(Link) The Ways We Lie, by Stephanie Ericsson

The Ways We Lie, by Stephanie Ericsson

Mother Tongue, by Amy Tan

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.

Just last week, I was walking down the street with my mother, and I again found myself conscious of the English I was using, the English I do use with her. We were talking about the price of new and used furniture and I heard myself saying this: "Not waste money that way." My husband was with us as well, and he didn't notice any switch in my English. And then I realized why. It's because over the twenty years we've been together I've often used that same kind of English with him, and sometimes he even uses it with me. It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language I grew up with.

So you'll have some idea of what this family talk I heard sounds like, I'11 quote what my mother said during a recent conversation which I videotaped and then transcribed. During this conversation, my mother was talking about a political gangster in Shanghai who had the same last name as her family's, Du, and how the gangster in his early years wanted to be adopted by her family, which was rich by comparison. Later, the gangster became more powerful, far richer than my mother's family, and one day showed up at my mother's wedding to pay his respects. Here's what she said in part: "Du Yusong having business like fruit stand. Like off the street kind. He is Du like Du Zong -- but not Tsung-ming Island people. The local people call putong, the river east side, he belong to that side local people. That man want to ask Du Zong father take him in like become own family. Du Zong father wasn't look down on him, but didn't take seriously, until that man big like become a mafia. Now important person, very hard to inviting him. Chinese way, came only to show respect, don't stay for dinner. Respect for making big celebration, he shows up. Mean gives lots of respect. Chinese custom. Chinese social life that way. If too important won't have to stay too long. He come to my wedding. I didn't see, I heard it. I gone to boy's side, they have YMCA dinner. Chinese age I was nineteen."

You should know that my mother's expressive command of English belies how much she actually understands. She reads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stockbroker, reads all of Shirley MacLaine's books with ease--all kinds of things I can't begin to understand. Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It's my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world.

Lately, I've been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks. Like others, I have described it to people as 'broken" or "fractured" English. But I wince when I say that. It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than "broken," as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholeness and soundness. I've heard other terms used, "limited English," for example. But they seem just as bad, as if everything is limited, including people's perceptions of the limited English speaker.

I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother's "limited" English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say That is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect. And I had plenty of empirical evidence to support me: the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her.

My mother has long realized the limitations of her English as well. When I was fifteen, she used to have me call people on the phone to pretend I was she. In this guise, I was forced to ask for information or even to complain and yell at people who had been rude to her. One time it was a call to her stockbroker in New York. She had cashed out her small portfolio and it just so happened we were going to go to New York the next week, our very first trip outside California. I had to get on the phone and say in an adolescent voice that was not very convincing, "This is Mrs. Tan."

And my mother was standing in the back whispering loudly, "Why he don't send me check, already two weeks late. So mad he lie to me, losing me money.

And then I said in perfect English, "Yes, I'm getting rather concerned. You had agreed to send the check two weeks ago, but it hasn't arrived."

Then she began to talk more loudly. "What he want, I come to New York tell him front of his boss, you cheating me?" And I was trying to calm her down, make her be quiet, while telling the stockbroker, "I can't tolerate any more excuses. If I don't receive the check immediately, I am going to have to speak to your manager when I'm in New York next week." And sure enough, the following week there we were in front of this astonished stockbroker, and I was sitting there red-faced and quiet, and my mother, the real Mrs. Tan, was shouting at his boss in her impeccable broken English.

We used a similar routine just five days ago, for a situation that was far less humorous. My mother had gone to the hospital for an appointment, to find out about a benign brain tumor a CAT scan had revealed a month ago. She said she had spoken very good English, her best English, no mistakes. Still, she said, the hospital did not apologize when they said they had lost the CAT scan and she had come for nothing. She said they did not seem to have any sympathy when she told them she was anxious to know the exact diagnosis, since her husband and son had both died of brain tumors. She said they would not give her any more information until the next time and she would have to make another appointment for that. So she said she would not leave until the doctor called her daughter. She wouldn't budge. And when the doctor finally called her daughter, me, who spoke in perfect English -- lo and behold -- we had assurances the CAT scan would be found, promises that a conference call on Monday would be held, and apologies for any suffering my mother had gone through for a most regrettable mistake.

I think my mother's English almost had an effect on limiting my possibilities in life as well. Sociologists and linguists probably will tell you that a person's developing language skills are more influenced by peers. But I do think that the language spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular, plays a large role in shaping the language of the child. And I believe that it affected my results on achievement tests, I.Q. tests, and the SAT. While my English skills were never judged as poor, compared to math, English could not be considered my strong suit. In grade school I did moderately well, getting perhaps B's, sometimes B-pluses, in English and scoring perhaps in the sixtieth or seventieth percentile on achievement tests. But those scores were not good enough to override the opinion that my true abilities lay in math and science, because in those areas I achieved A's and scored in the ninetieth percentile or higher.

This was understandable. Math is precise; there is only one correct answer. Whereas, for me at least, the answers on English tests were always a judgment call, a matter of opinion and personal experience. Those tests were constructed around items like fill-in-the-blank sentence completion, such as, "Even though Tom was, Mary thought he was --." And the correct answer always seemed to be the most bland combinations of thoughts, for example, "Even though Tom was shy, Mary thought he was charming:' with the grammatical structure "even though" limiting the correct answer to some sort of semantic opposites, so you wouldn't get answers like, "Even though Tom was foolish, Mary thought he was ridiculous:' Well, according to my mother, there were very few limitations as to what Tom could have been and what Mary might have thought of him. So I never did well on tests like that.

The same was true with word analogies, pairs of words in which you were supposed to find some sort of logical, semantic relationship -- for example, "Sunset is to nightfall as is to ." And here you would be presented with a list of four possible pairs, one of which showed the same kind of relationship: red is to stoplight, bus is to arrival, chills is to fever, yawn is to boring: Well, I could never think that way. I knew what the tests were asking, but I could not block out of my mind the images already created by the first pair, "sunset is to nightfall"--and I would see a burst of colors against a darkening sky, the moon rising, the lowering of a curtain of stars. And all the other pairs of words --red, bus, stoplight, boring--just threw up a mass of confusing images, making it impossible for me to sort out something as logical as saying: "A sunset precedes nightfall" is the same as "a chill precedes a fever." The only way I would have gotten that answer right would have been to imagine an associative situation, for example, my being disobedient and staying out past sunset, catching a chill at night, which turns into feverish pneumonia as punishment, which indeed did happen to me.

I have been thinking about all this lately, about my mother's English, about achievement tests. Because lately I've been asked, as a writer, why there are not more Asian Americans represented in American literature. Why are there few Asian Americans enrolled in creative writing programs? Why do so many Chinese students go into engineering! Well, these are broad sociological questions I can't begin to answer. But I have noticed in surveys -- in fact, just last week -- that Asian students, as a whole, always do significantly better on math achievement tests than in English. And this makes me think that there are other Asian-American students whose English spoken in the home might also be described as "broken" or "limited." And perhaps they also have teachers who are steering them away from writing and into math and science, which is what happened to me.

Fortunately, I happen to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions made about me. I became an English major my first year in college, after being enrolled as pre-med. I started writing nonfiction as a freelancer the week after I was told by my former boss that writing was my worst skill and I should hone my talents toward account management.

But it wasn't until 1985 that I finally began to write fiction. And at first I wrote using what I thought to be wittily crafted sentences, sentences that would finally prove I had mastery over the English language. Here's an example from the first draft of a story that later made its way into The Joy Luck Club, but without this line: "That was my mental quandary in its nascent state." A terrible line, which I can barely pronounce.

Fortunately, for reasons I won't get into today, I later decided I should envision a reader for the stories I would write. And the reader I decided upon was my mother, because these were stories about mothers. So with this reader in mind -- and in fact she did read my early drafts--I began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with: the English I spoke to my mother, which for lack of a better term might be described as "simple"; the English she used with me, which for lack of a better term might be described as "broken"; my translation of her Chinese, which could certainly be described as "watered down"; and what I imagined to be her translation of her Chinese if she could speak in perfect English, her internal language, and for that I sought to preserve the essence, but neither an English nor a Chinese structure. I wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts.

Apart from what any critic had to say about my writing, I knew I had succeeded where it counted when my mother finished reading my book and gave me her verdict: "So easy to read."

The Myth of the Latin Woman, by Judith Ortiz Cofer

The Myth of the Latin Woman:
/ Just Met a Girl Named Maria
Judith Ortiz Cofer

On a bus trip to London from Oxford University where I was earning some graduate credits one summer, a young man, obviously fresh from a pub, spotted me and as if struck by inspiration went down on his knees in the aisle. With both hands over his heart he broke into an Irish tenor's rendition of "Maria" from West Side Story. My politely amused fellow passengers gave his lovely voice the round of gentle applause it deserved. Though I was not quite as amused, I managed my version of an English smile: no show of teeth, no extreme contortions of the facial muscles—I was at this time of my life practicing reserve and cool. Oh, that British control, how I coveted it. But Maria had followed me to London, reminding me of a prime fact ofmy life: you can leave the Island, master the English language, and travel as far las you can, but ifyou are a Latina, especially one like me who so obviously belongs to Rita Moreno's gene pool, the Island travels with you.

This is sometimes a very good thing—it may win you that extra minute of someone's attention. But with some people, the same things can make you an island—not so much a tropical paradise as an Alcatraz, a place nobody wants to visit. As a Puerto Rican girl growing up in the United States and wanting like most children to "belong," I resented the stereotype that my Hispanic appearance called forth from many people I met.

Our family lived in a large urban center in New Jersey during the sixties, where life was designed as a microcosm of my parents' casas on the island. We spoke in Spanish, we ate Puerto Rican food bought at the bodega, and we practiced strict Catholicism complete with Saturday confession and Sunday mass at a church where our parents were accommodated into a one-hour Spanish mass slot, per- formed by a Chinese priest trained as a missionary for Latin America.
As a girl I was kept under strict surveillance, since virtue and modesty were, by cultural equation, the same as family honor. As a teenager I was instructed on how to behave as a proper senorita. But it was a conflicting message girls got, since the Puerto Rican mothers also encouraged their daughters to look and act like women and to dress in clothes our Anglo friends and their mothers found too "mature" for our age. It was, and is, cultural, yet I often felt humiliated when I appeared at an American friend's party wearing a dress more suitable to a semiformal than to a playroom birthday celebration. At Puerto Rican festivities, neither the music nor the colors we wore could be too loud. I still experience a vague sense of letdown when I'm invited to a "party" and it turns out to be a marathon conversation in hushed tones rather than a fiesta with salsa, laughter, and dancing—the kind of celebration I remember from my childhood.

I remember Career Day in our high school, when teachers told us to come dressed as if for a job interview. It quickly became obvious that to the barrio girls, "dressing up" sometimes meant wearing ornate jewelry and clothing that would be more appropriate (by mainstream standards) for the company Christmas party than as daily office attire. That morning I had agonized in front of my closet, trying to figure out what a "career girl" would wear because, essentially, except for Mario Thomas on TV, I had no models on which to base my decision. I knew how to dress for school: at the Catholic school I attended we all wore uniforms; I knew how to dress for Sunday mass, and I knew what dresses to wear for parties at my relatives' homes. Though I do not recall the precise details of my Career Day outfit, it must have been a composite ofthe above choices. But I remember a comment my friend (an Italian-American) made in later years that coalesced my impressions of that day. She said that at the business school she was attending the Puerto Rican girls always stood out for wearing "everything at once." She meant, of course, too much jewelry, too many accessories. On that day at school, we were simply made the negative models by the nuns who were themselves not credible fashion experts to any of us. But it was painfully obvious to me that to the others, in their tailored skirts and silk blouses, we must have seemed "hopeless" and "vulgar." Though I now know that most adolescents feel out of step much of the time, I also know that for the Puerto Rican girls of my generation that sense was intensified. The way our teachers and classmates looked at us that day in school was just a taste of the culture clash that awaited us in the real world, where prospective employers and men on the street would often misinterpret our tight skirts and jingling bracelets as a come-on.

Mixed cultural signals have perpetuated certain stereotypes—for example, that of the Hispanic woman as the "Hot Tamale" or sexual firebrand. It is a one- dimensional view that the media have found easy to promote. In their special vocab- ulary, advertisers have designated "sizzling" and "smoldering" as the adjectives of choice for describing not only the foods but also the women of Latin America. From conversations in my house I recall hearing about the harassment that Puerto Rican women endured in factories where the "boss men" talked to them as if sexual innuendo was all they understood and, worse, often gave them the choice of sub- mitting to advances or being fired.

It is custom, however, not chromosomes, that leads us to choose scarlet over pale pink. As young girls, we were influenced in our decisions about clothes and colors by the women—older sisters and mothers who had grown up on a tropical island where the natural environment was a riot of primary colors, where showing your skin was one way to keep cool as well as to look sexy. Most important of all, on the island, women perhaps felt freer to dress and move more provocatively, since, in most cases, they were protected by the traditions, mores, and laws of a Spanish/ Catholic system of morality and machismo whose main rule was: You may look at my sister, but ifyou touch her I will kill you. The extended family and church struc- ture could provide a young woman with a circle of safety in her small pueblo on the island; ifa man "wronged" a girl, everyone would close in to save her family honor.

This is what I have gleaned from my discussions as an adult with older Puerto Rican women. They have told me about dressing in their best party clothes on Sat- urday nights and going to the town's plaza to promenade with their girlfriends in front of the boys they liked. The males were thus given an opportunity to admire the women and to express their admiration in the form of piropos: erotically charged street poems they composed on the spot. I have been subjected to a few piropos while visiting the Island, and they can be outrageous, although custom dictates that they must never cross into obscenity. This ritual, as I understand it, also entails a show of studied indifference on the woman's part; if she is "decent," she must not acknowledge the man's impassioned words. So I do understand how things can be lost in translation. When a Puerto Rican girl dressed in her idea ofwhat is attractive meets a man from the mainstream culture who has been trained to react to certain types of clothing as a sexual signal, a clash is likely to take place. The line I first heard based on this aspect ofthe myth happened when the boy who took me to my first formal dance leaned over to plant a sloppy overeager kiss painfully on my mouth, and when I didn't respond with sufficient passion said in a resentful tone: "I thought you Latin girls were supposed to mature early"—my first instance of being thought of as a fruit or vegetable—I was supposed to ripen, not just grow into
Womanhood like other girls.


It is surprising to some of my professional friends that some people, including
those who should know better, still put others "in their place." Though rarer, these incidents are still commonplace in my life. It happened to me most recently during a stay at a very classy metropolitan hotel favored by young professional couples for their weddings. Late one evening after the theater, as I walked toward my room with my new colleague (a woman with whom I was coordinating an arts program), a middle-aged man in a tuxedo, a young girl in satin and lace on his arm, stepped directly into our path. With his champagne glass extended toward me, he ex- claimed, "Evita!"

major university. She says her doctor still shakes his head in puzzled amazement at all the "big words" she uses. Since I do not wear my diplomas around my neck for all to see, I too have on occasion been sent to that "kitchen," where some think I obviously belong.

One such incident that has stayed with me, though I recognize it as a minor offense, happened on the day of my first public poetry reading. It took place in Miami in a boat-restaurant where we were having lunch before the event. I was nervous and excited as I walked in with my notebook in my hand. An older woman motioned me to her table. Thinking (foolish me) that she wanted me to autograph  
a copy of my brand new slender volume of verse, I went over. She ordered a cup of coffee from meA, assuming that I was the waitress. 

Our way blocked, my companion and I listened as the man half-recited, half-bellowed "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina." When he finished, the young girl said: "How about a round of applause for my daddy?" We complied, hoping this would bring the silly spectacle to a close. I was becoming aware that our little group was attracting the attention of the other guests. "Daddy" must have perceived this too, and he once more barred the way as we tried to walk past him. He began to shout-sing a ditty to the tune of "La Bamba"—except the lyrics were about a girl named Maria whose exploits all rhymed with her name and gonorrhea. The girl kept saying "Oh, Daddy" and looking at me with pleading eyes. She wanted me to laugh along with the others. My companion and I stood silently waiting for the man to end his offensive song. When he finished, I looked not at him but at his daughter. I advised her calmly never to ask her father what he had done in the army. Then I walked between them and to my room. My friend complimented me on my cool handling of the situation. I confessed to her that I really had wanted to push the jerk into the swimming pool. I knew that this same man—probably a corporate executive, well educated, even worldly by most standards—would not have been likely to regale a white woman with a dirty song in public. He would perhaps have checked his impulse by assuming that she could be somebody's wife or mother, or at least somebody who might take offense. But to him, I was just an Evita or a Maria: merely a character in his cartoon-populated universe.

Because of my education and my proficiency with the English language, I have acquired many mechanisms for dealing with the anger I experience. This was not true for my parents, nor is it true for the many Latin women working at menial jobs who must put up with stereotypes about our ethnic group such as: "They make good domestics." This is another facet of the myth of the Latin woman in the United States. Its origin is simple to deduce. Work as domestics, waitressing, and factory jobs are all that's available to women with little English and few skills. The myth of the Hispanic menial has been sustained by the same media phenomenon that made "Mammy" from Gone with the Wind America's idea of the black woman for generations; Maria, the housemaid or counter girl, is now indelibly etched into the national psyche. The big and the little screens have presented us with the picture ofthe funny Hispanic maid, mispronouncing words and cooking up a spicy storm in a shiny California kitchen.

This media-engendered image of the Latina in the United States has been doc- umented by feminist Hispanic scholars, who claim that such portrayals are partially responsible for the denial of opportunities for upward mobility among Latinas in the professions. I have a Chicana friend working on a Ph.D. in philosophy at a  poems for menus, I suppose. I know that it wasn't an intentional act of cruelty, yet of all the good things that happened that day, I remember that scene most clearly, because it reminded me of what I had to overcome before anyone would take me seriously. In retrospect I understand that my anger gave my reading fire, that I have almost always taken doubts in my abilities as a challenge—and that the result is, most times, a feeling of satisfaction at having won a covert when I see the cold, ap- praising eyes warm to my words, the body language change, the smile that indicates that I have opened some avenue for communication. That day I read to that woman and her lowered eyes told me that she was embarrassed at her little faux pas, and when I willed her to look up at me, it was my victory, and she graciously allowed me to punish her with my full attention. We shook hands at the end of the reading, and I never saw her again. She has probably forgotten the whole thing but maybe not.

Yet I am one of the lucky ones. My parents made it possible for me to acquire a stronger footing in the mainstream culture by giving me the chance at an educa- tion. And books and art have saved me from the harsher forms of ethnic and racial prejudice that many of my Hispanic companeras have had to endure. I travel a lot around the United States, reading from my books of poetry and my novel, and the reception I most often receive is one of positive interest by people who want to know more about my culture. There are, however, thousands of Latinas without the privilege of an education or the entree into society that I have. For them life is a struggle against the misconceptions perpetuated by the myth of the Latina as whore, domestic, or criminal. We cannot change this by legislating the way people look at us. The transformation, as I see it, has to occur at a much more individual level. My personal goal in my public life is to try to replace the old pervasive stereotypes and myths about Latinas with a much more interesting set of realities. Every time I give a reading, I hope the stories I tell, the dreams and fears I examine in my work, can achieve some universal truth which will get my audience past the particulars of my skin color, my accent, or my clothes.

I once wrote a poem in which I called us Latinas "God's brown daughters." This poem is really a prayer of sorts, offered upward, but also, through the human-to- human channel of art, outward. It is a prayer for communication, and for respect. In it, Latin women pray "in Spanish to an Anglo God/with a Jewish heritage," and they are "fervently hoping/that if not omnipotent/at least He be bilingual." 

Just Walk on By, by Brent Staples

BRENT STAPLES
Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space

Brent Staples (b. 1951) earned his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Chicago and went on to become a journalist. The following essay originally appeared in Ms. Magazine in 1986, under the title "Just Walk On By." Staples revised it slightly for publication in Harper's a year later under the present title. The particular occasion for Staples's reflections is an incident that occurred for the first time in the mid-1970s, when he discovered that his mere presence on the street late at night was enough to frighten a young white woman. Recalling this incident leads him to reflect on issues of race, gender, and class in the United States. As you read, think about why Staples chose the new title, "Black Men and Public Space."
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.
I moved to New York nearly two years ago and I have remained an avid night walker. In central Manhattan, the near-constant crowd cover minimizes tense one-on-one street encounters. Elsewhere – in SoHo, for example, where sidewalks are narrow and tightly spaced buildings shut out the sky – things can get very taut indeed.
After dark, on the warrenlike streets of Brooklyn where I live, I often see women who fear the worst from me. They seem to have set their faces on neutral, and with their purse straps strung across their chests bandolier-style, they forge ahead as though bracing themselves against being tackled. I understand, of course, that the danger they perceive is not a hallucination. Women are particularly vulnerable to street
violence, and young black males are drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of that violence. Yet these truths are no solace against the kind of alienation that comes of being ever the suspect, a fearsome entity with whom pedestrians avoid making eye contact.
It is not altogether clear to me how I reached the ripe old age of twenty-two without being conscious of the lethality nighttime pedestrians attributed to me. Perhaps it was because in Chester, Pennsylvania, the small, angry industrial town where I came of age in the 1960s, I was scarcely noticeable against a backdrop of gang warfare, street knifings, and murders. I grew up one of the good boys, had perhaps a half-dozen fistfights. In retrospect, my shyness of combat has clear sources.

As a boy, I saw countless tough guys locked away; I have since buried several, too. They were babies, really – a teenage cousin, a brother of twenty-two, a childhood friend in his mid-twenties – all gone down in episodes of bravado played out in the streets. I came to doubt the virtues of intimidation early on. I chose, perhaps unconsciously, to remain a shadow-timid, but a survivor.
The fearsomeness mistakenly attributed to me in public places often has a perilous flavor. The most frightening of these confusions occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when I worked as a journalist in Chicago. One day, rushing into the office of a magazine I was writing for with a deadline story in hand, I was mistaken for a burglar. The office manager called security and, with an ad hoc posse, pursued me through the labyrinthine halls, nearly to my editor's door. I had no way of proving who I was. I could only move briskly toward the company of someone who knew me.
Another time I was on assignment for a local paper and killing time before an interview. I entered a
jewelry store on the city's affluent Near North Side. The proprietor excused herself and returned with an enormous red Doberman pinscher straining at the end of a leash. She stood, the dog extended toward me, silent to my questions, her eyes bulging nearly out of her head. I took a cursory look around, nodded, and bade her good night.
Relatively speaking, however, I never fared as badly as another black male journalist. He went to nearby Waukegan, Illinois, a couple of summers ago to work on a story about a murderer who was born there. Mistaking the reporter for the killer, police officers hauled him from his car at gunpoint and but for his press credentials would probably have tried to book him. Such episodes are not uncommon. Black men trade tales like this all the time.
Over the years, I learned to smother the rage I felt at so often being taken for a criminal. Not to do so would surely have led to madness. I now take precautions to make myself less threatening. I move about with care, particularly late in the evening. I give a wide berth to nervous people on subway platforms during the wee hours, particularly when I have exchanged business clothes for jeans. If I happen to be entering a building behind some people who appear skittish, I may walk by, letting them clear the lobby before I return, so as not to seem to be following them. I have been calm and extremely congenial on those rare occasions when I've been pulled over by the police.
And on late-evening constitutionals I employ what has proved to be an excellent tension-reducing measure: I whistle melodies from Beethoven and Vivaldi and the more popular classical composers. Even steely New Yorkers hunching toward nighttime destinations seem to relax, and occasionally they even join in the tune. Virtually everybody seems to sense that a mugger wouldn’t be warbling bright, sunny selections from Vivaldi's Four Seasons. It is my equivalent of the cowbell that hikers wear when they know they are in bear country.

For Discussion and Writing
1. How does Staples describe himself? How is he sometimes seen by others?
2. Staples begins his essay by discussing the effect of his presence on another person. However,
others’ reactions to his presence affect him in return, and he spends much of the essay explaining the emotional and practical effects he experiences as a consequence of his interactions. How is the complication and paradox of these situations expressed by the last sentence about Staples’ whistling classical music being the “equivalent of the cowbell that hikers wear when they know they are in bear country” (paragraph 12)?
3. The person with whom you find yourself identifying in a story sometimes depends on your own identity. With whom did you identify at the start of Staples’ essay, and how did it affect your reading of the full piece?b 

Syllabus: The Essentials

English 101 - College Reading and Composition I

Course Syllabus

Instructor: Tommy Amano-Tompkins                                     Term: Fall 2016

Section: 3182 – Th 6:45 pm - 9:55 pm                                                Location: NEA 205    

Office hours: Th 6:15-6:45 pm in NEA 205

Email: jhtompkins99@gmail.com (best way to communicate with me outside of class!)

Course Web site: http://eng101hf16.blogspot.com

English 101 is a course in critical reading and prose writing designed to refine the student’s skills in thinking logically, reading carefully, and writing effectively. Stress is placed on the organization and composition of objective expository essays, including the research paper.

Prerequisite: Completion of English 28 or 31 with a “C” or better or appropriate score on assessment test.

Student Learning Outcomes:

Students who successfully complete English 101 should be able to

·      Apply critical reading/thinking/writing skills analyzing and writing, both in and out-of-class essays, about various freshman composition level readings including essays and the novel.

·      Demonstrate the ability to follow academic conventions by formatting expository essays, including page-layout, parenthetical citations and Works Cited entries, in the current standard MLA format.

·      Write freshman-level essays that follow the various stages of essay writing, including pre-writing, thesis development, illustration and support of the thesis using concrete, specific evidence/examples, editing, proofreading and which are free of most errors in syntax, grammar, punctuation, diction, and spelling.

·      Demonstrate understanding of effective college-level argumentation by producing logically supported arguments and by recognizing and avoiding common logical fallacies.

·      Produce a research paper, which utilizes the various elements of research production, such as designing a research plan, compiling research notes, producing an outline, developing a draft, producing a finished paper that utilizes at least five sources and has a complete MLA-formatted Works Cited page.

ADA Statement:

Students with disabilities, whether physical, learning, or psychological, who believe that they may need accommodations in this class, are encouraged to contact Special Programs & Services as soon as possible to ensure that such accommodations are implemented in a timely manner. Their phone number is 310-233-4620, and they are located in Cafeteria 108.

Required Texts: (available at the campus bookstore)

Patterns for College Writing: A Rhetorical Reader and Guide by Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell – ISBN #: 978-1457666520

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah – ISBN 978-0312577223

Who We Be by Jeff Chang – ISBN 978-1-250-07489-8

You will also need to purchase two blue exam books for in-class essays.

Bring your books, a notebook (or notebook paper), and a pen to every class meeting. To complete some assignments, you will need access to the Internet and to a computer word processor.

Students who succeed in English 101 usually choose to:                        **Read carefully!**

• Make a serious commitment to succeeding in this class.
• Come to class on time and prepared.
• Get the required texts as soon as possible.
• Do all the assignments, including readings, and keep up with the class schedule.
• Participate in class discussions and activities.
• Refrain from using their cell phones during class.
• Let me know immediately if they experience a problem with the class or if other areas of their lives seriously interfere with their ability to do their class work.
• Seek out all legitimate help with their course work, if they need it, including the Writing Lab, Special Programs & Services, campus librarians, their textbooks, and me.

·      Maintain academic integrity by doing his or her own work. They do not plagiarize; they do not cheat. (See box on plagiarism on next page.)

• Treat their classmates and instructor with respect and consideration.
• Recognize that real learning is difficult – it involves making mistakes and taking risks.

If you are not willing to make these choices, you are not likely to succeed in this class!

I will be happy to meet with you to discuss your work in this course. I encourage you to visit me during office hours, but if that is not convenient for you, we can make an appointment to meet at another time.

Plagiarism can mean copying, word for word, all or part of something someone else has written and turning it in with your name on it. Plagiarism also includes using your own words to express someone else’s ideas without crediting the source of those ideas.

Plagiarism is a very serious form of academic misconduct. It’s both lying and stealing, and it’s a waste of time for students and teachers. College and departmental policy on plagiarism will be strictly enforced: Any student caught plagiarizing will automatically receive a zero for that assignment, with no possibility of making it up, and may be subject to a formal reprimand and/or suspension.

Cite your sources! Please retain all notes and drafts of your papers until grading for the course is completed.

Attendance/Tardiness

Attendance in class is mandatory. This is the college policy. If a student is absent for more than the hours than a class meets per week, or if there is irregular attendance or a pattern of absences, the instructor has sufficient cause to drop a student from the class. For example, if a course meets 3 hours a week, then a student is allowed a maximum of 3 absences. Students who enter the class after the official starting time will be marked for ½ an absence for that particular day.

If a student is absent from the first and/or second class meeting of the semester, then he or she will be dropped, because there are people who want to enroll. If you miss three classes during the semester, you will be dropped from the class.

Electronic Communication Devices Policy

According to Communications Division policy, electronic communication devices must remain off during class time. Exceptions may be considered by faculty consultation (i.e. family emergency). A first offense may result in the student being suspended from the class for one meeting. Repeated offenses may result in up to a 2-day suspension from the class pending a conference with the Vice President of Student Services.

Grading:

Your final grade in this class will be computed as follows.

Essays (3)                                                      25%                            

Research Paper                                                23%                                                                              

Reading Analysis Presentations (5)                 15%

Journal                                                                        10%

Midterm                                                            7%                                        

Final                                                                  8%                  

Quizzes                                                             6%                

Participation                                                      6%                

Total                                                                100%              

A = 90%   900-1000 points          B = 80%   800-899                             C = 70%   700-799

            D = 60%   600-699                     F = 50%    0-599

English 101 is a UC-CSU transferable course, so rigorous academic standards must be applied to grading your work. All assignments are required. In-class work, such as reading analysis presentations and quizzes, cannot be made up.

Missing assignments can significantly impact your grade and prevent you from passing the course. For example, if you fail to turn in one essay (worth 150 points) and one Reading Analysis Presentation (40 points), you will need to complete every other assignment with an average score of more than 87% in order to pass the class with a C (70%).

No late assignments will be accepted, unless an extension has been arranged with the instructor in advance.

Quizzes will be given at the beginning of the class session; students who are absent or arrive late may not make up quizzes, even if they have really good excuses. There will be other quizzes during the semester at random intervals.

Reading Analysis Presentation assignments: You are required to present your analysis of one of the assigned readings every few weeks for the duration of the class. There will be a sign-up sheet for each set of readings; in some cases, you may be assigned to analyze a specific reading. You must do your analysis on the reading you signed up for (or were assigned) – you may not switch to another reading without clearing it with your instructor before the class. Your written analysis is due the day you discuss discuss it in class, and you will present your findings to the class during our discussion of the reading. Late reading analyses will not be accepted. Guidelines for the reading analyses will be distributed separately.

Essays (including Research Paper) must be typed and formatted according to MLA (Modern Language Association) guidelines. For guidance, see the MLA Formatting and Style Guide at the Web site of the Purdue Online Writing Lab (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/ - link available on the course site). Papers must be written using Microsoft Word or Pages software. They must be submitted by email, unless another arrangement has been made. Late papers will receive an automatic 10% point deduction and will not be accepted later than one week after the original due date. The research paper will not be accepted late!

Turnitin.com: To verify the originality of writing submitted for this class, all essays must be uploaded to Turnitin.com. Turnitin.com will generate an originality report for the instructor identifying any borrowed material in student essays (borrowed material includes correctly documented quotes, as well as plagiarized material). In order to receive full credit, students must upload their essays to Turnitin.com before class on the day the assignment is due. No essay will be graded until it is uploaded to Turnitin.com.

Go to Turnitin.com to create a student profile. Use the following information to upload your essay:

                        Class ID: 13354121                            Enrollment password: 3182

Revising: You may revise one or both of the two take-home essays (not the research paper) and resubmit your work for a new grade. To improve your grade, you will need to do more than correct grammatical errors and reword or reorder a few phrases. Revision means a new vision; it means looking at your work with fresh eyes and reconsidering the content, focus, and organization of your essay. It may involve rethinking, as well as rewriting. You are strongly advised to consult with your instructor and/or the Writing Lab before you begin revising. Revised essays are due within one week of receiving your original essay back and must be accompanied by your original essay. Please do not revise and resubmit essays that receive a score of 90% or higher.

Los Angeles Harbor College Mission Statement

Los Angeles Harbor College promotes access and student success through associate and transfer degrees, certificates, economic and workforce development, and basic skills instruction. Our educational programs and support services meet the needs of diverse communities as measured by campus institutional learning outcomes.

Contact information for a few reliable classmates

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Name                                                                            Phone                                        Email

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Name                                                                            Phone                                        Email

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Name                                                                            Phone                                        Email
Schedule of Topics, Readings, and Written Assignments (subject to change)

Date	Readings to be completed before class	Quizzes, exams, and major assignments
	Week 1
Thurs. 9/1	Review Syllabus, etc. Handout: “The Myth of ‘Practice Makes Perfect’” Homework: Read http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/17405859/colin-kaepernick-did-controversial-was-not-un-american-nfl (summarize) Optional: https://twitter.com/Kaepernick7 Patterns for College Writing: Ch. 1 – Reading to Write: Becoming a Critical Reader, pp. 13-27 Ch. 8 – Exemplification, pp. 207-221 “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” by Judith Ortiz Cofer, pp. 230-235 (summarize) “Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space” by Brent Staples, pp. 238-241 (summarize) **Anytime you see this: (summarize), you must write a one-paragraph summary of the reading that precedes it and turn it in at the next class as homework	Writing diagnostic
	Week 2
Thurs. 9/8	Quiz In-class: discuss homework Homework: Patterns for College Writing: Ch. 2 – Invention, pp. 29-49 Ch. 14 – Argumentation pp. 523-542 – Important for essay 1 “Mother Tongue, ” by Amy Tan, pp. 463-469 (summarize) “The Ways We Lie” by Stephanie Ericsson, pp.  471-478 (summarize) **Last day to drop classes without a fee or a “W” is Sept. 8 (in-person) and Sept. 11 (online)	Quiz 1 (Reading Analysis)
	Week 3
Thurs. 9/15	Quiz In-class: Homework: Patterns for College Writing: Ch. 3 – Arrangement, pp. 51-64  Debate: Should American Citizenship be a Birthright? pp. 591-592 “The Case for Birthright Citizenship” by Linda Chavez, pp. 593-595 (summarize) “An Argument to Be Made about Immigrant Babies and Citizenship” by George F. Will, pp. 598-600 (summarize) Prompt: Essay 1 -Prepare for prewriting and outline	Quiz 2 (Reading Analysis)
	Week 4
Thurs. 9/22	Quiz In-class: discuss prompt for essay 1 Homework: Patterns for College Writing: Ch. 4 – Drafting and Revising, pp. 65-79 “The ‘Black Table’ Is Still There” by Lawrence Otis Graham, pp. 348-350 (summarize) “A Peaceful Woman Explains Why She Carries a Gun” by Linda M. Hasselstrom, pp. 353-357 (summarize) -Prepare for Draft 1 Workshop	Quiz 3 Prewriting/Outline for Essay 1 (Reading Analysis )
	Week 5
Thurs. 9/29	Quiz In-class: Peer review draft essay 1 Homework: The Nightingale: Chapters 1-7, pp. 1-64	Quiz 4 Peer Review: Draft of Essay 1 (Reading Analysis)
	Week 6
Thurs. 10/6	Quiz In-class: Discuss The Nightingale – Why wouldn’t people believe what was actually happening? Homework: The Nightingale: Chapters 8-13, pp. 65-142 Chapters 14-19, pp. 143-218 Read prompt critical essay 2	Quiz 5 Essay 1 due (Reading Analysis)
	Week 7
Thurs. 10/13	Quiz In-class: What is a critical essay? Homework: The Nightingale: Chapters 20-25, pp. 219-295 Chapters 26-33, pp. 296-370 -Outline Essay 2	Quiz 6 (Reading Analysis 3)

	Week 8
Thurs. 10/20	Quiz In-class: Prewriting/Outline 2 Workshop Homework: The Nightingale: Chapters 34-39, pp. 371-438 Draft 2 Peer review workshop -distribute questions for peer review	Quiz 7 (Reading Analysis) Outline Essay 2
	Week 9
Thurs. 10/27	Quiz In-class: Discuss Who We Be to prepare for first reading Peer review rough draft essay 2 Homework: Who We Be: Introduction, pp. 3-12 (mandatory summarize)	Quiz 8 (Reading Analysis) Rough Draft of Essay 2
	Week 10
Thurs. 11/3	Quiz In-class: Homework: Patterns for College Writing: Ch. 16 – Finding and Evaluating Sources, pp. 713-718 Who We Be: Chapters 1-2, pp. 17-53 (Comics; activism, politics, & art) LIBRARY ORIENTATION	Quiz 9 Essay 2 due (Reading Analysis)
	Week 11
Thurs. 11/10	Quiz In-class: Homework: MLA Cheat Sheet Patterns for College Writing: Ch. 14 – Argumentation, pp. 523-530 Who We Be: Chapter 3, pp. 55-64, & Chapter 9, pp. 169-189 (Advertising) Chapter 6, pp.  101-122 & Chapter 12, pp. 241-253 (Political campaigns)	Quiz 10  (Reading Analysis)
	Week 12
Thurs. 11/17	Quiz In-class: Homework: Patterns for College Writing: Ch. 14 – Argumentation, pp. 531-547 Who We Be: Chapter 10, pp.  191-208 & beginning of Chapter 11, pp. 213-217 (TV) Chapter 13, pp. 255-271 & Chapter 14, pp. 273-288 (Obama image, economic inequality) **Last day to drop classes with a “W” is Nov. 17 (in-person) and Nov. 20 (online)	Quiz 11 Research Proposal Handout: MLA  (Reading Analysis)
	Week 13
Thurs. 11/24	THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY – NO CLASS
	Week 14
Thurs. 12/1	Quiz In-class: Homework: Patterns for College Writing: Ch. 17 – Integrating Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism, pp. 719-728 Who We Be: Chapter 15, pp. 291-313 (Occupy Movement, Trayvon Martin)	Quiz 12 Research paper outline (Reading Analysis)

	Week 15
Thurs. 12/8	Quiz In-class: Homework: Who We Be: Epilogue, pp. 323-341 (DREAM Act protests, coming out as undocumented) Research Paper Draft Workshop	Quiz 13 Research paper draft (Reading Analysis)
	Finals Week
Thurs. 12/15	Present research papers	Research paper due