Analysis of Black Like Me by John Griffith and Appearances by Carmen Vasquez

The 'Fundamentals of Composition l' course was very interesting and taught me a lot. I understood many new things, and I got knowledge of many problems that our society is currently facing. Even though all the works that we have read throughout this semester were interesting and helped me gain some new understandings, "Black Like Me" by John Griffin and "Appearances" by Carmen Vasquez impressed me the most.

Personally, I consider John Griffin's book, "Black Like Me", being the representative of the classical literature.

Also, I believe, it is an excellent teaching tool as it gives the readers a lot of knowledge about one of the biggest issues in today's society - racism. Today's life is full of problems and obstacles. Many of them are people's personal difficulties, however, some of them are becoming the tragedies of the whole societies. Today, racism is considered one of the most important issues in the United States. However, as unpleasant as it sounds, for some people racism doesn't appear to be a problem at all.

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The book teaches people that everybody is equal in today's world. The color of skin should not be a reason for disrespect or ignorance toward the other people. The fact that Griffin decided to "become black" and to enter the completely different and even dangerous world had a great impression on me. I believe it takes more than just a regular person to do something like that. His experiences and observations showed whites that people of the other race are not different from them.

It was always really hard to be a part of minority group in any country. The majority of the population usually believes that the minorities are the people of the lower class and doesn't consider them being equal to themselves. I am saying that not from somebody else's experiences, but from my personal knowledge. Since I am Ukrainian, it was always harder for me to achieve everything in America.

The reason, why the book Black Like Me had such a great impression on me is because the problem that is discussed in it applies to me personally in some way. Also, this book has many examples of the real life that impressed me a lot. One of them, is the problem of forced isolation that Black people had to go through at that time. They were not able to use the same facilities as white people, for example, bathrooms, hotels, and restaurants.

It was a really big problem at that time. Today, the prejudice and the discrimination of people with different color of skin are not as strong as they were before. Now, people have become more educated. Such books and such courses, like the one we had this semester, helped people to understand the way people deserve to be treated. It also helped people realize that people should not be evaluated on the basis of the color of their skin. Moreover, people should appreciate the individual for his or her personality, intelligence, education, and kindness.

The essay Appearances was also very interesting and didactic. I gained a lot of knowledge about the other problem of our society - homophobia. It is often called an acceptable prejudice. People are very prejudice by their nature. People usually have problems accepting other people for who they are and not for the color of skin they have or for their sexual preferences. This book had a really big influence on me. I was really surprised and disappointed by the fact that innocent people were hurt only because they were thought of as gays. These people were discriminated on the basis on their preferences. As far as I think, it is not the way it should be. Moreover, I believe we should learn how to treat people differently, and how to separate people's preferences and races from their personalities.

In conclusion, I want to admit that these two works that we studied on our course I consider as an excellent teaching tools. They taught us to be kind and to respect each other based on our personality. I choose the book "Black Like Me" by John Griffin and "Appearances" Essay by Carmen Vazquez, because these two works I like the best as they describe very actual problems in our society today.