Excerpt from "On Seeing England for the First Time"

Born in Antigua while it was still under British rule, Elaine Potter Richardson was taught that anything "Made in England" was better. But then she moved to New York, changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid, and wrote an essay that makes fun of the view.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 12 Unit 1's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: My Papa's Waltz, in just-, The Last Word, Mushrooms, I Remember, Invisible Man, Four Skinny Trees, Dirty Work, On Seeing England for the First Time, Speaking with Hands, The White Man's Burden, The Poor Man's Burden, Shooting an Elephant, Lindo Jong: Double Face, Stranger in the Village
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. mutton
    meat from a mature domestic sheep
    The England I was looking at was laid out on a map gently, beautifully, delicately, a very special jewel: it lay on a bed of sky blue--the background of the map--its yellow form mysterious, because though it looked like a leg of mutton, it could not really look like anything so familiar as a leg of mutton because it was England
  2. authority
    freedom from doubt; belief in yourself and your abilities
    When my teacher had pinned this map up on the blackboard, she said, "This is England"--and she said it with authority, seriousness, and adoration, and we all sat up.
  3. source
    the place where something begins
    We understood then--we were meant to understand then--that England was to be our source of myth and the source from which we got our sense of reality, our sense of what was meaningful, our sense of what was meaningless--and much about our own lives and much about the very idea of us headed that last list.
  4. establish
    set up or found
    It had written on it the name of the company, the year the company was established, and the words "Made in England."
  5. proper
    appropriate for a condition or purpose or occasion
    Felt was not the proper material from which a hat that was expected to provide shade from the hot sun should be made, but my father must have seen and admired a picture of an Englishman wearing such a hat in England
  6. compelling
    tending to persuade by forcefulness of argument
    this picture that he saw must have been so compelling that it caused him to wear the wrong hat for a hot climate most of his long life.
  7. substantial
    providing abundant nourishment
    The very idea of the meal itself, breakfast, and its substantial quality and quantity was an idea from England; we somehow knew that in England they began the day with this meal called breakfast and a proper breakfast was a big breakfast.
  8. vain
    having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
    My father's brown felt hat would develop a hole in its crown, the lining would separate from the hat itself, and six weeks before he thought that he could not be seen wearing it--he was a very vain man--he would order another hat from England.
  9. conquer
    put down by force or authority
    I did not know then that the statement "Draw a map of England" was something far worse than a declaration of war, for in fact a flat-out declaration of war would have put me on alert, and again in fact, there was no need for war--I had long ago been conquered.
  10. awe
    an overwhelming feeling of wonder or admiration
    I did not know then that this statement was meant to make me feel in awe and small whenever I heard the word "England": awe at its existence, small because I was not from it.
Created on Wed Mar 04 12:21:54 EST 2015 (updated Wed Mar 04 20:23:56 EST 2015)

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