"Speaking with Hands"

Luis J. Rodriguez grew up in a poor, crime-ridden, gang-filled neighborhood of Los Angeles. In his poem, he shows how this can affect a mother's treatment and behavior at a corner grocery store.

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
10 words 46 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. cheap
    of very poor quality
    There were these small corner stores
    we called marketas
    who charged more money
    for cheaper goods than what existed
    in other parts of town.
  2. option
    the act of choosing or selecting
    The owners were often thieves in white coats
    who talked to you like animals,
    who knew you had no options
  3. preferred
    more desirable than another
    who knew Watts was the preferred landfill
    of the city
  4. register
    a cashbox with an adding machine to add up the bill
    One time, Mama started an argument
    at the cash register.
  5. dignity
    the quality of being worthy of esteem or respect
    In her broken English,
    speaking with her hands,
    she had us children stand around her
    as she fought with her grocer
    on prices & quality & dignity.
  6. sober
    dignified and serious in manner or character
    Mama became a woman swept
    by a sobering madness
  7. pillar
    anything that approximates the shape of a column or tower
    she must have been what Moses saw
    in the burning bush,
    a pillar of fire
  8. consume
    destroy completely
    consuming the still air
  9. reek
    smell badly and offensively
    that reeked of overripe fruit
    and bad meat from the frozen food
    section
  10. argue
    have a disagreement about something
    The police came and argued too,
    but Mama wouldn't stop.
Created on Wed Mar 04 13:33:01 EST 2015 (updated Wed Mar 04 20:23:38 EST 2015)

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