offal— (noun) Waste parts, especially of a butchered animal.
“For a month or so in the winter any stray man had work, if he could breathe the stench of offal and stand up for twelve hours . . . ” (154).
From this, I understand now that the jobs available were only for the men who can stand the stench of a butchered animal.
palsy-(noun) -Complete or partial muscle paralysis, often accompanied by loss of sensation and uncontrollable body movements or tremors.
Page 5- Last sentence- “Not only did she have to live our her years in a house palsied by the baby’s fury at having its throat cut, but those ten minutes she spent pressed up against dawn-colored stone studded with star chips, her knees wide open as the grave, were longer than life, more alive, more pulsating than the baby blood that soaked her fingers like oil.
From this, I understand that the house was paralyzed and controlled by the baby’s fury.
I enjoyed our visits to the Brooklyn Historical Society. Ive never been there before so i did not know what to expect. Although we only got to look at a few pieces, i learned a lot from our visits. During our first visit we were reading “Only The Dead Know Brooklyn”, and so we got a chance to look at the history of Brooklyn. We saw maps of the borough of Brooklyn that showed streets, where the train and railroads crossed, and also noted many differences of Brooklyn today. From the map, we noticed that places that are now a part of Queens, were once in Brooklyn. This experience was cool because i didn’t think i could get my hands on primary sources like these. During our second visit, we looked at slave advertisements during the time we were reading “Beloved”. While reading the advertisements I understood the terms used to describe them because it was defined in the book. The slave ad that we saw at our table was in a newspaper from 1825, and the newspaper was still in good condition which was interesting to know it was well preserved and that i had the pleasure of reading it. In the last visit to BHS, we had a second chance to look at the same slave ads and we had to present. It was a nice experience since we didnt see everyone’s ads, but we got to hear what they saw. Overall, it was a intriguing experience.
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