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The value of narrative essay
The value of narrative essay
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Although it has only been 2 weeks that I have been attending in this writing course, I have already expanded my knowledge greatly and gained plenty of courage in a very little time period. I am not an avid reader, nor do I ever bother to take my own time to go out and pick up or buy a book, but throughout the weeks, I have been assigned to read a new article every week, and each article has made me realize the power and potential reading has to a single person. How it can change someone’s life drastically. I mostly enjoyed reading “The Importance of the Act of Reading” by Paulo Freire, “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie, and “All Writing is Autobiography” by Donald M. Murray.
In Alexie’s article I’ve come up with questions while reading. “How did the author’s motivation and compassion for his peers help him guide his future?” and “Why did the author motivate his peers to read?” In “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie explains how he achieved
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Murray uses his own past events in his childhood and creates poems and short stories. In this article, Murray explains realizes that he seeks for understanding and compassion in his own writing. This explaination by Murray really opened up to me how writing is more than just simply a way to express yourself through words, it is a way to tell a story in each word that you write. It is a way to find yourself and how you’ve become what you are today and how writers begin to understand themselves after reading their own work. Another thing Murray states was that throughout a period of time, a writer can completely change people’s mind and creativity just by his/her diction that he/she
As I grew up learning to read was something I learned in school, yet for Sherman Alexie and Malcolm X can’t say the same. These two amazing authors taught themselves, at different stages of their lives, to read. In Sherman Alexie’s essay “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” and Malcolm X’s essay “Learning to Read” they both explain the trials and experiences they went through that encouraged them to work to achieve literacy.
Sherman Alexis a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian who wrote “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and me”. In the short story explains how he learned to read and write even with limited resources on the reservation where he grew up. He starts his story by using popular culture describing how he learned how to read using a comic book about “Superman”. He also explained why Indian children were never supposed to amount to anything in life and that they were supposed to be dumb among Non-Indians. He wanted to let other Indian students that reading is what saved his life. It opened up his mind and made him a better person today.
At what age did you learn to read? Were you younger or were you older? In “Superman and Me”, Sherman Alexie describes the importance of learning how to read at a young age and how reading saved his life. Sherman Alexie’s “Superman and Me” uses rhetorical analysis effectively to show that by reading he became an example for Indians at the reservations by beating and conquering all of the stereotypes that were against Native Americans.
Writing with Readings and Handbook. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013. 52-57. Print.
Many people think that reading more can help them to think and develop before writing something. Others might think that they don’t need to read and or write that it can really help them to brainstorm things a lot quicker and to develop their own ideas immediately (right away). The author’s purpose of Stephen King’s essay, Reading to Write, is to understand the concepts, strategies and understandings of how to always read first and then start something. The importance of this essay is to understand and comprehend our reading and writing skills by brainstorming our ideas and thoughts a lot quicker. In other words, we must always try to read first before we can brainstorm some ideas and to think before we write something. There are many reasons why I chose Stephen King’s essay, Reading to Write, by many ways that reading can help you to comprehend, writing, can help you to evaluate and summarize things after reading a passage, if you read, it can help you to write things better and as you read, it can help you to think and evaluate of what to write about.
Reading a book is a great entertainment, but more importantly, it gives you more knowledge to learn. In a short story entitled “Superman and me” by Sherman Alexie, he discussed how it’s like to be in a minority, or an Indian in a non-Indian world, and how reading helped him get through it. Growing up, his father influenced him into reading books. Due to this he started to teach himself how to read and gained more knowledge. Though he is smart, it was hard for him to be noticed, “Indian children were expected to be stupid,” because of this he worked hard and proved the majority what he is capable of. Alexie’s passion in reading had helped himself and his fellow man rise against all the discrimination and be accepted by
Although the greater picture is that reading is fundamental, the two authors have a few different messages that they seek to communicate to their audiences. “The Joy of Reading and Writing” depicts how reading serves as a mechanism to escape the preconceived notions that constrain several groups of people from establishing themselves and achieving success in their lifetimes. “Reading to Write,” on the other hand, offers a valuable advice to aspiring writers. The author suggests that one has to read, read, and read before he or she can become a writer. Moreover, he holds an interesting opinion concerning mediocre writing. He says, “Every book you pick has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones” (p.221). Although these two essays differ in their contents and messages, the authors use the same rhetorical mode to write their essays. Both are process analyses, meaning that they develop their main argument and provide justification for it step by step. By employing this technique, the two authors create essays that are thoughtful, well supported, and easy to understand. In addition, Alexie and King both add a little personal touch to their writings as they include personal anecdotes. This has the effect of providing support for their arguments. Although the two essays have fairly different messages, the authors make use of anecdotes and structure their writing in a somewhat similar
Alexie, Sherman. “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” Writer’s Presence: A Pool of Readings. 5th ed. Ed. Robert Atawan and Donald McQuade. Boston:Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. 73-76. Print
The very first chapter we read of Mindful Writing changed my perspective to see that anyone and everyone can be a writer. Brian Jackson, the author of Mindful Writing, wrote, “In this book I want to convince you that anyone writing anything for any reason is a writer…Writing is not something we do just in school. It is a vital means of influence in all facets of life.” It was through that very first reading that I began to think about writing as more than just a dreaded part of school, and I began to think of myself as more than just a student forced to write. Our very first assignment, My Writing Story, helped me to reflect on my identity as a writer. I realized that I was a writer every time I wrote in my journal or captioned an Instagram post. Throughout the semester, as I came to love writing more with each paper I wrote, I was able to create my identity as a writer. I learned that I loved research and analyzing others’ thoughts and ideas, but that writing simply on my own opinions, wasn’t my favorite past time. Through the countless readings this semester, I saw which writing styles I loved and which didn’t speak to me. Each day of class, I chipped away at creating my identity as a writer, and I’m grateful for the lessons that helped me shape and realize that
Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. Tenth edition. Edited by Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. New York: Longman Publishers, pp. 371-377, 2008.
The author of Superman and Me, Sherman Alexie, claims that reading can teach you things necessary for life. Throughout Superman and Me, Alexie describes things reading taugh him, like how picking up a book at the age of three pushed him into learning above his level. Also, in his story, Sherman Alexie shows how reading helped to save him from being segregated or stereotyped because he was an Indian boy, which helps stress their importance. Alexie uses his life experiences and specific situations to express emotion and get intouch with the reader. He tries to push the point that books helped him grow and gave him new oportunites: helping him discover his love for journalism and writing. Alexie believes that reading is an important part of life for all people, he expresses this by using diction and repetition to add emotion to his story about how reading is so important.
“My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well” (16). Alexie uses repetition by using the word “love” three times. His determination of learning came from him being inspired by his father. The main character also slowly got to harder levels of books. He first used comic books because they had pictures and the dialogue made them easier to read. “In one panel, Superman breaks through a door. His suit is red, blue, and yellow” (16). Alexie uses imagery by describing the colors on the Superman's suit. The main character learned to read by connecting pictures to words. He shows drive by doing something that is very hard and not giving up while doing it. Lastly, the main character started to read more than just books. He used the little vocabulary he had to see if he could read signs, mail,
Writing is an important skill that both reflects the personality of the author and the reader. Certain styles are used to express what the intentions of an author when writing an essay or even a literature piece. For instance, the type of rhetoric an author uses can shed light on the author’s attitude toward a topic. The two essays “Superman & Me” by Sherman Alexie and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read” by Francine Prose have similar messages, but their rhetoric and style are vastly different. Both essay’s messages are about the impact of reading on America’s youth. Prose’s essay seems to be concerned and scornful towards modern schools literature curriculum, whereas Alexie’s essay has more of a hopeful, confident tone through his rhetoric.
2. “Writing autobiography is my way of making meaning of the life I have led and am leading and may lead” (Murray 228). Murray used these words in his article, “All Writing is Autobiography” and they were very eye opening to me as I read about his ideas on autobiography writing. Murray suggests the all writing is an autobiography because it helps us express whats inside even if we don’t necessarily mean to and without directly talking about oneself. After Murrays column , “OverSixty” he says, “I wrote it in part for therapy, and it began as a note to myself several weeks after the experience to help me cut through thr jungle of thoughts and emotions”(228). Murray uses writing as therapy and says that all his pieces are autobiograpical because they sometimes have to smallest glimmer of his childhood or other events in his life but he hides it inside a story. Another way that Murray defends his argument is when he says, “We become what we write” (230). Writng gives one’s self to become who they want to be and express it. Even if you don’t
“Why do you read all the time?” A frequently asked question of my past and I still find it repeated even now as I have entered a higher class of the educated. Whenever posed with this blatant criticism of my preferred free time activity, I simply answer with “Why don’t you read all the time?” Of course I might sound like the biggest geek that ever walked the face of the earth, but the fact of the matter is that no matter what negative stereotype is attached to those who read, it has never stopped me from continuing to pursue my joy of literature. I am a firm believer in the power of a book and that the fact that the more well read you are the better chance you have of relating to entirely different groups of people.