ENG 208 FALL, 2017Wed. Nov. 8 Week 11-2

"Getting off to a good start can make or break you, which is why your introduction is so important. It must be both respectful of the audience...and compelling enough for them to hear you out.

Think about throwing a dinner party: Your guests are the audience. You plan a menu and set the table. Before you serve the entrée you serve an appetizer and introduce those who are meeting for the first time. Your introduction should put your guests on common ground-at ease with each other-before the main course, your story, is served.

from Colorado State Writing Guide

Narrative Tension. Specific proper nouns. Relay historical or cultural data. Non-English passages in context.

from “A Small Mountain” by Anna Qu

We are the lucky ones, my mother reminds me after a freighter carrying 286 illegal immigrants from Fujian province crashed a quarter-mile off the coast of Rockaway, Queens. The Golden Venture ran aground in June 1993 after enduring a 112-day odyssey across 17,000 miles. The news of terrified men and women leaping into icy water in the middle of the night haunted us. Dozens of Chinese people attempted to swim ashore; five drowned and two died of a heart attack. Those that survived would most likely be deported. It sent tremors through the Chinese-American community. We felt both fortunate and foolish; fortunate for making it to this country, foolish for complaining about stifling work conditions, long hours and under the table wages that kept us from getting ahead. 

I wipe my hands on the front of my tee-shirt, turning the red fabric a blotchy, crimson red. It’s cool against my belly. My fingertips are pale and prune-y from washing dishes. 

Juo ka li, juo ka li, my mother says impatiently. Hurry, hurry.

She parks me on the couch in our living room and squats in front of the entertainment system, letting out a loud half-groan, half-sigh. The guttural sound reminds me of countryside Mainlanders from Wenzhou, squatting along unpaved streets. She works 10-14 hour days at the garment factory six, seven days a week with my stepfather. 

Where’d they go? I ask in our native Wenzhounese dialect. They are my stepfather, half-brother and half-sister. 

Their father took them somewhere. Why do you care, she says, inserting a VHS into the player.

Create a post: In Class Writing Exercises:

Highlight, in a different color, all forms of "to be." Replace with an action verb.

Highlight all common nouns.Replace with proper nouns and a short passage of context.

Look at all your non-English passages.Did you put at least some of them within a context of something familiar in a scene?

from “Carta de Amor (Love Letter)” by Susana Praver-Pérez.

Our first stop was Jose’s beautiful aunt Sara’s apartment. Sitting in her living room looking over the laguna, Titi Sara spoke on behalf of the gathered family:“They tell me you are in love with my nephew” she said in English to put me at ease.But, as I wanted to impress, I answered in what I thought was my very best “Boricua”: “Sí Doña Sara, estoy enchulada.”As my response elicited smiles from all present, I felt encouraged to give it my all and, hoping to charm my future in-laws, added: “¡Sí! Estoy enchulada con cojones.”At this point, the approving smiles turned to expressions of shock by everyone including José. My stomach dropped…¡Coño!I had blown it! … ¡Qué carajo!

Write 1-2 paragraphs that feature a scene highlighting narrative tension between cultures.

from “Oh My Oh Chicken Soup With Rice” by Sung Yum

In the cafeteria one day this blue-eyed little girl named Emily scrunches up her nose when I open my lunchbox.

She asks, what is that?

We call this 주먹밥. 주먹 meaning fist, and 밥 meaning rice, as in rice shaped with the fist. Or rice the size and shape of a fist. There’s this toughness about the name that I feel describes my mother perfectly.

My mother, who took the time to cook a pot of rice and dress it with sesame seed oil, vinegar, salt, and a smidge of sugar. She tossed the rice while it was still hot, so the sugar and salt would dissolve more easily. She did this with bare-handed poise, distributing seasonings between each scalding grain, careful not to crush them. The skin of her hands is tough and thick after years of handling heat and spice.

When Emily scrunches up her nose and asks what is that, this is what rushes through me. But there’s no word for all this. There’s no word for watching my mother form a shell of seasoned rice around chopped salmon and rolling it in toasted sesame seeds, no word for learning the right amount of pressure to pack without squishing through years of repeated tradition, no word for even the simplest of go-to meals that have been passed down to me with no verbal instruction, no word for the way my mother licks her thumb when she slides a single perilla leaf from the stack like turning a page of a book, or the sound of it when she lays it down at the bottom of my lunchbox to keep the rice from sticking, no word for the art of prepping, sharing, watching, eating, tasting, the kinetic and olfactory language of caring for one another.

But at home, we call this 주먹밥. 주먹 meaning fist, and 밥 meaning rice. I haven’t learned the word fist yet, not that it’s of any use when Emily asks what is that?

I panic. I’m afraid of saying something stupid. I know what a fist looks like, but I don’t know what it’s called. They’re for punching. I tell Emily I’m eating punch rice. Punch rice? She’s raising an eyebrow. I’m giggling uncontrollably. It’s not that anything is funny, at least not in that moment. This might be the first time I’ve ever felt like living is decay in slow motion. This might be my first panic attack. I’m drawing more attention to me than the question itself. Emily rolls her eyes and turns away to eat her lunch.

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Compose a new opening paragraph or two that will draw your ideal audience into your piece. Give us a specific scene. Drop us immediately into some sort of action. Create a tension within the moment. Contradict yourself.

from Mother Tongue, by Amy Tan

I am not a scholar of English or literature. I cannot give you much more than personal opinions on the English language and its variations in this country or others.

I am a writer. And by that definition, I am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language -- the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade. And I use them all -- all the Englishes I grew up with.

Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use. I was giving a talk to a large group of people, the same talk I had already given to half a dozen other groups. The nature of the talk was about my writing, my life, and my book, The Joy Luck Club. The talk was going along well enough, until I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her. I was saying things like, "The intersection of memory upon imagination" and "There is an aspect of my fiction that relates to thus-and-thus'--a speech filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, all the forms of standard English that I had learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother.

Publish this as In-Class Writing Exercises.

Find one peer to work with on Friday in our Virtual Classroom.Make communication arrangements.