Learning to write by russell baker

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57Reading, Inquiry, and Research ■ PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information

TANYA BARRIENTOS

Se Habla Español

The man on the other end of the phone line is telling me the classes I’ve called about are fi rst- rate: native speakers in charge, no more than six stu- dents per group.

“Conbersaychunal,” he says, allowing the fat vow- els of his accented English to collide with the sawed- off consonants.

I tell him that will be fi ne, that I’m familiar with the conversational setup, and yes, I’ve studied a bit of Spanish in the past. He asks for my name and I supply it, rolling the double r in Barrientos like a pro. That’s when I hear the silent snag, the momentary hesitation I’ve come to expect at this part of the ex- change. Should I go into it again? Should I explain, the way I have to half a dozen others, that I am Gua- temalan by birth but pura gringa by circumstance? Do I add the humble little laugh I usually attach to the end of my sentence to let him know that of course I see the irony in the situation?

This will be the sixth time I’ve signed up to learn the language my parents speak to each other. It will be the sixth time I’ve bought workbooks and note- books and textbooks listing 501 conjugated verbs in alphabetical order, with the hope that the subjunc- tive tense will fi nally take root in my mind.

In class, I will sit across a table from the “native speaker,” who won’t question why the Irish-American lawyer, or the ad ex- ecutive of Polish descent, has enrolled but, with a telling glance, will wonder what to make of me.

Look, I’ll want to say (but never do). Forget the dark skin. Ignore the obsidian eyes. Pretend I’m a pink-cheeked, blue-eyed blonde whose name tag says Shannon. Because that is what a person who doesn’t innately know the difference between corre, corra, and corrí is supposed to look like, isn’t it? She certainly isn’t supposed to be earth-toned or be from my kind of background. If she happens to be named García or López, it’s prob- ably through marriage, or because an ancestor at the very root of her fam- ily trekked across the American line three or four generations ago.

I, on the other hand, came to the United States at age three, in 1963, with my family and stopped speaking Spanish immediately.

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Tanya Maria Barrientos has written for the Philadelphia Inquirer for more than twenty years. Barrientos was born in Guate- mala and raised in El Paso, Texas. Her fi rst novel, Frontera Street, was published in 2002, and her second, Family Resemblance, was pub- lished in 2003. Her column “Un- conventional Wisdom” runs every week in the Inquirer. This essay originally appeared in the collec- tion Border-Line Personalities: A New Generation of Latinas Dish on Sex, Sass & Cultural Shifting. We selected this reading because we see increasingly more students with linguistic backgrounds similar to Barrientos’. As you read her es- say, compare your language back- ground to hers.

Her

M E M O I R

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The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, Second Edition 13

Roen−Glau−Maid: The McGraw−Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, 2/e

II. Using What You’ve Learned to Share Information

4. Writing to Share Experience

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2011

PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information ■ 4 | Writing to Share Experiences58

College-educated and seamlessly bilingual when they settled in West Texas, my parents (a psychology professor and an artist) embraced the notion of the American melting pot wholeheartedly. They declared that their two children would speak nothing but inglés. They’d read in English, write in English, and fi t into Anglo society beautifully. If they could speak the red, white, and blue without a hint of an accent, my mother and father believed, people would be forced to look beyond the obvious and see the all-American kids hidden inside the ethnic wrapping.

It sounds politically incorrect now. But America was not a hyphenated nation back then. People who called themselves Mexican-Americans or Afro-Americans were considered dangerous radicals, while law-abiding cit- izens were expected to drop their cultural baggage at the border and erase any lingering ethnic traits. Role models like Vikki Carr, Linda Ronstadt, and Raquel Welch1 had done it and become stars. So why shouldn’t we?

To be honest, for most of my childhood I liked being the brown girl who defi ed expectations. When I was seven, my mother returned my older brother and me to elementary school one week after the school year had already begun. We’d been on vacation in Washington, D.C., visiting the Smithsonian, the Capitol, and the home of Edgar Allan Poe. In the Volks- wagen, on the way home, I’d memorized “The Raven,” and I’d recite it with melodramatic fl air to any poor soul duped into sitting through my perfor- mance. At the school’s offi ce, the registrar frowned when we arrived.

“You people. Your children are always behind, and you have the nerve to bring them in late?”

“My children,” my mother answered in a clear, curt tone, “will be at the top of their classes in two weeks.”

The registrar fi led our cards, shaking her head. I did not live in a neighborhood with other Latinos, and the public

school I attended attracted very few. I saw the world through the clear, cruel vision of a child. To me, speaking Spanish translated into being poor. It meant waiting tables and cleaning hotel rooms. It meant being left off the cheerleading squad and receiving a condescending smile from the guidance counselor when you said you planned on becoming a lawyer or a doctor. My best friends’ names were Heidi and Leslie and Kim. They told me I didn’t seem “Mexican” to them, and I took it as a compliment. I en- joyed looking into the faces of Latino store clerks and waitresses and, yes, even our maid, and saying “yo no hablo español.” It made me feel superior. It made me feel American. It made me feel white.

It didn’t matter that my parents spoke Spanish and were success- ful. They came from a different country, where everyone looked alike. In America, fi tting in with the gringos was key. I didn’t want to be a Latina

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1Three popular entertainers of Hispanic orgin.

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14 Writing

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II. Using What You’ve Learned to Share Information

4. Writing to Share Experience

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2011

59Reading, Inquiry, and Research ■ PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information

anything. I thought that if I stayed away from Spanish, the label would stay away from me.

When I was sixteen, I told my father how much I hated being called Mexican—not only because I wasn’t, but also because the word was hurled as an insult. He cringed and then he made a radical plan. That summer, instead of sending me to the dance camp in Aspen that I wanted to attend, he pointed me toward Mexico City and the Ballet Nacional.

“I want you to see how beautiful Mexico is,” he said. “That way when anybody calls you Mexican, you will hold your head up.”

I went, reluctantly, and found out he was right. I loved the music, the art, the architecture. He’d planted the seed of pride, but it would take years for me to fi gure out how to nurture it.

Back at home, my parents continued to speak only English to their kids while speaking Spanish to each other.

My father enjoyed listening to the nightly Mexican newscast on televi- sion, so I came to understand lots of the Spanish I heard. Not by design, but by osmosis. So, by the time I graduated from college, I’d become an odd Hispanic hybrid—an English-only Latina who could comprehend Spanish spoken at any speed but was reluctant to utter a word of it. Then came the backlash. In the two decades I’d worked hard to isolate myself from the stereotype I’d constructed in my own head, society shifted. The nation had changed its views on ethnic identity.

College professors had started teaching history through African- American and Native American eyes. Children were being told to forget about the melting pot and picture America as a multicolored quilt instead.

Hyphens suddenly had muscle, and I was left wondering where I fi t in. The Spanish language was supposedly the glue that held the new Latino- American community together. But in my case it was what kept me apart. I felt awkward among groups whose conversations fl owed in and out of Spanish. I’d be asked a question in Spanish and I’d have to answer in Eng- lish, knowing that raised a mountain of questions. I wanted to call myself Latina, to fi nally take pride, but it felt like a lie. So I set out to learn the language that people assumed I already knew.

After my fi rst set of lessons, which I took in a class provided by the news- paper where I worked in Dallas, I could function in the present tense. “Hola Paco, ¿qué tal? ¿Qué color es tu cuaderno? El mío es azul.”2 My vocabulary built quickly, but when I spoke my tongue felt thick inside my mouth, and if I needed to deal with anything in the future or the past I was sunk. I sug- gested to my parents that when I telephoned we should converse only in Spanish, so I could practice. But that only lasted a few short weeks. Our rela- tionship was built in English and the essence of it got lost in the translation.

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2Hello Paco. What’s happening? What color is your notebook? Mine is blue.

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The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, Second Edition 15

Roen−Glau−Maid: The McGraw−Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, 2/e

II. Using What You’ve Learned to Share Information

4. Writing to Share Experience

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2011

PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information ■ 4 | Writing to Share Experiences60

By my mid-twenties I had fi nally come around to understanding that being a proud Latina meant showing the world how diverse the culture can be. As a newspaper reporter, I met Cubans and Puerto Ricans and brown- skinned New Mexicans who could trace their families all the way back to the conquistadores. I interviewed writers and teachers and migrant work- ers, and I convinced editors to put their stories into print. Not just for the readers’ sake, but for my own. I wanted to know what other Latinos had to say about their assimilation into American culture, and whether speaking Spanish somehow defi ned them. What I learned was that they considered Spanish their common denominator, linking them to one another as well as to their pasts. With that in mind, I traveled to Guatemala to see the place where I was born, and basked in the comfort of recognizing my own features in the faces of strangers. I felt connected, but I still wondered if without fl awless Spanish I could ever fi ll the Latino bill.

I enrolled in a three-month submersion program in Mexico and emerged able to speak like a sixth-grader with a solid C average. I could read Gabriel García Márquez with a Spanish-English dictionary at my elbow, and I could follow ninety percent of the melodrama on any given telenovela.

But I still didn’t feel genuine. My childhood experiences were different from most of the Latinos I met. I had no quinceañera, no abuelita teaching me to cook tamales, no radio in the house playing rancheras. I had ballet lessons, a high school trip to Europe, and a tight circle of Jewish friends. I’d never met another Latina like me, and I began to doubt that they existed.

Since then, I’ve hired tutors and bought tapes to improve my Spanish. Now I can recite Lorca. I can handle the past as well as the future tenses. But the irregular verbs and the subjunctive tense continue to elude me.

My Anglo friends call me bilingual because I can help them make ho- tel reservations over the telephone or pose a simple question to the women taking care of their children. But true speakers discover my limitations the moment I stumble over a diffi cult construction, and that is when I get the look. The one that raises the wall between us. The one that makes me think I’ll never really belong. Spanish has become a pedigree, a litmus test showing how far from your roots you’ve strayed. Of course, the same people who would hold my bad Spanish grammar against me wouldn’t blink at an Anglo tripping over a Spanish phrase. In fact, they’d probably be fl attered that the white man or woman was giving their language a shot. They’d embrace the effort. But when I fumble, I immediately lose the privilege of calling myself a full-fl edged Latina. Broken Spanish doesn’t count, except to set me apart from “authentic” Latinas forever.

My bilingual friends say I make too much of it. They tell me that my Guatemalan heritage and unmistakable Mayan features are enough to le- gitimize my membership in the Latino-American club. After all, not all Poles speak Polish. Not all Italians speak Italian. And as this nation grows

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16 Writing

Roen−Glau−Maid: The McGraw−Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, 2/e

II. Using What You’ve Learned to Share Information

4. Writing to Share Experience

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61Reading, Inquiry, and Research ■ PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information

more and more Hispanic, not all Latinos will share one language. But I don’t believe them. I think they say those things to spare my feelings.

There must be other Latinas like me. But I haven’t met any. Or, I should say, I haven’t met any who have fessed up. Maybe they are secretly strug- gling to fi t in, the same way I am. Maybe they are hiring tutors and listen- ing to tapes behind the locked doors of their living rooms, just like me. I wish we all had the courage to come out of our hiding places and claim our rightful spot in the broad Latino spectrum. Without being called hopeless gringas. Without having to offer apologies or show remorse.

If it will help, I will go fi rst. Aquí estoy.3

Spanish-challenged and pura Latina.

3I am here.

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QUESTIONS FOR WRITING AND DISCUSSION: LEARNING OUTCOMES

Rhetorical Knowledge: The Writer’s Situation and Rhetoric

1. Audience: For whom do you suppose Barri- entos is writing about these experiences?

2. Purpose: What do you see as Barrientos’s purpose in writing this essay?

3. Voice and tone: Barrientos has specifi c atti- tudes toward her subject matter. What parts of her essay can you cite to show what her at- titudes are?

4. Responsibility: How reliable does Barrientos seem in the way that she presents factual in- formation? What specifi c details in her essay seem most credible? Why?

5. Context, format, and genre: Although Bar- rientos presents her experiences as true, she still relates them almost in the form of a story. How effective is this strategy for writing about such experiences? How does Barrientos use dialogue in her autobiographical narrative to represent the views of participants?

Critical Thinking: The Writer’s Ideas and Your Personal Response

6. Barrientos says that her parents “declared that their two children will speak nothing but in-

glés.” What were their motives for saying that? What do you think about that declaration?

7. In many ways, this essay is about how Bar- rientos is trying to fi t into American culture and society. Where have you tried to fi t in, and what have your struggles been?

Composing Processes and Knowledge of Conventions: The Writer’s Strategies

8. Barrientos tells of her experiences in the fi rst person. How would it alter the effectiveness and interest of this essay if it had been writ- ten in the third person? Why?

9. Barrientos now and then writes in Spanish. How do the Spanish sentences affect her essay?

Inquiry and Research: Ideas for Further Exploration

10. Interview several family members about their language background and experiences. In a brief paper, explain how their experiences compare to those related by Barrientos.

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The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, Second Edition 17

Roen−Glau−Maid: The McGraw−Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, 2/e

II. Using What You’ve Learned to Share Information

4. Writing to Share Experience

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2011

PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information ■ 4 | Writing to Share Experiences62

SUKI KIM

Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits

Queens in the early 80’s struck me as the Wild West. Our fi rst home there was the upstairs of a two-family brownstone in Woodside. It was a crammed, ugly place, I thought, because in South Korea I had been raised in a hilltop mansion with an orchard and a pond and peacocks until I en- tered the seventh grade, when my millionaire father lost everything overnight. Gone in an in- stant was my small world, made possible by my father’s shipping company, mining business and hotels. Because bankruptcy was punishable by a jail term, we fl ed, penniless, to America.

The ugly house was owned by a Korean fam- ily that ran a dry cleaner in Harlem. Their sons, Andy and Billy, became my fi rst playmates in America, though playmate was a loose term, largely because they spoke English and I didn’t.

The fi rst English word I learned at the junior high near Queens Boulevard was F.O.B., short for “fresh off the boat.” It was a mystery why some kids called me that when I’d actually fl own Korean Air to Kennedy Airport.

At 13, I took public transportation to school for the fi rst time instead of being driven by a chauffeur. I had never done homework without a gov- erness helping me. I also noticed that things became seriously messy if no maids were around. Each week, I found it humiliating to wheel our dirty clothes to a bleak place called Laundromat.

One new fact that took more time to absorb was that I was now Asian, a term that I had heard mentioned only in a social studies class. In Korea, yellow was the color of the forsythia that bloomed every spring along the fence that separated our estate from the houses down the hill. I certainly never thought of my skin as being the same shade.

Unlike students in Korean schools, who were taught to bow to teach- ers at every turn, no one batted an eye when a teacher entered a class- room. Once I saw a teacher struggle to pronounce foreign-sounding names from the attendance list while a boy in the front row French-kissed a girl wearing skintight turquoise Jordache jeans. In Korea, we wore slippers to keep the school fl oor clean, but here the walls were covered with graffi ti, and some mornings, policemen guarded the gate and checked bags.

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Suki Kim is the au- thor of the novel The Interpreter. She was born in South Korea in 1970 and came to the

United States in 1983. She lives

in the East Village in New York City. We

included Kim’s essay in this text- book because it is a compelling story, and like Barrientos (page 57), Kim discusses how language affects and determines how she might “fi t in.”

Suk th T S i i c

U in 1

in the in New Yo

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18 Writing

Roen−Glau−Maid: The McGraw−Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, 2/e

II. Using What You’ve Learned to Share Information

4. Writing to Share Experience

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2011

63Reading, Inquiry, and Research ■ PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information

My consolation was the English as a Second Language class where I could speak Korean with others like me. Yet it did not take me long to realize that the other students and I had little in common. The wealthier Korean immigrants had settled in Westchester or Manhattan, where their children attended private schools. In Queens, most of my E.S.L. classmates came from poor families who had escaped Korea’s rigid class hierarchy, one dictated by education level, family background and fi nancial status.

Immigration is meant to be the great equalizer, yet it is not easy to erad- icate the class divisions of the old country. What I recall, at 13, is an acute awareness of the distance between me and my fellow F.O.B.’s, and another, more palpable one between those of us in E.S.L. and the occasional Eng- lish-speaking Korean-American kids, who avoided us as though we brought them certain undefi ned shame. It was not until years later that I learned that we were, in fact, separated from them by generations.

We who sat huddled in that E.S.L. class grew up to represent the so- called 1.5 generation. Many of us came to America in our teens, already rooted in Korean ways and language. We often clashed with the fi rst gen- eration, whose minimal command of English traps them in a time-warped immigrant ghetto, but we identifi ed even less with the second generation, who, with their Asian-American angst and anchorman English, struck us as even more foreign than the rest of America.

Even today, we, the 1.5 generation, can just about maneuver our an- chor. We hip-hop to Usher with as much enthusiasm as we have for belting out Korean pop songs at a karaoke. We celebrate the lunar Korean thanks- giving as well as the American one, although our choice of food would most likely be the moon-shaped rice cake instead of turkey. We appreciate eggs Benedict for brunch, but on hung-over mornings, we cannot do with- out a bowl of thick ox-bone soup and a plate of fresh kimchi. We are 100 percent American on paper but not quite in our soul.

In Queens of the early 80’s, I did not yet understand the layers of divi- sion that existed within an immigrant group. I preferred my Hello Kitty backpack to the ones with pictures of the Menudo boys, and I cried for weeks because my parents would not let me get my ears pierced. I watched reruns of “Three’s Company” in an attempt to learn English, thinking the whole time that John Ritter was running a fi rm called Three’s. I stayed up until dawn to make sense of “Great Expectations,” fl ipping through the dic- tionary for the defi nition of words like “Pip.”

More brutal than learning English was facing poverty with a rich girl’s habits and memory. In my neighborhood, a girl who grew up with a gov- erness and a chauffeur belonged to a fairy tale. This was no Paris Hilton’s “Simple Life,” but the beginning of my sobering, often-terrifying, never simple American journey. I soon discovered that I had no choice but to ad-

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The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, Second Edition 19

Roen−Glau−Maid: The McGraw−Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, 2/e

II. Using What You’ve Learned to Share Information

4. Writing to Share Experience

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2011

PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information ■ 4 | Writing to Share Experiences64

just. I had watched my glamorous mother, not long ago a society lady who lunched, taking on a job as a fi sh fi lleter at a market.

Before the year was over, my parents moved us out of the neighborhood in search of better jobs, housing and education. As for the family who owned the house in Woodside, I did not see any of them again until the fall of 2001, when Billy walked into the Family Assistance Center at Pier 94, where I was volun- teering as an interpreter. He was looking for his brother, Andy, who had been working on the 93rd fl oor when the fi rst plane crashed into the north tower.

From The New York Times, November 21, 2004 © The New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retrans- mission of the Material without express written permission is prohibited. www.nytimes.com.

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QUESTIONS FOR WRITING AND DISCUSSION: LEARNING OUTCOMES

Rhetorical Knowledge: The Writer’s Situation and Rhetoric

1. Audience: Who is the primary audience for this autobiographical essay? What makes you think that?

2. Purpose: Why has Kim chosen to write about this particular set of experiences?

3. Voice and tone: What is Kim’s attitude to- ward her readers? What is her attitude toward her subject? What cues in her writing make you think this?

4. Responsibility: What evidence can you fi nd in this essay to suggest that Kim has responsi- bly portrayed her family to readers?

5. Context, format, and genre: Kim’s autobio- graphical essay did not include photos other than the one that appears at the beginning of the essay. If she were to make this essay available in an online environment, where she could easily include photos, what pho- tos would you most like her to add? To what extent does Kim’s essay follow the chrono- logical organizational pattern typical of auto- biographical essays?

Critical Thinking: The Writer’s Ideas and Your Personal Response

6. What is your response to Kim’s mentioning in the fi rst paragraph that “bankruptcy was punishable by a jail term” in South Korea?

7. At the end of paragraph 2, Kim notes that she did not understand why other children called her “fresh off the boat” because she had fl own to Kennedy Airport. What does this observa- tion say about her use of the English language when she fi rst arrived in the United States?

Composing Processes and Knowledge of Conventions: The Writer’s Strategies

8. In autobiographical essays, one convention is to use past-tense verbs to narrate past events. How well does Kim follow this convention? Point to several examples to support your judgment.

9. Only once in this autobiographical essay does Kim quote other people—”fresh off the boat” in paragraph 2. She does not include any dia- logue in the essay. Where might she have in- cluded dialogue?

Inquiry and Research: Ideas for Further Exploration

10. In paragraphs 8 and 9, Kim refers to the “1.5 generation.” The 1.5 generation includes people who emigrate from another country before or during adolescence. Such immi- grants bring with them some cultural fea- tures from their home countries, but they are young enough to adapt relatively easily to the new culture. Conduct a Web search to read more about the term “1.5 generation.” How does it differ from “fi rst-generation” and “second-generation” immigrants?

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20 Writing

Roen−Glau−Maid: The McGraw−Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, 2/e

II. Using What You’ve Learned to Share Information

4. Writing to Share Experience

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2011

65Reading, Inquiry, and Research ■ PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information

As illustrated by “Ways of Writing to Share Experiences” (page 52), expe- riences can be shared through many genres. The “Genres Up Close” feature explores doing so through a literacy narrative.

GENRES Up Close Writing a Literacy Narrative The literacy narrative has been a popular genre for decades, but it has become increas- ingly so in recent years. Readers are curious about how others, especially famous writ- ers, have developed their writing and reading skills. When reporters and talk-show hosts interview well-known writers, they frequently ask about the writers’ experiences with reading and writing, particularly early in life.

When writers craft literacy narratives, they often do the following:

Narrate their experiences with using language—reading and writing • in particular situations. As you craft a literacy narrative, think about those moments when you were most aware that you were using language as a reader and/ or writer.

Critically refl ect on their experiences with using language.• As you craft a literacy narrative, think about the effects of particular experiences with reading and writing. For example, if your fi rst-grade teacher congratulated you for reading a book when you when you were six years old, how did that positive reinforcement affect your reading after that moment?

Think about how they developed agency as readers and writers.• That is, what has reading and writing allowed them to do in life? As you craft a lit- eracy narrative, think about the ways that reading and writing have helped you to achieve certain goals. Think about how reading and writing have helped you to make a difference in the world.

Defi ne “literacy” broadly.• As you consider your literacy experiences, be in- clusive. In addition to reading and writing with words, how have you developed other similar or related skills? For example, what are your experiences with visual images? What are your experiences with information literacy (fi nding, evaluating, and using information)?

To explain how they became literate people, writers may use dialogue to tell part of their literacy narratives. Another common practice in literacy narratives is to describe the emotions that the writer felt at a particular moment. Sharing these emotions can help readers understand the impact of the event. Of course, strong positive emotions can motivate people to keep doing something. In the selection by Russell Baker, “On Becoming a Writer,” notice how Baker uses both of these conventions to convey how he developed his lifelong commitment to writing.

GENRES UP CLOSE

Refl ection (p. 11)

Rhetorical Analysis (p. 21)

Audience Profi le (p. 36)

Literacy Narrative (p. 65)

Profi le (p. 110)

Annotated Bibliography/ Review of Literature (p. 152)

Visual Analysis (p. 198)

Editorial (p. 239)

Review (p. 281)

Poster (p. 329)

Proposal (p. 378)

Book Review (p. 419)

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The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, Second Edition 21

Roen−Glau−Maid: The McGraw−Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, 2/e

II. Using What You’ve Learned to Share Information

4. Writing to Share Experience

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2011

PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information ■ 4 | Writing to Share Experiences66

RUSSELL BAKER

On Becoming a Writer

The only thing that truly interested me was writing, and I knew that sixteen-year-olds did not come out of high school and become writers. I thought of writing as something to be done only by the rich. It was so obviously not real work, not a job at which you could earn a living. Still, I had begun to think of myself as a writer. It was the only thing for which I seemed to have the small- est talent, and, silly though it sounded when I told people I’d like to be a writer, it gave me a way of thinking about myself which satisfi ed my need to have an identity.

The notion of becoming a writer had fl ickered off and on in my head since the Belleville days, but it wasn’t until my third year in high school that the possibility took hold. Until then I’d been bored by everything associated with English courses. I found English grammar dull and baf- fl ing. I hated the assignments to turn out “com- positions,” and went at them like heavy labor, turning out leaden, lackluster paragraphs that were agonies for teachers to read and for me to write. The classics thrust on me to read seemed as deadening as chloroform.

When our class was assigned to Mr. Fleagle for third-year English I anticipated another grim year in that dreariest of subjects. Mr. Fleagle was notorious among City students for dullness and inability to inspire. He was said to be stuffy, dull, and hopelessly out of date. To me he looked to be

sixty or seventy and prim to a fault. He wore primly severe eyeglasses, his wavy hair was primly cut and primly combed. He wore prim vested suits with neckties blocked primly against the collar buttons of his primly starched white shirts. He had a primly pointed jaw, a primly straight nose, and a prim manner of speaking that was so correct, so gentlemanly, that he seemed a comic antique.

I anticipated a listless, unfruitful year with Mr. Fleagle and for a long time was not disappointed. We read Macbeth. Mr. Fleagle loved Macbeth and

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Born in Virginia in 1925, Russell Baker began his profes- sional writing career with the Baltimore

Sun in 1947, after attend-

ing Johns Hopkins University. In 1973 he

won a Pulitzer for commentary for his nationally syndicated column, “Observer,” which he wrote for the New York Times from 1962 to 1998. Baker is the author of a Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir Growing Up (1982) and Looking Back: Heroes, Rascals, and Other Icons of the American Imagination (2002) and has edited numerous books. Baker’s writing regularly appears in the New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, and McCalls. The following selection is excerpted from Growing Up. Russell Baker’s literacy narrative focuses on his dream of becoming a writer. As you read his piece, think about your own dreams. How can college help you achieve those dreams?

Bor in B h s c t

Su afte

ing Jo University

L I T E R A C Y N A R R A T I V E

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22 Writing

Roen−Glau−Maid: The McGraw−Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, 2/e

II. Using What You’ve Learned to Share Information

4. Writing to Share Experience

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2011

67Reading, Inquiry, and Research ■ PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information

wanted us to love it too, but he lacked the gift of infecting others with his own passion. He tried to convey the murderous ferocity of Lady Macbeth one day by reading aloud the passage that concludes

. . . I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums. . . .

The idea of prim Mr. Fleagle plucking his nipple from boneless gums was too much for the class. We burst into gasps of irrepressible snickering. Mr. Fleagle stopped.

“There is nothing funny, boys, about giving suck to a babe. It is the— the very essence of motherhood, don’t you see.”

He constantly sprinkled his sentences with “don’t you see.” It wasn’t a question but an exclamation of mild surprise at our ignorance. “Your pronoun needs an antecedent, don’t you see,” he would say, very primly. “The purpose of the Porter’s scene, boys, is to provide comic relief from the horror, don’t you see.”

Late in the year we tackled the informal essay. “The essay, don’t you see, is the . . .” My mind went numb. Of all forms of writing, none seemed so boring as the essay. Naturally we would have to write informal essays. Mr. Fleagle distributed a homework sheet offering us a choice of topics. None was quite so simple-minded as “What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” but most seemed to be almost as dull. I took the list home and dawdled until the night before the essay was due. Sprawled on the sofa, I fi nally faced up to the grim task, took the list out of my notebook, and scanned it. The topic on which my eye stopped was “The Art of Eating Spaghetti.”

This title produced an extraordinary sequence of mental images. Surg- ing up out of the depths of memory came a vivid recollection of a night in Belleville when all of us were seated around the supper table—Uncle Allen, my mother, Uncle Charlie, Doris, Uncle Hal—and Aunt Pat served spaghetti for supper. Spaghetti was an exotic treat in those days. Neither Doris nor I had ever eaten spaghetti, and none of the adults had enough experience to be good at it. All the good humor of Uncle Allen’s house reawoke in my mind as I recalled the laughing arguments we had that night about the so- cially respectable method for moving spaghetti from plate to mouth.

Suddenly I wanted to write about that, about the warmth and good feel- ing of it, but I wanted to put it down simply for my own joy, not for Mr. Fleagle. It was a moment I wanted to recapture and hold for myself. I wanted to relive the pleasure of an evening at New Street. To write it as I wanted, however, would violate all the rules of formal composition I’d learned in school, and Mr. Fleagle would surely give it a failing grade. Never mind. I

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The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, Second Edition 23

Roen−Glau−Maid: The McGraw−Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, 2/e

II. Using What You’ve Learned to Share Information

4. Writing to Share Experience

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2011

PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information ■ 4 | Writing to Share Experiences68

would write something else for Mr. Fleagle after I had written this thing for myself.

When I fi nished it the night was half gone and there was no time left to compose a proper, respectable essay for Mr. Fleagle. There was no choice next morning but to turn in my private reminiscence of Belleville. Two days passed before Mr. Fleagle returned the graded papers, and he re- turned everyone’s but mine. I was bracing myself for a command to report to Mr. Fleagle immediately after school for discipline when I saw him lift my paper from his desk and rap for the class’s attention.

“Now, boys,” he said, “I want to read you an essay. This is titled ‘The Art of Eating Spaghetti’.”

And he started to read. My words! He was reading my words out loud to the entire class. What’s more, the entire class was listening. Listening at- tentively. Then somebody laughed, then the entire class was laughing, and not in contempt and ridicule, but with openhearted enjoyment. Even Mr. Fleagle stopped two or three times to repress a small prim smile.

I did my best to avoid showing pleasure, but what I was feeling was pure ecstasy at this startling demonstration that my words had the power to make people laugh. In the eleventh grade, at the eleventh hour as it were, I had discovered a calling. It was the happiest moment of my entire school career. When Mr. Fleagle fi nished he put the fi nal seal on my happi- ness by saying, “Now that, boys, is an essay, don’t you see. It’s—don’t you see—it’s of the very essence of the essay, don’t you see. Congratulations, Mr. Baker.”

For the fi rst time, light shone on a possibility. It wasn’t a very hearten- ing possibility, to be sure. Writing couldn’t lead to a job after high school, and it was hardly honest work, but Mr. Fleagle had opened a door for me. After that I ranked Mr. Fleagle among the fi nest teachers in the school.

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Because this piece of dialogue includes the title of his es- say, Baker uses both double and single quotation marks.

By sharing his emo- tions, Baker helps readers understand the impact the event had on him. With the clause “I had discov- ered a calling,” he indicates the forma- tion of a lifelong com- mitment to writing.

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24 Writing

Roen−Glau−Maid: The McGraw−Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, 2/e

II. Using What You’ve Learned to Share Information

4. Writing to Share Experience

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2011

69Reading, Inquiry, and Research ■ PART 2 | Using What You Have Learned to Share Information

QUESTIONS FOR WRITING AND DISCUSSION: LEARNING OUTCOMES

Rhetorical Knowledge: The Writer’s Situation and Rhetoric

1. Audience: Who is Baker’s primary audience for this piece of writing? What makes you think that?

2. Purpose: What is Baker’s purpose in telling this story about becoming a writer?

3. Voice and tone: What is Baker’s attitude to- ward his topic and his audience? How do you know that.

4. Responsibility: What has Baker done in this essay to be a responsible writer?

5. Context, format, and genre: Even though this piece is excerpted from Baker’s book- length memoir, Growing Up, what makes it work as a stand-alone essay? How has Baker used dialogue in this autobiographical narrative?