About the Book
This reader presents classic and contemporary essays. Organized thematically, it includes prose works spanning various ages, cultures and subjects. This updated edition includes 130 complete essays, two new chapters on gender and on the environment, and an introductory chapter on the reading and writing process. It also contains more work by women and writers from multicultural heritages. Each chapter now has its own introduction, with previewing sections which alert students to possibilities for reading, discussion and writing, as well as end-of-chapter "Connections" writing assignments.
Table of Contents:
Part 1 "Childhood and family" - Salvation, Langston Hughes; one writer's beginnings, Eudora Welty; silent dancing, Judith Ortiz Cofer; the woman warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston; why the geese shrieked, Isaac Bashevis Singer; home for Christmas, Carson McCullers; once more to the lake, E.B. White; classic and contemporary - a boy's life, Mark Twain; momma, the dentist, and me, Maya Angelou. Part 2 "The sense of place" - mapping the real geography, Barry Lopez; shooting an elephant, George Orwell; where the world began, Margaret Laurence; Vietnam - a delicate innocence, Pico Iyer; Antigua - a small place, Jamaica Kincaid; the odors of homecoming, Pablo Neruda; the way to rainy mountain, N. Scott Momaday; classic and contemporary - here is New York, E.B. White; Miami - the Cuban presence, Joan Didion. Part 3 "Manners and customs" - hold the mayonaisse, Julia Alvarez; pilgrims from the Orient, Jade Snow Wong; soul food, Imamu Amiri Baraka; polygamy, Ann Grace Mojtabai; for the indians no thanksgiving, Michael Dorris; philistines and philistinism, Vladimir Nabokov; beauty - when the other dancer is the self, Alice Walker; classic and contemporary - a superstitious household, Joseph Addison; superstitious minds, Letty Cottin Pogrebin. Part 4 "School and College" - Education, E.B. White; graduation, Maya Angelou; by any other name, Santha Rama Rau; sex ed, Anna Quindlen; bogus multiculturalism, Dinesh D'Souza; the library card, Richard Wright; knowledge and wisdow, Bertrand Russell; fighting racism on campus, Audrey Edwards; classic and contemporary - learning to read and write, Frederick Douglass; the lonely good company of books, Richard Rodriguez. Part 5 "Gender and human development" - only daughter, Sandra Cisneros; the female body, Margaret Atwood; footprints in the ashes of time, Mary Leakey; being a man, Paul Theroux; erotica and pornography, Gloria Steinem; what men are missing, Michael Dorris; the anger of a child, Adrienne Rich; libidinal types, Sigmund Freud; classic and contemporary - sex vs. loveliness, D.H. Lawrence; beauty, Susan Sontag. Part 6 "Social processes and institutions" - roots, Ronald Takaki; more than just a shrine - paying homage to the ghosts of Ellis Island, Mary Gordon; being prohibited, Doris Lessing; Grant and Lee - a study in contrasts, Bruce Catton; the revolution has just begun, Vaclav Havel; wrong ism, J.B. Priestley; an inquiry into the persistence of unwisdom in government, Barbara Tuchman; classic and contemporary - the declaration of independence, Thomas Jefferson; I have a dream, Martin Luther King, Jr. Part contents.
