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Redefining America

Scott Nelson/Getty Images 5

In this photograph from 2002, American soldiers radio their position while conducting a
“sensitive site exploitation,” or SSE, mission in Afghanistan. In the background, two young
Afghan girls watch them. The goal of this mission was to prevent fighters from terrorist
groups al-Qaeda and the Taliban from taking refuge in villages along the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
What does this image convey about American soldiers’ experience? What does it
reveal about how war affects civilians?

than ever before. As this nation continues to grapple with the legacy of its mistreatment
of and theft from American Indians, poets Natalie Diaz and Louise Erdrich continue to
center and celebrate Native cultures and their stories. While racial and ethnic conflicts
continue to remind us that the struggle for equal rights is not over, Ross Gay reminds
us of the breath that is common to all humans, José Olivarez weaves immigrant
struggle and success into heroic myth, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah addresses
racial and economic inequality through satire — and zombies. As American soldiers
continue to fight in wars abroad, we have the voice of soldier and poet Brian Turner,
whose haunting poem describes the challenges of a soldier returning from one of those
wars to face the mundane realities of everyday life.
The twenty-first century also saw the election of Barack Obama, the first African
American president of the United States. The official portraits of him and First Lady
Michelle Obama by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald are, in turn, the first to be done
by African American artists. These paintings not only give insight into the identity of
well-known public figures but they also encourage us to consider how and by whom
art is made, and what that art means to different audiences.
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Copyright © 2021 by Bedford, Freeman & Worth High School Publishers. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter.
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