Flyin West By: Pearl Cleage Act 1 Scene 3

Definitions of the word ritual and explanations of the purpose rituals serve in general in a culture. Two specific examples of rituals from any cultures and identify by name the 2 rituals and explain their purpose

In the play, Flying West by Pearl Cleage, in Act 1 Scene lll, there is an important ritual performed together by the sisters Fannie, Minnie, and Sophie to honor and remember their arrival in Nicodemus in search for a better life away from racism. There ritual involves them standing in a circle outside their home, holding hands, as they recite to each other that they are free Negro women, who left their homes where their lives were not their own, and moved from Memphis to the West to be free women bonded with trust, strength, courage, and love. A ritual can be defined in a variety of ways depending on the situation. In the play, Flyin West, the ritual is represented as a spiritual ceremony. In every culture, there are different rituals performed that serve for a certain purpose in that culture.
According to a dictionary online, I found two definitions of the word ritual. The first one defined ritual as a set of actions done regularly which has symbolic value or meaning and is well known in religious practices. The other meaning I found defined ritual as a performance of ceremonial acts prescribed by a tradition. Each culture in the world has many different rituals each one serving as a specific purpose in their culture. Some ways people in their culture do rituals are such acts like dancing, chanting, story telling, singing, gift exchanging, praying, basically any kind of act done by a group of people all together. Rituals play a very important role because it continues the existence of a culture for many years passing it down from one generation to the other. Rituals teach younger generations about their culture’s past and history and give them a greater sense of who they are and where they came from.
Although weddings in every culture have the same purpose of combining the love and life of two human beings, each culture has they’re very own tradition and ritual of celebrating them. In the African culture, it is diverse and has various ethnic groups and because of that, specific wedding rituals vary from region to region in Africa. In West Africa, Nigeria, for instance, they have an engagement ceremony held before the wedding day which is a time of festivity and fun. After the engagement ceremony, the bride goes to the father’s house to make preparations and the groom’s family visits her and pays the bride of traditional clothes, shoes, bags, and jewelry. On the night of the wedding there is a grand party held where they have traditional music and peopling dance and singing throughout the entire night. Some may do henna designs on the hands and feet of the bride and elders of the family help bathe her before the wedding day. The wedding celebration may last for days.
In a Japanese culture wedding, spring and fall are the favorite seasons to do a wedding because it represents good luck. The ceremony itself is held in Shinto Shrines. Members of families, close relatives, and friends attend the wedding. The bride is painted pure white from head to toe to visibly declare her maiden status to the gods and wears a traditional wedding kimono called shiromuku and a headpiece covered with ornaments to invite good luck to the couple. The Japanese grooms wear black kimonos. As the two exchange vows, their families face each other instead of the couple marrying. The ceremony also includes sake drinking rituals and exchanging of wedding rings. The guests and families also drink sake to symbolize the bonding of the couple. The fathers of the groom and of the bride then introduce their respective family members to each other. Following the wedding is a reception which is a party full of games, skits, and karaoke. Each dish at the reception has a symbolic wish for happiness, prosperity, long life, and many children. For example lobster is served for its deep red color symbolizing the color of “luck.”
Rituals in every culture can involve partying, singing, dancing, or it could just be a group of people together celebrating an important and memorable event in their lives. Just like in Flyin West, Fannie, Sophie, and Minnie’s ritual was an act of just remembering who they were and most importantly where they came. Rituals may be done occasionally or regularly but the significance of them is to keep cultural traditions going from generation to generation, like Fannie, Sophie, and Minnie so that they’re stories and existence is never forgotten.

Flyin' West By Pearl Cleage

In the play, Flyin’ West by Pearl Cleage, the story takes place during the 1890’s where African women born into slavery move from Memphis to settle down in Nicodemus, Kansas in hopes for better life opportunities away from racism. Although the three women, Sophie, Fannie, and Minnie, are not blood related sisters, they consider themselves sisters because of the struggles they go through from white communities and in search of land they can call their own. Their sister, Minnie, arrives back for a visit in Nicodemus from London with her husband, Frank, who both have been living in a more different, wealthy, and privelaged lifestyle compared to Sophie and Miss Leah. Frank is of mixed heritage, being that his father is white, and has very little in common with the morals and values of Minnie’s sisters. Through out the play, Frank is rude towards Sophie and Miss Leah constantly making sarcastic comments. I think his mulatto color plays a part to his character because of the fact that his complexion shows some white in him, so it makes him feel superior to the others and ignores his African heritage.

He is pysically abusive towards Minnie which both Sophie and Miss Leah later discover. Minnie has no say to anything and allows him to step all over her. I think she stays in the relationship because not only is she carrying his child, but also because he is the breadwinner and she enjoys all the fancy things he exposes her to such as life in the city. I think that as much as Minnie loved him, she probably wanted to get out of the relationship before she visited Nicodemus, but didn't know how and didn't have the support of her sisters.
Because Frank’s white brothers stopped sending him money, he was left with nothing to support himself or Minnie and makes a plan to force Minnie to add his name in her deed so he can sell her portion of the land for a great deal of money. He beats her hard for it. There land is the most important thing to them because it’s the only place they can call their own home. Their land is extremely valuable because they were willing to do anything and everything to save their land, even if it meant having to kill Frank which they eventually did.

During my reading I came across two new vocabulary words. The first one is skulking which is found on page 59Act 2 scene 1, “Frank is skulking around in the yard, coatless and cold.” Skulking means keep on hiding as for some evil reason. The second word is gumption found on page 3 Act 1 scene 3, “Because they haven’t got the gumption to try something new.” Gumption means taking the initiative or having the courage.

The characters in the play illustrate the themes of strength, courage, determination, and freedom and I feel that Sophie had those characteristics within her. Throughout the play, she had the strength to speak up for what ever she believed in and never gave up on her plan that their neighborhood would soon be a place with freedom for the colored. I liked this play because it helps us remember the history of African Americans and the struggles they had to go through before they got where they are today. The present is the result of what happened in the past and in order to fully understand why things are they way they are today, its important to have some knowledge of what went on before.

Flyin' West By Pearl Cleage

Act1 Scene 1 & 2

In the play, Flyin' West by Pearl Cleage, they sotry takes place during the 1890's where African women born into slavery move from Memphis to settle down in Nicodemus, Kansas in the West in hopes for better life opportunities away from racism. Although the three women, Sophie Fannie, and Minnie are not blood related sister, they consider themselves sisters from the struggles like racism and segragation they go through in life together.

As they live in Nicodemus, Kansas, all of them especially Sophia begin to worry about the threats of white speculators trying to ruin their black community and turn it into white land just like majority of everything around them. As they worry, Sophie continues to be a strong, independent woman who holds her ground and cintinues to believe that one day, they'll be able to live their lives as free worthy people who can own land. They wait excitedly for their sister, Minnie, and her husband Frank's arrival from London, whom they haven't seen for almost two years. Minnie and Frank's stay in Nicodemus teaches them a thing or two about how there is a limited amount of freedom in the West compared to their lifestyles in London. Because they are both so used to a free lifestyle in England with a bunch of white folks, it allows them to experience a different kind of freedom being in the West. Sophie continues to launch plans in expanding the land filled with Africans who are able to live in a working environment.

Although there were no vocabulary words that I needed to look up, I did want to mention that reading this story gave me a better understanding of what African Americans had to go through to receive the kind of freedom they have today. We all obviously know that they had to go through racisism and segragation for years and it's a good book that can teach us and give more knowledge about the specific struggles they had to go through that made everyone and everything equal today regardless of our color.

Mee Street Chronicles By: Frankie Lennon

Fever



The story, Fever, is based on the author'slv lfe during her journey through college. She atens Indiana University College and there she makes fiends, one in particular she extremely admires at first glance, named Stacey. She buries the thought of liking a female deep down as far as she possibly can. The author is aware of the fact that she is only attracted to girl and the thought of anyone finding out scares her to death. By that, she forced herself to conform with the norms of society by flirting with guys and even having boyfriends just to keep the appearance. Her crush on her friend Stacey only grew, but she continued to hide it. The more they saw each other around campus, the more they hung out together alone and that friendship grew more than just being friends. They both kept their relationship secret to protect themselves from being outcasts so they continued to see each other secretly.

They both care and loved each other, but they both still continued dating guys just to be safe that their secret wouldn't come out or be any suspicious. Stacey absolutely didn't an any of it to be exposed so she kept a steady boyfriend, but this time, it was different because she got engaged. The engageme was an approach to end the relationship she had with the author because she was afraid of being who she really was and what others would say or think.

I like that the story was full of emotions and very descriptive epecially because it's about the narrators own love lif. It was unique considering the fact that authors don't usually come out of the closet and write about their sexual orientation, especially when it's still an issue many people are not so open to talk about. I enjoyed the story and give you props for being brave enough to put this story out.

Ammunition: Information that can be used to attack or defend a claim or argument or viewpoint

Revelation: The act of revealing, disclosing, or discovering to others what was before unknown to them


Quesions that I have regarding the story is, did Tweey or Joann have any suspicions between what was happening with you and Stacey? Did Stacey eventually follow through with the wedding with Ned?

Mee Street Chronicles- Value of the stories

Whether its comics, fairy tales, non-fiction or fiction, all stories are written and told for many different purposes in life and are passed down to teach new generations to generations. People tend to think that stories are just ways to expand children's imagination and its true, but some of us don't realize that stories are for everyone regardless of our age.

In some way or the other, stories are tied to history allowing us to better understand why things are the way they are today. Stories always have some kind of moral or lesson to teach the readers about and help them make better sense of themselves and the world around them. Stories may also allow the reader to learn a thing or two more about themselves that they didn't know before. Sometimes, authors write a story about their life and puttingthem out is used to reach out to readers especially those who may be going through the same thing. Stories may also provide readers useful information they can use as a guide and support through any struggles they are going through in life.

In reading Mee Street Chronicles, what I found most valuable about the stories was the fact that the author was brave enough to put her life story, specifically about her sexuality out to the world. Especially in the story, "Fever", which talks about her love life and in it she reveals her inner most thoughts about a female friend, Stacey, whom she falls in love with. She describes Stacey's physical features that fascinates her the most and expresses her love for Stacey in such a way that makes you understand the pain she feels throughout her secret love life. She had a fear of being different, a fear of being hated, and fear of being an outcast to society and this is what caused her to not come out earlier in her life because she knew how nasty people reacted to homosexuals. Because authors don't usually come out and write about their sexual orientation and personal love life the way she did in her book, it reaches out to people who are going through the same or similiar struggle she went through and to remind them that they are not alone in this world.