Select one of the prompts below and follow the directions. Your essay should be three paragraphs and must have a thesis statement in the first paragraph. Be sure to develop your ideas fully and to refer to the passage read in section IV.
Write an essay about a time when you found yourself in a situation where you were different and uncomfortable. How did you handle it? How do you feel about the way the narrator handled it in this passage from "Detroit Skyline, 1949"?
Identify the period details in the passage and write an essay explaining what they add to the story.
How does this passage reflect the concerns and style of contemporary postmodernism?
Read the following passage from “Detroit Skyline, 1949” by Bobbie Ann Mason.
Sharon Belletieri lived with her parents in a famous kind of sanitary house where you couldn’t get TB or rheumatic fever because it had no drafts. “You won’t have to worry about polio,” Betsy Lou had told me. The house had venetian blinds like my aunt’s, and there was also a television set, an immense one, on legs. Howdy Doody was on, but no one was watching. I did not know what to say to the children. They all knew each other, and their screams and giggles had a natural continuity, something like the way my mother talked with her sister, and like the splendid houses of the neighborhood, all set so close together.
For her birthday, Sharon’s parents gave her a Toni doll that took my breath away. It had a bolero sundress, lace-edged panties and slip, and white shoes and socks—an outfit as fine as any of Lunetta’s. It came with a Play Wave, including plastic spin curlers and Toni Creme Rinse. The doll’s magic nylon hair was supposed to grow softer in texture the more you gave it permanent waves. Feeling self-conscious in my new playsuit, I sat quietly at the party, longing to give that doll a permanent.
Eventually, even though I had hardly opened my mouth, someone laughed at my accent. I had said the unfortunate word “hair” again, in reference to the doll.
Sharon said, “She’s from Kentucky.”
Growing bold and inspired, I said, “Well, we don’t have any reds in Kentucky.”