Please see attached files below. Both pdfs as well as doc are...

Please see attached files below. Both pdfs as well as doc are important to read. This is for creative writing: fiction course. Please cite from stories to directly support. Also add a reference page.

The Lesson
Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995)
Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only
ones just right, this lady moved on our block with nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup. And quite
naturally we laughed at her, laughed the way we did at the junk man who went about his business like he was
some big-time president and his sorry-ass horse his secretary. And we kinda hated her too, hated the way we
did the winos who cluttered up our parks and pissed on our handball walls and stank up our hallways and
stairs so you couldn't halfway play hide-and-seek without a goddamn gas mask. Miss Moore was her name.
The only woman on the block with no Frst name. And she was black as hell, cept for her feet, which were
Fsh-white and spooky. And she was always planning these boring-ass things for us to do, us being my cousin,
mostly, who lived on the block cause we all moved North the same time and to the same apartment then
spread out gradual to breathe. And our parents would yank our heads into some kinda shape and crisp up our
clothes so we'd be presentable for travel with Miss Moore, who always looked like she was going to church
though she never did. Which is just one of the things the grownups talked about when they talked behind her
back like a dog. But when she came calling with some sachet she'd sewed up or some gingerbread she'd made
or some book, why then they'd all be too embarrassed to turn her down and we'd get handed over all spruced
up. She'd been to college and said it was only right that she should take responsibility for the young ones'
education, and she not even related by marriage or blood. So they'd go for it. Specially Aunt Gretchen. She
was the main gofer in the family. You got some ole dumb shit foolishness you want somebody to go for, you
send for Aunt Gretchen. She been screwed into the go-along for so long, it's a blood-deep natural thing with
her. Which is how she got saddled with me and Sugar and Junior in the Frst place while our mothers were in
a la-de-da apartment up the block having a good ole time.
So this one day Miss Moore rounds us all up at the mailbox and it's puredee hot and she's knockin herself out
about arithmetic. And school suppose to let up in summer I heard, but she don't never let up. And the starch
in my pinafore scratching the shit outta me and I'm really hating this nappy-head bitch and her goddamn
college degree. I'd much rather go to the pool or to the show where it's cool. So me and Sugar leaning on the
mailbox being surly, which is a Miss Moore word. And ±lyboy checking out what everybody brought for
lunch. And ±at Butt already wasting his peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich like the pig he is. And Junebug
punchin on Q.T.'s arm for potato chips. And Rosie Giraffe shifting from one hip to the other waiting for
somebody to step on her foot or ask her if she from Georgia so she can kick ass, preferably Mercedes'. And
Miss Moore asking us do we know what money is like we a bunch of retards. I mean real money, she say, like it's only poker chips or monopoly papers we lay on the grocer. So right away I'm tired of this and say so. And
would much rather snatch Sugar and go to the Sunset and terrorize the West Indian kids and take their hair ribbons and their money too. And Miss Moore Fles that remark away for next week's lesson on brotherhood, I can tell. And Fnally I say we oughta get to the subway cause it's cooler an' besides we might meet some cute boys. Sugar done swiped her mama's lipstick, so we ready. So we heading down the street and she's boring us silly about what things cost and what our parents make and how much goes for rent and how money ain't divided up right in this country. And then she gets to the part about we all poor and live in the slums which I don't feature. And I'm ready to speak on that, but she steps out in the street and hails two cabs just like that. Then she hustles half the crew in with her and hands me a Fve-dollar bill and tells me to calculate 10 percent tip for the driver. And we're off. Me and Sugar and Junebug and ±lyboy hangin out the window and hollering to everybody, putting lipstick on each other cause
±lyboy a faggot anyway, and making farts with our sweaty armpits. But I'm mostly trying to Fgure how to spend this money. But they are fascinated with the meter ticking and Junebug starts laying bets as to how much it'll read when ±lyboy can't hold his breath no more. Then Sugar lays bets as to how much it'll be when

1
Good Country People
by Flannery O’Connor
Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone,
Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for
all her human dealings. Her forward expression was steady and
driving like the advance of a heavy truck. Her eyes never swerved to
left or right but turned as the story turned as if they followed a yellow
line down the center of it. She seldom used the other expression
because it was not often necessary for her to retract a statement, but
when she did, her face came to a complete stop, there was an almost
imperceptible movement of her black eyes, during which they seemed
to be receding, and then the observer would see that Mrs. Freeman,
though she might stand there as real as several grain sacks thrown on
top of each other, was no longer there in spirit. As for getting anything
across to her when this was the case, Mrs. Hopewell had given it up.
She might talk her head off. Mrs. Freeman could never be brought to
admit herself wrong to any point. She would stand there and if she
could be brought to say anything, it was something like, “Well, I
wouldn’t of said it was and I wouldn’t of said it wasn’t” or letting her
gaze range over the top kitchen shelf where there was an assortment
of dusty bottles, she might remark, “I see you ain’t ate many of them
figs you put up last summer.”
They carried on their most important business in the kitchen at
breakfast. Every morning Mrs. Hopewell got up at seven o’clock and
lit her gas heater and Joy’s. Joy was her daughter, a large blonds girl
who had an artificial leg. Mrs. Hopewell thought of her as a child
though she was thirty-two years old and highly educated. Joy would
get up while her mother was eating and lumber into the bathroom and
slam the door, and before long, Mrs. Freeman would arrive at the back
door. Joy would hear her mother call, “Come on in,” and then they would talk for a while in low voices that were indistinguishable in the
bathroom. By the time Joy came in, they had usually finished the weather report and were on one or the other of Mrs. Freeman’s daughters, Glynese or Carramae. Joy called them Glycerin and Caramel. Glynese, a redhead, was eighteen and had many admirers; Carramae, a blonde, was only fifteen but already married and pregnant. She could not keep anything on her stomach. Every morning Mrs. Freeman told Mrs. Hopewell how many times she had vomited since the last report. Mrs. Hopewell liked to tell people that Glynese and Carramae were two of the finest girls she knew and that Mrs. Freeman was a
lady and that she was never ashamed to take her anywhere or introduce her to anybody they might meet. Then she would tell how
she had happened to hire the Freemans in the first place and how they were a godsend to her and how she had had them four years. The reason for her keeping them so long was that they were not trash. They were good country people. She had telephoned the man whose name they had given as reference and he had told her that Mr. Freeman was a good farmer but that his wife was the nosiest woman ever to walk the earth. “She’s got to be into everything,” the man said. “If she don’t get there before the dust settles, you can bet she’s dead,
that’s all. She’ll want to know all your business. I can stand him real good,” he had said, “but me nor my wife neither could have stood that woman one more minute on this place.” That had put Mrs. Hopewell off for a few days. She had hired them in the end because there were no other applicants but she had made up her mind beforehand exactly how she would handle the woman. Since she was the type who had to be into everything, then, Mrs. Hopewell had decided, she would not only let her be into everything, she would
see to it that she was into everything – she would give her the responsibility of everything, she would put her in charge. Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people’s in such a constructive way that she had kept them four years. Nothing is perfect. This was one of Mrs. Hopewell’s favorite sayings. Another was: that is life! And still another, the most important, was: well, other people have their opinions too. She would
make these statements, usually at the table, in a tone of gentle insistence as if no one held them but her, and the large hulking Joy, whose constant outrage had obliterated every expression from her face, would stare just a little to the side of her, her eyes icy blue, with the look of someone who had achieved blindness by an act of will and means to keep it. When Mrs. Hopewell said to Mrs. Freeman that life was like that, Mrs. Freeman would say, “I always said so myself.” Nothing had been arrived at by anyone that had not first been arrived at by her. She was
quicker than Mr. Freeman. When Mrs. Hopewell said to her after they had been on the place for a while, “You know, you’re the wheel behind the wheel,” and winked, Mrs. Freeman had said, “I know it. I’ve
always been quick. It’s some that are quicker than others.” “Everybody is different,” Mrs. Hopewell said.

The
Lone Ranger and Tonto
Fistfight
in
Heaven
·.·.:
SHERMAN ALEXIE
[b. 1966]
Too
hot
to
sleep so I walked down
to
the
Third Avenue
7-11
for a
Creamsicle.
and
the
company
of
a graveyard-shift cashier. I know
that
gaine. I worked graveyard for
a
Seattle
7-11
and
got
robbed once
too often. The last time the bastard locbd me in the cooler. He even
took my money and basketball shoes.
The graveyard-shift worker in . the Third Avenue 7-11 looked like
they all do. Acne scars and a bad haircut, pants that showed off
his white socks, and those cheap black sh,oes that have no support.
My arches still ache from my year at the Seattle 7-11.
"Hello,''. he asked wheri I walked into his store. "How you doing?"
I gave him a half-wave as I back to the freezer. He looked
me over so he could describe me to the police later. I knew the look.
Orte of my old girlfriends said I started to look at her that way, too.
She left me not long after that.
No,
I left her and don't blaine her for
anything . That's how it happened. When one person starts to look at
another like a criminal, then the love is over. It's logical.
"I trust you," she said to me. "You get too angry."
She was white and I lived with her in Seattle. Some nights we
fought so, bad that I would just get in my car and drive all night, only
stop to fill up on gas. In fact, I worked the graveyard shift to spend
as much time away from her as possible. But I learned all about
Seattle that way, driving its back ways and dirty alleys.
Sometimes, though, I would forget where I was and get lost. I'd
drive for hours, searching for something familiar. Seems like I'd
spent my whole life thai:way, looking for anything I recognized. Once,
I ended up in a nice residential neighborhood and somebody must
have been worried because the police showed up and pulled me over.
478

Use
by Alice Walker
I will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon. A yard like this
is more comfortable than most people know. It is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room. When the
hard clay is swept clean as a Foor and the ±ne sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves,
anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come inside the
house.
Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed
of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her
sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that "no" is a word the world never learned to say to her.
You've no doubt seen those TV shows where the child who has "made it" is confronted, as a surprise, by her
own mother and father, tottering in weakly from backstage. (A pleasant surprise, of course: What would they
do if parent and child came on the show only to curse out and insult each other?) On TV mother and child
embrace and smile into each other's faces. Sometimes the mother and father weep, the child wraps them in
her arms and leans across the table to tell how she would not have made it without their help. I have seen
these programs.
Sometimes I dream a dream in which Dee and I are suddenly brought together on a TV program of this sort.
Out of a dark and soft.seated limousine I am ushered into a bright room ±lled with many people. There I meet
a smiling, gray, sporty man like Johnny Carson who shakes my hand and tells me what a ±ne girl I have.
Then we are on the stage and Dee is embracing me with tears in her eyes. She pins on my dress a large
orchid, even though she has told me once that she thinks orchids are tacky Fowers.
In real life I am a large, big.boned woman with rough, man.working hands. In the winter I wear Fannel
nightgowns to bed and overalls dur.ing the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat
keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork
liver cooked over the open ±re minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull
calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before
nightfall. But of course all this does not show on television. I am the way my daughter would want me to be:
a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake. My hair glistens in the hot bright lights.
Johnny Carson has much to do to keep up with my quick and witty tongue.
But that is a mistake. I know even before I wake up. Who ever knew a Johnson with a quick tongue? Who

Discuss Character Development in
Assigned Stories
As you discuss the characters you've met in these stories,
consider and comment upon the writer's method of
presenting and developing them. What exactly occurred in
the stories that enhanced your knowledge of the characters?
Were characters round or Fat, static or dynamic? Be speci±c,
and try to turn the discussion towards all the stories that
were read.