flowery, words worn from abuse, words that offered improbable promises, untruthful and confusing words, until all she had left were words sure to touch the minds of men and women's intuition. Calling upon the knowledge she had purchased from the priest for twenty pesos, she wrote the speech on a sheet of paper and then signaled El Mulato to untie the rope that bound her ankles to a tree. He led her once more to the Colonel, and again she felt the throbbing anxiety that had seized her when she first saw him. She handed him the paper and waited while he looked at it, holding it gingerly between thumbs and fingertips. "What the shit does this say," he asked finally. "Don't you know how to read?" "War's what I know," he replied. She read the speech aloud. She read it three times, so her client could engrave it on his memory. When she finished, she saw the emotion in the faces of the soldiers who had gathered round to listen, and saw that the Colonel's eyes glittered with enthusiasm, convinced that with those words the presidential chair would be his. "If after they've heard it three times, the boys are still standing there with their mouths hanging open, it must mean the thing's damn good, Colonel" was El Mulato's approval. "All right, woman. How much do I owe you?" the leader asked. "One peso, Colonel." "That's not much," he said, opening the pouch he wore at his belt, heavy with proceeds from the last foray. "The peso entitles you to a bonus. I'm going to give you two secret words," said Belisa Crepusculario. "What for?" She explained that for every fifty centavos a client paid, she gave him the gift of a word for his exclusive use. The Colonel shrugged. He had no interest at all in her offer, but he did not want to be impolite to someone who had served him so well. She walked slowly to the leather stool where he was sitting, and bent down to give him her gift. The man smelled the scent of a mountain cat issuing from the woman, a fiery heat radiating from her hips, he heard the terrible whisper of her hair, and a breath of sweetmint murmured into his ear the two secret words that were his alone. "They are yours, Colonel," she said as she stepped back. "You may use them as much as you 6 please." El Mulato accompanied Belisa to the roadside, his eyes as entreating as a stray dog's, but when he reached out to touch her, he was stopped by an avalanche of words he had never heard before; believing them to be an irrevocable curse, the flame of his desire was extinguished. During the months of September, October, and November the Colonel delivered his speech so many times that had it not been crafted from glowing and durable words it would have turned to ash as he spoke. He travelled up and down and across the country, riding into cities with a triumphal air, stopping in even the most forgotten villages where only the dump heap betrayed a human presence, to convince his fellow citizens to vote for him. While he spoke from a platform erected in the middle of the plaza, El Mulato and his men handed out sweets and painted his name on all the walls in gold frost. No one paid the least attention to those advertising ploys; they were dazzled by the clarity of the Colonel's proposals and the poetic lucidity of his arguments, infected by his powerful wish to right the wrongs of history, happy for the first time in their lives. When the Candidate had finished his speech, his soldiers would fire their pistols into the air and set off firecrackers, and when finally they rode off, they left behind a wake of hope that lingered for days on the air, like the splendid memory of a comet's tail. Soon the Colonel was the favorite. No one had ever witnessed such a phenomenon: a man who surfaced from the civil war, covered with scars and speaking like a professor, a man whose fame spread to every corner of the land and captured the nation's heart. The press focused their attention on him. Newspapermen came from far away to interview him and repeat his phrases, and the number of his followers and enemies continued to grow. "We're doing great, Colonel," said El Mulato, after twelve successful weeks of campaigning. But the Candidate did not hear. He was repeating his secret words, as he did more and more obsessively. He said them when he was mellow with nostalgia; he murmured them in his sleep; he carried them with him on horseback; he thought them before delivering his famous speech; and he caught himself savoring them in his leisure time. And every time he thought of those two words, he thought of Belisa Crepusculario, and his senses were inflamed with the memory of her feral scent, her fiery heat, the whisper of her hair, and her sweetmint breath in his ear, until he began to go around like a sleepwalker, and his men realized that he might die before he ever sat in the presidential chair. "What's got hold of you, Colonel," El Mulato asked so often that finally one day his chief broke 7 down and told him the source of his befuddlement: those two words that were buried like two daggers in his gut. "Tell me what they are and maybe they'll lose their magic," his faithful aide suggested. "I can't tell them, they're for me alone," the Colonel replied. Saddened by watching his chief decline like a man with a death sentence on his head, El Mulato slung his rifle over his shoulder and set out to find Belisa Crepusculario. He followed her trail through all that vast country, until he found her in a village in the far south, sitting under her tent reciting her rosary of news. He planted himself, spraddle-legged, before her, weapon in hand. "You! You're coming with me," he ordered. She had been waiting. She picked up her inkwell, folded the canvas of her small stall, arranged her shawl around her shoulders, and without a word took her place behind El Mulato's saddle. They did not exchange so much as a word in all the trip; El Mulato's desire for her had turned into rage, and only his fear of her tongue prevented his cutting her to shreds with his whip. Nor was he inclined to tell her that the Colonel was in a fog, and that a spell whispered into his ear had done what years of battle had not been able to do. Three days later they arrived at the encampment, and immediately, in view of all the troops, El Mulato led his prisoner before the Candidate. "I brought this witch here so you can give her back her words, Colonel," El Mulato said, pointing the barrel of his rifle at the woman's head. "And then she can give you back your manhood." The Colonel and Belisa Crepusculario stared at each other, measuring one another from a distance. The men knew then that their leader would never undo the witchcraft of those accursed words, because the whole world could see the voracious-puma eyes soften as the woman walked to him and took his hand in hers. Copyright © 1989 by Isabel Allende From The Stories of Eva Luna, Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden

By the late 1800s, the Spanish were losing control of Cuba. Concerned about insurrection in the countryside, they moved rural Cubans to “reconcentration” camps where the Spanish claimed they would be better able to protect them. U.S. Consul-General Fitzhugh Lee forwarded the following account of the conditions of the camps to the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State on November 27, 1897. Lee said the author of the note was “a man of integrity and character.” “[W]e will relate to you what we saw with our own eyes: “Four hundred and sixty women and children thrown on the ground, heaped pellet-mell as animals, some in a dying condition, others sick and others dead. . . . “There is still alive the only living witness, a young girl of 18 years, whom we found seemingly lifeless on the ground; on her right-hand side was the body of a young mother, cold and rigid, but with her young child still alive clinging to her dead body; on her left-hand side was also the corpse of a dead woman holding her son in a dead embrace. . . . “The circumstances are the following: complete accumulation of bodies dead and alive, so that it was impossible to take one step without walking over them; the greatest want of cleanliness, want of light, air, and water; the food lacking in quality and quantity what was necessary to sustain life. . . . From all this we deduct that the number of deaths among the reconcentrados has amounted to 77 per cent.” Source: Unsigned note that was included in a telegram sent by Fitzhugh Lee, U.S. Consul-General in Cuba, to the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State November 27, 1897. consul-general: a government official living in a foreign country charged with overseeing the protection of U.S. citizens and promoting trade pell-mell: state of disorder accumulation: pile want: lack reconcentrados: the reconcentration camp prisoners; The following is an excerpt from Albert J. Beveridge’s speech, delivered September 16, 1898. Beveridge gave this speech while he was campaigning to become a senator for Indiana. The speech helped him win the election and made him one of the leading advocates of American expansion. “Fellow citizens, it is a noble land that God has given us; a land that can feed and clothe the world;. . . . It is a mighty people that he has planted on this soil . . . It is a glorious history our God has bestowed upon his chosen people; . . .a history of soldiers who carried the flag across the blazing deserts and through the ranks of hostile mountains, even to the gates of sunset. . . . “The Opposition tells us that we ought not to govern a people without their consent. I answer: The rule of liberty that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of self-government. I answer, We govern the Indians without their consent, we govern our territories without their consent, we govern our children without their consent. “They ask us how we will govern these new possessions. I answer: If England can govern foreign lands, so can America. If Germany can govern foreign lands, so can America. . . . “What does all this mean for every one of us? It means opportunity for all the glorious young manhood of the republic, the most virile, ambitious, impatient, militant manhood the world has ever seen. It means that the resources and the commerce of these immensely rich dominions will be increased. . . . “In Cuba, alone, there are 15,000,000 acres of forest unacquainted with the axe. There are exhaustless mines of iron. . . . There are millions of acres yet unexplored. . . . It means new employment and better wages for every laboring man in the Union. . . .

Create multiple choice questions using the following information: In November, Mrs. Baker has Holling read The Tempest. Despite his preconceptions, Holling is captivated by all the "good stuff" in the play, especially the cussing, which he decides to learn by heart. He figures that Mrs. Baker could not have read the play herself; if she had, she certainly would not have let him have it. Holling is amazed when he discovers that his teacher not only has read the play, but she knows the bad parts as well. Mrs. Baker gives Holling a one-hundred-and-fifty question test on The Tempest, and assigns him to read the play again, telling him "there is a lot more to (it) than a list of colorful curses." The deadline set by Holling's classmates for him to bring them cream puffs arrives, but although Holling's father's company has won the Baker's Sporting Emporium contract, he refuses to extend an advance on his son's allowance. Desperate, Holling goes to Goldman's Best Bakery, offering to work for the money he lacks to buy the cream puffs. Coincidentally, Mr. Goldman, who is active in Long Island's Shakespeare Company, needs a boy to perform in their upcoming Extravaganza, and because of his work with Mrs. Baker, Holling fits the bill. Mr. Goldman gives Holling the required number of cream puffs in exchange, but sadly, while the students are at recess, Caliban and Sycorax, the escaped rats who inhabit the classroom walls and ceiling, come out and decimate the treats. Somehow, the disaster is blamed on Holling; he must clean up the mess, and his classmates decree that he still owes them cream puffs. The next Wednesday, Holling brings five cream puffs to school, which is all he can afford. In addition to facing his classmates' ire, he has to deal with the fact that, in the Shakespeare Company Holiday Extravaganza, he must play the part of Ariel, who is a fairy, and wear yellow tights with white feathers on an unmentionable part of his anatomy; "not a good thing for a boy from Camillo Junior High." To Holling's surprise, just when things are at their darkest, Mrs. Baker comes through for him, bringing cream puffs for the students on his behalf. That afternoon, Mrs. Baker and Holling discuss The Tempest, and whether or not Caliban, the "monster," deserves a happy ending. Holling argues that, as the antagonist, he does not, but Mrs. Baker muses whether Shakespeare might have shown, even in a monster, the capacity of humankind to use defeat to grow. Mrs. Bigio stumbles into the classroom at this point, emitting sounds of indescribable sadness; she has just learned that her husband has been killed in a futile reconnaissance mission in Vietnam. Two nights after his funeral, the Catholic Relief Agency, which houses Vietnamese refugees, including Holling's classmate Mai Thi, is the target of a hate crime. Holling reflects that Shakespeare, with his happy endings for nearly everyone in The Tempest, is wrong. He says, "sometimes, there isn't a Prospero to make everything fine...and...the quality of mercy is strained." In December, Camillo Junior High is awash in "signs of the season." Mrs. Baker, however, does not share the holiday spirit, but Holling is too absorbed with his problems with the Shakespeare Holiday Extravaganza to wonder why. As always, Holling seeks help from his family, but to no avail; his mother comments insipidly that his embarrassing costume is cute, his father tells him to wear it to please Mr. Goldman, who might one day need an architect, and his sister warns him that if news of his role gets to the high school, no one better find out they are related. The only thing that prevents December from being a total disaster is Mrs. Baker's announcement that Mickey Mantle will be signing autographs at the Baker Sporting Emporium. Unfortunately, Mrs. Baker also tells the class about Holling and the Shakespeare Extravaganza, and encourages the students to attend both events. Holling's classmates are intensely curious about his role as Ariel, whom he euphemistically describes as "a warrior." Mr. Goldman tells Mrs. Baker that Holling needs "some practice on interpretation", and she practices with him, playing the part of Prospero. Mrs. Baker is a terrific reader, and when she and Holling rehearse the part where Prospero releases Ariel from bondage, Holling is inspired, realizing what it means to be free "to create his own happy ending." On the night of the performance, Mrs. Baker, Mrs. Bigio, Danny Hupfer and his parents, Meryl Lee, and Mai Thi are in the audience to support Holling, unlike his own parents, who do not want to miss the Bing Crosby Christmas Special on television. Holling executes his part with such passion that his classmates are moved to tears, and do not even notice what he is wearing. When the show is over, Holling, finding the dressing room locked, rushes outside, still in costume, where his father is supposed to be waiting to take him to Baker's Sporting Emporium to see Mickey Mantle. Typically, his father is not there, and Holling, frantic, flags down a bus and begs the driver to take him to the Emporium. The driver takes pity on him and complies, getting him to the Emporium just in time, but when Holling approaches Mickey Mantle for an autograph, the famous player looks derisively at his costume and snaps rudely, "I don't sign baseballs for kids in yellow tights." Danny Hupfer witnesses this snub, and loyally returns his own autographed baseball to Mickey Mantle, saying, "I guess I don't need this after all." Holling and Danny leave together in silence, smarting because "when gods die, they die hard." During the days remaining until holiday break, Mrs. Bigio is especially cantankerous; her cafeteria cooking is unappetizing at best, and her comments to the students are impatient and unkind. Holling, remembering Mrs. Bigio's sadness when she received the news of her husband's death, does not complain, but he is bewildered at the sheer desolation he witnesses when Mrs. Bigio bitterly tells Mai Thi that she "shouldn't even be here...a queen in a refugee home while American boys are sitting in swamps on Christmas Day." After school on the last day before break, Mrs. Baker gives Holling, Danny Hupfer, and Doug Swieteck each a new baseball and mitt, and sends them to the gym, where, to their delight, they meet Joe Pepitone and Horace Clark in their Yankee uniforms, and receive tickets to Opening Day at the Stadium. Mrs. Baker's family knows what happened with Mickey Mantle, and wants to make it up to the boys. The next day, President Johnson declares a Christmas ceasefire in Vietnam, and the holiday season begins in earnest.

Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast Before March, 2011, I was a photographic retoucher based in New York City. We're pale, gray creatures. We hide in dark, windowless rooms, and generally avoid sunlight. We make skinny models skinnier, perfect skin more perfect, and the impossible possible, and we get criticized in the press all the time, but some of us are actually talented artists with years of experience and a real appreciation for images and photography. On March 11, 2011, I watched from home, as the rest of the world did, as the tragic events unfolded in Japan. Soon after, an organization I volunteer with, All Hands Volunteers, were on the ground, within days, working as part of the response efforts. I, along with hundreds of other volunteers, knew we couldn't just sit at home, so I decided to join them for three weeks. On May the 13th, I made my way to the town of Ōfunato. It's a small fishing town in Iwate Prefecture, about 50,000 people, one of the first that was hit by the wave. The waters here have been recorded at reaching over 24 meters in height, and traveled over two miles inland. As you can imagine, the town had been devastated. We pulled debris from canals and ditches. We cleaned schools. We de-mudded and gutted homes ready for renovation and rehabilitation. We cleared tons and tons of stinking, rotting fish carcasses from the local fish processing plant. We got dirty, and we loved it. For weeks, all the volunteers and locals alike had been finding similar things. They'd been finding photos and photo albums and cameras and SD cards. And everyone was doing the same. They were collecting them up, and handing them in to various places around the different towns for safekeeping. Now, it wasn't until this point that I realized that these photos were such a huge part of the personal loss these people had felt. As they had run from the wave, and for their lives, absolutely everything they had, everything had to be left behind. At the end of my first week there, I found myself helping out in an evacuation center in the town. I was helping clean the onsen, the communal onsen, the huge giant bathtubs. This happened to also be a place in the town where the evacuation center was collecting the photos. This is where people were handing them in, and I was honored that day that they actually trusted me to help them start hand-cleaning them. Now, it was emotional and it was inspiring, and I've always heard about thinking outside the box, but it wasn't until I had actually gotten outside of my box that something happened. As I looked through the photos, there were some were over a hundred years old, some still in the envelope from the processing lab, I couldn't help but think as a retoucher that I could fix that tear and mend that scratch, and I knew hundreds of people who could do the same. So that evening, I just reached out on Facebook and asked a few of them, and by morning the response had been so overwhelming and so positive, I knew we had to give it a go. So we started retouching photos. This was the very first. Not terribly damaged, but where the water had caused that discoloration on the girl's face had to be repaired with such accuracy and delicacy. Otherwise, that little girl isn't going to look like that little girl anymore, and surely that's as tragic as having the photo damaged. (Applause) Over time, more photos came in, thankfully, and more retouchers were needed, and so I reached out again on Facebook and LinkedIn, and within five days, 80 people wanted to help from 12 different countries. Within two weeks, I had 150 people wanting to join in. Within Japan, by July, we'd branched out to the neighboring town of Rikuzentakata, further north to a town called Yamada. Once a week, we would set up our scanning equipment in the temporary photo libraries that had been set up, where people were reclaiming their photos. The older ladies sometimes hadn't seen a scanner before, but within 10 minutes of them finding their lost photo, they could give it to us, have it scanned, uploaded to a cloud server, it would be downloaded by a gaijin, a stranger, somewhere on the other side of the globe, and it'd start being fixed. The time it took, however, to get it back is a completely different story, and it depended obviously on the damage involved. It could take an hour. It could take weeks. It could take months. The kimono in this shot pretty much had to be hand-drawn, or pieced together, picking out the remaining parts of color and detail that the water hadn't damaged. It was very time-consuming. Now, all these photos had been damaged by water, submerged in salt water, covered in bacteria, in sewage, sometimes even in oil, all of which over time is going to continue to damage them, so hand-cleaning them was a huge part of the project. We couldn't retouch the photo unless it was cleaned, dry and reclaimed. Now, we were lucky with our hand-cleaning. We had an amazing local woman who guided us. It's very easy to do more damage to those damaged photos. As my team leader Wynne once said, it's like doing a tattoo on someone. You don't get a chance to mess it up. The lady who brought us these photos was lucky, as far as the photos go. She had started hand-cleaning them herself and stopped when she realized she was doing more damage. She also had duplicates. Areas like her husband and her face, which otherwise would have been completely impossible to fix, we could just put them together in one good photo, and remake the whole photo. When she collected the photos from us, she shared a bit of her story with us. Her photos were found by her husband's colleagues at a local fire department in the debris a long way from where the home had once stood, and they'd recognized him. The day of the tsunami, he'd actually been in charge of making sure the tsunami gates were closed. He had to go towards the water as the sirens sounded. Her two little boys, not so little anymore, but her two boys were both at school, separate schools. One of them got caught up in the water. It took her a week to find them all again and find out that they had all survived. The day I gave her the photos also happened to be her youngest son's 14th birthday. For her, despite all of this, those photos were the perfect gift back to him, something he could look at again, something he remembered from before that wasn't still scarred from that day in March when absolutely everything else in his life had changed or been destroyed. After six months in Japan, 1,100 volunteers had passed through All Hands, hundreds of whom had helped us hand-clean over 135,000 photographs, the large majority — (Applause) — a large majority of which did actually find their home again, importantly. Over five hundred volunteers around the globe helped us get 90 families hundreds of photographs back, fully restored and retouched. During this time, we hadn't really spent more than about a thousand dollars in equipment and materials, most of which was printer inks. We take photos constantly. A photo is a reminder of someone or something, a place, a relationship, a loved one. They're our memory-keepers and our histories, the last thing we would grab and the first thing you'd go back to look for. That's all this project was about, about restoring those little bits of humanity, giving someone that connection back. When a photo like this can be returned to someone like this, it makes a huge difference in the lives of the person receiving it. The project's also made a big difference in the lives of the retouchers. For some of them, it's given them a connection to something bigger, giving something back, using their talents on something other than skinny models and perfect skin. I would like to conclude by reading an email I got from one of them, Cindy, the day I finally got back from Japan after six months. "As I worked, I couldn't help but think about the individuals and the stories represented in the images. One in particular, a photo of women of all ages, from grandmother to little girl, gathered around a baby, struck a chord, because a similar photo from my family, my grandmother and mother, myself, and newborn daughter, hangs on our wall. Across the globe, throughout the ages, our basic needs are just the same, aren't they?" Thank you. (Applause) (Applause)

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