The Short Prose Reader

* indicates a selection new to this edition

Chapter 1: On Writing

*Russell Baker: On Becoming a Writer

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: How to Write with Style

Amy Tan: Mother Tongue

William Zinsser: Simplicity

Chapter 2: On Reading

Eudora Welty: One Writer’s Beginnings

*Judith Ortiz Cofer: Volar

Malcolm X: Prison Studies

Ellen Tashie Frisina: “See Spot Run”: Teaching My Grandmother to Read

Chapter 3: Description

*Annie Dillard: In the Jungle

Maxine Hong Kingston: Catfish in the Bathtub

Richard Selzer: The Discus Thrower

Virginia Woolf: The Death of the Moth

Chapter 4: Narration

Elizabeth Wong: The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl

Langston Hughes: Salvation

George Orwell: A Hanging

Grace Paley: Travelling

Chapter 5: Illustration

Brent Staples: Night Walker

Barbara Ehrenreich: What I’ve Learned from Men

*Amarty Sen: A World Not Neatly Divided

Lewis Thomas: Death in the Open

Chapter 6: Comparison and Contrast

Rachel Carson: A Fable for Tomorrow

*Katha Pollitt: Why Boys Don’t Play with Dolls

Ellen Goodman: The Tapestry of Friendships

Michele Ingrassia: The Body of the Beholder

Chapter 7: Definition

Janice Castro with Dan Cook and Christina Garcia: Spanglish

Suzanne Britt Jordan: Fun, Oh Boy, Fun. You Could Die from It

Gloria Naylor: A Word’s Meaning

*David Brooks: The Organization Kid

Chapter 8: Classification

Judith Viorst: Friends, Good Friends - and Such Good Friends

E.B. White: The Three New Yorks

James T. Baker: How Do We Find the Student in a World of Academic Gymnasts and Worker Ants?

*Amy Rashap: The American Dream for Sale

Chapter 9: Process Analysis

Jerrold G. Simon: How to Write a Resume

*John Lantos: Life and Death in the Neonatal Intensive Care

Ernest Hemingway: Camping Out

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: In the Kitchen

Chapter 10: Cause-and-Effect Analysis

Stephen King: Why We Crave Horror Movies

Anne Roiphe: Why Marriages Fail

*Harry Crews: Why I Live Where I Live

Susan Jacoby: When Bright Girls Decide That Math Is “a Waste of Time”

Chapter 11: Argumentation and Persuasion

Reparations for Slavery: Pro and Con

*Manning Marable: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

*Shelby Steele: A Childish Illusion of Justice

The Death Penalty: Pro and Con

*Bob Herbert: Death-Penalty Dissenters

*James Q. Wilson: What Death-Penalty Errors?

Issues of Identity

Judy Brady: I Want a Wife

Jonathan Kozol: Are the Homeless Crazy?

*Robert L. Spitzer: Psychiatry and Homosexuality

*Ronald Takaki: The Harmful Myth of Asian Superiority

Anna Quindlen: Women Are Just Better

Issues of Political Rights

Molly Ivins: Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of Guns

*Julie Bosman: The (No) Free Speech Movement

Martin Luther King, Jr.: I Have a Dream

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