Category: social change

The meaning of the word “vestige” in Clint Smith’s poem “We Are Black Boys in America” enhances the poem’s meaning when read as a double-entendre. Its first and perhaps most well-known definitions are “a trace of something that is disappearing or no longer exists” (Vestige 1), or “the smallest amount (meant to emphasize the absence […]

While Caleb watches over his injured mother, he notes that it would not be “difficult to keep from sleeping” because “everything was painted in the shades of killers” (Scott). The word “shades” in particular is wrought with meaning. “Shade” often has to do with color, for example, when someone says “I like this shade of […]

“Elspeth Howell was a sinner… Whenever she saw a church or her husband quoted verse or she touched the simple cross around her neck while she fetched her bags, her transgressions lay in the hollow of her chest, hard and heavy as stone. The multitude of her sins—anger, covetousness, thievery—created a tension in her body, […]

Freedom, one of the hallmarks of selfhood, is governed by emotional and bodily autonomy. In this essay, I will define autonomy according to a person’s self-determination and agency. That is to say, the process by which a person controls his life and the specific actions he uses to control his life, despite the inherent vulnerability […]