full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Chris Abani: Telling stories from Africa

Unscramble the Blue Letters


When I was 10, I read James Baldwin's "Another Country," and that book broke me. Not because I was encountering homosexual sex and love for the first time, but because the way James wrote about it made it impossible for me to attach otherness to it. "Here," Jimmy said. "Here is love, all of it." The fact that it happens in "Another Country" takes you quite by srusrpie. My friend Ronald Gottesman says there are three kinds of people in the world: those who can cuont, and those who can't. (lhueagtr) He also says that the cause of all our trouble is the belief in an essential, pure identity: rieliguos, ehintc, historical, ideological.

Open Cloze


When I was 10, I read James Baldwin's "Another Country," and that book broke me. Not because I was encountering homosexual sex and love for the first time, but because the way James wrote about it made it impossible for me to attach otherness to it. "Here," Jimmy said. "Here is love, all of it." The fact that it happens in "Another Country" takes you quite by ________. My friend Ronald Gottesman says there are three kinds of people in the world: those who can _____, and those who can't. (________) He also says that the cause of all our trouble is the belief in an essential, pure identity: _________, ______, historical, ideological.

Solution


  1. count
  2. laughter
  3. ethnic
  4. religious
  5. surprise

Original Text


When I was 10, I read James Baldwin's "Another Country," and that book broke me. Not because I was encountering homosexual sex and love for the first time, but because the way James wrote about it made it impossible for me to attach otherness to it. "Here," Jimmy said. "Here is love, all of it." The fact that it happens in "Another Country" takes you quite by surprise. My friend Ronald Gottesman says there are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't. (Laughter) He also says that the cause of all our trouble is the belief in an essential, pure identity: religious, ethnic, historical, ideological.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
nigerian journalist 2
james bond 2
african narratives 2
tom opens 2
jewish holocaust 2
melancholic history 2
sex education 2
valuable resource 2


Important Words


  1. attach
  2. belief
  3. book
  4. broke
  5. count
  6. country
  7. encountering
  8. essential
  9. ethnic
  10. fact
  11. friend
  12. gottesman
  13. historical
  14. homosexual
  15. ideological
  16. impossible
  17. james
  18. jimmy
  19. kinds
  20. laughter
  21. love
  22. otherness
  23. people
  24. pure
  25. read
  26. religious
  27. ronald
  28. sex
  29. surprise
  30. takes
  31. time
  32. trouble
  33. wrote