Cisneros Baldwin

Religion is the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. In both “Little Miracles, Kept Promises” by Sandra Cisneros and “If Black English isn’t a Language, Then Tell me, what is?” by James Baldwin, religion plays a prominent role. Religion is the source of power that has a strong standing point in both essays. Religion is the focal point of langue, in this case, and it is used as a way to escape what they are facing in the real world. James Baldwin writes his story around Black English, and how the whites don’t believe it was a real language at all because black people came up with it. The way African Americans were treated is unfair, they were not able to be educated, brought over to America in chains, and none of them could speak the same language; “ and under these conditions, the slave began the formation of the black church, and it is within this unprecedented tabernacle that black English began to be formed.” (Baldwin 264) The church is where all the slaves came together for the first time; it is where the development of their language and culture was formed. This was a way for all the native peoples to put aside their differences and communicate with a language they all knew. They now had a way to reach out to each other without the whites understanding. Something so horrible brought these people together and formed something great, a new language as liberation from the hard ships they had to face. “Little Miracles, Kept Promises” focuses on religion; the story is all prayers to a higher power to better their lives. The people writing these prayers are using religion as something to turn to for help. They feel that this is what they need as a desertion from the reality of their lives. They pray for the things they want, their health, or even just the simplest things as graduating from high school, this shows how pronounced religion is in these people’s lives and gives them hope. The format