Page 103 - ELA_CA_HighSchool_Sampler_Flipbook

ACTIVITY 1.15 continued
12 As students are reading, monitor their progress. Be sure they are engaged with the text and annotating as directed. Evaluate whether the selected reading mode is effective.
13 You may want to have volunteers take the role of the two characters and read the excerpt for the class.
80 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 11
9781457304675_TCB_SE_G11_U1_B2.indd 80
10/3/15 12:35 AM
80 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 11
ACTIVITY 1.15
continued
Money and the American Dream
My Notes
MAMA: You had breakfast?
RUTH: Some coffee.
MAMA: Girl, you better start eating and looking after yourself better. You almost thin as Travis.
RUTH: Lena—
MAMA: Un-hunh?
RUTH: What are you going to do with it?
MAMA: Now don’t you start, child. It’s too early in the morning to be talking about money. It ain’t Christian.
RUTH: It’s just that he got his heart set on that store—
MAMA: You mean that liquor store that Willy Harris want him to invest in? RUTH :Yes—
MAMA: We ain’t no business people, Ruth. We just plain working folks.
RUTH: Ain’t nobody business people till they go into business. Walter Lee say colored people ain’t never going to start getting ahead till they start gambling on some different kinds of things in the world—investments and things.
MAMA: What done got into you, girl? Walter Lee done finally sold you on investing.
RUTH: No. Mama, something is happening between Walter and me. I don’t know what it is—but he needs something—something I can’t give him any more. He needs this chance, Lena.
MAMA (frowning deeply): But liquor, honey—
RUTH: Well—like Walter say—I spec people going to always be drinking themselves
some liquor.
MAMA: Well—whether they drinks it or not ain’t none of my business. But whether I go into business selling it to ‘em is, and I don’t want that on my ledger this late in life. (stopping suddenly and studying her daughter-in-law) Ruth Younger, what’s the matter with you today? You look like you could fall over right there.
RUTH: I’m tired.
MAMA: Then you better stay home from work today.
RUTH: I can’t stay home. She’d be calling up the agency and screaming at them, “My girl didn’t come in today —send me somebody! My girl didn’t come in!” Oh, she just have a fit ...
MAMA: Well, let her have it. I’ll just call her up and say you got the flu—
RUTH (laughing): Why the flu?
MAMA: ‘Cause it sounds respectable to ‘em. Something white people get, too. They know ‘bout the flu. Otherwise they think you been cut up or something when you tell ‘em you sick.
RUTH: I got to go in. We need the money.
MAMA: Somebody would of thought my children done all but starved to death the way they talk about money here late. Child, we got a great big old check coming tomorrow.
RUTH (sincerely, but also self-righteously): Now that’s your money. It ain’t got nothing to do with me. We all feel like that—Walter and Bennie and me—even Travis.
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.