English 1121 / Fall 2007 and Spring 2008
The Mercury Reader
Personal Writing Selections
|
Author, Title, # of pages |
Publication Source, Date |
Information |
|
Sherman Alexie, Indian Education, 7 pages |
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, 1993, 2005 | A well-known Native American writer offers a narrative sketch of his experiences in public schools on and off the reservation. |
|
Joan Didion, On Going Home, 4 pages |
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 1966, 1967, 1968 | Didion captures the restless discomfort of the intellectual doomed to go home and never be at home; her daughter's first birthday takes her back to her parents' house, but leaves her unable to find a place for herself there. |
|
Annie Dillard, An American Childhood, 8 pages |
An American Childhood, 1987 | In a portrait any intellectual's mother would love, Dillard describes her mother's intellectual gymnastics, recounting mind-stretching antics involving everything from card games to household inventions. |
|
Richard Rodriguez, Complexion, 6 pages |
Hunger of Memory, 1982 | Rodriguez traces his love of language and literature--women's interests in his Mexican-American culture--to his early shame over the darkness of his skin, leaving him feeling less than a man. |
|
David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day, 5 pages |
Me Talk Pretty One Day, 2000 | If you've ever had a teacher who made you feel like a fool, you're not alone. With his identity hanging in the balance, Sedaris uses humor to combat "fear and discomfort" while he tries to learn French from a difficult teacher. |
|
Amy Tan, Mother Tongue, 7 pages |
Threepenny Review (periodical), 1990 | Chinese-American novelist Tan explains the various Englishes with which she grew up, emphasizing the impact of "broken" English on her development as a writer. |
|
James Thurber, University Days, 6 pages |
My Life and Hard Times, 1933 | An American humorist uses several anecdotes to characterize a less than exemplary education as Ohio State University in the early years of the twentieth century. |
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Alice Walker, Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self, 8 pages |
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, 1983 | In a series of vignettes, an African-American writer relates her obsession with the childhood eye injury that disfigured her face--until her baby daughter recognizes her mother's beauty. |
|
E. B. White, Once More to the Lake, 7 pages |
The Essays of E. B. White, 1941 | Returning with his son to a lake he had often visited in childhood, a noted American writer feels the pull of the past amid constant reminders that time has moved on. |
Personal Writing Characteristics
According to The St. Martin's Guide to Writing (5th ed., 1997, pp. 24-41), a personal essay in which the writer remembers people, places, or events has the following characteristics:
It tells an entertaining story.
It is vivid -- letting readers see what makes the event as well as the people and places memorable for the writer.
It includes suspense, clear time markers, visual description, specific narrative action, dialogue, vivid language, similes, metaphors, and specific details.
It is purposeful, trying to give readers an understanding of why this particular person, place, or event was significant in the writer's life.
It includes self-presentation but not unwanted self-disclosures.
It can lead readers to think in new ways about their own experiences or about how other people's lives differ from their own.
Updated: 23 July 2009