Most common obstacles I am seeing so far

1. The essay is not about what Ascher and Staples mean, but how they make that meaning. The way that they use all the things and strategies we talk about: point of view, figurative language, diction, narration, etc. to communicate to the reader.

2. Getting stuck on writing the essay as it will be read. Start the essay where your thinking starts. If your thinking isn't ready for a thesis, then start with a body paragraph. If your thinking isn't ready for a body paragraph, then start with one way one of the authors conveys the experience. Then consider if the other author does a similiar thing or an opposing thing. Write those ideas down. It is important to have a strong opening thesis or claim in the essay; however, the writing of ideas, gathering of quotes, outlining and organizing, IN ESSENCE THINKING ON PAPER does not need to wait until after the thesis is generated. A thesis can always be edited and most often is the result of some previous writing and thinking.

3. There is no good writing, only good rewriting. Waiting for the perfect sentence, paragraph, essay, etc is very unrealistic and frustrating. It is a recursive process whereby your ideas grow and focus and the your language becomes stronger and more controlled as the work goes on. Do not hold back from writing your ideas because they don't sound good or right. Write them, read them back, tweak them. Seeing your ideas in writing is the beginning of finding out what you think, not the end.

NOTE: I just reread and changed much of this. For example, the final sentence read:
"Seeing your ideas in writing is the first step in finding out what you think, not the last step."
The "first step" "last step" was awkward. It communicated my idea, but honestly...it stunk. Changing to "beginning" and "end" is better. It is clearer. Ending the sentence with "the end" makes more sense. How would I have known this if I didn't write the terrible sentence first?

Comparison Contrast Essay

Assignment:

Each of the two passages below describes an encounter between two people and a reflection concerning its meaning. Read the passages carefully, and write an essay in which you compare and contrast the ways each writer conveys the experience. Your analysis should include a discussion of speaker, point of view, selection of detail, and other stylistic and rhetorical features you consider significant.

Our work schedule for this essay will be:

Monday 11/22- Lab time
Tuesday 11/23- Lab time
Wednesday 11/24- Even though we may not meet, the essay is still due. If you cannot find me put it in my
mailbox in the main office

All late papers are penalized one full grade for every day the essay is late.
The essay is Due on 11/24/10 by 11:30 a.m.

“Black Men and Public Space"--Brent Staples

My first victim was a woman-white, well dressed, probably in her early twenties. I came upon her late one evening on a deserted street in Hyde Park, a relatively affluent neighborhood in an otherwise mean, impoverished section of Chicago. As I swung onto the avenue behind her, there seemed to be a discreet, uninflammatory distance between us. Not so. She cast back a worried glance. To her, the youngish black man-a broad six feet two inches with a beard and billowing hair, both hands shoved into the pockets of a bulky military jacket seemed menacingly close. After a few more quick glimpses, she picked up her pace and was soon running in earnest. Within seconds she disappeared into a cross street.

That was more than a decade ago, I was twenty-two years old, a graduate student newly arrived at the University of Chicago. It was in the echo of that terrified woman's footfalls that I first began to know the unwieldy inheritance I'd come into--the ability to alter public space in ugly ways. It was clear that she thought herself the quarry of a mugger, a rapist, or worse. Suffering a bout of insomnia, however, I was stalking sleep, not defenseless wayfarers. As a softy who is scarcely able to take a knife to a raw chicken--let alone hold one to a person's throat--I was surprised, embarrassed, and dismayed all at once. Her flight made me feel like an accomplice in tyranny. It also made it clear that I was indistinguishable from the muggers who occasionally seeped into the area from the surrounding ghetto. That first encounter, and those that followed,
signified that a vast, unnerving gulf lay between nighttime pedestrians- particularly women—and me. And I soon gathered that being perceived as dangerous is a hazard in itself. I only needed to turn a corner into a dicey situation, or crowd some frightened, armed person in a foyer somewhere, or make an errant move after being pulled over by a policeman. Where fear and weapons meet--and they often do in urban America--there is always the possibility of death.

In that first year, my first away from my hometown, I was to become thoroughly familiar with the language of fear. At dark, shadowy intersections, I could cross in front of a car stopped at a traffic light and elicit the thunk, thunk, thunk of the driver--black, white, male, or female-- hammering down the door locks. On less traveled streets after dark, I grew accustomed to but never comfortable with people crossing to the other side of the street rather than pass me. Then there were the standard unpleasantries with policemen, doormen, bouncers, cabdrivers, and others whose business it is to screen out troublesome individuals before there is any nastiness.



“On Compassion” Barbara Lazear Ascher

The man’s grin is less the result of circumstance than dreams or madness. His buttonless shirt, with one sleeve missing, hangs outside the waist of his baggy trousers. Carefully plaited dreadlocks bespeak a better time, long ago. As he crosses Manhattan’s Seventy-Ninth Street, his gait is the shuffle of the forgotten ones held in place by gravity rather than plans. On the corner of Madison Avenue, he stops before a blond baby in an Aprica stroller. The baby’s mother waits for the light to change and her hands close tighter on the stroller’s handle as she sees the man approach.
The others on the corner, five men and women waiting for the crosstown bus, look away. They daydream a bit and gaze into the weak rays of November light. A man with a briefcase lifts and lowers the shiny toes of his right shoe, watching the light reflect, trying to catch and balance it, as if he could hold and make it his, to ease the heavy gray of coming January, February, March. The winter months that will send snow around the feet, calves, and knees of the grinning man as he heads for the shelter of Grand Central or Pennsylvania Station.
But for now, in this last gasp of autumn warmth, he is still. His eyes fix on the baby. The mother removes her purse from her shoulder and rummages through its contents: lipstick, a lace handkerchief, an address book. She finds what she’s looking for and passes a folded dollar over her child’s head to the man who stands and stares even though the light has changed and traffic navigates around his hips.
His hands continue to angle at his sides. He does not know his part. He does not know that acceptance of the gift and gratitude are what makes this transaction complete. The baby, weary of the unwavering stare, pulls its blanket over its head. The man does not look away. Like a bridegroom waiting at the altar, his eyes pierce the white veil.
The mother grows impatient and pushes the stroller before her, bearing the dollar like a cross. Finally, a black hand rises and closes around green.
Was it fear or compassion that motivated the gift?