Black Boston: Now & Then: Creative Writing Assessment #1 for Dr. Christopher Madson’s English Language Arts 11 & Advanced Placement Language and Composition
Write a poem that explores your experience of living in Boston today. The only requirement: is that your poem is at least 10 lines in length. And, most importantly, you consider your rhetorical situation (think SOAPSTone) and use a few rhetorical devices and strategies.
“The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.” — Chinua Achebe (No Longer at Ease)
“You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” — Malcolm X (Speech, Prospects for Freedom).
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” — James Baldwin (Fifth Avenue, Uptown. Esquire)
“Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you; sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of.” — Edwidge Danticat (The Farming of Bones)
“I am an invisible man...I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. ” — Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man).
