Our Favorite Authors
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Tomorrow marks the first day of summer session. I plan to mix a little bit of music with a lot of writing. In my preparation this week, I searched for a few short stories and/or essays that bring a certain beat or rhythm to the classroom, if you know what I’m talking about. Haruki Murakami…
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A few years back I introduced a writing project to a basic skills class. It was a process analysis essay, and I called it “Immigrant Stories.” Each student had to trace his/her family’s journey from Mexico to California. I had them research background for their family’s point of origin. They explained any complications of coming…
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In English classes this year, we’re going to Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk, and Blog the Blog. This means we will publish our best writing on our own personal websites. To get started, I’ve asked students to search the blogosphere for interesting arguments. I’m hoping they will connect the writing with their own experience. …
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A college professor once compared my writing to a Sam Shepard play. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I didn’t really understand what Sam was writing about. But, I took it as a great compliment. I tried. I don’t know how you study Sam Shepard. No one I approached seemed to speak of…
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When people ask me how I came up with Friends of the Earth, I tell them I read T.C. Boyle. We’re reading The Tortilla Curtain in my 101 classes. We’re into his short story “Love of my Life” in English 1B. Somewhere in between, I found his environmentalist novel Friend of the Earth, and voila. …
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This semester we read Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” It may be one of 400 short stories that JCO has published, but it may be the best. She says, “I write and write and write, and rewrite, an even if I retain only a single page from a full…
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I’m putting together my lesson plan for day one of the fall semester. I’m going with Sandra Cisneros and “Geraldo with No Name.” It’s from House on Mango Street. You know, the poor little girl Esperanza: “In English my name means hope,” she says. “In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means…
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I read somewhere that Raymond Carver “revealed the strangeness concealed behind the banal.” I’m not sure what that means, but I think that is exactly the point. Raymond Carver doesn’t detail grand tragedies to entertain us in his stories. His writes of everyday occurrences. Disasters are looming. We can’t avoid them. The disasters are us.…
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Has the Internet made everyone writers? I’ve asked my English composition students to get with it. We’re scanning the web for interesting blogs to use as models for our own. The more we read, the better we write. With our blog entries, we are looking to make our interior life into our exterior life. We’re…
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“The moment you make someone promise anything is the same moment you ask them to lie to you.” ― Molly Ringwald, When it Happens to YouMore Stuff I've Been Reading: I love this book. How much talent can one person possibly have?