Identity Matters: Rhetorics of Difference
Lillian Bridwell-Bowles, University of Minnesota

ISBN-10: 0132432889
ISBN-13: 9780132432887

Publisher: Prentice Hall
Copyright: 1998
Format: Paper; 592 pp
Published: 12/08/1997

Suggested retail price: $60.80
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Designed for a first-year composition course or an advanced composition course; also appropriate for writing-intensive courses in sociology or psychology where the focus is on identity formation, cultural pluralism, or multiculturalism.

Showing the interconnections between such issues as race, class, and gender, this refreshingly different multicultural reader introduces basic rhetorical strategies for analyzing the complex variables which define identity in the postmodern world. Focusing on writing to learn, and critical consciousness raising, it brings together some of today's most respected theorists, with selections ranging from 'high brow' essays in popular magazines to fiction and 'creative' writing from counter-culture sources.

  • Demonstrates the variety of rhetorical approaches student writers might use in order to explore their own identities through writing. Pg.___
  • Introduces a set of key rhetorical questions that can be applied to the readings and to the students' planning, drafting, and revising stages. Pg.___
  • Includes two types of writing assignments after each essay: writing for personal discovery, and writing for academic purposes. Pg.___
  • Features cross-chapter and issue connections throughout, leading to better critical thinking about topics that too often yield stereotypes. Pg.___
  • Provides research topics and assignments.
  • Gives students basic guidelines to format and document their essays. Pg.___



1. Identity and Writing in College.

Writing to Learn. Writing to Communicate. Factors That Influence Identity. Controversy. Interconnectedness. Cross-Disciplinarity. Critical Reading. Prompts to Get You Started. Rhetorical Questions. A Final Comment on Our Purposes. Representative Identity References.



2. Race and Ethnicity.

Lise Funderburg, Parents and Family.David Mura, Secrets and Anger? Sherman Alexie, Integration.Richard Rodriguez, India. Reginald McKnight, Confessions of a Wannabe Negro.Gary Indiana, Memoirs of a Xenophobic Boyhood.Patricia Williams, My Best White Friend: Cinderella Revisited.Jorge Klor DeAlva, Earl Shorris, and Cornel West, Our Next Race Question: The Uneasiness Between Blacks and Latinos.



3. Class.

Julie Charlip, A Real Class Act: Searching for Identity in the Classless Society.Michael Lind, To Have and Have Not: Notes on the Progress of the American Class War.Katherine Newman, Illegitimate Elites and the Parasitic Underclass.Paul Fussell, Speak, That I May See Thee.Lilliana Heker, The Stolen Party.Ben Hamper, Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line.Dorothy Allison, River of Names.G.K. Meyer, Dancing with the Headhunters.



4. Gender and Sexuality.

Andrew Kimbrell, A Time For Men to Pull Together; A Manifesto for the New Politics of Masculinity.Katha Pollitt, Are Women Morally Superior to Men? Debunking 'Difference' from Feminism. David H. Freedman, The Aggressive Egg.Sallie Tisdale, A Weight that Women Carry: The Compulsion to Diet in a Starved Culture. Paula Gunn Allen, They Make Their Climb.Bernard Cooper, A Clack of Tiny Sparks: Remembrances of a Gay Boyhood.Norah Vincent, A Normal Lesbian.Jessica Hagedorn, Asian Women in Film: No Joy, No Luck.



5. Religion and Spirituality.

Zainab Ali, Unveiling Islam: What Muslims Believe. Judith Plaskow, Im and B'li: Women in the Conservative Movement. James McBride, The Color of Water.Nicholas Cooper-Lewter, My Jesus Was Jim Crowed.Usry Alleyne, Atheism and Me: Why I Don't Believe in God.Arthenia J. Bates, A Ceremony of Innocence.Adrian C. Louis, Earth Bone Connected to the Spirit Bone.Diane Glancy, The Bible and Black Elk.Charles Marwick, Should Physicians Prescribe Prayer for Health? Spiritual Aspects of Well-Being Considered.



6. Age.

David D. Cooper, The Changing Seasons of Liberal Learning. Terry McMillan, Ma' Dear.Alice Walker, Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self.Bailey White, An Old Lepidopterist. Dan Fost, Farewell to the Lodge.Tina Rosenberg, On the Row.



7. Ability and Disability.

Edward Dolnick, Deafness as Culture.David Berreby, Up with People.Nancy Mairs, On Being a Cripple.Laura Hershey, Choosing Disability.Mike Ervin, Who Gets to Live? Who Will Decide?Michael Dorris, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: A National Perspective and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: A Parent's Perspective.Joseph P. Whelen, S. J. How I Pray Now: A Conversation.John Hassler, Rufus at the Door.



8. Region.

Paul Gruchow, Discovering One's Own Place.Louise Erdrich, Big Grass.Polly Stewart, Regional Consciousness as a Shaper of Local History: Examples from the Eastern Shore. Jonathan Raban, The Unlamented West.Dorothy Allison, I'm Working on My Charm.Caffilene Allen, First They Changed My NameEddy L. Harris, South of Haunted Dreams: A Ride Through Slavery's Old Back Yard.Jill Nelson, A Place of Grace. Edward Hoagland, New York Blues.



9. Nation.

Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy.Itabari Njeri, Sushi and Grits: Ethnic Identity and Conflict in a Newly Multicultural America.Chang-rae Lee, Mute in an English-Only World.Tim O'Brien, On the Rainy River: The Things They Carried.Thomas King, Borders.Leslie Marmon Silko, The Border Patrol State.



10. Writing in a Variety of Academic Forms.

Academic Conventions. Conditions for Learning to Write Well. Critical Practice. Critical Writing. Invention: Ways to Get Material. Drafting: Producing Material and Crafting a Form. Using Outside Sources. Critical Feedback. Revising. Polishing and Editing.

References.

Index..

For First-Year Composition - Reader


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