Seeking Truth in Journalism by John McManus
"Losing the Senses" by Rosalyn Ostler
Losing the Senses by Rosalyn Ostler
One - It fades intermittently--
the perfume of orange blossoms
sweet in my nostrils, then a flatline
of fragrance, until a later surprise
when your face touches mine
and the scent of your rushes in.
My skin breathes your embrace,
Hording for the times of loss.
Two – I miss the taste of blackberries,
Caramel, fresh cauliflower, of shrimp,
Fried mushrooms, root beer,
Buttered toast, Hershey’s kisses.
Three – As clouds, fluttered leaves,
and butterflies dim, my mind scrambles
to preserve them. I imprint my brain
with sunsets, waterfalls, autumn colors,
saving the most precious space
for your smile.
Four – My ears strain for last sounds
Of mockingbirds, crickets and frogs,
The creek rushing through a summer night,
Tchaikovsky and Alley Cat, laughter
Of friends, your lips whispering love.
Five – And last – oh please last,
My fingers strive to remember
Their journeys across your face,
Through your hair.
My skin craves the communication
Of your articulate hands.
When numbness cloaks my fingertips,
May every touch live in their memory.
One - It fades intermittently--
the perfume of orange blossoms
sweet in my nostrils, then a flatline
of fragrance, until a later surprise
when your face touches mine
and the scent of your rushes in.
My skin breathes your embrace,
Hording for the times of loss.
Two – I miss the taste of blackberries,
Caramel, fresh cauliflower, of shrimp,
Fried mushrooms, root beer,
Buttered toast, Hershey’s kisses.
Three – As clouds, fluttered leaves,
and butterflies dim, my mind scrambles
to preserve them. I imprint my brain
with sunsets, waterfalls, autumn colors,
saving the most precious space
for your smile.
Four – My ears strain for last sounds
Of mockingbirds, crickets and frogs,
The creek rushing through a summer night,
Tchaikovsky and Alley Cat, laughter
Of friends, your lips whispering love.
Five – And last – oh please last,
My fingers strive to remember
Their journeys across your face,
Through your hair.
My skin craves the communication
Of your articulate hands.
When numbness cloaks my fingertips,
May every touch live in their memory.
"Born to be Mild" by Abigail Tucker
Rhetorical Analysis Example
"The Insufferable Emaciated" by Sam Ellis
Sam Ellis
Larson Pd. 1
10/1/12
The Insufferable Emaciated
In the article, “The Lean and Hungry Look” by Suzanne Britt, the author discusses the relationship between fat and skinny people. She states that thin people are no fun, whereas fat people know how to goof off and enjoy life. Similarly, she states that thin people are downers in comparison to fat people, who she describes as ‘convivial’. While reading the article, the author’s purpose of creating the piece of literature becomes quickly apparent: to convince the reader that fat people are better than skinny people. She accomplishes this through a variety of means, mainly her appeal to a specific audience and the employment of Aristotle’s tactics of argument, ethos and pathos.
Interestingly enough, Suzanne Britt’s article targets not only a more obese audience, but a skinny audience as well. She targets a more obese demographic by taking their side. She bluntly—and somewhat sarcastically—has been watching skinny people for most of her adult life, and she “doesn’t like what she sees.” She goes on to say that skinny people are dangerous, believing that they should be watched closely. She humorously represents them as somewhat sketchy and shady individuals. As well, she highlights all of the traits of skinny individuals that a fat person would find obnoxious, such as their constant monitoring of their caloric intake, their inability to sit still, and their incompetency in regards to enjoying life. All of these attempts clearly distinguish fat people as her primary target audience. Correspondingly, she appeals to skinny people by making ridiculous—and seemingly far-fetched—notions about the odd mannerisms of skinny people that regular “fit individuals” find humorous.
The author Suzanne Britt employs Aristotle’s pathos as her primary means of rhetorical appeal in her article. The author establishes herself as a fat person when she speaks of herself, two other fat individuals, and a skinny person doing a jigsaw puzzle and she essentially states that skinny people don’t think like fat people do. By establishing herself as fat, she, in a sense, creates a bridge of shared emotion between herself and her fat audience. Through this she establishes pathos, which allows her to effectively argue her position to her audience. Furthermore, she plays off of the shared emotion that skinny people are obnoxious, seemingly in the way that a puppy is obnoxious to an elderly dog. She performs this by representing them as busy, narrow-minded individuals who are apparently unanimously stricken with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder).
In order to effectively exhibit her opinion, the author also utilizes the rhetorical appeal of ethos. She establishes herself as a trusty person with a legitimate opinion by stating that she is fat herself (previously mentioned above). By doing this, she not only creates a persona of an author with shared emotions, but one who has applicable experience to what she is writing about. By doing so, she is capable of appealing to the reader’s ethos and more effectively convincing said reader of her position.
In summation, the author Suzanne Britt employs the use of rhetoric in her article, “The Lean and Hungry Look” to provide a convincing argument of her views regarding skinny people. She effectively targets fat and skinny audiences by providing text that appeals to fat people while at the same time humoring skinny people. She further provides a convincing argument through her use of pathos. She appeals to the shared emotion of fat individuals by highlighting the traits of skinny people that fat people would find obnoxious. And finally, she employs the use of ethos to establish herself as a trustworthy source based on her fat condition and her real life experiences regarding the issue.
Larson Pd. 1
10/1/12
The Insufferable Emaciated
In the article, “The Lean and Hungry Look” by Suzanne Britt, the author discusses the relationship between fat and skinny people. She states that thin people are no fun, whereas fat people know how to goof off and enjoy life. Similarly, she states that thin people are downers in comparison to fat people, who she describes as ‘convivial’. While reading the article, the author’s purpose of creating the piece of literature becomes quickly apparent: to convince the reader that fat people are better than skinny people. She accomplishes this through a variety of means, mainly her appeal to a specific audience and the employment of Aristotle’s tactics of argument, ethos and pathos.
Interestingly enough, Suzanne Britt’s article targets not only a more obese audience, but a skinny audience as well. She targets a more obese demographic by taking their side. She bluntly—and somewhat sarcastically—has been watching skinny people for most of her adult life, and she “doesn’t like what she sees.” She goes on to say that skinny people are dangerous, believing that they should be watched closely. She humorously represents them as somewhat sketchy and shady individuals. As well, she highlights all of the traits of skinny individuals that a fat person would find obnoxious, such as their constant monitoring of their caloric intake, their inability to sit still, and their incompetency in regards to enjoying life. All of these attempts clearly distinguish fat people as her primary target audience. Correspondingly, she appeals to skinny people by making ridiculous—and seemingly far-fetched—notions about the odd mannerisms of skinny people that regular “fit individuals” find humorous.
The author Suzanne Britt employs Aristotle’s pathos as her primary means of rhetorical appeal in her article. The author establishes herself as a fat person when she speaks of herself, two other fat individuals, and a skinny person doing a jigsaw puzzle and she essentially states that skinny people don’t think like fat people do. By establishing herself as fat, she, in a sense, creates a bridge of shared emotion between herself and her fat audience. Through this she establishes pathos, which allows her to effectively argue her position to her audience. Furthermore, she plays off of the shared emotion that skinny people are obnoxious, seemingly in the way that a puppy is obnoxious to an elderly dog. She performs this by representing them as busy, narrow-minded individuals who are apparently unanimously stricken with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder).
In order to effectively exhibit her opinion, the author also utilizes the rhetorical appeal of ethos. She establishes herself as a trusty person with a legitimate opinion by stating that she is fat herself (previously mentioned above). By doing this, she not only creates a persona of an author with shared emotions, but one who has applicable experience to what she is writing about. By doing so, she is capable of appealing to the reader’s ethos and more effectively convincing said reader of her position.
In summation, the author Suzanne Britt employs the use of rhetoric in her article, “The Lean and Hungry Look” to provide a convincing argument of her views regarding skinny people. She effectively targets fat and skinny audiences by providing text that appeals to fat people while at the same time humoring skinny people. She further provides a convincing argument through her use of pathos. She appeals to the shared emotion of fat individuals by highlighting the traits of skinny people that fat people would find obnoxious. And finally, she employs the use of ethos to establish herself as a trustworthy source based on her fat condition and her real life experiences regarding the issue.
The Other Half of the Story by Melissa Segura
"Got Roddick?" by Angela Yamashita
Angela Yamashita
Dr. Sanchez
English 15
12 December 2005
Got Roddick?
Andy Roddick is one of the hottest professional athletes today. In 2003 he became the youngest American to finish ranked number one in the ATP rankings, and he’s known not only for his excellent playing skills but also for his good looks and easygoing attitude. Ex-boyfriend to popular singer Mandy Moore, Roddick has been thrown into the spotlight and is now a teenage crush. It was his picture that stopped me while leafing through Seventeen and made me take a longer look. Roddick stands staring at the viewer, racquet over his shoulder, leaning against the net on the court. More prominent than his white pants, white tennis shirt, and white towel draped around his neck is the white milk mustache above his upper lip. The ad reads: “now serving. I’m into power. So I drink milk. It packs 9 essential nutrients into every glass. Which comes in handy whether you’re an athlete or an energetic fan.” At the bottom of the page is the ad slogan (also in white) “Got Milk?”
The “Got Milk” campaign has published numerous ads that try to convince adults to drink more milk. Everyone from rock groups to actors to athletes have participated in this campaign. In today’s caffeine-obsessed society of coffee and soda drinkers, America’s Dairy Farmers and Milk Processors (the association that sponsors the “Got Milk?” campaign) felt the need to reverse the decline in milk consumption by advertising milk in a new way. The catchy “Got Milk?” proved to be highly successful, and the campaign has been mimicked by many others including “Got cookies?” “Got fish?” “Got sports?” and even “Got Jesus?” (Philpot). The Andy Roddick ad is typical of the “Got Milk?” series, urging people young and old to drink milk to remain healthy and strong. The Roddick ad primarily uses the appeals of ethos and pathos to persuade its audience. (The one gesture toward logos in the ad is the mention that milk has nine nutrients.)
To establish the ethos of their ads, America’s Dairy Farmers and Milk processors use celebrity endorsements. The “Got Milk?” campaign has enlisted a range of celebrities popular with young audiences from Kelly Clarkson to Sheryl Crow, Bebe Neuwirth to Ben Roethlisberger, T-Mac (Tracy McGrady) to Bernie Mac. Choosing Andy Roddick, the dominant young male player in American tennis, fits squarely in this lineup. Admired by a strong following of young adults (girls for his looks, boys for his athletic ability), Roddick is an ideal spokesman for establishing that milk is a healthy drink. Implicit in the ad is that milk will help you become a better athlete and better looking too.
Pathos in the ad is conveyed not simply through Roddick’s good looks. His pose is casual, almost slouching, yet his face is serious, one that suggest that he not only means business about playing tennis but also about his drink of choice. The words “I’m into power” don’t mess around. They imply that you too can be more powerful by drinking milk. “Now serving” is also in your face, making a play on the word “serving” both as a tennis and a drink term.
The effectiveness of the “Got Milk?” campaign is demonstrated in gallons of milk sold. The campaign began in California in 1993 at a time when milk sales were rapidly eroding. A San Francisco ad agency developed the milk mustache idea, which is credited for stopping the downward trend in milk consumption in California. In 1995 the campaign went national. By 2000 national sales of milk remained consistent in contrast to annual declines in the early 1990s remained consistent in contrast to annual declines in the early 1990s (Stamler). “Got milk?” gave milk a brand identity that it had previously lacked, allowing it to compete with the well-established identities of Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Milk now has new challengers with more and more people going out to Starbuck’s and other breakfast bars. Nonetheless, the original formula of using celebrities like Andy Roddick who appeal to younger audiences continues to work. Milk isn’t likely to go away soon as a popular beverage.
Dr. Sanchez
English 15
12 December 2005
Got Roddick?
Andy Roddick is one of the hottest professional athletes today. In 2003 he became the youngest American to finish ranked number one in the ATP rankings, and he’s known not only for his excellent playing skills but also for his good looks and easygoing attitude. Ex-boyfriend to popular singer Mandy Moore, Roddick has been thrown into the spotlight and is now a teenage crush. It was his picture that stopped me while leafing through Seventeen and made me take a longer look. Roddick stands staring at the viewer, racquet over his shoulder, leaning against the net on the court. More prominent than his white pants, white tennis shirt, and white towel draped around his neck is the white milk mustache above his upper lip. The ad reads: “now serving. I’m into power. So I drink milk. It packs 9 essential nutrients into every glass. Which comes in handy whether you’re an athlete or an energetic fan.” At the bottom of the page is the ad slogan (also in white) “Got Milk?”
The “Got Milk” campaign has published numerous ads that try to convince adults to drink more milk. Everyone from rock groups to actors to athletes have participated in this campaign. In today’s caffeine-obsessed society of coffee and soda drinkers, America’s Dairy Farmers and Milk Processors (the association that sponsors the “Got Milk?” campaign) felt the need to reverse the decline in milk consumption by advertising milk in a new way. The catchy “Got Milk?” proved to be highly successful, and the campaign has been mimicked by many others including “Got cookies?” “Got fish?” “Got sports?” and even “Got Jesus?” (Philpot). The Andy Roddick ad is typical of the “Got Milk?” series, urging people young and old to drink milk to remain healthy and strong. The Roddick ad primarily uses the appeals of ethos and pathos to persuade its audience. (The one gesture toward logos in the ad is the mention that milk has nine nutrients.)
To establish the ethos of their ads, America’s Dairy Farmers and Milk processors use celebrity endorsements. The “Got Milk?” campaign has enlisted a range of celebrities popular with young audiences from Kelly Clarkson to Sheryl Crow, Bebe Neuwirth to Ben Roethlisberger, T-Mac (Tracy McGrady) to Bernie Mac. Choosing Andy Roddick, the dominant young male player in American tennis, fits squarely in this lineup. Admired by a strong following of young adults (girls for his looks, boys for his athletic ability), Roddick is an ideal spokesman for establishing that milk is a healthy drink. Implicit in the ad is that milk will help you become a better athlete and better looking too.
Pathos in the ad is conveyed not simply through Roddick’s good looks. His pose is casual, almost slouching, yet his face is serious, one that suggest that he not only means business about playing tennis but also about his drink of choice. The words “I’m into power” don’t mess around. They imply that you too can be more powerful by drinking milk. “Now serving” is also in your face, making a play on the word “serving” both as a tennis and a drink term.
The effectiveness of the “Got Milk?” campaign is demonstrated in gallons of milk sold. The campaign began in California in 1993 at a time when milk sales were rapidly eroding. A San Francisco ad agency developed the milk mustache idea, which is credited for stopping the downward trend in milk consumption in California. In 1995 the campaign went national. By 2000 national sales of milk remained consistent in contrast to annual declines in the early 1990s remained consistent in contrast to annual declines in the early 1990s (Stamler). “Got milk?” gave milk a brand identity that it had previously lacked, allowing it to compete with the well-established identities of Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Milk now has new challengers with more and more people going out to Starbuck’s and other breakfast bars. Nonetheless, the original formula of using celebrities like Andy Roddick who appeal to younger audiences continues to work. Milk isn’t likely to go away soon as a popular beverage.
"A Case for Andre Ward" by Chris Mannix
Reflecting from Writing: A Guide to College and Beyond by Lester Faigley
Reflecting
From Writing: A Guide for College and Beyond by Lester Faigley
A successful reflection engages readers and allows them to see an event, person, or thing through your eyes, but more important, by thinking about your reflections, readers often find out something about themselves.
Writing Reflections
When we reflect, we consider an idea or experience in order to come to a greater understanding of its significance. Unless we are writing in a private diary or journal, we use reflective writing to share our experience and its significance with others. Reflecting is also a way of understanding ourselves. By connecting memories of the past to our knowledge in the present, we learn about who we were and who we have become.
Reflective essays can address deeply emotional issues like family relationships, personal failings, and dramatic crises. But reflection does not always involve personal topics. In some cases, being too personal or confessional can limit a writer’s ability to connect to his or her audience.
The goal of reflection should not be simply to vent pent-up emotions or expose secrets (although when done well, these techniques can be effective). Instead, it should allow the audience to share with the writer a discovery of significance. A reflection on an important event in the history of a family should do more than focus on the writer’s feelings; it should explore how each family member changed as a result.
Components of Reflections
What people, places, and events stand out in my memory?
· Find a reflective topic
Listing is one way to identify possible topics for reflective writing. You might list people, events, or places that have been significant in your life, then look back over your list and check the items that seem especially vivid to you.
Will my readers be interested?
· Consider your readers
How interesting will this topic be to your readers? Will they want to share in your experience?
What is my purpose?
· Identify a purpose
A clear purpose makes the reflection coherent. Your purpose is not to teach a lesson about life but rather to convey the significance of the experience—why it is important or memorable and why it is worth writing and reading about.
What key details communicate the significance of my reflection?
· Provide concrete details
Concrete details stimulate readers’ imagination and make your reflection come alive. Use factual details such as dates to provide background information. Augment visual details with your other senses: smells, sounds, tastes, and feelings.
· Use dialog when possible
Convey interaction between people with their words.
How do I organize my reflection?
· Think about your organization
Telling what happened in a chronological order is the simplest organization for writers to use, but it is not the only one possible. Conceptual order explores different points and links them together. For example, you might reflect on a photograph, examining details one by one and discussing how they related to your family’s past.
What is the most engaging way to begin?
· Start fast
The beginning of a reflection must show the writer’s involvement and gain the reader’s interest.
· Finish strong
Effective conclusions invite readers to reflect further. Ending with a question or an issue to think about is usually better than trying to sum up with a moral lesson.
Keys to Reflections
· Tell a good story
Readers have to be interested in your story to understand the significance. Often reflections gain and keep readers’ interest by presenting a conflict or a difficult decision that must be resolved.
· Let the details convey the significance
Select details carefully to communicate meaning. Identify people by more than how they look. Think about mannerisms, gestures, and habits to suggest their character.
· Be honest
Telling the truth about your thoughts and actions can build a strong rapport with your audience, but beware of becoming sentimental. Too much emotion can turn readers off.
· Focus on the little things in life
A reflection need not reveal earth-shattering secrets or teach crucial life lessons. It may be as simple as describing something that makes you happy. Remember that small moments of significance can be just as rewarding for readers as great events.
For a reflection on an image or object, let the reflection grow out of the details
Your close reading of details and your explanation of the significance of the experience is critical.
· For a reflection on an image or object, let the reflection grow out of the details.
Your close reading of details and your explanation of the significance of the experience is critical.
From Writing: A Guide for College and Beyond by Lester Faigley
A successful reflection engages readers and allows them to see an event, person, or thing through your eyes, but more important, by thinking about your reflections, readers often find out something about themselves.
Writing Reflections
When we reflect, we consider an idea or experience in order to come to a greater understanding of its significance. Unless we are writing in a private diary or journal, we use reflective writing to share our experience and its significance with others. Reflecting is also a way of understanding ourselves. By connecting memories of the past to our knowledge in the present, we learn about who we were and who we have become.
Reflective essays can address deeply emotional issues like family relationships, personal failings, and dramatic crises. But reflection does not always involve personal topics. In some cases, being too personal or confessional can limit a writer’s ability to connect to his or her audience.
The goal of reflection should not be simply to vent pent-up emotions or expose secrets (although when done well, these techniques can be effective). Instead, it should allow the audience to share with the writer a discovery of significance. A reflection on an important event in the history of a family should do more than focus on the writer’s feelings; it should explore how each family member changed as a result.
Components of Reflections
What people, places, and events stand out in my memory?
· Find a reflective topic
Listing is one way to identify possible topics for reflective writing. You might list people, events, or places that have been significant in your life, then look back over your list and check the items that seem especially vivid to you.
Will my readers be interested?
· Consider your readers
How interesting will this topic be to your readers? Will they want to share in your experience?
What is my purpose?
· Identify a purpose
A clear purpose makes the reflection coherent. Your purpose is not to teach a lesson about life but rather to convey the significance of the experience—why it is important or memorable and why it is worth writing and reading about.
What key details communicate the significance of my reflection?
· Provide concrete details
Concrete details stimulate readers’ imagination and make your reflection come alive. Use factual details such as dates to provide background information. Augment visual details with your other senses: smells, sounds, tastes, and feelings.
· Use dialog when possible
Convey interaction between people with their words.
How do I organize my reflection?
· Think about your organization
Telling what happened in a chronological order is the simplest organization for writers to use, but it is not the only one possible. Conceptual order explores different points and links them together. For example, you might reflect on a photograph, examining details one by one and discussing how they related to your family’s past.
What is the most engaging way to begin?
· Start fast
The beginning of a reflection must show the writer’s involvement and gain the reader’s interest.
· Finish strong
Effective conclusions invite readers to reflect further. Ending with a question or an issue to think about is usually better than trying to sum up with a moral lesson.
Keys to Reflections
· Tell a good story
Readers have to be interested in your story to understand the significance. Often reflections gain and keep readers’ interest by presenting a conflict or a difficult decision that must be resolved.
· Let the details convey the significance
Select details carefully to communicate meaning. Identify people by more than how they look. Think about mannerisms, gestures, and habits to suggest their character.
· Be honest
Telling the truth about your thoughts and actions can build a strong rapport with your audience, but beware of becoming sentimental. Too much emotion can turn readers off.
· Focus on the little things in life
A reflection need not reveal earth-shattering secrets or teach crucial life lessons. It may be as simple as describing something that makes you happy. Remember that small moments of significance can be just as rewarding for readers as great events.
For a reflection on an image or object, let the reflection grow out of the details
Your close reading of details and your explanation of the significance of the experience is critical.
· For a reflection on an image or object, let the reflection grow out of the details.
Your close reading of details and your explanation of the significance of the experience is critical.
"Let it Snow" by David Sedaris
"Two Ways to Belong to America" by Bharati Mukherjee
This is a tale of two sisters from Calcutta, Mira and Bharati, who have lived in the United States for some 35 years, but who find themselves on different sides in the current debate over the status of immigrants.
I am an American citizen and she is not. I am moved that thousands of long-term residents
are finally taking the oath of citizenship. She is not.
Mira arrived in Detroit in 1960 to study child psychology and pre-school education. I followed
her a year later to study creative writing at the University of Iowa. When we left India, we were almost identical in appearance and attitude. We dressed alike, in saris; we expressed identical views on politics, social issues, love and marriage in the same Calcutta convent-school accent. We would endure our two years in America, secure our degrees, then return to India to marry the grooms of our father's choosing.
Instead, Mira married an Indian student in 1962 who was getting his business administration
degree at Wayne State University. They soon acquired the labor certifications necessary for
the green card of hassle-free residence and employment.
Mira still lives in Detroit, works in the Southfield, Mich., school system, and has become
nationally recognized for her contributions in the fields of pre-school education and parent-teacher relationships. After 36 years as a legal immigrant in this country, she clings passionately to her Indian citizenship and hopes to go home to India when she retires.
In Iowa City in 1963, I married a fellow student, an American of Canadian parentage. Because of the accident of his North Dakota birth, I bypassed labor-certification requirements and the race-related "quota" system that favored the applicant's country of origin over his or her merit. I was prepared for (and even welcomed) the emotional strain that came with marrying outside my ethnic community. In 33 years of marriage, we have lived in every part of North America. By choosing a husband who was not my father's selection, I was opting for fluidity, self-invention, blue jeans and T-shirts, and renouncing 3,000 years (at least) of caste-observant, "pure culture" marriage in the Mukherjee family. My books have often been read as unapologetic (and in some quarters overenthusiastic) texts for cultural and psychological "mongrelization." It's a word I celebrate.
Mira and I have stayed sisterly close by phone. In our regular Sunday morning conversations,
we are unguardedly affectionate. I am her only blood relative on this continent. We expect to see each other through the looming crises of aging and ill health without being asked. Long before Vice President Gore's "Citizenship U.S.A." drive, we'd had our polite arguments over the ethics of retaining an overseas citizenship while expecting the permanent protection and economic benefits that come with living and working in America.
Like well-raised sisters, we never said what was really on our minds, but we probably pitied
one another. She, for the lack of structure in my life, the erasure of Indianness, the absence of an unvarying daily core. I, for the narrowness of her perspective, her uninvolvement with the mythic depths or the superficial pop culture of this society. But, now, with the scapegoating of "aliens" (documented or illegal) on the increase, and the targeting of long-term legal immigrants like Mira for new scrutiny and new self-consciousness, she and I find ourselves unable to maintain the same polite discretion. We were always unacknowledged adversaries, and we are now, more than ever, sisters.
"I feel used," Mira raged on the phone the other night. "I feel manipulated and discarded.
This is such an unfair way to treat a person who was invited to stay and work here because of her talent. My employer went to the I.N.S. and petitioned for the labor certification. For over 30 years, I've invested my creativity and professional skills into the improvement of this country's pre-school system. I've obeyed all the rules, I've paid my taxes, I love my work, I love my students, I love the friends I've made. How dare America now change its rules in midstream? If America wants to make new rules curtailing benefits of legal immigrants, they should apply only to immigrants who arrive after those rules are already in place." To my ears, it sounded like the description of a long-enduring, comfortable yet loveless marriage, without
risk or recklessness. Have we the right to demand, and to expect, that we be loved? (That, to me, is the subtext of the arguments by immigration advocates.) My sister is an expatriate, professionally generous and creative, socially courteous and gracious, and that's as far as her Americanization can go. She is here to maintain an identity, not to transform it.
I asked her if she would follow the example of others who have decided to become citizens
because of the anti-immigration bills in Congress. And here, she surprised me. "If America wants to play the manipulative game, I'll play it too," she snapped. "I'll become a U.S. citizen for now, then change back to Indian when I'm ready to go home. I feel some kind of irrational attachment to India that I don't to America. Until all this hysteria against legal immigrants, I was totally happy. Having my green card meant I could visit any place in the world I wanted to and then come back to a job that's satisfying and that I do very well."
In one family, from two sisters alike as peas in a pod, there could not be a wider divergence of immigrant experience. America spoke to me -- I married it -- I embraced the demotion from expatriate aristocrat to immigrant nobody, surrendering those thousands of years of "pure culture," the saris, the delightfully accented English. She retained them all. Which of us is the freak?
Mira's voice, I realize, is the voice not just of the immigrant South Asian community but of an
immigrant community of the millions who have stayed rooted in one job, one city, one house, one ancestral culture, one cuisine, for the entirety of their productive years. She speaks for greater numbers than I possibly can. Only the fluency of her English and the anger, rather than fear, born of confidence from her education, differentiate her from the seamstresses, the domestics, the technicians, the shop owners, the millions of hard-working but effectively silenced documented immigrants as well as their less fortunate "illegal" brothers and sisters.
Nearly 20 years ago, when I was living in my husband's ancestral homeland of Canada, I was
always well-employed but never allowed to feel part of the local Quebec or larger Canadian society. Then, through a Green Paper that invited a national referendum on the unwanted side effects of "nontraditional" immigration, the Government officially turned against its immigrant communities, particularly those from South Asia.
I felt then the same sense of betrayal that Mira feels now.
I will never forget the pain of that sudden turning, and the casual racist outbursts the Green Paper elicited. That sense of betrayal had its desired effect and drove me, and thousands like me, from the country.
Mira and I differ, however, in the ways in which we hope to interact with the country that we
have chosen to live in. She is happier to live in America as expatriate Indian than as an immigrant American. I need to feel like a part of the community I have adopted (as I tried to
feel in Canada as well). I need to put roots down, to vote and make the difference that I can. The price that the immigrant willingly pays, and that the exile avoids, is the trauma of self-transformation.
Seeking Truth in Journalism: Won't Get Fooled Again by John McManus
Living Like Weasels by Annie Dillard
A weasel is wild. Who knows what he thinks? He sleeps in his underground den, his tail draped over his nose. Sometimes he lives in his den for two days without leaving. Outside, he stalks rabbits, mice, muskrats, and birds, killing more bodies than he can eat warm, and often dragging the carcasses home. Obedient to instinct, he bites his prey at the neck, either splitting the jugular vein at the throat or crunching the brain at the base of the skull, and he does not let go. One naturalist refused to kill a weasel who was socketed into his hand deeply as a rattlesnake. The man could in no way pry the tiny weasel off, and he had to walk half a mile to water, the weasel dangling from his palm, and soak him off like a stubborn label.
And once, says Ernest Thompson Seton--once, a man shot an eagle out of the sky. He examined the eagle and found the dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to his throat. The supposition is that the eagle had pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instinct taught him, tooth to neck, and nearly won. I would like to have seen that eagle from the air a few weeks or months before he was shot: was the whole weasel still attached to his feathered throat, a fur pendant? Or did the eagle eat what he could reach, gutting the living weasel with his talons before his breast, bending his beak, cleaning the beautiful airborne bones?
I have been reading about weasels because I saw one last week. I startled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance.
Twenty minutes from my house, through the woods by the quarry and across the highway, is Hollins Pond, a remarkable piece of shallowness, where I like to go at sunset and sit on a tree trunk. Hollins Pond is also called Murray's Pond; it covers two acres of bottomland near Tinker Creek with six inches of water and six thousand lily pads. In winter, brown-and-white steers stand in the middle of it, merely dampening their hooves; from the distant shore they look like miracle itself, complete with miracle's nonchalance. Now, in summer, the steers are gone. The water lilies have blossomed and spread to a green horizontal plane that is terra firma to plodding blackbirds, and tremulous ceiling to black leeches, crayfish, and carp.
This is, mind you, suburbia. It is a five-minute walk in three directions to rows of houses, though none is visible here. There's a 55-mph highway at one end of the pond, and a nesting pair of wood ducks at the other. Under every bush is a muskrat hole or a beer can. The far end is an alternating series of fields and woods, fields and woods, threaded everywhere with motorcycle tracks--in whose bare clay wild turtles lay eggs.
So, I had crossed the highway, stepped over two low barbed-wire fences, and traced the motorcycle path in all gratitude through the wild rose and poison ivy of the pond's shoreline up into high grassy fields. Then I cut down through the woods to the mossy fallen tree where I sit. This tree is excellent. It makes a dry, upholstered bench at the upper, marshy end of the pond, a plush jetty raised from the thorny shore between a shallow blue body of water and a deep blue body of sky.
The sun had just set. I was relaxed on the tree trunk, ensconced in the lap of lichen, watching the lily pads at my feet tremble and part dreamily over the thrusting path of a carp. A yellow bird appeared to my right and flew behind me. It caught my eye; I swiveled around—and the next instant, inexplicably, I was looking down at a weasel, who was looking up at me.
Weasel! I'd never seen one wild before. He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs' worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I didn't see, any more than you see a window.
The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key.
Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don't. We keep our skulls. So.
He disappeared. This was only last week, and already I don't remember what shattered the enchantment. I think I blinked, I think I retrieved my brain from the weasel's brain, and tried to memorize what I was seeing, and the weasel felt the yank of separation, the careening splash-down into real life and the urgent current of instinct. He vanished under the wild rose. I waited motionless, my mind suddenly full of data and my spirit with pleadings, but he didn't return.
Please do not tell me about "approach-avoidance conflicts." I tell you I've been in that weasel's brain for sixty seconds, and he was in mine. Brains are private places, muttering through unique and secret tapes-but the weasel and I both plugged into another tape simultaneously, for a sweet and shocking time. Can I help it if it was a blank?
What goes on in his brain the rest of the time? What does a weasel think about? He won't say. His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feathers, mouse blood and bone: uncollected, unconnected, loose leaf, and blown.
I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular--shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands?--but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel's: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.
I missed my chance. I should have gone for the throat. I should have lunged for that streak of white under the weasel's chin and held on, held on through mud and into the wild rose, held on for a dearer life. We could live under the wild rose wild as weasels, mute and uncomprehending. I could very calmly go wild. I could live two days in the den, curled, leaning on mouse fur, sniffing bird bones, blinking, licking, breathing musk, my hair tangled in the roots of grasses. Down is a good place to go, where the mind is single. Down is out, out of your ever-loving mind and back to your careless senses. I remember muteness as a prolonged and giddy fast, where every moment is a feast of utterance received. Time and events are merely poured, unremarked, and ingested directly, like blood pulsed into my gut through a jugular vein. Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?
We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience--even of silence--by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.
And once, says Ernest Thompson Seton--once, a man shot an eagle out of the sky. He examined the eagle and found the dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to his throat. The supposition is that the eagle had pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instinct taught him, tooth to neck, and nearly won. I would like to have seen that eagle from the air a few weeks or months before he was shot: was the whole weasel still attached to his feathered throat, a fur pendant? Or did the eagle eat what he could reach, gutting the living weasel with his talons before his breast, bending his beak, cleaning the beautiful airborne bones?
I have been reading about weasels because I saw one last week. I startled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance.
Twenty minutes from my house, through the woods by the quarry and across the highway, is Hollins Pond, a remarkable piece of shallowness, where I like to go at sunset and sit on a tree trunk. Hollins Pond is also called Murray's Pond; it covers two acres of bottomland near Tinker Creek with six inches of water and six thousand lily pads. In winter, brown-and-white steers stand in the middle of it, merely dampening their hooves; from the distant shore they look like miracle itself, complete with miracle's nonchalance. Now, in summer, the steers are gone. The water lilies have blossomed and spread to a green horizontal plane that is terra firma to plodding blackbirds, and tremulous ceiling to black leeches, crayfish, and carp.
This is, mind you, suburbia. It is a five-minute walk in three directions to rows of houses, though none is visible here. There's a 55-mph highway at one end of the pond, and a nesting pair of wood ducks at the other. Under every bush is a muskrat hole or a beer can. The far end is an alternating series of fields and woods, fields and woods, threaded everywhere with motorcycle tracks--in whose bare clay wild turtles lay eggs.
So, I had crossed the highway, stepped over two low barbed-wire fences, and traced the motorcycle path in all gratitude through the wild rose and poison ivy of the pond's shoreline up into high grassy fields. Then I cut down through the woods to the mossy fallen tree where I sit. This tree is excellent. It makes a dry, upholstered bench at the upper, marshy end of the pond, a plush jetty raised from the thorny shore between a shallow blue body of water and a deep blue body of sky.
The sun had just set. I was relaxed on the tree trunk, ensconced in the lap of lichen, watching the lily pads at my feet tremble and part dreamily over the thrusting path of a carp. A yellow bird appeared to my right and flew behind me. It caught my eye; I swiveled around—and the next instant, inexplicably, I was looking down at a weasel, who was looking up at me.
Weasel! I'd never seen one wild before. He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs' worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I didn't see, any more than you see a window.
The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key.
Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don't. We keep our skulls. So.
He disappeared. This was only last week, and already I don't remember what shattered the enchantment. I think I blinked, I think I retrieved my brain from the weasel's brain, and tried to memorize what I was seeing, and the weasel felt the yank of separation, the careening splash-down into real life and the urgent current of instinct. He vanished under the wild rose. I waited motionless, my mind suddenly full of data and my spirit with pleadings, but he didn't return.
Please do not tell me about "approach-avoidance conflicts." I tell you I've been in that weasel's brain for sixty seconds, and he was in mine. Brains are private places, muttering through unique and secret tapes-but the weasel and I both plugged into another tape simultaneously, for a sweet and shocking time. Can I help it if it was a blank?
What goes on in his brain the rest of the time? What does a weasel think about? He won't say. His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feathers, mouse blood and bone: uncollected, unconnected, loose leaf, and blown.
I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular--shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands?--but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel's: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.
I missed my chance. I should have gone for the throat. I should have lunged for that streak of white under the weasel's chin and held on, held on through mud and into the wild rose, held on for a dearer life. We could live under the wild rose wild as weasels, mute and uncomprehending. I could very calmly go wild. I could live two days in the den, curled, leaning on mouse fur, sniffing bird bones, blinking, licking, breathing musk, my hair tangled in the roots of grasses. Down is a good place to go, where the mind is single. Down is out, out of your ever-loving mind and back to your careless senses. I remember muteness as a prolonged and giddy fast, where every moment is a feast of utterance received. Time and events are merely poured, unremarked, and ingested directly, like blood pulsed into my gut through a jugular vein. Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?
We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience--even of silence--by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.
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."
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."
How I Learned to Give Up on Cool by Steve Carrell
I have come to the realization that I am not cool.
This is not a stunning revelation for the world at large, since no one has ever thought of me as cool. But on a personal level, this information has both saddened me and been a bit of a relief.
Like most people, I have painful memories of trying to fit in as a child. I wore, said, and did pretty much what everyone else did. My goal was to not stand out in any way. I aggressively homogenized myself. I did not aspire to be "cool." That was the lofty stuff of a Clint Bajakian, or a Paul Slye—classmates of mine. I wanted only to avoid being "uncool." A second-tier matador doesn't worry about vanquishing the bull; he concentrates on survival. So was my approach to "coolness."
For the better part of my adult life, I proudly avoided nerd/nimrod/goober status. I was always just cool enough.
As I gained success as an actor, my coolness quotient remained essentially the same. Notoriety did not bring extra coolness, only more awareness that I was nominally cool.
And then it happened. I found myself in the men's clothing section of Target (a store I cannot leave without making at least a nominal purchase). There they were: cargo pants. One hundred percent cotton, three colors from which to choose (tan, dark tan, and khaki), and pockets. Lots and lots of pockets. I wanted these pants.
But wait. Cargo pants? Surely I couldn't be serious. These were not what other semicool men my age wore. I wasn't a world explorer, or a photographer. I didn't work at a zoo.
I loved them, though. Especially the gigantic pockets on the legs. Perfect for a wallet, sunglasses, lip balm, keys, can of soda, cell phone. No, wait—there was a sub-pocket specifically designed for cell phone portage. These pants would be mine.
And they were. In all three colors. With that purchase went every glimmer of hope that I would ever be seriously cool. Steve McQueen did not wear cargo pants. Nor did Cary Grant. Legend has it that JFK once wore cargo shorts at the family compound in Hyannis Port. But Rose demanded that he change.
Maybe the coolest people are the ones who don't care about being cool. Maybe I will start a new trend. Perhaps I'm so out, I'm in. Nope; that's a lie. I've just given up trying, and I am content in my failure. And besides, I can carry around a meatball sub in my pants.
This is not a stunning revelation for the world at large, since no one has ever thought of me as cool. But on a personal level, this information has both saddened me and been a bit of a relief.
Like most people, I have painful memories of trying to fit in as a child. I wore, said, and did pretty much what everyone else did. My goal was to not stand out in any way. I aggressively homogenized myself. I did not aspire to be "cool." That was the lofty stuff of a Clint Bajakian, or a Paul Slye—classmates of mine. I wanted only to avoid being "uncool." A second-tier matador doesn't worry about vanquishing the bull; he concentrates on survival. So was my approach to "coolness."
For the better part of my adult life, I proudly avoided nerd/nimrod/goober status. I was always just cool enough.
As I gained success as an actor, my coolness quotient remained essentially the same. Notoriety did not bring extra coolness, only more awareness that I was nominally cool.
And then it happened. I found myself in the men's clothing section of Target (a store I cannot leave without making at least a nominal purchase). There they were: cargo pants. One hundred percent cotton, three colors from which to choose (tan, dark tan, and khaki), and pockets. Lots and lots of pockets. I wanted these pants.
But wait. Cargo pants? Surely I couldn't be serious. These were not what other semicool men my age wore. I wasn't a world explorer, or a photographer. I didn't work at a zoo.
I loved them, though. Especially the gigantic pockets on the legs. Perfect for a wallet, sunglasses, lip balm, keys, can of soda, cell phone. No, wait—there was a sub-pocket specifically designed for cell phone portage. These pants would be mine.
And they were. In all three colors. With that purchase went every glimmer of hope that I would ever be seriously cool. Steve McQueen did not wear cargo pants. Nor did Cary Grant. Legend has it that JFK once wore cargo shorts at the family compound in Hyannis Port. But Rose demanded that he change.
Maybe the coolest people are the ones who don't care about being cool. Maybe I will start a new trend. Perhaps I'm so out, I'm in. Nope; that's a lie. I've just given up trying, and I am content in my failure. And besides, I can carry around a meatball sub in my pants.
My Body is My Own Business by Naheed Mustafa
I OFTEN wonder whether people see me as a radical, fundamentalist Muslim terrorist packing an AK-47 assault rifle inside my jean jacket. Or may be they see me as the poster girl for oppressed womanhood everywhere. I’m not sure which it is. I get the whole gamut of strange looks, stares, and covert glances. You see, I wear the hijab, a scarf that covers my head, neck, and throat. I do this because I am a Muslim woman who believes her body is her own private concern.
Young Muslim women are reclaiming the hijab, reinterpreting it in light of its original purpose to give back to women ultimate control of their own bodies.
The Qur’an teaches us that men and women are equal, that individuals should not be judged according to gender, beauty, wealth, or privilege. The only thing that makes one person better than another is her or his character.
Nonetheless, people have a difficult time relating to me. After all, I’m young, Canadian born and raised, university educated why would I do this to myself, they ask.
Strangers speak to me in loud, slow English and often appear to be playing charades. They politely inquire how I like living in Canada and whether or not the cold bothers me. If I’m in the right mood, it can be very amusing.
But, why would I, a woman with all the advantages of a North American upbringing, suddenly, at 21, want to cover myself so that with the hijab and the other clothes I choose to wear, only my face and hands show?
Because it gives me freedom.
WOMEN are taught from early childhood that their worth is proportional to their attractiveness. We feel compelled to pursue abstract notions of beauty, half realizing that such a pursuit is futile.
When women reject this form of oppression, they face ridicule and contempt. Whether it’s women who refuse to wear makeup or to shave their legs, or to expose their bodies, society, both men and women, have trouble dealing with them.
In the Western world, the hijab has come to symbolize either forced silence or radical, unconscionable militancy. Actually, it’s neither. It is simply a woman’s assertion that judgment of her physical person is to play no role whatsoever in social interaction.
Wearing the hijab has given me freedom from constant attention to my physical self. Because my appearance is not subjected to public scrutiny, my beauty, or perhaps lack of it, has been removed from the realm of what can legitimately be discussed.
No one knows whether my hair looks as if I just stepped out of a salon, whether or not I can pinch an inch, or even if I have unsightly stretch marks. And because no one knows, no one cares.
Feeling that one has to meet the impossible male standards of beauty is tiring and often humiliating. I should know, I spent my entire teenage years trying to do it. It was a borderline bulimic and spent a lot of money I didn’t have on potions and lotions in hopes of becoming the next Cindy Crawford.
The definition of beauty is ever-changing; waifish is good, waifish is bad, athletic is good — sorry, athletic is bad. Narrow hips? Great. Narrow hips? Too bad.
Women are not going to achieve equality with the right to bear their breasts in public, as some people would like to have you believe. That would only make us party to our own objectification. True equality will be had only when women don’t need to display themselves to get attention and won’t need to defend their decision to keep their bodies to themselves.
Naheed Mustafa graduated from the University of Toronto last year with an honors degree in political and history. She is currently studying journalism at Ryerson Polytechnic University.
By Naheed Mustafa
Young Muslim women are reclaiming the hijab, reinterpreting it in light of its original purpose to give back to women ultimate control of their own bodies.
The Qur’an teaches us that men and women are equal, that individuals should not be judged according to gender, beauty, wealth, or privilege. The only thing that makes one person better than another is her or his character.
Nonetheless, people have a difficult time relating to me. After all, I’m young, Canadian born and raised, university educated why would I do this to myself, they ask.
Strangers speak to me in loud, slow English and often appear to be playing charades. They politely inquire how I like living in Canada and whether or not the cold bothers me. If I’m in the right mood, it can be very amusing.
But, why would I, a woman with all the advantages of a North American upbringing, suddenly, at 21, want to cover myself so that with the hijab and the other clothes I choose to wear, only my face and hands show?
Because it gives me freedom.
WOMEN are taught from early childhood that their worth is proportional to their attractiveness. We feel compelled to pursue abstract notions of beauty, half realizing that such a pursuit is futile.
When women reject this form of oppression, they face ridicule and contempt. Whether it’s women who refuse to wear makeup or to shave their legs, or to expose their bodies, society, both men and women, have trouble dealing with them.
In the Western world, the hijab has come to symbolize either forced silence or radical, unconscionable militancy. Actually, it’s neither. It is simply a woman’s assertion that judgment of her physical person is to play no role whatsoever in social interaction.
Wearing the hijab has given me freedom from constant attention to my physical self. Because my appearance is not subjected to public scrutiny, my beauty, or perhaps lack of it, has been removed from the realm of what can legitimately be discussed.
No one knows whether my hair looks as if I just stepped out of a salon, whether or not I can pinch an inch, or even if I have unsightly stretch marks. And because no one knows, no one cares.
Feeling that one has to meet the impossible male standards of beauty is tiring and often humiliating. I should know, I spent my entire teenage years trying to do it. It was a borderline bulimic and spent a lot of money I didn’t have on potions and lotions in hopes of becoming the next Cindy Crawford.
The definition of beauty is ever-changing; waifish is good, waifish is bad, athletic is good — sorry, athletic is bad. Narrow hips? Great. Narrow hips? Too bad.
Women are not going to achieve equality with the right to bear their breasts in public, as some people would like to have you believe. That would only make us party to our own objectification. True equality will be had only when women don’t need to display themselves to get attention and won’t need to defend their decision to keep their bodies to themselves.
Naheed Mustafa graduated from the University of Toronto last year with an honors degree in political and history. She is currently studying journalism at Ryerson Polytechnic University.
By Naheed Mustafa
Visual Analysis
Lawless Review
by Dave White
It's easy to get excited about the amount of quality ingredients Lawless brings to its true-crime brew: director John Hillcoat (who made the underseen, underrated The Road), post-punk icon Nick Cave, who not only wrote the screenplay but also composed the score with Dirty Three violinist Warren Ellis, and the presence of actors like Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska and Gary Oldman. It's about that weirdest, most fascinating of all 20th century American social engineering mistakes, Prohibition, and it's based on Matt Bondurant's fictionalized history of his bootlegging family and their battles with the Law, The Wettest County in the World. It's lushly photographed and its period details authentic. The foamy head on the illegal beer: 85-year-old bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley gets to perform his take on The Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat" over the closing credits.
To extend the alcohol analogy just a little bit more (and then I'll be done with it, promise), it's just as easy to get fall-down, barfy drunk and pee your pants on the good stuff as it is the cheap stuff. And that's how it all goes south here, an accumulation of wrong-headed details that distract and ultimately weigh down an already too-conventional story of criminal ascendance, hubris, comeuppance and redemption. It wants to be Bonnie and Clyde. Instead it's Old-Timey Scarface and His Alcoholic Superhero Brothers.
Shia LaBeouf, a young man already scrambling to get out from under the shadow of Optimus Prime by wisely seeking out work with demanding directors like Lars Von Trier (in 2013's The Nymphomaniac), is saddled with carrying his first serious adult-oriented film (not counting Eagle Eye, and there's no reason you should). But when the script calls for him to go through the Tony Montana motions in vintage clothes and to affect a wildly fluctuating Southern accent, it's hard not to feel a little sorry for the mess he's gotten himself into. Hardy, who plays LaBeouf's older brother, also suffers. The script puts myth before man so literally that his character's defining attribute is that he's made of indestructible materials and easily survives shootings where literal holes are blown through major organs. That he also can't seem to decide which dialect of the American South he likes best is just more weird on top of weird. As comic relief -- his dialogue consists of a series of distrusting grunts and murmurs that unexpectedly give way to eloquent ruminations on the nature of humanity, fear and morality -- he's more than the film deserves and less than enough to save it from itself.
But nobody gets scorched as deeply as Guy Pearce, cast as a supervillain Special Deputy with an extreme hair-part and a vaguely Euro-rodent manner of speaking. That he's not an animated character playing against the rest of the cast, Roger Rabbit-style, is all that's missing from his cartoon-like presence, one that throws the film full tilt into the directional confusion and chaos it flirts with from the beginning. Characters drift in and out, symbolic motifs peek up out of the brush (cockfighting, of course, identical Foghorn Leghorns attempting to peck one another to death) before scurrying away and everything ultimately finds itself drowned in the spray of machine gun bullets and huge, splattery squibs.
Brother-against-brother-against-crime-boss-against-retro-drug-war-metaphor never felt so much like a field trip to the least interesting art museum in the city: pretty things to look at everywhere and your boring old history teacher phoning in a lecture you tune out as quickly as you can.
To extend the alcohol analogy just a little bit more (and then I'll be done with it, promise), it's just as easy to get fall-down, barfy drunk and pee your pants on the good stuff as it is the cheap stuff. And that's how it all goes south here, an accumulation of wrong-headed details that distract and ultimately weigh down an already too-conventional story of criminal ascendance, hubris, comeuppance and redemption. It wants to be Bonnie and Clyde. Instead it's Old-Timey Scarface and His Alcoholic Superhero Brothers.
Shia LaBeouf, a young man already scrambling to get out from under the shadow of Optimus Prime by wisely seeking out work with demanding directors like Lars Von Trier (in 2013's The Nymphomaniac), is saddled with carrying his first serious adult-oriented film (not counting Eagle Eye, and there's no reason you should). But when the script calls for him to go through the Tony Montana motions in vintage clothes and to affect a wildly fluctuating Southern accent, it's hard not to feel a little sorry for the mess he's gotten himself into. Hardy, who plays LaBeouf's older brother, also suffers. The script puts myth before man so literally that his character's defining attribute is that he's made of indestructible materials and easily survives shootings where literal holes are blown through major organs. That he also can't seem to decide which dialect of the American South he likes best is just more weird on top of weird. As comic relief -- his dialogue consists of a series of distrusting grunts and murmurs that unexpectedly give way to eloquent ruminations on the nature of humanity, fear and morality -- he's more than the film deserves and less than enough to save it from itself.
But nobody gets scorched as deeply as Guy Pearce, cast as a supervillain Special Deputy with an extreme hair-part and a vaguely Euro-rodent manner of speaking. That he's not an animated character playing against the rest of the cast, Roger Rabbit-style, is all that's missing from his cartoon-like presence, one that throws the film full tilt into the directional confusion and chaos it flirts with from the beginning. Characters drift in and out, symbolic motifs peek up out of the brush (cockfighting, of course, identical Foghorn Leghorns attempting to peck one another to death) before scurrying away and everything ultimately finds itself drowned in the spray of machine gun bullets and huge, splattery squibs.
Brother-against-brother-against-crime-boss-against-retro-drug-war-metaphor never felt so much like a field trip to the least interesting art museum in the city: pretty things to look at everywhere and your boring old history teacher phoning in a lecture you tune out as quickly as you can.
Me Talk Pretty One Day
Born in 1956 in Johnson City, New York, David Sedaris grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is a playwright (in collaboration with his sister Amy) and an essayist whose work has been featured regularly on National Public Radio and in collections such as Naked (1997) and Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000). Sedaris's work tends toward the satiric, but even the most wickedly pointed of his pieces are marked by an ironic stance that includes the author amonth those humans whose folly must be satirized. This insistence on turning his satiric eye on himself is evident in "Me Talk Pretty One Day," taken from the collection of the same name, in which he recounts his efforts to learn French.
Me Talk Pretty One Day – By David Sedaris
From his book Me Talk Pretty One Day
At the age of forty-one, I am returning to school and have to think of myself as
what my French textbook calls “a true debutant.” After paying my tuition, I was issued
a student ID, which allows me a discounted entry fee at movie theaters, puppet shows,
and Festyland, a far-flung amusement park that advertises with billboards picturing a
cartoon stegosaurus sitting in a canoe and eating what appears to be a ham sandwich.
I’ve moved to Paris with hopes of learning the language. My school is an easy
ten-minute walk from my apartment, and on the first day of class I arrived early,
watching as the returning students greeted one another in the school lobby. Vacations
were recounted, and questions were raised concerning mutual friends with names like
Kang and Vlatnya. Regardless of their nationalities, everyone spoke what sounded to
me like excellent French. Some accents were better than others, but the students
exhibited an ease and confidence that I found intimidating. As an added discomfort,
they were all young, attractive, and well-dressed, causing me to feel not unlike Pa Kettle
trapped backstage after a fashion show.
The first day of class was nerve-racking because I knew I’d be expected to
perform. That’s the way they do it here – it’s everybody into the language pool, sink or
swim. The teacher marched in, deeply tanned from a recent vacation, and proceeded to
rattle off a series of administrative announcements. I’ve spent quite a few summers in
Normandy, and I took a monthlong French class before leaving New York. I’m not
completely in the dark, yet I understood only half of what this woman was saying.
“If you have not meimslsxp or lgpdmurct by this time, then you should not be in
this room. Has everyone apzkiubjxow? Everyone? Good, we shall begin.” She spread
out her lesson plan and sighed, saying, “All right, then, who knows the alphabet?”
It was startling because (a) I hadn’t been asked that question in a while and (b) I
realized, while laughing, that I myself did not know the alphabet. They’re the same
letters, but in France they’re pronounced differently. I know the shape of the alphabet
but had no idea what it actually sounded like.
“Ahh.” The teacher went to the board and sketched the letter a. “Do we have
anyone in the room whose first name commences with an ahh?”
Two Polish Annas raised their hands, and the teachers instructed them to present
themselves by stating their names, nationalities, occupations, and a brief list of things
they liked and disliked in this world. The first Anna hailed from an industrial town
outside of Warsaw and had front teeth the size of tombstones. She worked as a
seamstress, enjoyed quiet times with friends, and hated the mosquito.
“Oh, really,” the teacher said. “How very interesting. I thought that everyone
loved the mosquito, but here, in front of all the world, you claim to detest him. How is it
that we’ve been blessed with someone as unique and original as you? Tell us, please.”
The seamstress did not understand what was being said but knew that this was
an occasion for shame. Her rabbity mouth huffed for breath, and she stared down at her
lap as though the appropriate comeback were stitched somewhere alongside the zipper
of her slacks.
The second Anna learned from the first and claimed to love sunshine and detest
lies. It sounded like a translation of one of those Playmate of the Month data sheets, the
answers always written in the same loopy handwriting: “Turn-ons: Mom’s famous five-alarm
chili! Turn offs: insecurity and guys who come on too strong!!!!”
The two Polish Annas surely had clear notions of what they loved and hated, but
like the rest of us, they were limited in terms of vocabulary, and this made them appear
less than sophisticated. The teacher forged on, and we learned that Carlos, the Argentine
bandonion player, loved wine, music, and, in his words, “making sex with the womans
of the world.” Next came a beautiful young Yugoslav who identified herself as an
optimist, saying that she loved everything that life had to offer.
The teacher licked her lips, revealing a hint of the saucebox we would later
come to know. She crouched low for her attack, placed her hands on the young
woman’s desk, and leaned close, saying, “Oh yeah? And do you love your little war?”
While the optimist struggled to defend herself, I scrambled to think of an answer
to what had obviously become a trick question. How often is one asked what he loves in
this world? More to the point, how often is one asked and then publicly ridiculed for his
answer? I recalled my mother, flushed with wine, pounding the table top one night,
saying, “Love? I love a good steak cooked rare. I love my cat, and I love …” My sisters
and I leaned forward, waiting to hear out names. “Tums,” our mother said. “I love
Tums.”
The teacher killed some time accusing the Yugoslavian girl of masterminding a
program of genocide, and I jotted frantic notes in the margins of my pad. While I can
honestly say that I love leafing through medical textbooks devoted to severe
dermatological conditions, the hobby is beyond the reach of my French vocabulary, and
acting it out would only have invited controversy.
When called upon, I delivered an effortless list of things that I detest: blood
sausage, intestinal pates, brain pudding. I’d learned these words the hard way. Having
given it some thought, I then declared my love for IBM typewriters, the French word for
bruise, and my electric floor waxer. It was a short list, but still I managed to
mispronounce IBM and assign the wrong gender to both the floor waxer and the
typewriter. The teacher’s reaction led me to believe that these mistakes were capital
crimes in the country of France.
“Were you always this palicmkrexis?” she asked. “Even a fiuscrzsa ticiwelmun
knows that a typewriter is feminine.”
I absorbed as much of her abuse as I could understand, thinking – but not saying
– that I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object which is incapable of
disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself. Why refer to Lady Crack Pipe or
Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?
The teacher proceeded to belittle everyone from German Eva, who hated
laziness, to Japanese Yukari, who loved paintbrushes and soap. Italian, Thai, Dutch,
Korean, and Chinese – we all left class foolishly believing that the worst over. She’d
shaken us up a little, but surely that was just an act designed to weed out the
deadweight. We didn’t know it then, but the coming months would teach us what it was
like to spend time in the presence of a wild animal, something completely
unpredictable. Her temperament was not based on a series of good and bad days but,
rather, good and bad moments. We soon learned to dodge chalk and protect our heads
and stomachs whenever she approached us with a question. She hadn’t yet punched
anyone, but it seemed wise to protect ourselves against the inevitable.
Though we were forbidden to speak anything but French, the teacher would
occasionally use us to practice any of her five fluent languages.
“I hate you,” she said to me one afternoon. Her English was flawless. “I really,
really hate you.” Call me sensitive, but I couldn’t help but take it personally.
After being singled out as a lazy kfdtinvfm, I took to spending four hours a night on my homework, putting in even more time whenever we were assigned an essay. I
suppose I could have gotten by with less, but I was determined to create some sort of
identity for myself: David, the hardworker, David the cut-up. We’d have one of those
“complete this sentence” exercises, and I’d fool with the thing for hours, invariably
settling on something like, “A quick run around the lake? I’d love to! Just give me a
moment while I strap on my wooden leg.” The teacher, through word and action,
conveyed the message that if this was my idea of an identity, she wanted nothing to do
with it.
My fear and discomfort crept beyond the borders of the classroom and
accompanied me out onto the wide boulevards. Stopping for a coffee, asking directions,
depositing money in my bank account: these things were out of the question, as they
involved having to speak. Before beginning school, there’d been no shutting me up, but
now I was convinced that everything I said was wrong. When the phone rang, I ignored
it. If someone asked me a question, I pretended to be deaf. I knew my fear was getting
the best of me when I started wondering why they don’t sell cuts of meat in vending
machines.
My only comfort was the knowledge that I was not alone. Huddled in the
hallways and making the most of our pathetic French, my fellow students and I engaged
in the sort of conversation commonly overhead in refugee camps.
“Sometimes me cry alone at night.”
“That be common for I, also, but be more strong, you. Much work and someday
you talk pretty. People start love you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay.”
Unlike the French class I had taken in New York, here there was no sense of
competition. When the teacher poked a shy Korean in the eyelid with a freshly
sharpened pencil, we took no comfort in the fact that, unlike Hyeyoon Cho, we all know
the irregular past tense of the verb to defeat. In all fairness, the teacher hadn’t meant to
stab the girl, but neither did she spend much time apologizing, saying only, “Well, you
should have been vkkdyo more kdeynfulh.”
Over time it became impossible to believe that any of us would ever improve.
Fall arrived and it rained every day, meaning we would now be scolded for the water
dripping from our coats and umbrellas. It was mid-October when the teacher singled me
out, saying, “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.” And it struck
me that, for the first time since arriving in France, I could understand every word that
someone was saying.
Understanding doesn’t mean that you can suddenly speak the language. Far from
it. It’s a small step, nothing more, yet its rewards are intoxicating and deceptive. The
teacher continued her diatribe and I settled back, bathing in the subtle beauty of each
new curse and insult.
“You exhaust me with your foolishness and reward my efforts with nothing but
pain, do you understand me?"
The world opened up, and it was with great joy that I responded, “I know the
thing that you speak exact now. Talk me more, you, plus, please, plus.”
Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Me Talk Pretty One Day. New York: Little,
Brown, 2000. 166-173.
Me Talk Pretty One Day – By David Sedaris
From his book Me Talk Pretty One Day
At the age of forty-one, I am returning to school and have to think of myself as
what my French textbook calls “a true debutant.” After paying my tuition, I was issued
a student ID, which allows me a discounted entry fee at movie theaters, puppet shows,
and Festyland, a far-flung amusement park that advertises with billboards picturing a
cartoon stegosaurus sitting in a canoe and eating what appears to be a ham sandwich.
I’ve moved to Paris with hopes of learning the language. My school is an easy
ten-minute walk from my apartment, and on the first day of class I arrived early,
watching as the returning students greeted one another in the school lobby. Vacations
were recounted, and questions were raised concerning mutual friends with names like
Kang and Vlatnya. Regardless of their nationalities, everyone spoke what sounded to
me like excellent French. Some accents were better than others, but the students
exhibited an ease and confidence that I found intimidating. As an added discomfort,
they were all young, attractive, and well-dressed, causing me to feel not unlike Pa Kettle
trapped backstage after a fashion show.
The first day of class was nerve-racking because I knew I’d be expected to
perform. That’s the way they do it here – it’s everybody into the language pool, sink or
swim. The teacher marched in, deeply tanned from a recent vacation, and proceeded to
rattle off a series of administrative announcements. I’ve spent quite a few summers in
Normandy, and I took a monthlong French class before leaving New York. I’m not
completely in the dark, yet I understood only half of what this woman was saying.
“If you have not meimslsxp or lgpdmurct by this time, then you should not be in
this room. Has everyone apzkiubjxow? Everyone? Good, we shall begin.” She spread
out her lesson plan and sighed, saying, “All right, then, who knows the alphabet?”
It was startling because (a) I hadn’t been asked that question in a while and (b) I
realized, while laughing, that I myself did not know the alphabet. They’re the same
letters, but in France they’re pronounced differently. I know the shape of the alphabet
but had no idea what it actually sounded like.
“Ahh.” The teacher went to the board and sketched the letter a. “Do we have
anyone in the room whose first name commences with an ahh?”
Two Polish Annas raised their hands, and the teachers instructed them to present
themselves by stating their names, nationalities, occupations, and a brief list of things
they liked and disliked in this world. The first Anna hailed from an industrial town
outside of Warsaw and had front teeth the size of tombstones. She worked as a
seamstress, enjoyed quiet times with friends, and hated the mosquito.
“Oh, really,” the teacher said. “How very interesting. I thought that everyone
loved the mosquito, but here, in front of all the world, you claim to detest him. How is it
that we’ve been blessed with someone as unique and original as you? Tell us, please.”
The seamstress did not understand what was being said but knew that this was
an occasion for shame. Her rabbity mouth huffed for breath, and she stared down at her
lap as though the appropriate comeback were stitched somewhere alongside the zipper
of her slacks.
The second Anna learned from the first and claimed to love sunshine and detest
lies. It sounded like a translation of one of those Playmate of the Month data sheets, the
answers always written in the same loopy handwriting: “Turn-ons: Mom’s famous five-alarm
chili! Turn offs: insecurity and guys who come on too strong!!!!”
The two Polish Annas surely had clear notions of what they loved and hated, but
like the rest of us, they were limited in terms of vocabulary, and this made them appear
less than sophisticated. The teacher forged on, and we learned that Carlos, the Argentine
bandonion player, loved wine, music, and, in his words, “making sex with the womans
of the world.” Next came a beautiful young Yugoslav who identified herself as an
optimist, saying that she loved everything that life had to offer.
The teacher licked her lips, revealing a hint of the saucebox we would later
come to know. She crouched low for her attack, placed her hands on the young
woman’s desk, and leaned close, saying, “Oh yeah? And do you love your little war?”
While the optimist struggled to defend herself, I scrambled to think of an answer
to what had obviously become a trick question. How often is one asked what he loves in
this world? More to the point, how often is one asked and then publicly ridiculed for his
answer? I recalled my mother, flushed with wine, pounding the table top one night,
saying, “Love? I love a good steak cooked rare. I love my cat, and I love …” My sisters
and I leaned forward, waiting to hear out names. “Tums,” our mother said. “I love
Tums.”
The teacher killed some time accusing the Yugoslavian girl of masterminding a
program of genocide, and I jotted frantic notes in the margins of my pad. While I can
honestly say that I love leafing through medical textbooks devoted to severe
dermatological conditions, the hobby is beyond the reach of my French vocabulary, and
acting it out would only have invited controversy.
When called upon, I delivered an effortless list of things that I detest: blood
sausage, intestinal pates, brain pudding. I’d learned these words the hard way. Having
given it some thought, I then declared my love for IBM typewriters, the French word for
bruise, and my electric floor waxer. It was a short list, but still I managed to
mispronounce IBM and assign the wrong gender to both the floor waxer and the
typewriter. The teacher’s reaction led me to believe that these mistakes were capital
crimes in the country of France.
“Were you always this palicmkrexis?” she asked. “Even a fiuscrzsa ticiwelmun
knows that a typewriter is feminine.”
I absorbed as much of her abuse as I could understand, thinking – but not saying
– that I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object which is incapable of
disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself. Why refer to Lady Crack Pipe or
Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?
The teacher proceeded to belittle everyone from German Eva, who hated
laziness, to Japanese Yukari, who loved paintbrushes and soap. Italian, Thai, Dutch,
Korean, and Chinese – we all left class foolishly believing that the worst over. She’d
shaken us up a little, but surely that was just an act designed to weed out the
deadweight. We didn’t know it then, but the coming months would teach us what it was
like to spend time in the presence of a wild animal, something completely
unpredictable. Her temperament was not based on a series of good and bad days but,
rather, good and bad moments. We soon learned to dodge chalk and protect our heads
and stomachs whenever she approached us with a question. She hadn’t yet punched
anyone, but it seemed wise to protect ourselves against the inevitable.
Though we were forbidden to speak anything but French, the teacher would
occasionally use us to practice any of her five fluent languages.
“I hate you,” she said to me one afternoon. Her English was flawless. “I really,
really hate you.” Call me sensitive, but I couldn’t help but take it personally.
After being singled out as a lazy kfdtinvfm, I took to spending four hours a night on my homework, putting in even more time whenever we were assigned an essay. I
suppose I could have gotten by with less, but I was determined to create some sort of
identity for myself: David, the hardworker, David the cut-up. We’d have one of those
“complete this sentence” exercises, and I’d fool with the thing for hours, invariably
settling on something like, “A quick run around the lake? I’d love to! Just give me a
moment while I strap on my wooden leg.” The teacher, through word and action,
conveyed the message that if this was my idea of an identity, she wanted nothing to do
with it.
My fear and discomfort crept beyond the borders of the classroom and
accompanied me out onto the wide boulevards. Stopping for a coffee, asking directions,
depositing money in my bank account: these things were out of the question, as they
involved having to speak. Before beginning school, there’d been no shutting me up, but
now I was convinced that everything I said was wrong. When the phone rang, I ignored
it. If someone asked me a question, I pretended to be deaf. I knew my fear was getting
the best of me when I started wondering why they don’t sell cuts of meat in vending
machines.
My only comfort was the knowledge that I was not alone. Huddled in the
hallways and making the most of our pathetic French, my fellow students and I engaged
in the sort of conversation commonly overhead in refugee camps.
“Sometimes me cry alone at night.”
“That be common for I, also, but be more strong, you. Much work and someday
you talk pretty. People start love you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay.”
Unlike the French class I had taken in New York, here there was no sense of
competition. When the teacher poked a shy Korean in the eyelid with a freshly
sharpened pencil, we took no comfort in the fact that, unlike Hyeyoon Cho, we all know
the irregular past tense of the verb to defeat. In all fairness, the teacher hadn’t meant to
stab the girl, but neither did she spend much time apologizing, saying only, “Well, you
should have been vkkdyo more kdeynfulh.”
Over time it became impossible to believe that any of us would ever improve.
Fall arrived and it rained every day, meaning we would now be scolded for the water
dripping from our coats and umbrellas. It was mid-October when the teacher singled me
out, saying, “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.” And it struck
me that, for the first time since arriving in France, I could understand every word that
someone was saying.
Understanding doesn’t mean that you can suddenly speak the language. Far from
it. It’s a small step, nothing more, yet its rewards are intoxicating and deceptive. The
teacher continued her diatribe and I settled back, bathing in the subtle beauty of each
new curse and insult.
“You exhaust me with your foolishness and reward my efforts with nothing but
pain, do you understand me?"
The world opened up, and it was with great joy that I responded, “I know the
thing that you speak exact now. Talk me more, you, plus, please, plus.”
Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Me Talk Pretty One Day. New York: Little,
Brown, 2000. 166-173.