Exercise: Summarizing sources (APA) (autoscored)

ORIGINAL SOURCE

Marriages were the fabric of international as well as inter-noble relations, the primary source of territory, sovereignty, and alliance, and the major business of medieval diplomacy. The relations of countries and rulers depended not at all on common borders or natural interest but on dynastic connections and fantastic cousinships which could make a prince of Hungary heir to the throne of Naples and an English prince claimant to Castile. At every point of the loom sovereigns were thrusting in their shuttles, carrying the strand of a son or a daughter, and these, whizzing back and forth, wove the artificial fabric that created as many conflicting claims and hostilities as it did bonds. Valois of France, Plantagenets of England, Luxemburgs of Bohemia, Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, Habsburgs of Austria, Visconti of Milan, the houses of Navarre, Castile, and Aragon, Dukes of Brittany, Counts of Flanders, Hainault, and Savoy were all entwined in a crisscrossing network, in the making of which two things were never considered: the sentiments of the parties to the marriage, and the interest of the populations involved.

From page 47 of the book A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by B. W. Tuchman (New York, NY: Knopf, 1978).

ORIGINAL SOURCE

Black male critics were much harsher [than white critics] in their assessments of the novel [Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God]. From the beginning of her career, Hurston was severely criticized for not writing fiction in the protest tradition. Sterling Brown said in 1936 of her earlier book Mules and Men that it was not bitter enough, that it did not depict the harsher side of black life in the South, that Hurston made black southern life appear easygoing and carefree. Alain Locke, dean of black scholars and critics during the Harlem Renaissance, wrote in his yearly review of the literature for Opportunity magazine that Hurston’s Their Eyes was simply out of step with the more serious trends of the times. . . . The most damaging critique of all came from the most well-known and influential black writer of the day, Richard Wright. Writing for the leftist magazine New Masses, Wright excoriated Their Eyes as a novel that did for literature what minstrel shows did for theater, that is, make white folks laugh.

From pages vii-viii of M. H. Washington’s foreword to the 1998 reissue of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Z. N. Hurston (New York, NY: HarperPerennial).

ORIGINAL SOURCE

Many of the [New York City] schools with the most devastating academic records are also physically offensive places. At Morris High School, where less than 70 of the 1,700 children in the building qualified for graduation in the spring of 1993, barrels were filling up with rain in several rooms the last time I was there. Green fungus molds were growing in the corners of the room in which the guidance counselor met kids who were depressed. Many of these schools quite literally stink. Girls tell me they won’t use the toilets. They rush home the minute school is over. If they need to use the bathroom sooner, they leave sooner.

From pages 151–152 of the book Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation by J. Kozol (New York, NY: HarperPerennial, 1995).

ORIGINAL SOURCE

Culture of any kind is always influenced by many fads and fashions. Japanese culture has been worked on by history, both native and foreign, by Buddhism, Confucianism, and even at times by Christianity. But underneath the changing surface it has never quite let go of its oldest native roots which are connected to the Shinto cult. By this I do not mean the nationalistic State Shinto concocted by politicians in the late nineteenth century when they were pushing for a strong national identity, but the whole range of sensual nature worship, folk beliefs, ancient deities and rituals. It is the creed of a nation born farmers, which Japan in many ways still is.

From page 3 of the book Behind the Mask: On Sexual Demons, Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters, and Other Japanese Cultural Heroes by I. Buruma (New York, NY: Meridian, 1984).

ORIGINAL SOURCE

Some of the most evocative island graves lie alone in complete isolation. Splendid in their solitude and remote in their island location, these lone burial sites seem more impressive than the most elaborate tombs found crowded among other monuments in Paris’s Père Lachaise, London’s Kensal Green, Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof, and other vast metropolitan necropolises. Under two plum trees in the yard by Palapala Hoomau Church, near the remote village of Hana on the Hawaiian island of Maui, lies the grave of Charles A. Lindbergh (d. 1974). A low border of volcanic rock surrounds the plot which overlooks the Pacific Ocean. Lindbergh, buried in khaki trousers and a plain shirt, ordered the simplest possible coffin, made of eucalyptus wood. On the grave marker appear only the deceased’s name; the notation: “Born Michigan 1902 Died Maui 1974”; and an epitaph taken from Lindbergh’s writings: “If I take the wings of morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea.”

From page 188 of The Cemetery Book: Graveyards, Catacombs, and Other Travel Haunts Around the World by T. Weil (New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, 1992).