IMPORTANT 13 POINTS
"Cloudy Day" by Jimmy Santiago Baca.
1. Lines 1-5: What words and phrases in the first stanza reveal tone? How does the speaker feel about his situation based on this evidence?

2. Lines 7-12: What words in these lines have to negative connotations? What feelings do these words convey?

3. Lines 1-12: What is being personified in these lines? How do the wind's human-like qualities affect the speaker's attitude toward life in prison?

4. Lines 13-23: What image recurs throughout the poem? How do the wind and the speaker's attitude toward the wind change in stanzas 1-4?

5. Lines 36-46: Summarize these lines and identify the tone, citing examples to support your response.

1a. When we read the first stanza, it makes us clear that Baca is talking about his own life story. In the first stanza we get certain information where it's not even possible for an ordinary man  to come up with that kind of detail. Only the person who is incarcerated will teach us the truth of life. The language used by the speaker is very positive and hopeful.

2a. In these lines 7-12 a negative connotation is “huddled”. The feeling this word carries is being uncomfortable.

3a. The wind is being personified. The winds' human-like qualities affect the speaker's attitude because the wind was powerful and he was hopeless.

4a.The image the recurs is Baca seeing the guard towers as wind would flow. The wind that was once strong and powerful became weak at the end.

5a. Baca is hopeful at the end after four years he knows how a man can become one thing to another. In lines 36-43 he states “how a man can endure, how a man becomes so cruel”. “I have seen it everyday” he states.

6a. The poet is negative and powerless at the beginning of the poem, yet hopeful and empowered at the end.

Explanation:

the purpose of the heading in the passage is to identify who is telling the story.

this excerpt is part of the book sugar changed the world (2010) written by marc aronson and marina budhos. as the book has been written by two people, the heading "marc" indicates that this specific excerpt is being narrated by aronson. in the fragment, marc describes his grandfather's story after hearing it from his cousin. however, there are other excerpts where budhos is the one that tells the story of her family.

aronson and budhos, who are husband and wife in real life, decided to write sugar changed the world when they found out how sugar, which had an important role in slavery and economy, changed their ancestors' lives.