Instructions Need this in 6 pages | times new Roman font, 12 point, and 1.5 spacing This assignment is meant to reflect on two books assigned to one city (a pair of readings), relating it broader themes in your discipline, and understanding what the books contributes to the understanding of race, place, and gender. The midterm paper is 6 pages, and should be new times Roman font, 12 point, and 1.5 spacing and using consistent Chicago style citation format throughout. Reflections papers should not summarize the books. Instead, they should offer the reader's thoughts on the books' main themes, how these themes relate to others in the class, and how such themes shape your understandings of cities (or your discipline). The two books are Magic City by Jewell Parker Rhodes and Black Towns, Black Futures: The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West by Karla Slocum. Some of my key themes from Magic City by Jewell Parker includes yellow journalism, environmentally vulnerable cities, unearned feelings of oneself, world war impacts, lynchings and violence, maroons and maroon life, resurrection of memories and revisiting traumas, successful reparations acts, disenfranchisement of black people, running/escape/return, reparative planning with trauma acknowledgement, reconciliation and acknowledgement of place-based crimes, and other black settlements that were demolished for rearranging the city for the benefit of the wealthy. My key themes from Black Towns, Black Futures: The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West by Karla Slocum included exceptionalism and exploration with tropes like "black excellence," land ownership, myths and family histories, white gaze and viewing black towns in a vacuum, black towns situated on reservations and lack of mentioning this in the book, property values in Oklahoma, black gatherings and celebration, education as an important institution for individual and communal black identity, prisons as economic development, afrofuturism vs. reality and pressures of black people developing in an aging population, and the role of indigenous displacement. Themes that are through lines in both books include trauma narratives in a reparations framework, respectable black towns ideology and how it's intertwined with colonialism, exceptionalism, black peacemaking and black gatherings/celebration, acknowledging place based crimes, environmentally vulnerable, prosperity, extraction, reparative planning, dreaming, and vulnerability. Other questions to consider in this analysis should include: How is race different in other places? Where does Oklahoma fit in your narrative of America? How did these books touch on place, time, gender, race, and poverty? How were the writing styles different/similar? Student note: they are two books that can be accessed online The two books are Magic City by Jewell Parker Rhodes and Black Towns, Black Futures: The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West by Karla Slocum Slocum, K. 2019. Black Towns, Black Futures: The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Rhodes, J. P. 2021. Magic City. New York: Perennial Books. I know it's a very specific topic related to black issues and I can help give my opinions for whatever you need clarity for since it is a personal reflection. I just don't have time for this assignment, but I have past papers that I can send to you that can give you a better idea of how I write and issues I care about. I'm an architecture and historic preservation graduate student taking a planning course elective and I love talking about black heritage and community development, things like that so my perspective is a little unique sample: This is a short personal reflection writing we had to do for another book and the language wasn't too formal/academic but still substantial: Development Drowned and Reborn: The Blues and Bourbon Restorations in Post-Katrina New Orleans began with tracing back the use of the land to help understand the birth of blues. I loved the way the authors used history to help us understand some of the larger concepts explained in the book--one of the biggest that I was stuck on was the influence of Native Americans who occupied the land 12,000 years ago. To be honest, I tried to move on from this, but I am always astounded to know the kinds of practices that went on before and how intelligent they were. Learning about the ironically named civilization, Poverty Point, resonated deeply with me because this is no small feat: twelve thousand years ago, over 150 settlements were produced across states, connected to Central America, where social, cultural, and technological innovations were regularly designed and implemented into the year-round settlement that also happened to be geometrically organized with solar orientations, and had one of the most efficient agricultural systems. This mastering of planning (regionally), living off the land, living peacefully amongst other people, and having positive social relations…..and on top of that, having an archive of this knowledge to include cultural preservation of important/religious sites, how to build multicultural alliances and mobilize, and how to go about resistance. It is mind-boggling to me that all of this was possible and flourished for thousands of years. I thought it was an intelligent point to make and an even stronger pivot into the development of Louisiana and how the "heartland of the blues was birthed by slavery within slavery." They spoke about how the blues was used as a way to form an identity in crisis, but also how it transformed regional realities, and all of it stemmed largely from the Native American communities that existed prior that specialized in community development, planning, creating trading networks, and overall producing societies with longevity. I just had to pause there for a minute because my goodness--I love the way that the authors articulated the genius of Native Americans because no one ever speaks in this way about their contributions across this nation. Their stories are always told in a negative light (Trail of Tears, Walking Purchase, etc.) where their influence is severely downplayed and cheapened to something along the lines of "they lived off the land, made paths, and was overpowered by disease and colonialism, they were murdered and displaced, the end." I am grateful for this new perspective and reading this made me want to completely pivot from the book entirely to learn more about Native Americans in this powerful light.