As we said in class, your task is this:- Read the excerpt of Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory
- Using the "Reading int he Context of a Personal Economy" sheet, analyze your response to Rodriguez. In this activity, you're analyzing how you think and why you think that way.
- Write a reading response to Hunger of Memory. Use the guide linked in this post (it's the same one I distributed in class). This one will take the longest.
- Lastly, read Mortimer J. Adler's How to Mark a Book. Just read it. We'll discuss it a bit tomorrow. As you will notice, it provides some additional rationale and ideas for the annotation of text.
Tomorrow
we'll be reading a short essay called It's all in the Implications by Pico Iyer. We'll write our first paper on that essay, getting started on that tomorrow. We are in the study hall lab on Friday to work on the paper. Get your AUP in if you haven't done so already!
Ashley Petersen
ReplyDeleteAP. Period 2
Reading Response
“Perhaps because I have always, accidentally, been a classmate to children of rich parents, I long ago came to assume my association with the world; came to assume that I could have money, if it was money I wanted. But money, Big money, has never been the goal of my life. My story is not a version of Sammy Glicks. I work to support my habit of writing. The great luxury of my life is the freedom to sit at this desk.”
1. Suspend Judgment: This means he went to a richer school where most of his friend’s parents were rich. He saw it was easy for their parents therefore if he wanted to make “big money” he could get it easily. But he doesn’t desire the money; but his goal is to tell his story, not an adventure just simply doing what he loves. WRITING. What he thinks is “luxury” instead of the big parties.
2. Define the significant parts and how they’re related: The significant parts of this paragraph are money and how the people around Rodriguez have always had lots of money. Another significant part is how writing is his habit and the great luxury of his life where he finds his freedom. These are related through the statement of money is how he supports his habit; money is not what he desires.
3. Make the Implicit Explicit: “Big Money” is Implicit but he means lots of money upper class citizens and millionaires. Sammy Glick’s is an author from New York who escaped the Ghettos as a Jew. The line stating “The great luxury of my life is the freedom to sit at this desk,” is saying he would rather be in at his desk then at Fancy parties around the world, giving speeches, or traveling. He feels the most free and most happiness when he is at his desk writing.
4. Look for patterns: In the beginning of the passage Mr. Rodriguez states many negative statements but the contrasts in the next fragment. Ex: “I was socially disadvantaged child. And enchanted happy Child.” He also starts in the past and moves to who he has become in every paragraph.
5. Keep reformulating questions and explanations:
a. Which detail seem significant and why? The details that are important are the ones saying where he came from what his childhood was like and how much that has changed. This is important because without those details the reader wouldn’t know why he is so passionate about education and why money isn’t important to Mr. Rodriguez.
b. What is significance of a particular detail? What does it mean: The significance of detail on his past is significant because it builds up the story and lets you know the writer personally? This means that you’re not just jumping in and guessing he was born rich you know by facts.
c. What else might it mean: This might mean that the writer wants to give hope to others and use his story maybe as a testimony for the good?
d. How do the details fit together? The detail fit together in the way one leads up to the other and are like connecting lines for the major points Mr. Rodriguez makes. The details are all short and very strong statements.
e. What does this pattern of details mean: This pattern of detail means that Mr. Rodriguez wants to get his point across but not just state them but back the up with something people want to read.
f. What else might this same pattern of detail mean? How else could it be explained: This might also mean he is a detailed ordered person and likes to develop his stories?
g. what details don’t seem to fit. How might they be connected with other details to form another pattern: There aren’t any details that don’t fit or belong? They all seem to fit together
h. what does this new pattern mean? How might it cause me to read the meaning of the individual details differently? This new pattern means he has different styles or syntax.