Exploring Diversity

This photograph depicts two children playing. One child has multiple disabilities and the other child does not.

Although carefully planned at twilight so all animals can attend, things go terribly wrong during this walkabout. The group creates such a terrible hullabaloo that Namarrkun, the lightning man, is forced to show his strength.

In this poem, the speaker explores how our culture would be lacking—in people, in music, in movements, in contributions—without contributions of African Americans.

In this excerpt, the reader meets two characters from The Misfits: Addie, a girl who is exceptionally tall and smart for a middle schooler and Joe, who is creative and feminine in a way that makes his peers nervous.

In this poem, a black woman carefully analyzes her interaction with a white waitress, whose actions, although civil, are smoldering with superiority.

"Hope, Despair and Memory" is an address given by Elie Wiesel on December 11, 1986, the date Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Wiesel is an author and humanitarian and is known for writing about his experience as a survivor of the Holocaust.