Word: trivialize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...stretching to describe Channing as fighting "an internal civil war that would last as long as he lived." There are also times when it seems the author reveres his subject almost unceasingly, remarking early in the biography: "William Channing's first sensation of 'the power within' is not a trivial event in the history of the American mind...
...foes from the outset. Hochschwender, the loud, obnoxious neo-Nazi, and Wexford, the pathologically evil, power-obsessed editor of the school newspaper, emerge from the first meeting of their American History class determined to destroy each other. The reader can identify with neither character, and their rivalry quickly becomes trivial and boring...
...motorcycle accidents.) Black men are eight times as likely to die in a homicide as are white men. Says Lynn Curtis, former director of the Interagency Urban Initiatives Anti-Crime Program: "The typical violent crime involves two young black males who know each other and get into trivial altercations, which lead to serious injury because they both have weapons...
...long as Blacks are starving in the slums and I am eating well and using some of the best educational facilities in the country, my problems here will always seem trivial in comparison. There is racism at Harvard and there may be steps that Black students should take to combat it, but the real issue of racism is not behind these ivied walls; instead, it's on the streets of Roxbury and Cambridge and in other Black communities. It manifests itself through the serious economic deprivation and oppression inflicted on ghetto residents. If there is one Black child who goes...
BECAUSE WOLF relies so heavily on a patchwork style to convey the sketchiness of memory, trivial events are interspersed with important ones, and connected by observations both in the present, and in the context of the 1971 trip. Although for the most part, Wolf's style succeeds in evoking a feeling for the vicissitudes of memory, the lack of focus is often frustrating, and ultimately detracts from the book's power. Unlike other autobiographies, the author claims no inherent literary value in the author's childhood per se, thus the insignificance of many of the memories becomes cloying. The attempt...