CEJ Model


Grade __                                                                                              Name: _________________
AP Lang                                                                                               Date:   _________________

Current Events Journal #1
Yoon, Nicola. “‘We Don’t Make Princesses in Those Colors’: Words I Didn’t Expect to Hear in 2017.” The Guardian 19 August 2017. Web. 20 August 2017.
Nicola Yoon is a New York Times Bestselling author who has written several young adult novels being made into films. In this article, she describes an experience she had while attending a birthday party with her child. The party was held at a pizza-making place, and also there was a balloon artist who was a master at creating amazing shapes. “Along with the standards – swords, butterflies, crowns – she also made elaborate princesses, complete with hair and arms and a gown.” But all of the princess balloons were made out of the peach-colored balloons. Even though the artist had three different shades of brown balloons, she didn’t use any of those colors to make the princess balloons. When Nicola Yoon went up to her to ask why she didn’t make brown princesses, the balloon artist shrugged it off by claiming they didn’t make princesses in those colors, that the brown balloons weren’t the right shapes. As a Jamaican-American woman married to a Korean-American, Nicola Yoon is keenly sensitive to the racism that plagues America today. She makes it an effort to write about diverse characters, and much of her motivation stems from wanting to create characters her own daughter of mixed heritage can relate to.

Yoon feels passionately about the subject of diversity. This is evident in the very beginning of the article, when she equates keeping her infant daughter alive to “loving the skin she’s in”. She connects to her audience by describing her motherly concerns. Mothers of all races and backgrounds can identify with the overwhelming love and care Yoon feels towards her daughter. Yoon waits until the third paragraph to focus on the topic of her article, which is that one of the dangers she needs to help her daughter navigate through is the harmful presence of racism. Her words show how difficult a problem this is: “How do I teach her that she’s smart and beautiful and that she can be anyone she wants to be when the country and media tell her otherwise?” Yoon then relates the birthday party story. When she describes how frustrated and upset she was by the balloon artist’s white-only princess balloons, she adds, “I’m non-confrontational. Fights make me uncomfortable. I’ll avoid them if I can.” These words help her reach out to an audience that may feel similarly in such a situation -- that it’s better to ignore and brush off racism. But Yoon then decides to speak to the artist directly. And after telling her, “There are black princesses and it’s not OK for you to do that,” Yoon shares what she’s learned from the experience. She’s determined to confront racism, no matter how awkward it feels. Her words reveal her decision to persevere and tackle these moments because “it’s past time” such racist behavior end. And by sharing her decision, she is hoping to spur her readers to action, too.

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