After reading both Evie Shockley’s poem and a blog post found below, please choose another quote from the same poem and emulate a similar subclaim passage of critical analysis using 3 terms from the list of literary vocabulary also found below.  You’ll notice that the quoted passage comes first in this blog post. Finally, end your passage with a question to help serve another subclaim.

what’s not to liken?

BY EVIE SHOCKLEY

the 14-year-old girl was treated like:

        (a) a grown woman.

        (b) a grown man.

the bikini-clad girl was handled by the cop like:

        (a) a prostitute.

        (b) a prostitute by her pimp.

the girl was slung to the ground like:

        (a) a sack of garbage into a dumpster.

        (b) somebody had something to prove.

the girl’s braids flew around her head like:

        (a) helicopter blades.

        (b) she’d been slapped.

the black girl was pinned to the ground like:

        (a) an amateur wrestler in a professional fight.

        (b) swimming in a private pool is a threat to national security.

the girl’s cries sounded like:

        (a) the shrieks of children on a playground.

        (b) the shrieks of children being torn from their mothers.

the protesting girl was shackled like:

        (a) a criminal.

        (b) a runaway slave.

liken it or not

 On Evie Shockley’s “what’s not to liken?”

Excerpt from “what’s not to liken?”from Evie Shockley, semiautomatic

the girl’s braids flew around her head like:
(a) helicopter blades.
(b) she’d been slapped.

In her visceral and inventive poem “what’s not to liken?” Shockley uses the form of a multiple- choice test to juxtapose images that respond to a case of police abuse of Dajerria Becton in McKinney, Texas. The readers’ understanding of the poem’s subject (which could be any girl) changes as the details, actions, and scene change: multiple choices, indeed. Shockley asks her readers to consider the difference between a helicopter and a slap. Metaphorically, the image turns a girl’s braids into the energy of whirling blades and into a possibility of flight: a girl at play or dancing or merely enjoying life. The helicopter seems the better choice. And yet, in the mind’s eye, we can also see the helicopters of war and urban policing, and bodies airlifted for emergency evacuation. Subtly, Shockley suggests there are no safe choices, not for girls or women, and especially not for girls of color. Readers enter a difficult multiple choice test that offers few correct answers, and only a more difficult question: how do we find or make other choices?

Literary Vocabulary List – Use 3 terms

Conflict/tension

Cliché

Imagery

Diction

Metaphor

Tone

Theme

Simile

Symbol

syntax

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