Letters for the Living: Teaching Writing in a Violent AgeThis book takes up issues of violence in the lives of college students and looks for possibilities of teaching composition as an act of peace making. Through a variety of writings, the book illustrates students' experiences on the city streets of New York and in the small mining and steel towns of western Pennsylvania. One section of the book reports on a project that linked one author/educator's (Hurlbert) research writing class and the other author/educator's (Blitz) freshman composition II class. In the semester-long project, the classes researched and wrote about their own neighborhoods and the neighborhoods of their interstate partners. The book states that these two groups of students taught each other about the places in which they live and the ways in which they live there, and in many cases, what each learned about the other was "shocking." It also shares with the reader letters in which the two author/educators reflect upon their work as teachers, in an effort to understand the personal and cultural implications of what students write and say. (Contains 101 references.) (NKA). |
From inside the book
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Page 42
... told you how one of my earliest memories of my father is seeing him beat up my mother . How she stayed by him through his affairs , drunkenness , drug addiction , and cruelty . And how late in life they grew close . He was a troubled ...
... told you how one of my earliest memories of my father is seeing him beat up my mother . How she stayed by him through his affairs , drunkenness , drug addiction , and cruelty . And how late in life they grew close . He was a troubled ...
Page 49
... told me today that he does not want to see Pocahontas because , as he said , people get shot in it . Mark Mark : My students sometimes come back , sometimes years later , but many of them just disappear into the urban darkness . I have ...
... told me today that he does not want to see Pocahontas because , as he said , people get shot in it . Mark Mark : My students sometimes come back , sometimes years later , but many of them just disappear into the urban darkness . I have ...
Page 64
... told me that when he was sick , he'd tell her to be sure to attend my class and " record everything . " She told me , also , that at a dinner party they'd had , he told a group of similarly disabled , Black vets , that he had a teacher ...
... told me that when he was sick , he'd tell her to be sure to attend my class and " record everything . " She told me , also , that at a dinner party they'd had , he told a group of similarly disabled , Black vets , that he had a teacher ...
Common terms and phrases
Act of Hope African American American asked Bed-Stuy bell hooks boyfriend Bronx brother building change the world classroom composing composition class composition teachers course culture Daina death discussion drafts drugs English English Studies experience father feel friends going grade Greg guess happened hear Here's high school housing projects Hurlbert idea imagine John Jay College kids kind letters listen lives look Mark Mark mean Michael Mark Michael Michael mother neighbor neighborhood night pain peace pedagogy poem poetry Portsmouth problems questions remember respond rhetorical seems semester sense share Sharon social someone sometimes Spanish Harlem stories strange street Stuckey's student wrote Studies talk teaching tell Theresa things told town Vicente Huidobro violence walk wonder words workshop writing class York York City young