Ishmael Beah | Unusual Normality | New York City Mainstage 2015

KEY VOCABULARY: Answer the following FOUR questions about some important words that you will see in the upcoming text. 

 

Rehabilitation: the action of restoring someone to health or normal life through training and therapy

     1.  What might rehabilitation for a broken leg involve?

 

Counterpart: one having the same function or characteristics as another

      2. What might be the counterparts of grandmothers? 

 

Stereotypes: a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

      3. Can stereotypes ever be a good thing? Explain why or why not.

 

Naïve: showing a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment

      4. Write one example of a naïve belief? 

 

What do paragraphs 3-6 BEST reveal about Beah's character?

      (3) So I just started laughing, and I didn’t even bother going to the lost-baggage section to claim it.

      (4) I just walked right out to meet my new adoptive mother, who was standing there with a beaming smile, waiting for me. And I explained to her what had happened, and we laughed some more.

     (5) We left and went into Manhattan, and that evening we went to Kmart. (After we had had Chinese food and a fortune cookie that said, “You’re about to have new clothes.”)

     (6) And I thought to myself, What a great omen. Fresh new start to everything.

 

• He is shy around strangers.

• He trusts people too easily.

• He does not take life seriously.

• He has a positive outlook on life.

Write TWO details from this section that cause Beah's thoughts in paragraph 6. 

In paragraph 6, Beah writes, "And I thought to myself, What a great omen. Fresh start to everything." How does his word choice reveal his attitude (tone)? 

HINT: In paragraph 6, words such as "___________" and "___________" show that Beah has a/an _____________ attitude because ___________________.

Write TWO details that caused Beah's thoughts in paragraph 6. 

How does the word choice "What a great omen. Fresh start to everything" reveal his tone?

 

     (5) We left and went into Manhattan, and that evening we went to Kmart. (After we had had Chinese food and a fortune cookie that said, “You’re about to have new clothes.”)

     (6) And I thought to myself, What a great omen. Fresh new start to everything.

Read paragraphs 7-11 that were just spoken.  What words/phrases indicate that the author is finished relating information from his childhood?

      (7) I was coming from a country called Sierra Leone. At age eleven, a war had started in my country. At twelve I had become an orphan, because my mother, father, and two brothers had been killed in that war. At thirteen I was fighting as a soldier in that same war. At sixteen, after three years of war, I’d been removed from all that and had gone through rehabilitation, where I began learning how to deal with the memories of the war.

      (8) So from this experience, I had come to the United States. To have a new home, and to live with a mother who was willing to take me into her life when most people at the time were afraid of somebody like me.

      (9) It was a chance at living again, because all I had come to know, since I was eleven, was how to survive. I didn’t know how to live. All I knew, really, up until this point in my life, was struggle. This was what I had come to expect from life, and I didn’t trust in happiness or any kind of normality at all. 

     (10) So here I was in New York, with my new mother. We needed to step into that normality. 

     (11) But we had a lot of things to deal with, and one of the most pressing ones was that I needed to get into school. You see, the visa that I had been given was a prospective-student visa.6 This meant that when I arrived in the United States, I had three months to get into a school. If I didn’t, I would be returned to my war-torn country, Sierra Leone.

MAKE A PREDICTION:

Why might the information about his childhood be important to the rest of the story?

Read the excerpt from paragraph 17. 

     I would sit there thinking to myself, What do these school principals think? Do they really think that when there’s a war in your village or when your town is attacked, and people are gunned down in front of you, and you’re running for your life, you’re thinking to yourself, “You know, I must take my report card and put it in the back of my pocket.”

What quote BEST shows a playful, sarcastic tone?  

• I would sit there thinking to myself, What do these school principals think?

• ...you’re running for your life, you’re thinking to yourself, “You know, I must take my report card and put it in the back of my pocket.”

Read the excerpt from paragraphs 25-26:

They would say to me, “You’re such a weird kid.”

And I would respond by saying, “No, no, no. I’m not weird. Weird has a negative connotation. I prefer the word unusual. It has a certain sophistication and gravitas to it that suits my character.” 

Based on the context of the passage, the word gravitas most likely means…

 

 

 

•  silliness

• seriousness

• arrogance

Using paragraphs 21-30, we can tell that Beah What attitude does Beah have towards his classmates?  Use ACE to write a well-developed response. 

     A: Answer the question

     C: Cite textual evidence 

     E: Explain how that supports your answer.

HINT: 

Beah has a ____________ attitude towards his peers. In paragraph ____, he says "____________________." This shows that he is ___________ because ________________________. 

 

     (21) Thus began my two years of high school and making other teenagers confused about who I was. You see, I didn’t fit into any box. I didn’t have the same worries about what shoes or clothes I wore. And so my teenage counterparts always wanted to find out why I was like that. Why I didn’t worry about my essays or exams or things. 

     (22) And of course I couldn’t tell them, because I felt that they were not ready to hear the truth. What was I going to say? 

     (23) During a break from class, “Hey, you know, I was a child soldier at thirteen. Let’s go back to class now.” 

     (24) So I was silent, mostly. I didn’t say much. I would just smile. And this made them more curious. 

     (25) They would say to me, “You’re such a weird kid.” 

     (26) And I would respond by saying, “No, no, no. I’m not weird. Weird has a negative connotation. I prefer the word unusual. It has a certain sophistication and gravitas to it that suits my character.” 

     (27) And of course when I was finished saying this, they would look at me and say, “Why don’t you speak like a normal person?” 

     (28) The reason I spoke like this was because of my British-African English that I’d learned, which was the only formal English that I knew. So whenever I spoke, people felt ill at ease, particularly my fellow teenagers. They thought, What is wrong with this fellow?

     (29) Some of them, though, didn’t find it as strange. They thought maybe my English was like this because I was from some royal African family. 

     (30) So throughout my high-school years, I tried to make my English less formal, so that my friends would not feel disturbed by it. (However, I did not dispute the fact that I was from some royal African family or that I was a prince. Because, you see, sometimes some stereotypes have their benefits, and I certainly took advantage of that.)