Grade 9: Unit 1

America is an improbable idea. A mongrel nation built of ever-changing disparate parts, it is held together by a notion, the notion that all men are created equal, though everyone knows that most men consider themselves better than someone.

"Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody's image," the historian Daniel Boorstin wrote. That's because it was built of bits and pieces that seem discordant, like the crazy quilts that have been one of its great folk-art forms, velvet and calico and checks and brocades.

Many of the oft-told stories of the most pluralistic nation on earth are stories not of tolerance, but of bigotry.

Other countries with such divisions have in fact divided into new nations with new names, but not this one, impossibly interwoven even in its hostilities.

Faced with this diversity there is little point in trying to isolate anything remotely resembling a national character, but there are two strains of behavior that, however tenuously, abet the concept of unity.

There is that Calvinist undercurrent in the American psyche that loves the difficult, the demanding, that sees mastering the impossible, whether it be prairie or subway, as a test of character, and so glories in the struggle of this fractured coalescing.

In the same sense, we cannot really speak of a particular "immigrant contribution" to America because all Americans have been immigrants or the descendants of immigrants; even the Indians, as mentioned before, migrated to the American continent.

So, of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, eighteen were of non-English stock and eight were first-generation immigrants.

Every ethnic minority, in seeking its own freedom, helped strengthen the fabric of liberty in American life.

In 1953 the President's Commission on Immigration and Naturalization mentioned the following: Industrialists: Andrew Carnegie (Scot), in the steel industry; John Jacob Astor (German), in the fur trade; Michael Cudahy (Irish), of the meat-packing industry; the Du Fonts (French), of the munitions and chemical industry; Charles L. Fleischmann (Hungarian), of the yeast business; David Samoff (Russian), of the radio industry; and William S. Knudsen (Danish), of the automobile industry.

Boss Tweed said, characteristically, in defense of his own depredations in New York in the 1870's, "This population is too hopelessly split into races and factions to govern it under universal suffrage, except by bribery of patronage, or corruption."

But the very problems of adjustment and assimilation presented a challenge to the American idea—a challenge which subjected that idea to stem testing and eventually brought out the best qualities in American society.

There was only one source of beauty and light for me that school year. The only thing I had anticipated at the start of the semester. That was seeing Eugene.

In her abrupt way she said: "Elena, you are acting 'moony.'" Enamorada was what she really said, that is—like a girl stupidly infatuated.

I had started reading Gone with the Wind. I was enthralled by it, with the daring and the passion of the beautiful girl living in a mansion, and with her devoted parents and the slaves who did everything for them.

I had started reading Gone with the Wind. I was enthralled by it, with the daring and the passion of the beautiful girl living in a mansion, and with her devoted parents and the slaves who did everything for them.

Though I wanted to feel the right thing about President Kennedy's death, I could not fight the feeling of elation that stirred in my chest.

She tried to embrace me, but my books were in the way. My first impulse was to comfort her, she seemed so distraught, but I had to meet Eugene in fifteen minutes.

Inside, the butchers with their bloodstained white smocks deftly gutted the fish while customers cried out their orders and shouted, "Give me your freshest," to which the butchers always protested, "All are freshest."

Vincent at first refused to let me play, but when I offered my Life Savers as replacements for the buttons that filled in for the missing pieces, he relented.

My mother had a habit of standing over me while I plotted out my games.

My parents made many concessions to allow me to practice.

In days of old, heroes underwent many ordeals.
I am, in the end, a man whose goal is unfulfilled.
Let this be an expression of the torment which fills my belly.
Leave this as a memento to encourage fellow souls.

The Chinese immigrants, in particular, raised with a tradition of public poetry, composed carefully crafted verses that drew on Classical traditions, forms, and allusions.

Once the need inscribed on those walls was translated, efforts began to preserve the detention center and to give the Angel Island Detention Center a place of honor in a newly created State Park.

We tried mentioning our proximity to Afghanistan or Iraq, but it was no use.

If someone had been able to encapsulate the kindness of these second-graders in pill form, the pills would undoubtedly put many war correspondents out of business.

I had always assumed that she would be relieved to return to her family and to a land where she spoke the language and didn't need me to act as her interpreter.

"Indigenous!" he teased
as he flew by.