Study Guide: Days of Grace. A Memoir

VII.   Chapter Six:  The Striving and Achieving

B. Writing Incentives

Choose one of these writing assignments.

1.  Playing A Role:

You are Arthur Ashe.  In an oral presentation, give your classmates the advice that Ashe gives here about money.  Tap the resources of your own experiences as you convince your classmates to accept “your” ideas about money.

2.  Defining One’s Purpose in Life:

“I am not driven by an obsession to scratch my name indelibly on the pages of history.  The years pass, and the world forgets the efforts of virtually all individual men and women of goodwill.  And yet those efforts are not necessarily in vain because they are forgotten.  They may bear fruit in myriad unrecognized ways, small but potent – in one life helped here, in a single future brightened there.  I know I could never forgive myself if I elected to live without humane purpose, without trying to help the poor and unfortunate, without recognizing that perhaps the purest joy in life comes with trying to help others” (216-217). 

Write an essay on your purpose in life.  How do you respond to Arthur Ashe, who “could never forgive [him]self if [he] elected to live without human purpose”?

3.  Reporting on Research Findings:

Get a copy of Ashe’s A Hard Road to Glory from the library.  Write a summary of a chapter you read about a famous athlete.  Explain how this new information has made an impact on you.