Page 124 - The Language of Composition 4e Teacher Edition Sample.indd

For me, country was not a look, a style, or to join him on stage, the man on the radio said.
4
even a conscious attitude, but a physical place, Dad held his breath, worried that Mom would
CLOSE READING Identity its experience defined by distance from the be picked and swept away by a handsome celeb-
forces of culture that would commodify it. That rity in tight Wranglers and a cowboy hat. The
To help students consider the line of rea-
soning in the first section, you could ask place meant long stretches of near-solitude men I knew more often wore ball caps stained
them to explain how paragraph 8 functions broken up by long drives on highways to enter through by the salt of their foreheads.
as a transition between paragraphs 1–7 society and then exit again. Dad didn’t even like country music. Too sad,
and paragraphs 9–14. They could find Owning a small bit of the countryside he said.
evidence from each section that connects brought my father deep satisfaction. The state • • •
Copyright (c) 2023 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Uncorrected proofs have been used for this sample chapter.
to the claims in paragraph 8, and then had seized some of his dad’s farmland through
consider why Smarsh chose this struc- eminent domain in the 1960s to dig the reservoir In college, I began to understand the depth of 15
ture. How does her tone shift after that and move water east in underground tunnels for the rift that is economic inequality. Roughly
paragraph? the people of Wichita. Sometimes Dad would speaking, on one side of the rift was the place I
park his truck on the shoulder of the two-lane was from — laborers, workers, people filled with
blacktop that ran along the lake dam and take distrust for the systems that had been ignoring
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.
my brother and me up the long, steep concrete and even spurning them for a couple decades.
steps to look at what would have been his and On the other side were the people who run those
then our small inheritance, now literally under- systems — basically, people with college funds
water. We couldn’t use the water ourselves; it who end up living in cities or moving to one of
was for Wichitans to access by turning on a the expensive coasts. It’s much messier than
faucet. We thus had dug a private well right next that, of course. But before arriving on campus,
to a giant reservoir on what once was our land. I hadn’t understood the extent of my family’s
It’s an old story: pushing poor rural communities poverty — “wealth” previously having been rep-
out of the way to tap natural resources for cities. resented to me by a friend whose dad was our
Witnessing this as a child had affected Dad 10 small town’s postmaster and whose mom went
deeply, and he shared Grandpa’s attitude toward to the Wichita mall every weekend.
the value of land: “They don’t make any more Even at a midwestern state university, my
of it.” He had plans to buy the bit of land north background — agricultural work, manual labor,
of the house and build an addition when my rural poverty, teen pregnancies, domestic chaos,
brother and I were older and needed more room. pervasive addiction — seemed like a faraway
Mom was less sure of these plans. story to the people I met. Most of them were
Some evenings, I’d watch her curl and tease from tidy neighborhoods in Wichita, Kansas City,
her dark hair at the vanity mirror that my dad had the greater Chicago area. They used a different
built next to their master-suite bathroom. She sort of English and had different politics. They
smelled of hair spray and Calvin Klein Obsession were appalled that I had grown up with conser-
perfume. She left in the darkness and turned her vative ideas about government and Catholic doc-
car wheels from our dirt road on to the highway trine against abortion. I was appalled that they
for Wichita. didn’t know where their food came from or even
When Mom went to a George Strait concert seem to care since it had always just appeared on
at the small Cowboy Club in Wichita, when their plates when they wanted it.
Strait was newly famous, Dad sat at the stereo There was no language for whatever I repre-
next to our brick fireplace, listening to a radio sented on campus. Scholarships and student
broadcast of the show on a country station. organizations existed to boost kids from disad-
George would pick a woman from the audience vantaged groups such as racial minorities,
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CLOSE READING
®
AP Teaching Tip. To continue to explore considering hypothetical structural changes
the essay’s structure and line of reasoning, like this one, is to understand better why the
students might examine the sequence of the writer made the choices she did rather than
essay’s first two sections. How would the to analyze the pros or cons of what the essay
essay differ if Smarsh began at paragraph is not. You could also phrase these questions
®
15? How does the first section provide con- like AP Language Writing multiple-choice
text for the second section? How does the questions by starting with “The writer is
first section engage readers immediately in considering moving / omitting / changing
ways the second section might not? You [some feature]. Would the change benefit
might remind students that the goal, when the purpose or not?”

230 chapter 4 / Identity

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