Authors: Donald McQuade, Robert Atwan
ISBN-13: 9780312486860, ISBN-10: 0312486863
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's
Date Published: January 2009
Edition: 6th Edition
DONALD McQUADE is professor of English and former dean of undergraduate studies and Vice Chancellor of University Affairs at the University of California, Berkeley. A past chair of CCCC, he has directed the writing programs at Berkeley and at Queens College, CUNY, and has published widely on American literature, American culture, and composition theory and practice. With his daughter Christine, he is coeditor of Seeing & Writing, now in its third edition from Bedford/St. Martin's.
ROBERT ATWAN is the director of The Blue Hills Writing Institute at Curry College and founder of the Best American Essays series, for which he serves as series editor. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Atlantic Monthly, and Kenyon Review. For Bedford/St. Martin's, he has edited Ten on Ten: Major Essayists on Recurring Themes; Our Times: Readings from Recent Periodicals, now in its fifth edition, America Now: Short Readings from Recent Periodicals, now in its seventh edition, and Convergences, now available in its second edition.
The readings in The Writer’s Presence are selected exclusively for the quality of the writing. Editors Donald McQuade of the University of California, Berkeley, and Robert Atwan, Series Editor of The Best American Essays scoured hundreds of essays in search of teachable readings with strong voices and clear points of view. The result is a blend of classic pieces by favorites like James Baldwin, Annie Dillard, and Amy Tan; and fresh pieces by rising stars like Michael Pollan, Geeta Kothari, James McBride, and Daniel Harris. The voices in The Writer’s Presence represent different communities, time periods, levels of difficulty, and fields of study, and the topics intersect in intriguing and nuanced ways, giving students the opportunity to think critically and develop their own voices.
Organized by type of writing and with minimal apparatus, The Writer’s Presence gives instructors unsurpassed teaching flexibility. With so many exceptional readings and so many ways to teach them, the possibilities are endless.
Part I. Personal Writing: Exploring Our Own Lives
Alexie, Sherman, The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me
Angelou, Maya, "What's Your Name, Girl?"
*Arana, Marie, Ghosts: Pishtacos
Baldwin, James, Notes of a Native Son
The Writer at Work — James Baldwin on Black English
*Beller, Thomas, The Problem with T-Shirts
Carver, Raymond, My Father's Life
Cofer, Judith Ortiz, Silent Dancing
The Writer at Work — Cofer on Memory and Personal Essays
Cooper, Bernard, A Clack of Tiny Sparks: Remembrances of a Gay Boyhood
*Daum, Meghan, Toy Children
Didion, Joan, On Keeping a Notebook
Douglass, Frederick, Learning to Read and Write
*Dove, Rita, Major Steps
*Doyle, Brian, The Knock
*Ford, Richard, A City Beyond the Reach of Empathy
Frank, Anne, from The Diary of a Young Girl
*Gates, Henry Louis Jr., In the Kitchen
The Writer at Work — Henry Louis Gates Jr. on the Writer’s Voice
Hachiya, Michihiko, from Hiroshima Diary
Hoagland, Edward, On Stuttering
The Writer at Work — Edward Hoagland on What an Essay Is
Hughes, Langston, Salvation
The Writer at Work — Langston Hughes on How to Be a Bad Writer (In Ten Easy Lessons)
*Kothari, Geeta, If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?
Mairs, Nancy, On Being a Cripple
The Writer at Work — Nancy Mairs on Finding a Voice
Malcolm X, Homeboy
Mamet, David, The Rake: A Few Scenes from My Childhood
Mayblum, Adam, The Price We Pay
Orwell, George, Shooting an Elephant
Rodriguez, Richard, Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood
The Writer at Work — Rodriguez on a Writer's Identity
*Satrapi, Marjane, My Speech at West Point
*The Writer at Work — Marjane Satrapi on Comics
Sedaris, David, Me Talk Pretty One Day
Staples, Brent, Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space
The Writer at Work — Another Version of Just Walk on By
*Sullivan, Andrew, The M Word: Why It Matters to Me
Tan, Amy, Mother Tongue
Trudeau, Garry, My Inner Shrimp
Walker, Alice, Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self
*Walker, Jerald, Scattered Inconveniences
*The Writer at Work — Jerald Walker on Writing
White, E. B., Once More to the Lake
Part II. Expository Writing: Shaping Information
*Akst, Daniel, What Meets the Eye
*Amar, Akhil Reed, Second Thoughts: What the Right to Bear Arms Really Means
*Bérubé, Michael, Analyze, Don't Summarize
*Bettelheim, Bruno, Hansel and Gretel
Brooks, David, People Like Us
*Budiansky, Stephen, The Physics of Gridlock
Carter, Steven L., The Insufficiency of Honesty
Cunningham, Amy, Why Women Smile
DeLillo, Don, In The Ruins of the Future: Reflections on Terror, Loss and Time in the Shadow of September
Eighner, Lars, On Dumpster Diving
Epstein, Joseph, The Perpetual Adolescent
Fallows, James, Throwing Like a Girl
Frazier, Ian, All-Consuming Patriotism
*Gertner, Jon, The Futile Pursuit of Happiness
Gladwell, Malcolm, Big and Bad
Gould, Stephen Jay, Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs
*Harris, Daniel, Celebrity Bodies
*Hustvedt, Siri, Eight Days in a Corset
King, Stephen, Everything You Need to Know about Writing Successfully—in Ten Minutes
Kingston, Maxine Hong, No Name Woman
The Writer at Work — Maxine Hong Kingston on Writing for Oneself
Lincoln, Abraham, Gettysburg Address
The Writer at Work, Abraham Lincoln’s Hay Draft of the Gettysburg Address
*McBride, James, Hip-Hop Planet
*McGrath, Charles, The Pleasures of the Text
*Menand, Louis, Name that Tone
*Miller, Hanna, American Pie
Momaday, N. Scott, The Way to Rainy Mountain
Nafisi, Azar, Reading Lolita in Tehran
Ofri, Danielle, SAT
Orwell, George, Politics and the English Language
The Writer at Work — George Orwell on the Four Reasons for Writing
Pollitt, Katha, Why Boys Don't Play with Dolls
*Safire, William, Changing Warming
Schlosser, Eric, Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good
Simic, Charles, The Life of Images
*Sparrow, Fighting CIS
Trillin, Calvin, A Traditional Family
Tuchman, Barbara,"This Is the End of the World": The Black Death
Turkle, Sherry, How Computers Change the Way We Think
*Ullman, Ellen, Dining with Robots
*Weed, William Speed, 106 Science Claims and a Truckful of Baloney
Winn, Marie, TV Addiction
*Wolfe, Alan, On Loyalty
Wolfe, Tom, Hooking Up
Woolf, Virginia, The Death of the Moth
*Wright, Will, Dream Machines
Part III. Argumentative Writing: Contending with Issues
*Appiah, Kwame Anthony, The Case for Contamination
*Bass, Rick, Double-Talk
*Chaudry, Lakshmi, Mirror, Mirror on the Web
*Cullinan, Cormac, If Nature Had Rights
Diamond, Jared, The Ends of the World as We Know Them
*The Academic Voice — from Ecological Collapses of Past Civilizations
*Dickerson, Debra, Who Shot Johnny?
Dillard, Annie, Living Like Weasels
The Writer at Work — Annie Dillard on the Writing Life
Easterbrook, Greg, The Myth of Fingerprints
Ehrenreich, Barbara, Family Values
Ephron, Nora, The Boston Photographs
Gatto, John Taylor, Against School
Gibson, William, The Net Is a Waste of Time
*Gopnik, Adam, Shootings
Hearne, Vicki, What's Wrong with Animal Rights
Jefferson, Thomas, The Declaration of Independence
Kakutani, Michiko, The Word Police
King, Martin Luther Jr., I Have a Dream
The Artist at Work — Reenvisioning I Have a Dream, Ho Che Anderson
King, Martin Luther Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
The Writer at Work — Martin Luther King Jr. on Self-Importance
Kipnis, Laura, Against Love
*Levitt, Steven D. and Stephen J. Dubner, Trading Up: Where Do Baby Names Come from?
McKibben, Bill, Worried? Us?
*Michaels, Walter Benn, The Trouble with Diversity
*The Writer at Work, Walter Benn Michaels on Working with Sources
*Morris, Errol, Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
Nussbaum, Martha, Can Patriotism Be Compassionate?
*The Academic Voice, from Cultivating Humanity in Legal Education
*Paglia, Camille, The Pitfalls of Plastic Surgery
*Pinker, Steven, Sex Ed: The Science of Difference
*Pollan, Michael, What’s Eating America
*Postrel, Virginia, In Praise of Chain Stores
*Sandel, Michael J., The Case Against Perfection
Sanders, Scott Russell, The Men We Carry in Our Minds
The Writer at Work — Scott Russell Sanders on Writing Essays
*Schwartz, Barry, The Tyranny of Choice
Silko, Leslie Marmon, In the Combat Zone
Singer, Peter, The Singer Solution to World Poverty
*The Academic Voice, from Utility and the Survival Lottery
Slater, Lauren, The Trouble with Self-Esteem
The Writer at Work — Lauren Slater on Writing Groups
Swift, Jonathan, A Modest Proposal
Truth, Sojourner, Ain't I a Woman?
Twain, Mark, Corn-pone Opinions
Vidal, Gore, Drugs
Wideman, John Edgar, The Night I Was Nobody
Williams, Terry Tempest, The Clan of One-Breasted Women
Zinn, Howard, Stories Hollywood Never Tells
Part IV. Voices of Modern Fiction: Six Short Stories
Alexie, Sherman, What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona
*Carver, Raymond, What We Talk about When We Talk about Love
*The Editor at Work, Raymond Carver’s The Beginners
Kincaid, Jamaica, Girl
The Writer at Work, Jamaica Kincaid on Girl
Oates, Joyce Carol, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
*The Writer at Work, Joyce Carol Oates on Reading
O'Connor, Flannery, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The Writer at Work — Flannery O'Connor on Her Own Work
*The Critic at Work, William Caverlee on A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Updike, John, A&P
*The Critic at Work
* new to this edition