IB HL English 2016 Summer Reading Assignment
Tessa Shirley –
Welcome to senior year of IB HL English. During this year, we will complete Parts II and III of the IB HL English curriculum. As we fulfill curriculum requirements, we will also complete 60% of your IB HL English assessments. Consequently, we will need to “hit the ground running” this fall. To be prepared, I want you to do a bit of reading and a bit of thinking over the summer.
Part I: The work that I have chosen for you to read is an autobiography entitled Kaffir Boy written by Mark Mathabane. I want you to read this piece for several reasons. First, the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a part of our Part II curriculum, and although Kaffir Boy is nonfiction, it will still prepare you for our study of the novel in that it is a prose piece and contains many of the same literary elements. Furthermore, this book tells the story of a black boy growing up in Apartheid South Africa. During Part III of our course, we will read an autobiographical play by Athol Fugard entitled “Master Harold” …and the boys. In this play, Fugard a white boy who grew up in the same era, relates a poignant moment in his life which exposes another group of victims of apartheid. In telling his own story, Fugard also constructs an allegorical presentation of the South African system of legalized racism at this time. Throughout the year, we will reference Kaffir Boy, and I will expect you all to make insightful and brilliant connections J
To complete your summer reading assignment, please follow the instructions below:
1. Read Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane (I recommend that you purchase your own copy so that you can annotate as you read; however, if you choose not to go that route, I can issue you a copy before you leave for summer vacation. Just come by room 101.)
2. Select three significant passages from the text. You can select a quotation or a segment of up to 40 lines. You should present hard copies of each passage that you select. Be prepared to submit your hard copies on the first day of school.
You might deem a passage significant if it illuminates a theme, develops a character, expresses a central conflict, changes the direction of the plot, illustrates an author’s tone, etc….You should recognize significant passages after you have read the work and reflected on its meaning and how the author develops or expresses it.
(An example of a significant passage from To Kill a Mockingbird might be as follows: “Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit’em, but remember, it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” From The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, you might choose the following: “’All right, then, I’ll go to hell’—and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming.” From The Scarlet Letter, you might choose the following: “The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread.”)
3. Select one of your passages for which you will write an essay in which you prvide an analyticcal explanation of why the passage is significant to the work. I will expect this product on the first day of school in August of 2014. (Your essay should be approximately 500 words, typed, MLA style.)
4. During the first week of school, I will also expect each of you to participate in an impromptu oral discussion of the work. During the discussion, you will respond to questions that will require you to discuss the work as a whole and your interpretation of it.
Part II: Harlem Renaissance Poetry Packet
Directions: The poets who wrote the following poems were all a part of the Harlem Renaissance. (Take a few moments to research this era in American Literature before you begin dealing with the poetry so that you can put each poem in a historical context.) Zora Neale Hurston, who also lived and wrote during this era, wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God. I want you approach the reading of her novel with a basic understanding of the era in which she wrote and with a knowledge of the perspectives and struggles of her contemporaries. A careful reading of this selection of poetry should help you cultivate that insight.
Please read and carefully annotate each poem. Use the TPCAST format for annotating. If you google TPCASTT, you will find several resources online to help you with this process.
Your annotations will be due during the first week of school.
Poem 1: The Negro Speaks of Rivers written by Langston Hughes
(To: W.E.B. DuBois)
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than
the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Poem 2: Dinner Guest: Me written by Langston Hughes
I know I am
The Negro Problem
Being wined and dined,
Answering the usual questions
That come to white mind
Which seeks demurely
To probe in polite way
The why and wherewithal
Of darkness U.S.A. –
Wondering how things got this way
In current democratic night,
Murmuring gently
Over fraises du bois,
“I’m so ashamed of being white.”
The lobster is delicious,
The wine divine,
And the center of attention
At the damask table, mine.
To be a Problem on
Park Avenue at eight
Is not so bad.
Solutions to the Problem,
Of course, wait.
Poem 3: If We Must Die written by Claude McKay
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Poem 4: I Know My Soul written by Claude McKay
I plucked my soul out of its secret place,
And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky,
A twitching body quivering in space,
A spark of passion shining on my face.
And I explored it to determine why
This awful key to my infinity
Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.
And if the sign may not be fully read,
If I can comprehend but not control,
I need not gloom my days with futile dread,
Because I see a part and not the whole.
Contemplating the strange, I’m comforted
By this narcotic thought: I know my soul.
Poem 5: Yet Do I Marvel written by Countee Cullen
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable his ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
Poem 6: Reapers written by Jean Toomer (1894 – 1967)
Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones
Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones
In their hip-pockets as a thing that’s done,
And start their silent swinging, one by one.
Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,
And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds.
His belly close to ground. I see the blade,
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade.
Poem 7: A Black Man Talks of Reaping written by Arna Bontemps
I have sown beside all waters in my day
I planted deep, within my heart the fear
That wind or fowl would take the grain away.
I planted safe against this stark, lean year.
I scattered seed enough to plant the land
In rows from Canada to Mexico
But for my reaping only what the hand
Can hold at once is all that I can show.
Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields
My brother' sons are gathering stalk and root,
Small wonder then my children glean in fields
They have not sown, and feed on bitter fruits.
Poem 8: Harlem by Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?