Making Literature Matter with 2009 MLA Update : An Anthology for Readers and Writers

Prepared by editors whose scholarship fuses literary and composition studies,Making Literature Mattercombines a comprehensive writing text with a uniquely organized anthology for introductory literature courses that emphasize critical and academic writing.What makes literature matter?Writing about it argumentatively.The writing text helps students learn to analyze literature and develop responsible and persuasive claims about it making it matter to them as it hasn't before.Reading it when it explores issues that matter.The stories, poems, plays and essays in the anthology are uniquely organized into thematic clusters focusing on life issues that speak to students and evoke their engaged response.

JOHN SCHILB (Ph.D., State University of New York — Binghamton) is a professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he holds the Culbertson Chair in Writing. He has co-edited Contending with Words: Composition and Rhetoric in a Postmodern Age and, with John Clifford, Writing Theory and Critical Theory. He is author of Between the Lines: Relating Composition Theory and Literary Theory and Rhetorical Refusals: Defying Audiences’ Expectations.

JOHN CLIFFORD (Ph.D., New York University) is a professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Editor of The Experience of Reading: Louis Rosenblatt and Reader-Response Theory, he has published numerous scholarly articles on pedagogy, critical theory and composition theory, most recently in College English, in Relations, Locations, Positions: Composition Theory for Writing Teachers and in The Norton Book of Composition Studies.

Preface for Instructors

Contents by Genre

Part One: Working with Literature

1. What Is Literature? How and Why Does It Matter?

James Wright, "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" (poem)

How Have People Defined Literature?

*Why Study Literature in a College Writing Course?

What Can You Do to Make Literature Matter to Others?

*J. Robert Lennon, When I married, I became an old woman. . . . (story)

How to Read Closely

*Strategies for Close Reading

*Close Readings of a Poem

*Sharon Olds, "Summer Solstice, New York City" (poem)

Using Topics of Literary Studies to Get Ideas

Lynda Hull, Night Waitress (poem)

How to Make Arguments about Literature

Daniel Orozco, Orientation (story)

Jamaica Kincaid, Girl (story)

Strategies for Making Arguments about Literature

Looking at Literature as Argument

John Milton, "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent" (poem)

W. H. Auden, "The Unknown Citizen" (poem)

*Robert Frost, "Mending Wall" (poem)

4. The Writing Process

William Wordsworth, "The Solitary Reaper" (poem)

Strategies for Exploring

Strategies for Planning

Strategies for Composing

First Draft of a Student Paper

Abby Hazelton, The Passage of Time in "The Solitary Reaper"

Strategies for Revising

Revised Draft of a Student Paper

Abby Hazelton, The Passage of Time in "The Solitary Reaper"

Strategies for Writing a Comparative Paper

Ted Kooser, "Four Secretaries" (poem)

A Student Comparative Paper

Marla Tracy, When Singing Is Not Singing

A Writing Exercise

*C. K. Williams, The Singing (poem)

5. How to Write about Stories

Eudora Welty, A Visit of Charity

William Carlos Williams, The Use of Force

*Anton Chekhov, Sleepy

Students’ Personal Responses to the Stories

The Elements of Short Fiction

Final Draft of a Student Paper

Alison Caldwell, Forms of Blindness in "The Use of Force"

6. How to Write about Poems

Rosanna Warren, In Creve Coeur, Missouri

Charles Fort, We Did Not Fear the Father

Philip Levine, What Work Is

Mary Oliver, Singapore

Yusef Komunyakaa, Blackberries

Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Mill

Jimmy Santiago Baca, So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs Away from Americans

Louise Erdrich, The Lady in the Pink Mustang

*Marge Piercy, The Secretary Chant

A Student’s Personal Responses to the Poems

Michaela Fiorruci, Boundaries in Robinson, Komunyakaa, and Oliver

The Elements of Poetry

Revised Draft of a Student Paper

Michaela Fiorruci, Negotiating Boundaries

7. How to Write about Plays

Tennessee Williams, From The Glass Menagerie (scene)

Marsha Norman, from ‘night Mother (scene)

The Elements of Drama

Final Draft of a Student Paper

Tim Kerwin, The Significance of What Jessie "Thinks"

8. How to Write about Essays

June Jordan, Many Rivers to Cross

Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens

A Student’s Personal Response

The Elements of Essays

Final Draft of a Student Paper

Isla Bravo, Resisting Women’s Roles

9. How to Write a Research Paper

Strategies for Identifying an Issue and a Tentative Claim

Strategies for Finding and Using Secondary Sources

Strategies for Working with Sources

Strategies for Integrating Sources

Strategies for Documenting Sources (MLA Format)

Three Annotated Student Research Papers

*Katie Johnson, The Meaning of the Husband’s Fainting in "The Yellow Wall-Paper"

*Brittany Thomas, Substitution in Mitchell’s "The Evolution of the Rest Treatment" and Gilman’s "The Yellow Wall-Paper"

*Keith Alexander, What the Argument between Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields Demonstrated about the Media

Part Two: Literature and Its Issues

10. Families

Memories of Family: Essays

Brent Staples, The Runaway Son

Rick Moody, Demonology

*Paule Marshall, Poets in the Kitchen

*José Raul Bernardo, Happy Blue Crabs

Reconciling with Fathers: Poems

Lucille Clifton, forgiving my father

Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays

Theodore Roethke, My Papa's Waltz

*Li-Young Lee, My Father, in Heaven, Is Reading Out Loud

Louise Gluck, Terminal Resemblance

Exorcising the Dead: Critical Commentaries on a Poem

Sylvia Plath, Daddy

Critical Commentaries:

Mary Lynn Broe, From Protean Poetic: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath

Lynda K. Bundtzen, From Plath's Incarnations

Steven Gould Axelrod, From Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words

Tim Kendall, from Sylvia Plath: A Critical Study

Mothers and Daughters: Stories

Tillie Olsen, I Stand Here Ironing

Amy Tan, Two Kinds

Alice Walker, Everyday Use

Siblings in Conflict: Stories

Tobias Wolff, The Rich Brother

James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues

Family Dramas: Re-Visions of a Play

Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

Christopher Durang, For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls

Grandparents and Legacies: Poems

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Grandfather at the Indian Health Clinic

Nikki Giovanni, Legacies

Linda Hogan, Heritage

Gary Soto, Behind Grandma's House

Alberto Rios, Mi Abuelo

Yvonne V. Sapia, Grandmother, a Caribbean Indian, Described by My Father

*Judith Ortiz Cofer, Claims

Family Bonds: A Collection of Essays by bell hooks

bell hooks, Inspired Eccentricity

bell hooks, Talking Back

bell hooks, Spirit

A Family’s Dreams: Cultural Contexts for a Play

Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

Cultural Contexts:

The Crisis, The Hansberrys of Chicago: They Join Business Acumen with Social Vision

Lorraine Hansberry, April 23, 1964, Letter to the *York Times

Alan Ehrenhalt, From The Lost City: Discovering the Forgotten Virtues of Community in the Chicago of the 1950s

Sidney Poitier, from The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography

Parental Crisis: Stories

Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants

T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Love of My Life

Kate Braverman, Pagan Night

Gays and Lesbians in Families: Poems

Essex Hemphill, Commitments

Kitty Tsui, A Chinese Banquet

Minnie Bruce Pratt, Two Small-Sized Girls

*Rane Arroyo, My Transvestite Uncle Is Missing

The Family as Prison: A Story and Images

*Art Spiegelman, Prisoner on the Hell Planet

*Images from Maus

11. Love

True Love: Poems

William Shakespeare, Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Anne Bradstreet, To My Dear and Loving Husband

e. e. cummings, somewhere i have never travelled

Wislawa Szymborska, True Love

Sharon Olds, True Love

Michael S. Harper, Discovery

*Emily Dickinson, Wild Nights — Wild Nights!

*Wendy Rose, Julia

Romantic Dreams: Stories

Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman

James Joyce, Araby

John Updike, A & P

*Sherwood Anderson, Adventure

Love and Myth: Essays

Diane Ackerman, Orpheus and Eurydice

Carol Gilligan, Psyche and Cupid

A Seductive Argument: Re-Visions of a Poem

Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

Peter De Vries, To His Importunate Mistress

To Love or Not to Love: Critical Commentaries on a Poem

T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Critical Commentaries:

Charles Child Walcutt, Eliot’s "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Bruce Hayman, How Old is Prufrock? Does He Want to Get Married?

Leon Waldoff, Prufrock’s Defenses and Our Response

Heather Brown, The Ambiguity of Romance in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Melinda Hollis, Prufrock’s Road to Love Is Paved with Irony

The Appearance of Love: A Collection of Stories by Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin, The Storm

Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour

Kate Chopin, Désirée's Baby

Is This Love?: Stories

William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily

Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Zora Neale Hurston, The Gilded Six-Bits

*William Trevor, The Room

Jealous Love: A Play and Images

William Shakespeare, Othello

Images:

Eugene Delacroix, Desdemona Cursed by Her Father (painting)

Eugene Delacroix, Othello and Desdemona (painting)

The Need for Romantic Illusions: Cultural Contexts for a Story

Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

Cultural Contexts

*Sullivan Ballou, "My very dear Sarah"

*Brian Sullivan, Letter to Tobie

*Tyrone Parnell, Letter to Tracy

Looking Back on Past Love: Stories

Edith Wharton, Roman Fever

Alice Elliott Dark, The Secret Spot

Love as a Have? Poems

Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

*Susan Minot, My Husband’s Back

12. Freedom and Confinement

Freedom for Animals: Poems

Maxine Kumin, Woodchucks

D. H. Lawrence, Snake

Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish

*Thomas Lux, To Help the Monkey Cross the River

Can Tradition Be a Trap?: Critical Commentaries on a Story

*Shirley Jackson, The Lottery

Critical Commentaries

*Nick Crawford, Learning from "The Lottery": How Jackson’s Story Might Help Us Rethink Tradition

*Joe Romano, Sacrifice, Solidarity, and Senselessness

*Jon Schneiderman, Tradition, Justice, and Bloodlust in American Society

*Aimee Wilson, Under the Guise of Tradition: "The Lottery" and Female Circumcision

The Marriage Trap: Plays

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll House

Susan Glaspell, Trifles

Confined for Her Own Good: Cultural Contexts for a Story

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

Cultural Contexts

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Why I Wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper"

S. Weir Mitchell, From The Evolution of the Rest Treatment

John Harvey Kellogg, From The Ladies’ Guide in Health and Disease

Hobbled by Language: Essays

Richard Rodriguez, Aria

Tomas Rivera, On Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory

Victor Villaneuva, Jr., Reflecting on Richard Rodriguez

Trapped in Stereotypes: Poems

Chrystos, Today Was s Good Day Like TB

Louise Erdrich, Dear John Wayne

Dwight Okita, In Response to Executive Order 9066

David Hernandez, Pigeons

Sonia Sanchez, Song No. 3

*Pat Mora, Legal Alien

*Naomi Shihab Nye, Blood

A Torturous Confinement: Re-Visions of a Story

*Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony

*R. Crumb, In the Penal Colony

Remembering the Death Camps: Poems

Pastor Martin Niemoller, "First They Came for the Jews"

Nelly Sachs, "A Dead Child Speaks"

Yevgeny Yevtuchenko, "Babii Yar"

Karen Gershon, "Race"

Anne Sexton, "After Auschwitz"

Prisoners of War: Stories

Frank O'Connor, Guests of the Nation

Haruki Murakami, Another Way to Die

A Letter from Jail: An Essay and Images

Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

Images:

Protesting Desegregation in Montgomery, Alabama (photograph)

The Arrest of Martin Luther King, Jr. (photograph)

Martin Luther King, Jr. in Birmingham Jail (photograph)

A Dream of Freedom: A Collection of Poems by Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes, Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes, Open Letter to the South

Langston Hughes, Theme for English B

Langston Hughes, Harlem

The Cage of Socialization: Stories

*Karen Russell, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Steven Millhauser, Kaspar Hauser Speaks

 

13. Doing Justice

On Trial: Essays

Scott Russell Sanders, Doing Time in the Thirteenth Chair

*Kathleen Alcala, The Woman Who Loved Water

*Slavenka Drakulic, He Would Never Hurt a Fly

Maxine Hong Kingston, No Name Woman

Discovering Injustice: Stories

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown

Toni Cade Bambara, The Lesson

Punishments: Poems

Carolyn Forché, The Colonel

Seamus Heaney, Punishment

Rita Dove, Parsley

Sherman Alexie, Capital Punishment

He Said/She Said: Re-Visions of a Poem

Robert Browning, My Last Duchess

Gabriel Spera, My Ex-Husband

Avenging a Killing: Stories

Andre Dubus, Killings

Yiyun Li, Persimmons

Issues of Guilt: A Collection of Stories by Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado

Edgar Allan Poe, The Telltale Heart

*Edgar Allan Poe, Hop-Frog

Eyewitness Testimony: Cultural Contexts for a Play

*Ida Fink, The Table

Cultural Contexts

*Wladyslaw Szpilman, The Umschleagplatz

*Inga Clendinnen, Assessing Witness Testimony: Flilip Muller

*Dori Laub and Shoshana Felman, Bearing Witness

Misfit Justice: Critical Commentaries on a Story

Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Critical Commentaries

Flannery O’Connor, from Mystery and Manners

Martha Stephens, from The Question of Flannery O’Connor

Madison Jones, from "A Good Man’s Predicament"

Stephen Bandy, from "’One of My Babies’: The Misfit and the Grandmother"

Conscience on Trial: A Play and Images

Sophocles, Antigone

Images:

Jose Domjan, Poster for a Production of Antigone

Wieslaw Grzegorczyk, Poster for a Production of Antigone

Moreland Theatre Company, Poster for a Production of Antigone

Religious Justice: Stories

Hanif Kureishi, My Son, The Fanatic

*Rishi Reddi, Lord Krishna

Racial Injustice: Poems

Countee Cullen, Incident

*Natasha Trethewey, Incident

14. Journeys

An Errand of Love? Critical Commentaries on a Story

*Eudora Welty, A Worn Path

Critical Commentaries:

*Roland Bartel, Life and Death in Eudora Welty’s "A Worn Path"

*Neil Isaacs, Life for Phoenix

*Eudora Welty, Is Phoenix Jackson’s Grandson Really Dead?

Dangerous Journeys: Stories

*Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

*Tim O’Brien, Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

*Sherman Alexie, What You Pawn I Will Redeem

 

Roads Taken: A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost

*Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

*Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

*Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night

Journeys to the Past: Essays

*Joan Didion, On Going Home

*E. B. White, Once More to the Lake

N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain

*Marianna De Marco Torgovnick, On Being White, Female, and Born in Bensonhurst

Inner Journeys: Stories

*Willa Cather, Wagner Matinee

*Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh

*John Cheever, The Swimmer

A Journey’s Terrifying Beginning: Cultural Contexts for a Story

Ralph Ellison, "Battle Royal"

Cultural Contexts:

Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Exposition Address

W.E. B. DuBois, Of Mr. Booker T. Washington

Gunnar Myrdal, Social Equality

Journeys to a Dark Future: Stories

*Octavia Butler, Human Evolution

*Douglas Coupland, Shopping Is Not Creating

*Ursula LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

*Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Harrison Bergeron

Accidental Journeys: Poems

*William Stafford, Traveling Through the Dark

*John Burnside, Penitence

*Robert Wrigley, Highway 12, Just East of Paradise, Idaho

*James Tate, Thinking Ahead to Possible Options and the Worse Case Scenario

*Loren Goodman, Traveling Through the Dark (2005)

End of a Journey: A Play and Images

Marsha Norman, ’night, Mother

Images of Jessie and Thelma

*Kathy Bates and Anne Pituiak (1983; photograph)

*Edie Falco and Brenda Blethyn (2004; photograph)

*Oracle Theatre Production (2006; photograph)

A Journey to Death: Poems

*Mary Oliver, When Death Comes

John Donne, Death Be Not Proud

Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

Wislawa Szymborska, On Death, without Exaggeration

Journey to Experience: Re-Visions of a Story

Charles Perrault, Little Red Riding Hood

Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Little Red Cap

Angela Carter, The Company of Wolves

Crossing the Waters: Poems

*Katia Kapovich, The Ferry

*Linda Pastan, Leaving the Island

*Anne Sexton, Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound

Mark Doty, Night Ferry

Appendix: Critical Approaches to Literature

Contemporary Schools of Criticism

Working with the Critical Approaches

James Joyce, Counterparts (story)

Ann Petry, Like a Winding Sheet (story)

Index of Authors, Titles, and First Lines

Index of Key Terms

 

* new to this edition