Welcome APers!

If you’re reading this, it’s summer, and you’re reading a teacher’s blog…

If you’re reading this and you’re taking AP Language and Comp next year, you’ve come here because I wrote you a letter telling you to. Rhetoric!

Next, here is the website I mentioned, where you can post your reactions to the two memoirs you’re reading over the summer.

And here’s the text of the letter:

June 2009

Dear Honors Student:

Through a combination of blind luck, a belief in the possibilities of the future, and a deep and abiding love of the written word, you have registered for the following class:

AP Language and Composition

This class asks you to navigate the wilds of non-fiction prose in a number of genres (memoir, persuasive argumentation) in order to become better, more effective writers and analyzers of writing.  In preparation for next year I would like you to read two book-length memoirs of literary merit before you return to school.  When I say “literary merit,” I mean that a 28-page memoir of Brittney Spears written by her hairdresser is not going to meet the requirements.  I do, though, want you to choose a work that is interesting to you and makes you think.  Below is a list of a number of well-written, fascinating memoirs. Feel free to use the library or used bookstores to acquire your books.

•    Running with Scissors   Augusten Burroughs
•    Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever    Walter Kirn
•    The Glass Castle Jeannette Walls
•    Angela’s Ashes Frank McCourt
•    The Year of Magical Thinking   Joan Didion
•    Larry’s Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China … Daniel Asa Rose
•    The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts   Maxine Hong Kingston.
•    The Bell Jar   Sylvia Plath
•    Out of Africa   Isak Dinesen
•    Growing Up   Russell Baker
•    The Yankee Years   Joe Torre
•    All Over But the Shoutin’   Rick Bragg
•    A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius   Dave Eggers
•    Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight   Alexandra Fuller
•    I’m Down: A Memoir  Mishna Wolff
•    The Autobiography of Malcolm X   Alex Haley, Malcolm X
•    Not Becoming My Mother: and Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way Ruth Reichl
•    Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir   Azar Nafisi
•    Hunger of Memory   Richard Rodriguez
•    Black Boy   Richard Wright
•    Red Ribbon on a White Horse: My Story   Anzia Yezierska
•    A Long way Gone   Ismael Beah
•    Or many more: http://tinyurl.com/l734g9

Moreover, to keep the fun going all summer long, I’m asking you to write up a 750-word compare/contrast essay about the two memoirs  (due at the end of the first full week we’re back) that explore the similarities and differences in the writing style, attitudes, events, and descriptive power in the two books. Also, please make at least 3 short comments about your writing at the following site: https://drop.io/APMemoir/ I’ll have this letter and other information available at my website: nstearns.edublogs.org. Have a great summer.

Sincerely,

Nathan Stearns