Page 66 - The Language of Composition 4e Teacher Edition Sample.indd

and Ilya Kaminsky, whose essay draws parallels between present, recent past, and dis-
4
DIFFERENTIATION Identity
Connections to Text
®
®
AP Teaching Tip. Several AP Language
test prompts have dealt with topics related
to identity. You might consider using some
of these for writing practice while teaching
Copyright (c) 2023 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Uncorrected proofs have been used for this sample chapter.
this unit. Some possibilities:
Rhetorical Analysis prompts:
1992 Nancy Mairs, “I am a cripple”
2008 B Leonid Fridman, “America Needs
Its Nerds”
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2014 Abigail Adams, letter to John
Quincy Adams
2022 Sonia Sotomayor, “A Latina Judge’s
2022 Sonia Sotomayor , “A Latina Judge’ s
Voice”
Argument prompts:
1995 James Baldwin, “If Black English
Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?”
Multiple Choice passages:
2001 Mary Abigail Dodge, “My Garden”
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(also available in AP Classroom)
DIFFERENTIATION
Scaffolding
®
Since the AP Big Idea: Rhetorical Situa-
tion section delves into the Hurston essay,
you could choose to have the students
read the essay before reading the section
on this page, or you could remind them to
return to it after they read the essay.
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tant past to examine how multiple experiences — Jewish, deaf, immigrant, refugee,
veteran — across multiple generations coalesce.
Though they explore many different topics, come to us from many different eras, and
speak with many different voices, all of the texts in this chapter have this in common:
they each, in their own way, show us that no person’s identity can ever be distilled to just
one feature. Instead, these works recognize identities as complex, multifaceted, and
interdependent.
To gain a fuller appreciation and understanding of how writers develop rhetorical
arguments in texts, we’ll focus in this chapter on the Big Ideas, Skills, and Essential
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Knowledge in Unit 4 of the AP English Language and Composition course. This unit
covers aspects of Rhetorical Situation, Claims and Evidence, and Reasoning and Orga-
nization. While the questions after each of the readings in this chapter ask you to exam-
ine how several different elements of rhetoric and argument come together, we will
preview how those from Unit 4 work in the Classic Essay, “How It Feels to Be Colored
Me,” by Zora Neale Hurston (p. 181).
AP Big Idea: Rhetorical Situation
®
In her essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” Zora Neale Hurston describes growing up
in the small, self-governing Black community of Eatonville, Florida, which meant that she
did not experience much exclusion or racism in her early years. At age thirteen, Hurston
was sent to a school in Jacksonville, Florida, and her experiences there provide much of
the exigence behind her essay, which was first published in a political magazine that
featured writers of the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of Black arts and culture in the
United States with its peak of popularity during the 1920s. Hurston likely would have
thought of the magazine subscribers — primarily supporters of and participants in the
Harlem Renaissance — as her primary audience, although her explanation of the forma-
tive experiences of her youth could signal her desire to reach an even wider audience.
The year 1928, when her essay was published, fell within some of the most productive
years for Harlem Renaissance writers, but while opportunities for mainstream Black
expression had increased, the context of the rhetorical situation certainly included the
ongoing and overt racism of the time. Hurston’s purpose, closely tied to this context, is
to challenge the popular thinking of the time, which held that race was a biological and
immutable characteristic. Instead, Hurston presents her understanding of her race
through the lens of social norms and individual feeling, opening her second paragraph
with the sentence, “I remember the very day that I became colored.” The introduction to
her essay consists of a single sentence, an intriguing statement meant to lighten the
tone of the piece and establish her perspective on race as related in some way to the
stories we tell ourselves and each other. She concludes with a compelling image and
metaphor about the overwhelming attributes we all share, thus situating her argument,
which relies primarily on evidence drawn from personal experience, within a broader
context of human experience.
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chapter 4 / Identity
1/20/23 7:43 PM