Week 6

Welcome back to class. Hope you had a good weekend. Today I'll return any and all graded narratives and the midterm work.  Those who missed the midterm will have to make it up, perhaps in the latter part of today's class or the office hour that follows. We will be practicing the response/summary form to one or another of the ideas brought forth in Sandra Cisneros's piece "Eleven," and in the topical news article or story you have brought to class. The aim is to  present a brief description of the content of the work, in your own words,  and some use of direct quotation to  illustrate the writing.   Together we will read parts of "Eleven" to review its content and style and to look at the structure  Cisneros creates.  You will both summarize and respond to the content to convey what you think is most important, interesting, or relevant about the work. Summary alone differs from an essay in that it does not in itself advance any point, judgment, or evaluation of the subject text or topic.  Encyclopedias, for example, contain a great many summary abstracts of topics. Summary can provide the foundation and context to make larger claims or observations. We can discuss the material you have brought in individually or in pairs or small groups to enhance your understanding of it and you can build essay 4 around whatever discussions arise in response to it.  Summary  allows you to present the main thrust and some detail and then selectively focus on what you find most relevant. You aim to engage your audience with the material and leave them informed about a matter you find interesting and important. Your fellow students' comments and perspectives may be something to work with, as well. We will review how to include title, author, and one or two quotations from the text to show some of the original.  .......................... Summary/Response Checklist: Make sure that you identify the author’s name, the title of the article, essay, chapter and/or book from which the summary is drawn.  Reference these in your opening lines.  -----------------------------------------------------Summary/Response Sample Introductions In Brenda Peterson's essay "Bread Upon the Waters," she writes about the sense of belonging she  feels after living ten years along the shore of Puget Sound.  She "belongs" in a way she never felt  before as if the windy shore itself and the raucous seagulls who live there too have possessed her  heart and spirit.  She feeds them daily in what is to her a kind of ritual prayer, one she likens to those of the Hopi Indians, who "believe that our daily rituals and prayers literally keep this world spinning  on its axis." The reader can understand that her daily excursions sustain and center her in  important ways.  In the play A Streetcar Named Desire, written by Tennessee Williams, the protagonist Blanche  Dubois is a fallen Southern belle devastated by a cruel fate.  In the final scene, as she is being led away to an asylum, she says to the attendant doctor,  “I have always depended on the kindness of  strangers.”  The irony is that her only living relative, Stella, her sister, in whose home she had  taken refuge, commits her rather than believe the story she tells. But Blanche speaks the truth.  In “Eleven,” an autobiographical narrative written by Sandra Cisneros, she adopts the perspective of an  eleven-year-old to tell of the day, her birthday no less, when her teacher insisted an ugly, dirty old red sweater  that had long hung in the classroom’s closet belonged to her.  It did not.  The girl is pained by her inability  to defend herself and the humiliating presence of the sweater, now on her desktop. She says she feels “sick inside, like the part of me that’s three wants to come out of my eyes,” and we understand she is on  the verge of tears.  Her teacher's dominance is such that a little later she orders the girl, Rachel, to put the  hated sweater on.  "I wish I was invisible but I am not," she says. And then she does cry, for the humiliation,  frustration, and misery are too great.  -------------------------------- Homework:  Complete essay 5, in which you draw claims and conclusions based upon your reading of one or two new stories or published essays.  The essay is to be titled, 350 words or more, and incorporate the references  to the reading and at least one direct quotation. Also, you are to read several film reviews of the film Moonlight (2016), directed by Barry Jenkins.  Google the  title and you'll find a number, including ones by A.O. Scott and Roger Ebert, well-known film critics. Summarize some of the key facts and kinds of observations provided in film reviews.