Bad Boy: List 5

by Walter Dean Myers
In this memoir, acclaimed author Walter Dean Myers recounts his early life in Harlem in the 1940s and 50s.

This list covers the following chapters: "Dr. Holiday"–"The Typist."

Here are links to our lists for the memoir: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5

Here are links to our lists for other works by Walter Dean Myers: 145th Street, Fallen Angels, Monster, Slam!
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. nuance
    a subtle difference in meaning or opinion or attitude
    Mine was the humiliated consciousness, ashamed of its every face, its every nuance.
  2. conviction
    an unshakable belief in something without need for proof
    Ultimately, he would have to turn from her, which I felt was terrible. I didn’t know if I would have that much conviction.
  3. respective
    considered individually
    We were, in our separate ways, looking to establish our respective identities.
  4. seductive
    tending to entice into a desired action or state
    I would have liked to have sat across from her when Fats Waller, tinkling the keys of the piano seductively with his thick, powerful fingers, rolled his big eyes at her.
  5. coax
    influence or persuade by gentle and persistent urging
    She had helped me to move past just understanding the letters that made up words, and had coaxed me into making the words my own so that they danced in my head even away from the printed page.
  6. twine
    spin, wind, or twist together
    When I came out of Dr. Holiday’s office into the corridor, there was a thin black girl sitting on one of the wooden benches, her legs more twined around each other than crossed, her head in her hands.
  7. sporadically
    in an irregular or unpredictable manner
    I went to school only sporadically now, and was falling further and further behind.
  8. forthright
    characterized by directness in manner or speech
    Would a white psychologist have asked the same question so forthrightly?
  9. trappings
    ornaments; embellishments to or characteristic signs of
    It was also defined as someone who had a lot of money or at least the trappings of money: a big car, an expensive watch, or expensive clothes.
  10. impose
    inflict something unpleasant
    Being Afro-American, or black, was being imposed on me by people who had their own ideas of what those terms meant.
  11. subversive
    in opposition to an established system or government
    We immediately took the paper and wreath to the police station, along with information as to what obviously subversive family had discarded the offending decoration.
  12. epithet
    a defamatory or abusive word or phrase
    I had certainly heard the epithet....
  13. radical
    markedly new or introducing extreme change
    The radical newspapers were full of stories about Vietnam.
  14. breadth
    the capacity to understand a broad range of topics
    I had spent fifteen years of my life trying to expand my universe because I had been told that was what I should do, but there was no breadth to my world, no experience that would tell me what to do now that I was in trouble.
  15. mediate
    act between parties with a view to reconciling differences
    My ambition to make things right, to mediate between God and man to bring fairness and justice to the world, was a strength, even if it isolated me from the guys I played ball with.
  16. socialist
    advocating the state ownership of industry
    I found a socialist bookstore and read a history of the labor movement.
  17. obscure
    marked by difficulty of style or expression
    Now much of my writing contained remnants of too many thoughts and had too many obscure references.
  18. exert
    put to use
    The gang exerted its power over its turf, and I was living on what the gang members considered their turf.
  19. bluff
    deceive someone about your strength or intentions
    If there were a confrontation, I thought, I would assume my new persona of “disturbed” student and use it to bluff my way through.
  20. institutionalize
    cause to be admitted, as a person to a hospital
    He was still involved with the legal system and was always under the threat of being institutionalized again if somebody bothered to check on him.
  21. squander
    spend thoughtlessly; throw away
    I hadn’t yet sorted out the shame I felt for having squandered my life, which, at seventeen, I thought was nearly over anyway.
  22. sacrilegious
    grossly irreverent toward what is considered holy
    It would have been, I believe, considered sacrilegious for any of my early English teachers to mention that a Shakespeare, a Shelley, or a Keats even considered accepting money for the words.
  23. vista
    the visual percept of a region
    This opened wide vistas of scenes and locales that I did not so much visit in my reading, but rather possessed.
  24. stultify
    deprive of strength or efficiency; make useless or worthless
    I worked in a Wall Street mailroom and finally found a job in the post office from which I was fired because I could no longer stand the stultifying work.
  25. vanity
    feelings of excessive pride
    My poetry was all vanity, the gathering around me of the accoutrements of an inner life.
  26. accoutrement
    accessory or supplementary item of clothing
    My poetry was all vanity, the gathering around me of the accoutrements of an inner life.
  27. muse
    reflect deeply on a subject
    While they were out, I would dream of their appearing in the pages of some magazine, of a stranger musing over my words, of a phrase that I had written wandering through the mind of a subway rider.
  28. interim
    the time between one event, process, or period and another
    In the interim, despite my lack of college, my reading skills had allowed me to get better jobs.
  29. versatility
    having a wide variety of skills
    I wasn’t making a lot of money, but I realized that my ability to handle any written material gave me a versatility that many of my friends looking for jobs did not have.
  30. interpose
    be or come between
    “How do you go about doing it?” Mama asked, interposing herself between me and Dad.
Created on Tue Nov 06 13:31:30 EST 2018 (updated Tue Nov 06 16:39:50 EST 2018)

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