PEARL'S SECRET Neil Henry's Pearl's Secret is a fascinating autobiographical journey of an African American man's search for his racial identity. Henry is a light-skinned African American man who tries to piece together a few scraps passed down in his family and many years of...

It happened for as long as I could remember. I was ten and my sister was four. I am middle- height with light brown hair, which goes blond in the summer. I have pale skin, and when the heat and sunlight touch it, my skin develops in to a sea of freckles. My sister has brown hair like mine. She is sh...

"Singing In The Hills", by Bill and Hazel Westfall, section one, forward through page fifty-eight. In this section, Bill and Hazel tell stories from their childhood in this first section entitled "Where Our Music Comes From." Bill and his wife Hazel talk about how they got their...

Summary of Chapter 1 Malachy McCourt was born and grew up on a farm in Toome in Northern Ireland. Angela Sheehan was born in Limerick in Western Ireland. She grew up in Limerick with her mother, her two brothers Thomas and Patrick, and her sister Agnes – or Aggie as she is commonly called. An...

Chapter 1 In chapter one the main character Maia Wojciechowska wakes up from a dream to the sound of a plane. She thinks it is her father's, but when she runs outside with her new puppy to see, Maia finds out that it is not her father's plane. The plane flies over parallel with her runn...

Background Gary Soto was born on April 12, 1952, in the farming community of Fresno, California, to Mexican-American parents. In his essay "Being Mean" he talks of how his father and grandfather worked at the Sun Maid Raisin Factory and his mother peeled potatoes at Reddispud. Soto'...

SHORT STORY "Come on Gramps, you old steam train!" Yelled a voice. "Calm down you 'rat-bag,' I'm old you know" replied another from within the brush. A head popped out, slightly wind-beaten and worn, "where ya to?" he asked. There was a small ru...