Shitty first drafts

Taylor Thatcher MWF 8am 1 Annotated Bibliography

Alexie, Sherman. "The Joy of Reading and Writing; Superman and Me: Home Edition."

Los Angeles Times, (1998): 54.

Sherman Alexie’s in “Superman and Me” Alexie shares his story of how he fell in love with reading when he was little. He talks about his father and how he had a huge impact on his love for reading. Alexie talks about his father ho he was an avid reader. His father loved reading so much that he would spend any extra money that he had on new books to read. Since his father’s love for reading, Alexie decided that he wanted to be just like him and love reading as well. The Readers learn that from Alexie was a very bright kid, and that he taught himself how to read with a Superman comic book. He tells us readers that if he were not an Indian, he would have been considered to be a very smart kid at his age. Therefor because of his ethnicity he was very overlooked. Alexie shares the struggles of being in school on a reservation with a white teacher. He was the only student that would actually show the teacher that he was smart and capable of learning in school. Since he was so nice, all of the other students would get upset with him for showing off in front of the teacher. It was hard for Alexie to see his classmates act incapable around the teacher, because he saw that outside of school they were bright just like him. He wanted to make something of himself and he wanted a life to be proud of.

When he was an adult, Alexie sees children becoming more inclined to learn and succeed in school and life. Even though it was true he still sees the children who could care less about school and he wishes that he could do more for those students.

2 Anzaldua, Gloria. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” Borderlands: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters, Aunt Lute, 1987.Print Gloria explains in “How Tame a Wild Tongue” what its like to grow up in the United States of America during the 1980s as a Spanish speaker. She talks about the discrimination she felt as well as the feeling of shame toward embracing her ethnicity due to the environment around her. She also talked about how the Spanish language has been altered throughout time because of the changes in people’s surroundings causing them to adapt their language and even learn it for themselves as well. People were starting to develop new words, slang, and pronunciation of words when they would live in the different area especially over the course of the years. Gloria also indicates that heterogeneous people speak multiple languages like as many as 8 within the English and Spanish languages, Standard English, working class and slang English, Standard Spanish, Standard Mexican Spanish, North Mexican Spanish Dialect, Chicano Spanish, Tex-Mex, and Pachuco. With all the changes that happened in life and so many types of Spanish languages while growing up Gloria had to face a lot and she really had a hard time in the beginning of her life with everything but I think she learned a great deal from it.

Dethier, Brock. 21 Genres and How to Write Them. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2013. Print.

In “Writing Territories” from the novel 21 Genres and How to Write Them by Brock Dethier, the author explains the new ways of thinking about how we write today.

He describes each of our topic proposals as a territory we write in. Once we feel comfortable in several of these “territories” we then can begin to stay close to them

Taylor Thatcher MWF 8am 3 whenever we write. It isn’t until we stray away from these topics when we start feeling nervous and stressed out about learning something new because we expand our knowledge horizon way more. When we build on this idea of writers sticking in their territories, Dethier then talks about how we can connect these topics to build even stronger essays in our future. It may take some extra time and work but if a writer can relate two totally different topics together then that is just another powerful tool they have in their back pocket in being a better writer. This source can be very useful because it offers a new way of thinking about writing topics and can be very useful as a new writer looking how to improve their writing skills. Although opposed to the other sources that just tell us that the writing process is hard Dethier really focuses on showing the reader how they can be better and by doing so, understanding themselves and build off of their habits. Once they have done that then they can start using their skills and habits.

Lamott, Anne. "Shitty First Drafts." Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

NewYork: Andover, 1994. N. pag. Print.

This article shows a lot how when you are writing an essay that your first draft will always will not be as good as your final draft. When writing your first draft don’t try to make it perfect the author says that the first draft is the work that only you will see so you can get all of the information in your head on to the paper to see what you can use and what is useful. Write what ever comes to mind because you can always just rewrite it later, shitty first drafts are apart of the process of writing and figuring out what you have in your head and organizing it. I also like how she used dark humor saying "It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do -- you can either type, or kill yourself” (Lamott

4 1). She cites another writer and compares it to the unbearable pain and time for writing a first draft. I think it just really show how you can really just mess up on the draft at first but then you can make it all pretty when you go back and write your final draft. That’s what being a good writer is about because you have you make mistakes in order in improve from them.

Brand, Deborah. "Sponsors of Literacy." College Composition and Communication, Vol. 49, No. 2 (May, 1998), Pp. 165-18. N.p., n.d. Web. The author Deborah Brandt, who wrote a very long research article called Sponsors of Literacy, is a professor of English at the University of WisconsinMadison. Brandt’s main purpose of this article to is inform her audience on how people become literate through sponsors or even someone who gives some type of support and assistance throughout there life. She shows how sponsors can be supportive, ranging from parents to professors, bosses to company owners or just family. As well in her article she defines literacy as the ability to read and write where in some cases it goes unnoticed that sponsors teach the learner literacy to their own advantage. Also, Brandt shows interviews of people with different ages and backgrounds in order to support her developing argument where some people learned their literacy through the form of their sponsor. Brandt ends her article by including and discussing a study she conducted herself. In the study she observed the pattern of two people who shared the same age and town they lived in, however did not share the same social class. She shared this study to refer back to conclude her main argument why literacy is affected due to the different political, educational, and economical class people are identified with.

Taylor Thatcher MWF 8am 5

Tan, Amy. "Mother Tongue." Enriching ESOL Pedagogy: Readings and Activities for Engagement, Reflection, and Inquiry, (2002): 431-436.

Amy Tan explains in “Mother Tongue” is a story about how the author, Amy, became a writer. Throughout the whole article, Tan talks about the stereotype AsianAmericans are given and the obstacles she had to overcome to write her first book. She also talks about how her family is her real literacy sponsor and there should not be anything wrong with their connection. Also through the piece, Tan talks about how her mother knew a lot more than she was made out to. Since her dialect, people assumed she was talking nonsense when really they just couldn’t understand what she was saying.

This wasn’t the case for Tan because she could understand every word of her mother and could vouch for how much she actually knew. This source can be extremely useful because she was able to prove that her mom was smart and could talk very well. Amy does a great job of telling us about all her hardships in very clear detail and quoting exact evidence that she had. Even though this is a credible source the meaning of this article was not to persuade anyone or answer a question so it is quite bias I think at least. The goal of the article was to really just inform the readers about a daily struggle that Asian American go through all the time and to show how stereotypes can play a big role in deciding their futures in life.