I was struck by the “Create A READ poster” assignment because of the attention spent on D’Angelo’s education, both book learning and life knowledge. When I looked at this poster I thought about the moment when D is in jail and reading The Great Gatsby and I decided to use that scene to make a reading poster out of.

D’Angelo talks about how everyone’s past is available when we read. He discusses Gatsby and what we know about his past and that, even though Gatsby has books and other fine things, he does not use them because he still has not changed on the inside to become the refined man he says he is. D’Angelo constantly fights with himself about what he is because of his family and ‘job’ as opposed to who he wants to be. “What came first is who you really are,” he says, and yet D tries to escape the life that created him.

To make this I uploaded a screenshot from episode 6 of the Wire to my new friend canva.com and used some of their free text suggestions to come up with a cool overlay design for the text. I decided to write “You can always learn something about yourself” because of D’Angelo’s comments on the reading, as well as from his life experiences. I also find myself learning something with each book I read about who I am as a person.

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