ENG92, Dev Writing, July 2020

#5, 2 parts, A and B:

A: Essay Outline due Sunday 7p as comment below this post
B: (Full Essay 2 draft) due Monday 7p as separate post (categorize under “Essay 2 Feedback”)

NOTE: For those of you who I’ve told to work on Grammar & Paragraphing—and for anyone wanting extra credit—please do the Grammar & Paragraphing exercises (3 of them) and share your responses as a comment on that post.

A due Sunday 7/26, 7p:
—Read the Essay 2 assignment.
—Read the first two Essay 2 articles—on protests during the pandemic—to get ideas for your essay:
–Rep. Ken Buck, “First lockdowns, then riots – here’s how left’s hypocrisy added fuel to the fire”
–Open Letter Advocating for an Anti-Racist Public Health Response

–Brainstorm and outline for your Essay 2.  Post an essay outline containing the following items below as a comment responding to this post:

Essay 2 Outline
–Topic:
–Title/Author of an Article on this Topic you will summarize (can be one of the above readings):
–Your thesis (on whether and how protests should be happening during the Covid pandemic—and your reasons why

–Reason 1 supporting your thesis (topic of body paragraph 1)
–Reason 2 supporting your thesis (topic of body paragraph 2)

–1 related story you can tell that will support your thesis (3-4 notes on the key events and characters of this story will be fine for now)

–1 quotation from the article you’ve chosen that you want to discuss

–1 counter-argument (a perspective that disagrees with your thesis/opinion)

–1 point you will make to refute the counter-argument (why you think the counter-argument is wrong)

B, due Monday 7/27, 7p
–Write your full Essay 2 draft and create you own post containing an upload/link to your essay.  When posting, remember to choose the category “Essay 2 Feedback.” <<<< If you’ve posted correctly, your post will show up there under that link.

4. Due Fri 7/24, 7p

Using Detailed Storytelling to Persuade

For this assignment, I want you to focus on developing a story for your revised Essay 1 that will SHOW your readers the DETAILS of what is at stake in your topic: racism & police brutality.  Telling a detailed story can be one of the most powerful—and powerfully convincing—strategies for convincing a reader to believe in your thesis.  So this is what I want you to get practice doing for Friday.

First, for inspiration, I want you to (re-)read the opening sections of Larry Elder’s “Where’s Black Lives Matter When You Need Them?” and James Baldwin’s “A Report from Occupied Territory.”  Both of these texts begin with powerfully detailed stories that show us horrific acts of police brutality which draw us into the topic the writer wants us to think about.  However, you will notice that there are some key differences in the way each of these stories is worded and angled.  As discussed in today’s Zoom, Elder writes his story in a way that suggests subtly that what Officer Chauvin did to George Floyd wasn’t murder.  Meanwhile, Baldwin, in his story, plays up the violence that the black salesman experiences and witness while in police custody—violence which leads to his being partially blinded.  I point this out because while both of these stories draw us in to the topic of police brutality, they do so with different purposes in mind: Elder wants to convince us that police brutality towards black people is not as much of an issue as black-on-black violence; on the other hand, Baldwin wants to say that the policing of black neighborhoods like Harlem is tantamount to a military occupation of an otherwise autonomous “territory” or community.  Unlike Elder, he is not at all sympathetic to the cops…

Anyway, for this assignment I want you to respond below with two things:

A) A paragraph-long summary of the story Baldwin tells of the salesman’s experience with the police, and

B) A 1-2 paragraph story you will tell in your Essay 1 to try to convince your reader to believe in your own thesis about police brutality in the US. The story you tell can be from your own experience (something that happened to you or someone you are close to), something that you heard about happening to someone you know, a story you saw/heard about online, on social media, in a movie, etc. Please just make sure you make it as detailed as possible.  Details to include (not necessarily in this order):

–Who are the key characters involved?  What do they look like…sound like…smell like…etc.?  (You can make up details as needed, so long as you remain true enough to the spirit of the story.)

–Where are these characters in space?  Where do the key events of this story take place?  When do the events in this story take place (in history/time)?

–What are they (the main characters) doing?  What happens to them?  Which key events need to be described in order for the reader to understand what is going on and why it matters?

PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND TO THESE QUESTIONS IN ORDER.  INSTEAD, WRITE YOUR STORY AS 1-3 PARAGRAPHS, THEN RE-READ THESE QUESTIONS AND RE-READ/RE-WRITE YOUR STORY, MAKING SURE YOU’VE ADDRESSED ALL OF THESE QUESTIONS SOMEWHERE.

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