About the Book
This composition reader develops the urban experience and urban issues as a context for writing and as such connects with students' real experiences as they occur in city settings. Clusters of readings in each thematic unit cover a diversity of broad based contemporary issues, but the overarching theme of cites and urban life maintains a focus through all the units on how texts describe and influence connections among people.
Table of Contents:
Chapters 2-7 include “Unit Introduction,” “Pre-Reading Assignments,” “Unit Discussion Questions,” and “Writing Assignments.”
1.Reading, Writing, and Talking about Cities.
Thinking, Reading, and Writing More Critically about Cities.A Nice Place to Visit, But. . . Judith A. Martin.A Nice Place to Visit, But. . . (Annotated), Judith A. Martin.Continuing the Conversation.Disneyfication of the Metropolis: Popular Resistance in Seattle, Stacy Warren.Representing Urban Decline: Postwar Cities as Narrative Objects, Robert A. Beauregard.Reexamining Your Experiences and Your Environment.Niki's Window: Detroit and the Humiliation of History, Jerry Herron.Making New Sense of the Conversation.
2.Neighborhoods and a Sense of Community.
Houselessness and Homelessness, Jim Burklo.Homeplace: A Site of Resistance, bell hooks.The Rough Adventure of the Street. . . Jerome Charyn.Our Fortified Ghettos, Camile Jose Vergara.A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Mary Kay Blakely.Is Yellow Black or White? Gary Okihiro.Silent Dancing, Judith Ortiz Cofer.I Just Wanna Be Average, Mike Rose.
3.Crime In Our Cities.
Guns Aren't the Only Issue, Daryl F. Gates.Live from Death Row, Mumia Abu-Jamal.One Violent Crime, Brian Shapiro.War on the Streets, Mike Davis with Sue Ruddick.True Crime, Cheryl Russell.Saving Youth from Violence: Charting New Paths to Safety, Fred M. Hechinger.Turning Youth Gangs Around, Luis J. Rodriguez.
4.Expressions of City Life in Urban Art.
Art and Context: A Personal View, Dariah Dorosh.Graffiti: Tunnel Notes of a New Yorker, Leonard Kriegel.As the Sun Sets We Rise: The Life and Times of a Graffiti Artist, Chaka Jenkins.(Inter)Cultural (Inter)Connections, Judith M. McWillie.The Rap on Rap: The Black Music That Isn't Either, David Samuels.When Black Feminism Faces the Music and the Music Is Rap, Michelle Wallace.The Iconography of Chicano Self-Determination: Race, Ethnicity, Class, Shifra M. Goldman.
5.Cities and Suburbs.
The Buy of the Century, Alexander O. Boulton.Stressed Out in Suburbia, Nicholas Lehmann.The New Black Suburbs, David J. Dent.Secession of the Successful, Robert B. Reich.Separate and Unequal, David Moberg.Megalopolis Unbound, Robert Fishman.Edge City, Joel Garreau.Park Slope: Notes on a Middle Class “Utopia”, Jan Rosenberg.Let a Hundred Cities Bloom, Peter Shaw.
6.What Happened in L.A.?
Letter from L.A., William Broyles, Jr.City Lights, Lewis H. Lapham.Civil Disorder in Los Angeles: Justice Will Be Served, George Bush.Blood/Crips Proposal for LA's Face-Lift, Bloods and Crips.The Real Lesson of L.A., Bill Bradley.Learning to Talk of Race, Cornel West.Heatwave, Joyce Ann Joyce.Home Is Where the Han Is: A Korean American Perspective on the Los Angeles Upheavels, Elaine H. Kim.Pathfinders, Peter Medoff and Holly Sklar.
7.Urban Styles.
First Impressions, Stuart Ewen.The Return of the White Negro, E. Jean Carroll.Punks in L.A.: It's Kiss or Kill, Jon Lewis.Off the Streets . . . and Into the Future, Charles Gandee.Body Language, Katherine Betts.Deep Clean, Edward Zuckerman.Low Riders, High Stylers, Scott Martin.Jiving with Java, Michel Marriott.
