Being a chink by christine leong full text

I’m studying and need help with a English question to help me learn.

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Times new roman pt 12 for both essays. Thank you

ESSAY # 1

In their essays, “The Meanings of a Word” and "Being a Chink", Gloria Naylor and Christine Leong describe their personal experiences with race growing up in the United States. Although their essays are personal, they can be considered universal for many people like Naylor and Leong because they are describing life in a society that is not inclusive and not color blind.

Using Naylor’s and Leong’s essays, answer the following question in an essay:

How important is the topic of race in the United States today in 2017?

• Support your point of view with examples from Naylor’s and Leong’s essays.

• Use at least 3 in-text citations--2 from the readings and 1 from one of the posted videos. You may not use other outside sources. The format for a video clip citation and its corresponding in-text citation USE MLA 8 citation

• Include a Works Cited list for your citations MLA 8. 1300 words which does not include identifying information or Works Cited, limited use of “I”

THIS IS THE ESSAY BY NAYLOR

“The Meanings of a Word” by Gloria Naylor

source: http://faculty.ucc.edu/english-chewning/naylor.htm

Language is the subject. It is the written form with which
I’ve managed to keep the wolf away from the door and, in
diaries, to keep my sanity. In spite of this, I consider the
written word inferior to the spoken, and much of the
frustration experienced by novelists is the awareness that
whatever we manage to capture in even the most
transcendent passages falls far short of the richness of life. Dialogue achieves its power in the dynamics of a fleeting moment of sight, sound, smell, and touch. (1)

I’m not going to enter the debate here about whether it is language that shapes reality or vice versa. That battle is doomed to be waged whenever we seek intermittent reprieve from the chicken and egg dispute. I will simply take the position that the spoken word, like the written word, amounts to a nonsensical arrangement of sounds or letters without a consensus that assigns “meaning.” And building from the meanings of what we hear, we order reality. Words themselves are innocuous; it is the consensus that gives them true power. (2)

I remember the first time I heard the word nigger. In my third-grade class, our math tests were being passed down the rows, and as I handed the papers to a little boy in back of me, I remarked that once again he had received a much lower mark than I did. He snatched his test from me and spit out that word. Had he called me a nymphomaniac or a necrophiliac, I couldn’t have been more puzzled. I didn’t know what a nigger was, but I knew that whatever it meant, it was something he shouldn’t have called me. This was verified when I raised my hand, and in a loud voice repeated what he had said and watched the teacher scold him for using a “bad” word. I was later to go home and ask the inevitable question that every black parent must face— “Mommy, what does nigger mean?” (3)