
Pamela Mead
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About
Multi-modal freelancer with experience writing on a variety of subjects and mediums.
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eNotes Educator
This badge is awarded to all eNotes Educators. Only official Educators can answer students' questions on our site. Educators are teachers, professional researchers, and scholars who apply to our...
Recent Activity
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Answered a Question in History
This is a difficult question. I believe that most people—especially those of African descent—would be hard-pressed to articulate any positive outcomes of the transatlantic slave trade. As early as... -
Answered a Question in Survival In Auschwitz
The Auschwitz concentration camp was established by the Nazis near the town of Oświęcim, in Poland. Once the Nazis took over this area, they forcibly relocated the Poles and renamed the town—as... -
Answered a Question in Civil Disobedience
Thoreau's writing shows that he is clearly of the "small government" mentality. The first line in Civil Disobedience is: I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least.”... -
Answered a Question in Born a Crime
A large part of the final chapter of Trevor Noah's autobiography Born A Crime is about the deterioration of Trevor's mother's marriage to Abel. Over the years, Trevor has become used to Abel's... -
Answered a Question in Me Talk Pretty One Day
"Go Carolina" is one of the essays in David Sedaris's book Me Talk Pretty One Day. In "Go Carolina," we learn that Sedaris has struggled with a lisp since early childhood. By the time he reaches... -
Answered a Question in Wonder
August (Auggie), the protagonist of Wonder, is afraid to start middle school after having been homeschooled for so many years. Nevertheless, he listens to his parents's rationale and decides to... -
Answered a Question in Born a Crime
Trevor Noah was born in South Africa in 1984, when apartheid was still very much an issue. Noah's mother was Xhosa and his father was a German-Swiss white man, and it was illegal for "mixed races"... -
Answered a Question in Stuck in Neutral
In the book Stuck in Neutral, Shawn McDaniel is a fourteen-year-old living with cerebral palsy and is physically incapable of caring for himself. He also cannot speak, so his family members believe... -
Answered a Question in Made in Japan
Akio Morita is a co-founder of the Sony Corporation. In Made in Japan, Morita recounts tales of his early childhood and family life, including details about the family business that made his... -
Answered a Question in She Stoops to Conquer
She Stoops to Conquer, written by Oliver Goldsmith, may be considered either a farce or a "Comedy of Errors." A Comedy of Errors is an amusing play involving mistaken identities. We first see the... -
Answered a Question in The Spirit of Community
In "The Spirit of Community" by Amitai Etzioni, the author extols the virtues of the "communitarian" approach to living, which he believes will ultimately benefit all members of society. Not only... -
Answered a Question in Dreams from My Father
One of the ways in which Obama's mother helped compensate for his father's absence was to include her parents (Obama's grandparents) in his life to a great extent. Young Obama lived in Wichita,... -
Answered a Question in Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun
Canada believes that much of the violence we see in America today can be traced back to a broken education system, so I argue that this issue is the most important of all. Canada references schools... -
Answered a Question in Monster
In the novel Monster by Walter Dean Myers, we meet Steve—a 16-year-old African American from Harlem—who is awaiting trial as an accessory to a robbery scheme that ended in murder. The novel is... -
Answered a Question in Hamlet
Although the act of poisoning was commonplace in Shakespeare's time, there doesn't seem to be any evidence to support the idea that pouring poison in the ear was a method used to achieve this end.... -
Answered a Question in History
The idea of freedom means different things to different people, but most Americans would agree that freedom is the ability to do, think, act or speak however one likes, as long as doing so does not... -
Answered a Question in Unwind
In the novel Unwind, which takes places in a dystopian, post Second Civil War America, we learn that recent legislation has just been passed that allows parents to "retroactively 'abort' a child"... -
Answered a Question in History
United quite recently, it was believed that the earliest known settlers of the Americas had first crossed the Bering Straight land bridge around 15,000 years ago. However, a recent joint British... -
Answered a Question in Strange Fruit
Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith is the story of the doomed love affair between Nonnie Anderson, a recent African-American college graduate, and Tracy Deen, the white son of one of the area's most... -
Answered a Question in The Haunting of Hill House
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson was published in 1959. The novel follows a troubled woman named Eleanor Vance who is asked to help a scholar named Dr. Montague explore Hill House,... -
Answered a Question in The Fire Next Time
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin consists of two separate essays: "My Dungeon Shook — Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation," and "Down At The Cross — Letter from... -
Answered a Question in Atonement
Atonement opens with at the Country Estate of the Tallis family. Cecilia has just arrived and is reunited with Robbie, the son of the Tallis family’s cleaning lady who lives with his mother in a... -
Answered a Question in The Outsiders
S. E. Hinton began writing her début novel, The Outsiders, when she was still in high-school. In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Hinton mentions that part of the reason she wrote the... -
Answered a Question in Mahatma Gandhi
In his book Great Soul, author Joseph Lelyveld discusses Gandhi's 20 years in South Africa and how this time abroad helped to inform some of his most deeply-held beliefs about Hinduism. Gandhi was... -
Answered a Question in Sweat
In Zora Neale Hurston's short story "Sweat", we meet Delia Jones, the wife of a cruel man named Skyes, to whom she has been married for 15 years. Sykes does not work, so Delia is the breadwinner;... -
Answered a Question in The Swiss Family Robinson
The Swiss Family Robinson was written in 1812 and is about a family of six (two parents and four boys) who survive a shipwreck. The morning after the storm, the family members spy a tropical island... -
Answered a Question in Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter was born in London, England in October of 1930. Because of the bombing in London during World War II, Pinter was evacuated to the countryside when he was about nine years of age. He... -
Answered a Question in The Snows of Kilimanjaro
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway that takes place on the African savanna; The protagonist, Harry, and his wife are sitting outside having a discussion about his leg,... -
Answered a Question in Philadelphia, Here I Come!
Aunt Lizzy is probably the most important person in Gar's life and a huge part of the reason he decides to move to the United States. Gar's mother has passed away and his Aunt Lizzy (his mother's... -
Answered a Question in Firegirl
In chapter 11 of Firegirl, Jessica sits at her desk and opens her pencil case; a photo flutters to the floor. Tom immediately picks it up and begins to ask Jessica about it. Other students also... -
Answered a Question in Brave New World
Women have very little power in any place in society in Brave New World. In fact, women are mostly portrayed only in how they relate to men. The one arena in which which women did have some control... -
Answered a Question in Literature
George Kracha is the first immigrant of a Slovak family to come to America. We follow him and his wife to the new world, where we learn of George's employment in the steel mills. His wife is very... -
Answered a Question in Literature
Finding Zasha by Randi G. Barrow was published in 2013 and is the story of Ivan, a twelve-year-old boy in the year 1941 in Leningrad, Germany. Ivan is a partisan activist who is against the war,... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
In Lord of the Flies, chapter seven opens wth Jack, Ralph, and some older boys on their way back to camp after trying in vain to find the wild boar. Ralph seems to be the first to notice how... -
Answered a Question in Al Capone Does My Shirts
In the novel Al Capone Does My Shirts, the protagonist, Moose, moves with his family to Alcatraz so his father can begin a job as a prison guard. Moose is in seventh grade and must start a new... -
Answered a Question in Behind the Beautiful Forevers
The book is set in a slum called Annawadi in Mumbai, which is one of the fastest-growing cities in the world. The slum is near the airport and within sight of several luxury hotels. One of the main... -
Answered a Question in Evicted
In Matthew Desmond's book Evicted, which was published in 2016, the author invites us along on a visit with eight families living in extreme poverty in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Here, it is a constant... -
Answered a Question in Shoeless Joe
Shoeless Joe is Canadian author W. P. Kinsella's first book, published in 1982. The story is about Ray Kinsella, who has a mystical experience when he hears an otherworldly voice instructing him to... -
Answered a Question in The Grapes of Wrath
By chapter 18, Ma is just barely keeping the family together. She has never found much support or guidance from either organized religion or from the law—and that is not likely to change anytime... -
Answered a Question in Daughter of Fortune
In the case of Eliza Sommers, the heroine of the novel Daughter of Fortune, the title can be taken quite literally, since Eliza was born into comparatively wealthy circumstances. However, I believe... -
Answered a Question in Life of Pi
There are many religious items throughout Pi's house; so many, in fact, that the author describes Pi's home as a temple: Upstairs in his office there is a brass Ganesha sitting cross-legged next... -
Answered a Question in Fever 1793
Fever 1793 was written by Laurie Halse Anderson in the year 2000. The main character of the book, Matilda (or Mattie), finds herself caught up in an yellow fever epidemic that all but destroys... -
Answered a Question in Mexican WhiteBoy
Danny, the main character in Mexican WhiteBoy, is the offspring of a white mother and a Mexican father. Danny attends a private school near San Diego and—due to his slightly darker skin color—does... -
Answered a Question in Frankenstein
Although Victor Frankenstein is a chemistry student, he longs to create a more lasting testament than simple ephemeral experiments. With single-minded focus, he prepares for months before creating... -
Answered a Question in An Anthropologist on Mars
Although our understanding of autism has grown throughout the years, it remains a complex and multifarious disorder. Most researchers now now see autism as an umbrella term for several types of...