Name:________________________________Date:_____________ Baker Creative Writing

“The Almost White Boy”By Willard Motley

By birth he was half Negro and half white. Socially he was all Negro. That is when people knew that his mother was a brownskin woman with straightened hair and legs that didn’t respect the color line when it came to making men turn around to look at them. His eyes were gray. His skin was as white as Slim Peterson’s; his blond hair didn’t have any curl to it at all. His nose was big and his lips were big—the only tip-off. Aunt Beulah-May said he looked just like “poor white trash.” Other people, black and white, said all kinds of things about his parents behind their backs, even if they were married. And these people, when it came to discussing him, shook their heads, made sucking sounds with their tongues and said, “Too bad! Too bad!” And one straggly-haired Irish woman who had taken quite a liking to him had even gone so far as to tell him, blissfully unmindful of his desires in the matter, “I’d have you marry my daughter if you was white.”

One thing he remembered. When he was small his dad had taken him up in his arms and carried him to the big oval mirror in the parlor. “Come here, Lucy,” his father had said, calling Jimmy’s mother. His mother came, smiling at the picture her two men made hugged close together; one so little and dependent, the other so tall and serious-eyed. She stood beside him, straightening Jimmy’s collar and pushing his hair out of his eyes. Dad held him in between them. “Look in the mirror, son,” he said. And they all looked. Their eyes were serious, not smiling, not staring, just gloom-colored with seriousness in the mirror. “Look at your mother…Look at me.” His dad gave the directions gravely. “Look at your mother’s skin.” He looked. That was the dear sweet mother he loved. “Look at the color of my skin.” He looked. That was his daddy, the best daddy in the world. “We all love each other, son, all three of us,” his dad said, and his mother’s eyes in the mirror caught and held his father’s with something shining and proud through the seriousness; and his mother’s arm stole up around him and around his daddy. “People are just people. Some are good and some are bad,” his father said. “People are just people. Look—and remember.” He had remembered. He would never forget…Responding to the TextDirections: Answer each of the questions below in their entirety - these questions have multiple parts to them.

1. Descriptive details are essential in this short story because they establish both identity and the paradox of identity. What details illustrate why Jimmy was “socially…all Negro”? What details show that he, and his parents, are, after all, “people”?

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1Motley, Willard. “The Almost White Boy.” An Anthology for Young Writers, edited by Robert C. Meredith, National Textbook Company, 1996, pp. 100-101.

Name:________________________________Date:_____________ Baker Creative Writing

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2. When the boy is commanded to look in the mirror, does he instinctively look at descriptive details, or at something else? Explain your response.

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3. What does the boy see that he will “never forget”? Is it possible that he fails to see what he will constantly be reminded of?

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4. What details in the first paragraph are missing in the second one so that a portrait of the family will emerge?

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2Motley, Willard. “The Almost White Boy.” An Anthology for Young Writers, edited by Robert C. Meredith, National Textbook Company, 1996, pp. 100-101.

Name:________________________________Date:_____________ Baker Creative Writing

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Writing WorkshopDirections: answer both of the questions below.

1. The above selection illustrates that the emotional and mental state of the observer is important in the use of descriptive detail. What he sees will depend both upon what he has been taught to see and the way he immediately feels because of his situation. Reconstruct an event which occurred to you in which you were emotionally disturbed—angered, embarrassed, or fearful—and use descriptive details that represent your emotional state. You might take, for example, the day you lost what you had borrowed from a friend; the apology you had to make for missing a party to which you had been invited; your awareness that you have just said something unflattering about a person and that he has overheard you. Write about 700 words.

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3Motley, Willard. “The Almost White Boy.” An Anthology for Young Writers, edited by Robert C. Meredith, National Textbook Company, 1996, pp. 100-101.

Name:________________________________Date:_____________ Baker Creative Writing

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4Motley, Willard. “The Almost White Boy.” An Anthology for Young Writers, edited by Robert C. Meredith, National Textbook Company, 1996, pp. 100-101.

Name:________________________________Date:_____________ Baker Creative Writing

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2. Motley’s story is poignant because it talks about belonging. As human beings we must belong somewhere because it is a matter of satisfying our basic needs for love and acceptance. But people outside Jimmy’s group do not accept him as belonging

5Motley, Willard. “The Almost White Boy.” An Anthology for Young Writers, edited by Robert C. Meredith, National Textbook Company, 1996, pp. 100-101.

Name:________________________________Date:_____________ Baker Creative Writing

to either group of people represented by his parents. He is in an impossible situation. Have you ever felt that you didn’t belong to a group, any group? What physical description would make this evident to a reader? Using Motley’s story as a guide, describe the groups around you to which you belong and yet may not belong.

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6Motley, Willard. “The Almost White Boy.” An Anthology for Young Writers, edited by Robert C. Meredith, National Textbook Company, 1996, pp. 100-101.