We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow blogger.com more City Life vs. Village Life: Short Essay in Words (1) There are lots of differences between city life and village life. City life is really busy. People are always doing lots of works there. You have no time to waste there. On the other hand, village life is so calm. You will find lots Essay on City Life vs. Village Life in Words for Nov 01, · Essay in English | List of Essay Writing Topics in English Students, here is the list of a massive collection of various kinds of essays in English. No matter where you are from, our list will assist you to the fullest with any kind of essay you need
Walking While Black ‹ Literary Hub
My love for walking started in childhood, out of necessity. So I walked. The streets of Kingston, Jamaica, in the s were often terrifying—you could, for instance, get killed if a political henchman thought you came from the wrong neighborhood, or even if you wore the wrong color.
Wearing orange showed affiliation with one political party and green with the other, and if you were neutral or traveling far from home you chose your colors well.
The wrong color in the wrong neighborhood could mean your last day. No wonder, then, that my friends and the rare nocturnal passerby declared me crazy for my long late-night treks that traversed warring political zones.
And sometimes I did pretend to be crazy, shouting non sequiturs when I passed through especially dangerous spots, such as the place where thieves hid on the banks of a storm drain. Predators would ignore or laugh at the kid in his school uniform speaking nonsense. I made friends with strangers and went from being a very shy and awkward kid to being an extroverted, awkward one.
The beggar, the vendor, the poor laborer—those were experienced wanderers, and they became my nighttime instructors; they knew the streets and delivered lessons on how to navigate and enjoy them.
I imagined myself as a Jamaican Tom Sawyer, one moment sauntering down the streets to pick low-hanging mangoes that I could reach from the sidewalk, another moment hanging outside a street party with battling sound systems, each armed with speakers piled to create skyscrapers of heavy bass. The streets had their own safety: Unlike at home, there I could be myself without fear of bodily harm, essay on village and city life. Walking became so regular and familiar that the way home became home.
The streets had their rules, and I loved the challenge of trying to master them. I learned how to be alert to surrounding dangers and nearby delights, and prided myself on recognizing telling details that my peers missed. Kingston was a map of complex, and often bizarre, cultural and political and social activity, and I appointed myself its nighttime cartographer.
It was almost always men I saw. A lone woman walking in the middle of the night was as common a sight as Sasquatch; moonlight pedestrianism was too dangerous for her. I knew well enough to avoid those even at essay on village and city life noon. By 13 I was rarely home before midnight, and some nights found me racing essay on village and city life dawn. Yuh born a hospital; yuh neva born a street. You were born in a hospital, not in the streets.
On my first day in the city, I went walking for a few hours to get a feel for the place and to buy supplies to transform my dormitory room from a prison bunker into a welcoming space. I had come from a majority-black country in which no one was wary of me because of my skin color. I was especially unprepared for the cops.
They regularly stopped and bullied me, asking questions that took my guilt for granted. So I had to cobble together my own rules of engagement. Thicken my Jamaican accent. Quickly mention my college. My survival tactics began well before I left my dorm. I got out of the shower with the police in my head, assembling a cop-proof wardrobe. Light-colored oxford shirt.
V-neck sweater. Khaki pants. Sweatshirt or T-shirt with my university insignia. When I walked I regularly had my identity challenged, but Essay on village and city life also found ways to assert it.
Yet the all-American sartorial choice of white T-shirt and jeans, which many police officers see as the uniform of black troublemakers, was off limits to me—at least, if I wanted to have the freedom of movement I desired. In this city of exuberant streets, walking became a complex and often oppressive negotiation.
I would see a white woman walking toward me at night and cross the street to reassure her that she was safe. I would forget something at home but not immediately turn around if someone was behind me, because I discovered that a sudden backtrack could cause alarm. I had a cardinal rule: Keep a wide perimeter from people who might consider me a danger.
If not, danger might visit me. New Orleans suddenly felt more dangerous than Jamaica. The sidewalk was a minefield, and every hesitation and self-censored compensation reduced my dignity. Despite my best efforts, the streets never felt comfortably safe. Even a simple salutation was suspect.
Moments later, I was against his car in handcuffs. When I later asked him—sheepishly, of course; any other way would have asked for bruises—why he had detained essay on village and city life, he said my greeting had aroused his suspicion. When I told friends of his response, it was my behavior, not his, that they saw as absurd.
A few days after I left on a visit to Kingston, Hurricane Katrina slashed and pummeled New Orleans. I walked to feel less alienated—from myself, struggling with the pain of seeing my grandmother terminally ill; from my home in New Orleans, underwater and seemingly abandoned; from my home country, which now, precisely because of its childhood familiarity, felt foreign to me.
I was surprised by how familiar those streets felt. It was as if I had walked intodown to the soundtrack. And essay on village and city life was the wall of the neighborhood shop, adorned with the Rastafarian colors red, essay on village and city life, gold, and green along with images of local and international heroes Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey, and Haile Selassie.
The crew of boys leaning against it and joshing each other were recognizable; different faces, similar stories. I was astonished at how safe the streets felt to me, once again one black body among many, no longer having to anticipate the many ways my presence might instill fear and how to offer some reassuring body language.
Passing police cars were once again merely passing police cars. Walking had returned to me a greater set of possibilities. And why walk, if not to create a new set of possibilities? Following serendipity, I added new routes to the mental maps I had made from constant walking in that city from childhood to young adulthood, traced variations on the old pathways.
Seen theologically, then, walking is an act of faith. Walking is, after all, interrupted falling. In Jamaica, I felt once again as if the only identity that mattered was my own, not the constricted one that others had constructed for me. I strolled into my better self. W hen I tried to return to New Orleans from Jamaica a month later, there were no flights. I thought about flying to Texas so I could make my way back to my neighborhood as soon as it opened for reoccupancy, but my adoptive aunt, Maxine, who hated the idea of me returning to a hurricane zone before the end of hurricane season, essay on village and city life me to come to stay in New York City instead, essay on village and city life.
To strengthen her case she sent me an article about Texans who were buying up guns because they were afraid of the influx of black people from New Orleans. I had visited the city before, but each trip had felt like a tour in a sports car.
I welcomed the chance to stroll. I walked up past midtown skyscrapers, releasing their energy as lively people onto the streets, and on into the Upper West Side, with its regal Beaux Arts apartment buildings, essay on village and city life, stylish residents, and buzzing streets.
I went to Jackson Heights in Queens to take in people socializing around garden courtyards in Urdu, Korean, Spanish, Russian, and Hindi. And when I wanted a taste of home, I headed to Brooklyn, in Crown Heights, for Jamaican food and music and humor mixed in with the flavor of New York City. The city was my playground. Coffee shops open until predawn; verdant parks with nooks aplenty; food and music from across the globe; quirky neighborhoods with quirkier residents.
My impressions of the city took shape during my walks with her. As with the relationship, those first few months of urban exploration were all romance. The city was beguiling, exhilarating, vibrant.
One night in the East Essay on village and city life, I was running to dinner when a white man in front of me turned and punched me in the chest with such force that I thought my ribs had braided around my spine. I blew off this incident as an aberration, but the mutual distrust between me and the police was impossible to ignore, essay on village and city life. It felt elemental. Their suspicions would increase. No running, especially at night; no sudden movements; no hoodies; no objects—especially shiny ones—in hand; no waiting for friends on street corners, lest I be mistaken for a drug dealer; no standing near a corner on the cell phone same reason.
As comfort set in, inevitably I began to break some of those rules, until a night encounter sent me zealously back to them, having learned that anything less than vigilance was carelessness. After a sumptuous Italian dinner and drinks with friends, I was jogging to the subway at Columbus Circle—I was running late to meet another set of friends at a concert downtown.
I heard someone shouting and I looked up to see a police officer approaching with his gun trained on me. I was surrounded by a swarm and tried to focus on just one without inadvertently aggravating the others. For a black man, to assert your dignity before the police was essay on village and city life risk assault. One of them, digging through my already-emptied pockets, asked if I had any weapons, the question more an accusation.
Though I kept saying—calmly, of course, which meant trying to manage a tone that ignored my racing heart and their spittle-filled shouts in my face—that I had just left friends two blocks down the road, who were all still there and could vouch for me, to meet other friends whose text messages on my phone could verify that, yes, sir, yes, officer, of course, officer, it made no difference.
In fact, the dignity of black people meant less to them, which was why I always felt safer being stopped in front of white witnesses than black witnesses. The cops had less regard for the witness and entreaties of black onlookers, whereas the concern of white witnesses usually registered on them. A black witness asking a question or politely raising an objection could quickly become a fellow detainee. Deference to the police, then, essay on village and city life, was sine qua non for a safe encounter.
The cops ignored my explanations and my suggestions and continued to snarl at me. All except one of them, a captain. He told me that a black man had stabbed someone earlier two or three blocks away and they were searching for him. The police captain said I could go. None of the cops who detained me thought an apology was necessary.
Like the thug who punched me in the East Village, they seemed to think it was my own fault for running.
ESSAY ON CITY LIFE VS VILLAGE LIFE -- 200 WORDS
, time: 1:58Words Essay Archives - Paragraph Buzz
Click to see our best Video content. Take A Sneak Peak At The Movies Coming Out This Week (8/12) Mel Brooks To Release New Memoir ‘All About Me’ City Life vs. Village Life: Short Essay in Words (1) There are lots of differences between city life and village life. City life is really busy. People are always doing lots of works there. You have no time to waste there. On the other hand, village life is so calm. You will find lots Essay on City Life vs. Village Life in Words for Dear Twitpic Community - thank you for all the wonderful photos you have taken over the years. We have now placed Twitpic in an archived state
No comments:
Post a Comment