Tow #8 Independent Reading book

For this week’s Text of the Week, Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals (my independent reading book), has come to an end. From the beginning of the book it tells stories of uncertain days, one being when she almost got raped. The deeply detailed anecdote was horrifying in how real it felt, the diction, attention to small details along with every emotion she felt during that time, created a first person view for the reader. As the pages kept turning, Melba’s life only got worse. While entering the school she applied to pathos and ethos. By all of the tension building up, it was only a matter of time before she cracked and would leave Little Rock high, so a reader thought.  Because of her turning her cheek towards the harsh remarks and commentary, it allowed us as the reader to see how brave she had been, how strong she had been, and how powerful she is as a person. Without these harsh times of segregation during Little Rock’s integration period that she went through, it would be harder to believe her by just talking about it, rather than writing it down in detail. In the book there is photographs that capture some of these cruelsome times, elaborating a whole lot more than words could ever. One picture in particular meant a thousand words, when Elizabeth Eckford went into the face of a mob right in front of Little Rock, her looking helpless and vulnerable, but nowhere near giving up. In the background there were caucasian people hollering at her, her face staying forward, not looking back or making comments. This allowed us as readers to visually see what being hollered, harassed, and segregated was like (if we hadn’t already experienced that). Although to me it was very hard to finish the book due to its high attention to detail and slowly progressing plot, it was a book that I recommend for other individuals who are also interested in the events that occurred to the Little Rock nine during this time.