June Jorden Essay

In this essay Alice Walker teachers a class on Black English. I had actually heard of Black English being tought before. I never really knew how involved the class was though. The setting of rules and translations they came up with surprized me. When I heard about it I never expected there to be set rules like, "Eliminate use of the verb to be whenever possible". The class was so much more intence then I expected. As I read along in the begining I remembered thinking it would be a joke of a class. Once I started reading the rules and guidlines it started to sound like it could be chanllenging to write Black English. Later in the book one of Alice's students, Willie Jorden, who is always early to class and never absents misses class for a week. It turns out his brother Reggie was killed by the police. The class writes letters to the police all in Black English and none of the papers take them. Alice then asks Willie to write his own essay. Willie writes his essay in Standard English and is taken seriously. His essay gets published. I think this storey shows the importance of being able to write correctly and effectivly. I'm not saying that the Black English was a bad idea to learn just that in the end Willie was taken seriously when he wrote his essay in standard English.