Excerpt from "If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?"

Tune in to this list about tuna. Using sensory details in her essay, Geeta Kothari recalls trying to open a new world with the opening of a can.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 10 Unit 2's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: Where I'm From, Funny in Farsi, Kaffir Boy, Pick One, If You Are What You Eat, Persepolis, poems about parents, Hunger of Memory, Thanksgiving: A Personal History, Time to Assert American Values, Rough Justice, On Civil Disobedience, On Surrender at Bear Paw Mountain, On Women's Right to Vote, Declaration of the Rights of the Child, School's Out for Summer, One Word of Truth, Hope, Despair, and Memory
11 words 30 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. tacit
    implied by or inferred from actions or statements
    "To belong is to understand the tacit codes of the people you live with."--Michael Ignatieff
  2. tilt
    incline or bend from a vertical position
    We stand in the doorway of the kitchen, in semi-darkness, the can tilted toward daylight.
  3. repugnant
    offensive to the mind
    I want to eat what the kids at school eat: bologna, hot dogs, salami--foods my parents find repugnant because they contain pork and meat by-products, crushed bone and hair glued together by chemicals and fat.
  4. tolerate
    put up with something or somebody unpleasant
    Although she has never been able to tolerate the smell of fish, my mother buys the tuna, hoping to satisfy my longing for American food.
  5. internal
    located inward
    And the tuna in those sandwiches doesn't look like this, pink and shiny, like an internal organ.
  6. similar
    having the same or nearly the same characteristics
    In fact, this looks similar to the bad foods my mother doesn't want me to eat.
  7. peer
    look searchingly
    She is silent, holding her face away from the can while peering into it like a half-blind bird.
  8. botulism
    food poisoning from ingesting botulin
    I have never seen botulism, but I have read about it, just as I have read about but never eaten steak and kidney pie.
  9. disappoint
    fail to meet the hopes or expectations of
    They are not like other parents, and they disappoint me and my sister.
  10. negotiate
    succeed in passing through, around, or over
    They are supposed to help us negotiate the world outside, teach us the signs, the clues to proper behavior: what to eat and how to eat it.
  11. discrepancy
    a difference between conflicting facts or claims or opinions
    I see their sandwiches, yet cannot explain the discrepancy between them and the stinking, oily fish in my mother's hand.
Created on Fri Oct 10 21:44:49 EDT 2014 (updated Mon Oct 13 15:08:04 EDT 2014)

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