Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers

by Schilb, John; Clifford, John

• ISBN13: 9780312653545
• ISBN10: 0312653549
• Edition: 5th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-08-25
• Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's

Summary

Students respond powerfully to literature when it explores issues that matter to them, such as how love can be compromised by the demands of tradition, how authoritarian injustice can be resisted, and how popular culture influences behavior. And when students learn to analyze and argue for how literature engages such issues and exerts such power, they develop and hone their critical thinking and writing skills. In its fifth edition Making Literature Mattercontinues to deliver on the promise of its title. Its thematic anthology gathers memorable stories, poems, plays, and essays into unique literary clusters addressing issues that rouse passionate responses in students. At the same time, its comprehensive rhetoric shows students how to harness those responses into thoughtful arguments about the issues raised by the clusters and the literature.

Author Biography

John Schilb (Ph.D., State University of New York — Binghamton) is a professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he holds the Culbertson Chair in Writing. Currently the editor of College English, he has co-edited Contending with Words: Composition and Rhetoric in a Postmodern Age and, with John Clifford, Writing Theory and Critical Theory. He is author of Between the Lines: Relating Composition Theory and Literary Theory and Rhetorical Refusals: Defying Audiences’ Expectations.

 

John Clifford (Ph.D., New York University) is a professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Editor of The Experience of Reading: Louis Rosenblatt and Reader-Response Theory, he has published numerous scholarly articles on pedagogy, critical theory and composition theory, most recently in College English, in Relations, Locations, Positions: Composition Theory for Writing Teachers and in The Norton Book of Composition Studies.

Table of Contents

PART ONE: Working with Literature

 

1. What Is Literature? How and Why Does It Matter?
     James Wright, Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota (poem)
How Have People Defined Literature?
*    What Makes Literature “Literature”? Comparing a News Story and a Poem
*    Joyce Wadler, “Peter Rabbit Must Die” (news story)
      Maxine Kumin, “Woodchucks” (poem)
Why Study Literature in a College Writing Course?
What Can You Do to Make Literature Matter to Others?

 

2. How to Read Closely
Basic Strategies for Close Reading
Close Readings of a Poem
     Sharon Olds, “Summer Solstice, New York City” (poem)
*    Reading Closely by Annotating
     X. J. Kennedy, Death of a Window Washer (poem)
*    Further Strategies for Close Reading
*    Identify Characters’ Emotions
*    Edward Hirsch, Execution (poem)
*    Identify Speech Acts
*    Paul Lisicky, What Will Life Be Like in the Twenty-First Century? (story)
Using Topics of Literary Studies to Get Ideas
     Lynda Hull, Night Waitress (poem)

 

3. How to Make Arguments about Literature 
     Daniel Orozco, Orientation (story)
     Jamaica Kincaid, Girl (story)
Strategies for Making Arguments about Literature
Looking at Literature as Argument
     John Milton, When I Consider How My Light Is Spent (poem)
     W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen (poem)
     Robert Frost, Mending Wall (poem)

 

4. The Writing Process
     William Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper (poem)
Strategies for Exploring
Strategies for Planning
Strategies for Composing
First Draft of a Student Paper
     Abby Hazelton, The Passage of Time in “The Solitary Reaper”
Strategies for Revising
Revised Draft of a Student Paper
     Abby Hazelton, The Passage of Time in “The Solitary Reaper”
Strategies for Writing a Comparative Paper
*    Don Paterson, Two Trees (poem)
*    Luisa A. Igloria, Regarding History (poem)
*    Jeremy Cooper, Don Paterson’s Criticism of Nature’s Owners

 

5. How to Write about Stories
     Eudora Welty, A Visit of Charity
     William Carlos Williams, The Use of Force
*    Ira Sher, The Man in the Well
Students’ Personal Responses to the Stories
The Elements of Short Fiction
Final Draft of a Student Paper
     Alison Caldwell, Forms of Blindness in “The Use of Force”

 

6. How to Write about Poems
     Charles Fort, We Did Not Fear the Father
     Philip Levine, What Work Is
     Mary Oliver, Singapore
     Yusef Komunyakaa, Blackberries
     Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Mill
     Jimmy Santiago Baca, So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs Away from Americans
     Louise Erdrich, The Lady in the Pink Mustang
     Marge Piercy, The Secretary Chant
*     James Tate, The Restaurant Business
A Student’s Personal Responses to the Poems
     Michaela Fiorruci, Boundaries in Robinson, Komunyakaa, and Oliver
The Elements of Poetry
Revised Draft of a Student Paper
     Michaela Fiorruci, Negotiating Boundaries

 

7. How to Write about Plays
     Tennessee Williams, From The Glass Menagerie (scene)
     Marsha Norman, from ‘night Mother (scene)
The Elements of Drama
Final Draft of a Student Paper
     Tim Kerwin, The Significance of What Jessie “Thinks”

 

8. How to Write about Essays
     June Jordan, Many Rivers to Cross
     Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens
A Student’s Personal Response
The Elements of Essays
Final Draft of a Student Paper
     Isla Bravo, Resisting Women’s Roles

9. How to Write a Research Paper
Strategies for Identifying an Issue and a Tentative Claim
Strategies for Finding and Using Secondary Sources
Strategies for Working with Sources
Strategies for Integrating Sources
Strategies for Documenting Sources (MLA Format)
Four Annotated Student Research Papers
A Paper that Deals with Existing Interpretations of a Literary Work
     Katie Johnson, The Meaning of the Husband’s Fainting in “The Yellow Wall-Paper”
A Paper that Places Literature in Historical and Cultural Context
     Brittany Thomas, The Relative Absence of the Human Touch in “The Yellow Wall-Paper”
*A Paper that Analyzes a Literary Work through the Framework of a Particular Theorist
*    Jacob Grobowicz, Using Foucault to Understand Disciplinary Power in Gilman’s  “The

      Yellow Wallpaper”
A Paper that Uses a Literary Work to Examine Social Issues
*    Sarah Michaels, “The Yellow Wallpaper” as a Guide to Social Factors in  Postpartum Depression
*Poems and Pictures: A Portfolio for Writers

 

PART TWO: Literature and Its Issues

 

10. Families
Memories of Family: Essays
     Brent Staples, The Runaway Son
     Rick Moody, Demonology
*    bell hooks, from Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood
Reconciling with Fathers: Poems
     Lucille Clifton, forgiving my father
     Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays
     Theodore Roethke, My Papa's Waltz
     Li-Young Lee, My Father, in Heaven, Is Reading Out Loud
*    Molly Peacock, Say You Love Me
Exorcising the Dead: Critical Commentaries on a Poem
     Sylvia Plath, Daddy
     Critical Commentaries:
          Mary Lynn Broe, From Protean Poetic: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath
          Lynda K. Bundtzen, From Plath's Incarnations
          Steven Gould Axelrod, From Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words
          Tim Kendall, from Sylvia Plath: A Critical Study
Mothers and Daughters: Stories

     Tillie Olsen, I Stand Here Ironing
     Amy Tan, Two Kinds
     Alice Walker, Everyday Use
Siblings in Conflict: Stories
     Tobias Wolff, The Rich Brother
     James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues 

Family Dramas: Re-Visions of a Play
     Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
     Christopher Durang, For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls
Grandparents and Legacies: Poems
     Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Grandfather at the Indian Health Clinic 
     Nikki Giovanni, Legacies
     Linda Hogan, Heritage

     Gary Soto, Behind Grandma's House
     Alberto Ríos, Mi Abuelo
*    Lorna Dee Cervantes, Refugee Ship
     Judith Ortiz Cofer, Claims
*Poetic Visions of Family: A Collection of Poems by Sharon Olds
*    Sharon Olds, I Go Back to May 1937
*    Sharon Olds, His Stillness
*    Sharon Olds, My Son the Man
*    Sharon Olds, First Thanksgiving
A Family’s Dreams: Cultural Contexts for a Play
     Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun
     Cultural Contexts:
          The Crisis, The Hansberrys of Chicago: They Join Business Acumen with Social Vision
          Lorraine Hansberry, April 23, 1964, Letter to the New York Times
          Alan Ehrenhalt, From The Lost City: Discovering the Forgotten Virtues of Community in

          the Chicago of the 1950s
          Sidney Poitier, from The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography
*A Conflict in Values: A Story in the News
     Hanif Kureishi, My Son, the Fanatic
     In the News:
*         Haroon Siddiqui, American anti-Muslim prejudice goes mainstream
*         The Knoxville News-Sentinel, Attacks on Mosque Site Pervert Values
*         Andrew Norfolk, Muslim group behind “mega-mosque” seeks to convert  all Britain
*         Barbara Bradley Hagerty, New College Teaches Young American  Muslims
Fateful Decisions about Parenthood: Stories
     Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants
     T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Love of My Life
*    John Edgar Wideman, newborn thrown in trash and dies
Gays and Lesbians in Families: Poems
     Essex Hemphill, Commitments
*    Audre Lorde, Who Said It Was Simple
     Minnie Bruce Pratt, Two Small-Sized Girls
     Rane Arroyo, My Transvestite Uncle Is Missing

11. Love
True Love: Poems
     William Shakespeare, Let me not to the marriage of true minds
*    John Keats, Bright Star
     Emily Dickinson, Wild Nights--Wild Nights!
*    Edna St. Vincent Millay, What My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why
     e. e. cummings, somewhere i have never travelled
     Wislawa Szymborska, True Love
     Michael S. Harper, Discovery 
     Wendy Rose, Julia
Romantic Dreams: Stories
     Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman
     James Joyce, Araby
     John Updike, A & P
*The Pull of Tradition: Cultural Contexts for a Story
*    Jhumpa Lahiri, Going Ashore
     Cultural Contexts:
*         Jhumpa Lahiri My Two Lives
*         Anita Jain, Is Arranged Marriage Really Any Worse than Craigslist?
*         Miguel Helft, A Decent Proposal
*Mourning Loved Ones: Poems in the News
*    W.H. Auden, Funeral Blues
*    Theodore Roethke, Elegy for Jane
*    Anne Sexton, Sylvia’s Death
     In the News:
*         Adam Cohen, A New Kind of Memorial for the Internet Age
*         Lisa Miller, R.I.P. on Facebook
*         Scott Duke Harris, Online Memorials: Internet ads new dimension to    grieving process
*Places in the Heart: Essays
     M. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain
*    Barry Lopez, Emancipation
*    Ken Burns, Our Best Selves
A Seductive Argument: Re-Visions of a Poem
     Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
     Peter De Vries, To His Importunate Mistress
     T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Appearance of Love: A Collection of Stories by Kate Chopin
     Kate Chopin, The Storm
     Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour
     Kate Chopin, Désirée's Baby
Is This Love?: Stories
     William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
     Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
*    Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat
*Jealous Love: Critical Commentaries on a Play
     William Shakespeare, Othello
*    Critical Commentaries:
*         A.C. Bradley, The Noble Othello
*         Millicent Bell, Othello’s Jealousy
*         Jeffrie G. Murphy, Jealousy, Shame, and Rival
Love as a Haven? Poems
     Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
     Susan Minot, My Husband’s Back

 

12. Freedom and Confinement
Freedom for Animals: Poems
*    William Blake, The Tyger
     D. H. Lawrence, Snake
     Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish
     Thomas Lux, To Help the Monkey Cross the River
*    Dean Young, Clam Ode
Can Tradition Be a Trap?: Critical Commentaries on a Story
     Shirley Jackson, The Lottery
     Critical Commentaries
*         Shirley Jackson, The Morning of June 28, 1948, and “The Lottery”
          Nick Crawford, Learning from “The Lottery”: How Jackson’s Story Might  Help Us Rethink

          Tradition
          Jon Schneiderman, Tradition, Justice, and Bloodlust in American Society
          Aimee Wilson, Under the Guise of Tradition: “The Lottery” and Female  Circumcision
The Marriage Trap: Plays
     Henrik Ibsen, A Doll House
     Susan Glaspell, Trifles
Confined for Her Own Good: Cultural Contexts for a Story
     Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
     Cultural Contexts
          Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”
          S. Weir Mitchell, From The Evolution of the Rest Treatment
          John Harvey Kellogg, From The Ladies’ Guide in Health and Disease
Hobbled by Language: Essays
     Richard Rodriguez, Aria
     Tomás Rivera, On Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory
     Victor Villaneuva, Jr., Reflecting on Richard Rodriguez
Trapped in Stereotypes: Poems
     Chrystos, Today Was a Bad Day Like TB
     Louise Erdrich, Dear John Wayne
     Dwight Okita, In Response to Executive Order 9066
     David Hernandez, Pigeons
     Pat Mora, Legal Alien
* Toi Derricotte, Black Boys Play the Classics
  Naomi Shihab Nye, Blood
 Remembering the Death Camps: Poems
     Martin Niemoller, First They Came for the Jews
*    Nelly Sachs, Chorus of the Rescued
*    Marianne Cohn, I Shall Betray Tomorrow
     Karen Gershon, Race
     Anne Sexton, After Auschwitz
Prisoners of Masculinity: Stories
*    Ann Beattie, The Four-Night Fight
*    Olaf Olafsson, On the Lake
     Haruki Murakami, Another Way to Die
 A Dream of Freedom: A Collection of Poems by Langston Hughes
     Langston Hughes, Let America Be America Again
     Langston Hughes, Open Letter to the South
     Langston Hughes, Theme for English B
     Langston Hughes, Harlem
*Vampires Unleashed: A Story in the News
*    Karen Russell, Vampires in the Lemon Grove
     In the News:
*         Jason Zinoman, “Necking: True Blood Reinvents Vampire Sex”
*         Kim Hone McMahan, “Vampire Fad Really Bites When Teens Leave  Marks”
*         The Dominion Post, “Vampire Victim in Hospital for a Week”
Variations on a Stereotype: Re-Visions of a Story
     Charles Perrault, Little Red Riding Hood
     Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Little Red Cap
     Angela Carter, The Company of Wolves

 

13. Doing Justice
*Civil Disobedience: Essays
*    Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
*    Rebecca Solnit, The Thoreau Problem
     Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
Discovering Injustice: Stories
     Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown
     Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson
*    Alice Walker, The Flowers
Punishments: Poems
     Seamus Heaney, Punishment
     Carolyn Forché, The Colonel
*    C.K. Williams, The Nail

     Sherman Alexie, Capital Punishment
Critiquing a Justice System: Essays
     Scott Russell Sanders, Doing Time in the Thirteenth Chair
     Maxine Hong Kingston, No Name Woman
*    Atul Gawande, Hellhole
He Said/She Said: Re-Visions of a Poem
     Robert Browning, My Last Duchess
     Gabriel Spera, My Ex-Husband
Taking Revenge: Stories
     Andre Dubus, Killings
*    Ha Jin, Saboteur
Issues of Guilt: A Collection of Stories by Edgar Allan Poe
     Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado
     Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-tale Heart
     Edgar Allan Poe, Hop-Frog
Eyewitness Testimony: Cultural Contexts for a Play
     Ida Fink, The Table
     Cultural Contexts
          Wladyslaw Szpilman, The Umschleagplatz
          Dori Laub and Shoshana Felman, Bearing Witness
Misfit Justice: Critical Commentaries on a Story

     Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
     Critical Commentaries
          Flannery O’Connor, from Mystery and Manners
          Martha Stephens, from The Question of Flannery O’Connor
          Stephen Bandy, from “’One of My Babies’: The Misfit and the Grandmother”
*         John Desmond, from “Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit and the Mystery of  Evil”
*Women Resisting Injustice: A Play in the News
     Sophocles, Antigone
     In the News:
*         Peter Beaumont and Saeed Kamali Deghan, Iran: Women on the frontline of the fight for rights
*         Isabel Hilton, A Triumph for Moral Authority
Racial Injustice: Poems
     Countee Cullen, Incident
     Natasha Trethewey, Incident
*What Is a Criminal? Stories
*    Sherwood Anderson, Hands
*    Rebecca Makkai, The Briefcase
*    Linh Dinh, “!”
Envisioning a More Just World: Poems
*    William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper
*    Martin Espada, Imagine the Angels of Bread
*    Mark Jarman, If I Were Paul

 

14. Journeys
An Errand of Love? Critical Commentaries on a Story
     Eudora Welty, A Worn Path
     Critical Commentaries:
          Roland Bartel, Life and Death in Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path”
          Neil Isaacs, Life for Phoenix
          Eudora Welty, Is Phoenix Jackson’s Grandson Really Dead?
Going on Uncertain Journeys: Stories
     Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
*    Jill McCorkle, Magic Words
     Sherman Alexie, What You Pawn I Will Redeem
Roads Taken: A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost
     Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
     Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
     Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night
*Journeys to Addiction: Nonfiction
*    Richard Wright, Craving
*    Caroline Knapp, Love
*    Susan Cheever, Drinking with Daddy
*A Journey to War: In the News
     Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
     In the News
*         Valerie Seiling Jacobs, Packing for the Ineffable
Keep This Boy Running: Cultural Contexts for a Story
     Ralph Ellison, “Battle Royal”
     Cultural Contexts:
          Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Exposition Address
          W.E. B. DuBois, Of Mr. Booker T. Washington
          Gunnar Myrdal, Social Equality
Journeys to a Dark Future: Stories
*    Ray Bradbury, Mars Is Heaven!
*    Octavia Butler, Bloodchild
     Ursula Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
     Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Harrison Bergeron
Travels Through the Dark: Re-Visions of a Poem
     William Stafford, Traveling Through the Dark
     John Burnside, Penitence
     Robert Wrigley, Highway 12, Just East of Paradise, Idaho
     Loren Goodman, Traveling Through the Dark (2005)
End of a Journey: Plays
     Marsha Norman, ’night, Mother
*    Terence McNally, Andre’s Mother
 A Journey to Death: Poems
     Mary Oliver, When Death Comes
     John Donne, Death Be Not Proud
     Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
     Wislawa Szymborska, On Death, without Exaggeration
*    Emily Dickinson, I heard a Fly buzz—when I died
Crossing the Waters: Poems
     Katia Kapovich, The Ferry
     Linda Pastan, Leaving the Island
     Mark Doty, Night Ferry

 

Appendix: Critical Approaches to Literature
     Contemporary Schools of Criticism
     Working with the Critical Approaches
     James Joyce, Counterparts (story)
*    James Joyce, Eveline (story)