My name is Makumba Dukuray . I am a 26 year old  student at Lehman College . I am a Sociology major . I was born and raised in Bronx,New York . My parents are from The Gambia which is in West Africa and came to New York in the early 1990s. Soninke is my first language and English is my second. I didn’t learn how to completely  speak English til I was in 2nd grade . From kindergarten til the time i was finally able to grasp English it was difficult for me to communicate with my peers and …

 In society there has always been class division between who has resources and who doesn’t. In this particular text Sherman Alexie’s “ What You Pawn I Will Redeem” shows how Native Americans are the group who doesn’t have resources due to colonialism.   The protagonist Jackson Jackson is a homeless Spokane Native American living in the streets of Seattle , Washington . Throughout the story it shows his journey of getting back his grandmother’s regalia which is sees being sell in a pawnshop . Which he has to come up with $999 to give to the pawnshop owner to get it …

   Sherman Alexis was born in October 7 , 1966 on a Spokane Indian reservation in Washington. He’s a poet , novelist , novelist and filmmaker. He held the world heavyweight championship for poetry title . In this  text “what you pawn I will redeem “ I felt like he lived a life of a Spokane Indian . Native Americans were here before Christopher Columbus came and supposedly found America . Many natives were killed due to the fact that Columbus didn’t want anyone who didn’t look like him possibly taking over the land . Native Americans had dark skin compared …

                                        Its Friday afternoon in professor Weatherbee’s anthropology class . Im staring at every second that goes by patiently waiting for the clock to strike 2 o clock . The spring fling is a week away and I can’t wait for my girls to come down from New York and turn up with me . With exams , projects and papers to do I haven’t even been  sleeping at a normal time . My study group stayed up till 4am last week to study for statistics . It all paid off because I got a A- on the midterm, even …

     As I walk down the sandy sidewalk I  hear the roosters “cock a doodle do “ . School kids in their white and navy blue uniform are running to school to make it on time . Street vendors selling sliced oranges , mangoes and fish pies . Cars are honking at one another to go not knowing theres traffic ahead . I cross the street when all the cars stopped due to traffic because there is no street light on my block. I am juggling two barrels of water that i got from the well one is on my head …

   In my first fiction story “Daddy’s Little Girl” I really enjoyed writing that piece because I wanted readers to get a glimpse of what The Gambia is like in terms of culture , religion , food and language . I am sure people have their stereotypes about Africa and whats its like their so I wanted to shoot that down and show that Africa is just like everywhere else and not what people see on the television . I also wanted to address the issue of female genital mutilation which I feel really passionate about it not only because it …

  As I am reflecting on the end of the semester , I have learned a lot in this class that I didn’t know about fiction writing . I went to a high school that was geared to writing called Bronx Academy of Letters so when i seen this class was a LEH requirement I was interested in taking it . I thought it would interesting to be able to write my own story , create characters and give them situations and problems and come up with the solution . My goals in this class were to improve my writing skills …