Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

question of how their educational experiences had defined how
they perceived themselves, in particular, how they perceived
themselves as “writers.” What was the reality or “truth” of
their existence as “writers”? Inherently, there was also the
question of how the perceptions of others – teachers, family,
peers – influenced how they defined themselves as “writers.” In
order to provoke those questions further, the students had to
read Mike Rose’s “I Just Wanna Be Average,” Linda Brodkey’s
“Writing on the Bias,” Richard Rodriguez’ “Aria: A Memoir of a
Bilingual Childhood,” and Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild
Tongue.” The first essay, or “exploratory paper,” of the class,
“Your History as a ‘Writer’,” required them to:
[A]nalyze how you have defined yourself as a “writer”
through how you have been defined as a “writer” by
others. How do you (or don’t you) perceive yourself
as a “writer” and, more importantly, why? What
significance has writing had in your life and your
world? What experiences, educational or not, have
produced those perspectives? How have they been
limited or broadened by these experiences? And,
perhaps most important of all, what has been the
result of all this?
With this “critical analysis” of their history as “writers,” and
with “writing” as a whole, the students were also to use one of
those four essays, all of them “histories” as well, to
supplement and complicate their own.
The issues and questions that informed the second unit of
the class rose out of that question of the students as
“writers.” This second unit took those questions of reality and
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