“This is home. Whatever little I can do that will matter for something must be done here. A person can run for years but sooner or later he has to take a stand in the place which, for better or worse, he calls home, to do what he can do to change things there.”
—from The Chosen Place, The Timeless People by Paule Marshall
Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall
Page 27:
Caught in the riptide of her anger, Thomasina Moore was powerless to stop herself.
“…Here the tree of us suppose to be traveling together and she just ups and leaves, ruining the rest of the trip for the two of us. And after all the time I spent seeing to it everything would be just right!” (Which was true. The woman devoted the better part of the year to planning for the cruise—which each year took them to a different set of islands. She had the time, not having worked since her show business days. Her dead husband, a dentist, who had been taken with her color, had indulged her shamelessly, treating her as if she were all the children they had never had.)
“…No decent person’d do a thing like this. Why she’s no better come to think of it than some bun on a Hundred Twenty-fifth Street, never mind the airs she gives herself. But she never had me fooled. Oh, no, this is one boot she couldn’t play for a fool. I could tell her airs were nothing but a front. Always knew she had it in her to pull somethin’ mean and low-down like this. Knew it!”
“That’s why,” she cried, her suppressed fury at a new high, her breath sucked deep into the bony wells at her throat, her eyes convulsed. “That’s why if I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times: it…don’t…pay…to…go…no…place…with…niggers! They’ll mess up ever’ time!”
Unhurriedly, Avery Johnson bent and picked up first her gloves and then her pocketbook from the chair beside her. To her surprise she found she was smiling. A little faint, pleased, self-congratulatory smile, as if, instead of the insult, the woman had said something complimentary. It didn’t make sense. Yet the smile was, its warmth stealing across her…
this is how i feel when i see people who are in love.
“…families ate dinner out of paper plates and small children screamed and raced across the scarred grass. on the slopes, amid the rocks and trees there, lovers lay in each others arms, their faces close and murmuring. Selina gazed at them and slowly her lips parted, blindly her hand groped for Beryl as she was shaken by something she sensed in them. It seemed that they-those laughing girls with grass in their hair, those bold boys with daring hands- had attained the fullest freedom. Back on the trolley she had had the merest glimpse of it; it had charged her blood like a stimulant when she was walking in the zoo. But their freedom was richer, fuller and denied her.
“Look, two of them are kissing,” Beryl said, clinging to her arm.
It was more than just kissing, Selina wanted to say, watching their mouths open into each other and their bodies slowly sink into the grass. They were pouring themselves into each other. Suddenly she could not look any more. Tears stung her eyes. Pushing Beryl away she raced into a small wood near by and bounded up a low ridge there.”
I’m so confused as to what plagiarism is and what it isn’t. I can write “triple invisibility” while annotating the essay, but if I write about triple invisibility in my paper, it is plagiarism and it’s not allowed? What on earth is the difference?
None of you will even understand this ha. Kill. Me. Now.
