Compose Yourself:Writing & Identity in Douglas, Williams & Walker :: essays papers

Compose YourselfWriting & Identity in Douglas, Williams & Walker For the suffer several years, whenever I teach an introductory composition course I use an anthology of look fors called Fields of Writing.One of the strengths of this collection is the exemplary diversity of its selections, and among the best of these ar many shews by African Americans.I assign a number of these in the course, precisely four in particular I have undercoat to be consistently useful in teaching basic ideas well-nigh composition. These four are Frederick Douglasss Learning to Read & Write, Patricia Williamss On Being the butt of Property,and two by Alice Walker, Beauty When the Other Dancer is the Self and Am I Blue? Each of these essays conveys a different aspect of the classical link between literacy and identity, between the ability to express oneself and the process of cunning oneself. Let me explain what I mean by beginning with the oldest essay among this group, Learning to Read & Write by Frederick Douglas. <--if supportEmptyParas--<--endif--Douglass essay is a hornswoggle excerpt from his Autobiography.It describes the laborious process he had to go through in order to teach himself how to read and write.Douglas informs us that, in the beginning of his education, his prostitute had begun his instruction, but in compliance with the advice and direction of her husband, not merely ceased to instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by any one else. thusly Douglass situation becomes one in which he not only has to be his own teacher, he also has to, as he says, resort to discordant stratagems in order to outflank the considerable resistance to his acquisition of literacy.Douglass essay first teaches the students that, in circumstances which in fact resist the composition of an identity--in this case, Douglass identity as a freely literate human being--then literacy and specifically writing is the only way to carve out a length for ones own th oughts. If the words that define you all belong to others--to his mistress and master--then his sniff out of his own identity is at the mercy of their words, and can, to a certain extent, only be expressed in their terms. As Douglas goes on to point out, it isnt until he is at least partially literate that he can in full conceive the nature of his lack of an independent identity. Without his own phrase, he has no way to see himself as separate from the world constructed by the language of those who control him.