ANONYMOUS: Who Am I?

This open ended letter, written by an unknown author is meant to inform the reader of the native people, the Mestizos. It is to inform the reader of the lifetime struggles of this group of people. They addresses the reader as the attacker, and themselves; the victim. They are speaking as the whole group and the readers are those who have caused them so much pain and suffering; those who do not act, those who's ancestors took their land and those who still treat them with disdain. "You took away our lands...you are ashamed of what we are, and your attitude makes us feel that we, too, should be ashamed of what we are." The writer is informing the world of this unknown people that we are all treating poorly, our ancestors have treated poorly and persuade them to take action, to pull them out of the terrible life that we have allowed them to fall into.

• Levin, Gerald. "Who Am I?". Prose Models 11th ed. Harcourt College Publishers, 1975. 
• Anonymous, "Who Am I?" from Educating the Mexican American by Henry Sioux Johnson and William J. Hernandez. Valley Forge; Judson Press, 1970. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. 

"Homeless" "I think I will Not Forget This"

Persuading someone to change their opinion can be an odious task. Persuading an entire society to change their view of something is an extreme. Anna Quindlen could convince  anyone to change their view of the homeless through  her imagery  and personal anecdotes in an essay she wrote for the Times. It seems every paragraph of thought is clipped with a statement that one reads and rereads, feeling its weight and its true meaning. She talks about a homeless woman, Ann, and the pictures she carries of the home she used to have, “She was not adrift, alone, anonymous,although her bags and raincoat with the grime shadowing its creases had made me believe she was. She had a house, or at least once upon a time she had had one. Inside were curtains, a couch, a stove, potholders. You are where you live. She was somebody.” Quindlen admits to what the Global view of a homeless woman like Ann is; “adrift” “anonymous. But the idea of the Homeless stems from the idea of “home” itself- it is all of that stuff inside, potholders couches and the life you have inside that house. Ann, and countless other homeless people, have had a life and that’s who they are. Quindlen drives home this idea of the things that make up a life together by applying them to Ann and others without homes. “Here is a woman without a bureau. There is a man with no mirror, no wall to hang it on. They are not the homeless. They are people without homes...No window to look out upon the world. My God. That is everything”. This final statement encompasses everything Anna Quindlen wants the reader to feel; these are individual people, who do not have the simple things that make you who you are.

Hilary De Vries uses similar appeals to make her argument in “I Think I will Not Forget This”. Both women use powerful strategies to make the reader reject the ideas they have of homeless people. To change their lenses completely and put a personality and a face to them. De Vries sets out to do this, she makes it clear that she is out to personalize such a huge social problem. In her essay De Vries, narrates her time in a shelter, taking the reader through what she sees, not offering her own feelings. This allows the reader to experience the shelter and draw their own ideas about how they live.

De Vries offers her first personal thought, when the women are getting ready for bed “It is almost like being back in gym class, I think. But it isn't. It isn't school. It isn't even a home. And i still wonder how people can live like this.”  A woman in the shelter says to Hilary “everyone here is different. Everyone here is an individual”.  This is what Hilary De Vries will never forget and what she wants the reader to never forget, “compassion is not limited to those who can write checks”. Both Anna Quindlen and Hilary De Vries attempt to change the lenses with which the world views those without a home. This reader believes that both women were successful.

"Mortality" and "Tumorville"

“I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death.”

Though hearing this from a passing person, one might believe that this is an over dramatic statement. That to feel like death is something no one can say they have felt;not while living. But Hitchen’s explores, in his personal memoir Mortality, the feeling of dying. Not the last moment of breath, but the long and drawn out experience of death taking over your body.

A Very dark read Hitchens does not sugar coat the feeling of waking up and not being able to live, to get up, to move, to breath is all too much. He does not lighten the subject of death but shows us what he went through and his, possibly unorthodox, way of dealing with it. He familiarizes the reader with the stage theory of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross which is the process of moving from denial to anger to depression and acceptance. A common theory amongst grievers and often a simplified way of dealing with one's heavy emotions. Hitchens tells the reader how he did not go through these stages as one would when dealing with the grief of cancer- but that he was in denial for most of it and skipped over anger because he did not feel it would do him good.  He talks about how he dealt with his cancer by not dealing with it, he did not stop his work, but did 2 shows in one night, “This is what citizens of sick country do while they are still hopelessly clinging to their old domicile.” He felt as though he waded in a stage of oppression, “Instead, I am badly oppressed by the gnawing sense of waste”. He is only bothered by the fact that he is a life wasted. His dissonance is felt by the reader as he talks about the life he had planned to have.

Another source of discomfort for the reader is the lasting comparison throughout of cancer and the sick being “citizens” of their own country. That they are in a world all their own. He calls it “Tumorville” in once sentence. They have a language their own, their own culture and ways.  He shows the reader that unless you have been through cancer, or another life threatening series of sickness, it is a country you’ve never visited-you can never know what it is truly like.

Hitchens ends this stretch of Mortality with a truly upsetting question and answer. It is often shown that when someone has a terminal disease they ask “Why me?” Hitchens call thinks this is pointless, “To the dumb question ‘Why me?’ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply; Why not?” It is painfully true to many, that there is no rhyme or reason why they get sick, the world just allows it.


Hitchens, Christopher. "Excerpt." Mortality. New York: Twelve, 2012. N. pag.Twelve/Hachette Book Group. Web. 18 Oct. 2016

Biographies; past and present

Biographies are the telling of a person’s whole story, and memoirs are the little stories within that make up a life. A cumulative example of a memoir is The Glass Castle: A memoir by Jeannette Walls. The memoir is about Walls’ childhood and into adulthood, focusing on her parents and siblings and the unique way in which they live. Walls ‘ style of delivery is that of herself experiencing the unusual events of her childhood. She describes them as though still a child, she does not add what her adult self thinks or feels, so the reader is always able to create their own feelings on the events as if watching them happen.

Readers can hardly put the book down, because they want to read what they family will do next, what will happen to Jeanette and what her reaction will be. It is gripping and interesting, while also being a true story. A different approach to keeping the reader interested can be seen in Eudora Welty’s "One Writers Beginning's". Welty’s style follows a more ‘structured’ approach by telling you a sequence of events. She keeps the reader interested in her feelings as she is experiencing the situation. That is what you’re interest falls to; the opinions and feelings not the actual events.

Frederick Douglass in his first chapter of his autobiography, reveals much about himself. He reveals how little he actually knows about himself. Knowledge that we, today, would find almost instinctual; who are parents are, and how old we are. In today's world, a birthday is a right and something we all have; our day. But Frederick Douglass did not know his own. Frederick Douglass knows more about Frederick Douglass than any other writer, but his style is that of ignorance- he simply presents that he is not sure of exact dates or people (his birthday or father). Similar to Jeannette Walls, he presents it all as factual information, not his own feelings on the truly terrible childhood he experience. When he does offer up an opinion, it is stated as a guess of sorts. For example he talks about why he was taken away from his mother at a young age, “Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child's affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result.” Douglass can not say why they do this, but he recognizes the result.

Frederick Douglass takes a different approach to telling his story than do many other modern autobiographers. Most self written stories function as memoirs, talking about what is relevant or interesting, and jumping from story to story. These memoirs often stand to give the reader not only the events, but how the writer reacted and felt. What they took from the experience and how it lead to other events in their life. This is a contrast to the factual delivery of Frederick Douglass.

Douglass, Frederick. NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS AN AMERICAN SLAVE. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. Boston. 1845 Project Gutenberg, Web. 12 Oct. 2016

An Ascent of Realizations

             Petrarch's telling of his Ascent of Mount Ventoux  is a meaningful narrative, that on the surface was the author's journey climbing Mount Ventoux, and telling his father of this journey. As you read about his ascent though, he lets the reader, his father, in on his thoughts that relate to the events he is in. I think, even if one hasn't been to the top of Mount Ventoux, the feeling of being on top of the world and realizing things about your own life is something many can relate to. Any time you are in a historical location you feel a connection to that time and the people who were there. The author realizes that it seemed a mystical mountain when you think about it in ancient times, but it becomes human when you are there in the present. The author feels as though it is underwhelming. Seeing things from the past and trying to seeing how they fit into your own life; looking at something that ancient civilizations saw and realizing it is the same, they are the same as you.

             What I think is important to highlight is that the author is speaking to his father, taking him through his journey and reflections. He ends by asking his father to pray for him; “and I beseech you, in turn, to pray that these vague and wandering thoughts of mine may sometime become firmly fixed, and, ...may direct themselves at last toward the single, true, certain, and everlasting good.” He acknowledges that he is having all of these consequential ideas, but hopes he can turn them into broad lessons for many others. I think this is something we all hope for ; To leave an everlasting impression on the world and to do, in our short time, something good.

               This story follows the criteria of a narrative. It is a story of the author climbing a mountain and also the thoughts and realizations he has on his journey. The author has structured this essay as a letter to his father. Is is read very similar to a detailed journal entry. Beginning with his motivation and why he wanted to climb the mountain in the first place. His preparation, focusing on who he will climb with. In each paragraph he makes a point to share a thought he had with that coincides with the event taking place such as with finding a climbing companion, he realizes “so rarely do we meet with just the right combination of personal tastes and characteristics,even among those who are dearest to us.”  As a narrative often does, this essay follows the important life event of this author. He uses this event to find the deeper, important meanings of life.

Petrarch, Fransesco. The Ascent of Mount Ventoux. Digital image. Medieval Sourcebook: Petrarch: The Ascent of Mount Ventoux. Internet Medieval Source Book, 28 Aug. 09. Web. 1 Oct. 16.

Eudora Welty

One Writer's Beginnings

A Narration shows the change in people, places, things through experiences and events. Narration takes a reader on a journey. Eudora Welty’s Narration “One Writer's Beginnings” takes you through her childhood trip north to her parents hometowns. Her descriptions of her mother, their car and the things they say, take the reader back to a different time and place. Welty’s story is a narration taking through the experience and reveals to the reader things about Eudora and her family. Her mother's qualities remain unchanging through the story.  Welty says she never gives into the pleasure of the trip  and keeps her proper, motherly composure the whole trip.

John Mcphee The World's Largest Pile of Tires

   I chose to read John Mcphee’s “The World’s Largest Pile of Tires” from “Irons in the Fire”. I have to state that upon reading the title, I was intrigued on what it could be about, to my amusement, it was in fact an environmental piece about a pile of tires. The author begins immediately by giving the reader a visual that it is so big, it is almost visible from the Interstate 5 in California (off the bat I can tell this is written for Californians).  The first paragraph paints a vivid picture of the tire mountain to the reader. Similes and metaphors such as “the individual tires appear to be grains of black sand” (p85), are used to take the reader from seeing one tire, and how they pile up and up to be one whole mountain. Mcphee also highlights the many things you can see from the tire pile, that you can look in one direction and see 100 miles to the Sierra..close to them you walk in tire canyons”. One feels as though it is a land all its own, eroded from the tires. Mcphee begins his transition to talking about the environmental impact of all these tires, by  next talking about how they got there and how no one could pinpoint how many there were, that geologists even tire experts topographically couldn't size this mountain and calculate how many there were.

The final paragraph is one where it gets away from the tire pile itself, into the environmental impact. The deeper meaning of this pile is that, its tires, something we all use, we are all responsible for, “They are everybody’s tires. They are Environmental Defense funds tires, Rainforest Action Network tires... They are California's Natural Resources Federation tires...No one in innocent of scrapping those tires.” Mcphee lists 10 national, local, and federal environmental groups who are equally responsible for the tires being in the pile they are in. This leads him into stating his main idea, “Of the problem the tire pile represents, everybody is the cause and the problem, like the pile, has been increasing.”

Mcphee ends his description of  the tires and their meaning with highlighting irony. The irony that these tires are so hard to dispose of because of how good they are at being tires. Everything about how a tire is made, to be safe and indestructible, makes it near impossible to safely dispose of “When they are thrown away, they are just as tough as they were when they felt Kick One”. Mcphee doesn’t offer a solution to the problem of the tire pile at the end of this selection, but instead his delve into the tire pile, how vast it is, how impossible it could be to destroy, how it is our responsibility that it is there, only leaves the reader in thought.

Mcphee, John. ""The World's Largest Pile of Tires"" Prose Models. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978. N. pag. Print.