The little knot of screams is still…

I thought we’d try something a bit different today and do a bit of poetry.  Rita Dove’s Parsley explores a historical incident from the horrific reign of Rafael Trujillo and how language is used to control and oppress. Read the poem and in small groups…do a SOAPSTone analysis.

Here is an event list for the weekend.

Then, we’re on to Tan.

1. Why does Tan open her essay by stating, “I am not a scholar of English or literature,” then state, in the next paragraph, “I am a writer?” What is the difference Is she appealing to ethos, logos, or pathos? Why?
2. At several points in her essay, Tan relates anecdotes. How do they further her argument? Be sure to consider the anecdotes regarding Tan giving a speech, the stockbroker, the CAT scan, and Tan’s experience with the SATs. What would be the impact of omitting one of them?
3. What is Tan’s strategy behind including a direct quotation from her mother (paragraph eight) rather than paraphrasing what she said?
4. Tan criticizes herself twice in this essay. In paragraph 3, she quotes a speech she gave “filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases.” What are “nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases,” and why are they burdensome? At another point, Tan recalls a draft of The Joy Luck Club in which she wrote, “That was my mental quandary in its nascent state” (paragraph 20). Why does she call this “[A] terrible line?”
5. Tan divides the essay into three sections. Why? If there were no such breaks, what effect would this have on her audience?
6. Why does Tan believe that envisioning a reader – specifically her mother – encouraged her to write more authentically?
7. Discuss how Tan broadens the essay to have relevance beyond her personal experience. How does she raise issues that are germane to a group as well as to her as an individual?

We’ll use those questions to discuss the essay afterward. We might try our hands at some multiple choice questions based on Tan as well. Here is the link to the web-based voting.

If we get to it, I’d also like to take a look at The Soiling of Old Glory and begin talking/thinking about visual grammar.

HW: Work on your Immersive Essay. Rough draft due Mar 11th

Image Credit: mccormick.com