Spellbound: race and new york city

The book I chose to read for my book report is called Spellbound by Janet McDonald. The plot starts with Raven living with her mother in the projects in New York City. Raven had a baby at sixteen and had to drop out of high school to take care of her baby boy, Smokey. She wants to be better than another high school dropout, project girl with few prospects. She wants to do it for her mother’s sake. Her baby’s sake. And for her own sake. She wants to show the ambition she has inside of her and to do well and go to college or even get a high school diploma. Raven’s older sister has finished high school and gone to college. Dell even has a job at a law firm working as a paralegal. On Sundays, Dell comes over to go to church and eat dinner with her mother and sister. She introduces to raven to a spelling bee competition being held that promises the winner enrollment to a college prep high school and a full scholarship to a good college. This all sounds like a dream come true to the family but Raven cannot spell. Raven had done well in all of the other subjects. Raven never did well at all in spelling. At first Raven thought of this proposal as a mean joke her sister was playing. Dell promised her she could do it if she put her heart to it and that she was not kidding. This book tells what it is like to grow up in the projects, with a baby. This book shows how Raven lived and how many people today do also. Spellbound shows the reality of the society in our world today. With her brains, ambition, and support, Raven wins the spelling bee and goes off to finish high school and go to college. Raven’s life is very different than mine. I live in a house in the suburbs in Cincinnati, Ohio. Raven lives in an apartment in New York City, New York. Raven has a ” ghetto language” and I think I have a regular English language. We are both Christians although she is Baptist and I am a Catholic. Our food is also very different. In the ghetto, people eat a lot of unhealthy and fatty foods because unfortunately for some, that is all that they can afford. I eat healthy, nutritious foods that my mom cooks. Raven has a baby, and that is acceptable. I do not have a baby and I do not think I will have a baby until I get married. Our lives are very different from each other’s. I think that some of the stereotypes of black ghetto people are very harsh. Some people think that everyone in the ghetto projects is uneducated and dumb. Even though some of the residents in the projects have a very low income does not mean that they have little or no education. Even though Raven’s story is fictional, people have had the same experience of getting back up and starting over fresh. I think that people of the Caucasian race have stereotypes about them also. People think that all Caucasians are wealthy. There are as many wealthy Caucasians as there are blacks. There are many Caucasians that are also poor and do not have money. It is extremely necessary for everyone in the world of different cultures to accept the other cultures and races. In America, we are a melting pot. We put millions of people of different races and cultures together and everyone is a part of that. I do not like it when people make rude and nasty comments about another race or culture. It really bothers as to why people are as ignorant and uneducated as to not accept everyone as a human being. Everybody is different but we are all the same. If I could choose to be a member of any race or culture at any time in history, I would be an African American during the segregation of blacks and whites. I would be an ordinary citizen. I would become an African American and really know what it was like to not be able to use the same sink as the white or sit in the front of the bus with the white people. I have read many books but I would want to go back and try and stop segregation and speak up against the horrible discrimination. I would try and make a difference so that this never happened. What the white people did to the African Americans was wrong and by going back to that time, I would try my hardest to prevent that from ever happening and make the blacks and whites equal to each other.