Re: The Personal

[Dee Baer <dbaer@UDel.Edu>]

Thanks for your mediating post, Katie.  The technique of interweaving the
personal with the hard core facts in The Book of Yaak does sound effective
and convincing--it's my preferred sytle of writing and what I often
encourage my own two teenagers to experiment with. I would want students
to see how, as you say, the personal can be used as an effective
underpinning for the writing.  What I fear, first, is how our
inexperienced writers handle this use of the personal.  And what I fear
even more is how inexperienced or cocky teachers of writing misuse
personal writing.  One instructor on our campus assigned students a
published fictional rape fantasy to respond to in an essay. At our Writing
Center, we saw some of the fallout from that assignment, including sobbing
students.

Considering whether and how to include the personal in our assignments, we
need to consider the whole range of responses we might provoke. In the
hands of gifted, thoughtful teachers, I believe personal writing can
sometimes work beautifully.  However, the pitfalls are many and many are
those who fall in.


Dee Baer
University of Delaware Writing Center


On Fri, 21 Mar 1997, Latisha LaRue wrote:

> Dee and all,
> 	You raise some excellent and sensitive concerns about the nature
> of using the personal with students in writing.  But I wonder if much of
> this arises from misunderstandings over how the personal might enter into
> a piece of writing.
> 	When the nature of a personal narrative assignment is
> confessional, problems brew as you suggest below.  But when the writing
> has an authentic goal and the personal is used as part of the underpinning
> of the paper, I find that such happenstance is far less frequent.  In my
> classes, I also make a big deal out of audience in assigning writing.
> Students are fairly aware of this anyway since they so often work in
> writing groups sharing their work.  Even so, I think it is crucial to
> point out the obvious:  Remember, others will be reading these essays.  A
> writer must always consider who her audience is, what her purpose is, and
> how to best achieve that during the selection of what to include and what
> to exclude, I tell them.
> 	It seems to me that writing teachrs wander into making higher and
> higher the fences between the personal and "the rest" while writing in
> general is going the other way.  I've just finished Rick Bass's new _The
> Book of Yaak_, an unabashedly political text hell-bent on persuading
> readers to save the Yaak of Montana and all roadless cores in the world.
> As much as this seems a "non-personal" argument, he strengthens the piece
> considerably by often bringing in the personl -- anecdotes about his wife
> and daughters, a letter to a dying friend, stories from the Dirty Shame
> Saloon -- right alongside the statistics, notice of legislations, and
> more documentary type parts of the essay. News columnists, nonfiction
> writers of all sorts of writing resort more and more to including the
> personal, it seems to me.  
> 			Katie Fischer
> 
> 
> On Fri, 21 Mar 1997, Dee Baer wrote:
> 
> > Yes, such personal information can cometimes be a cri de coeur, but I
> > wonder how "proud" one should be of fostering such a public sharing--for
> > every student who needs to share a secret, a problem, I wonder how many
> > students are terrified that their own secrets, problems might be guessed
> > at or come out in some way?  With our writing classes usually 50% female,
> > I can pretty safely assume there will be at least one young woman who has
> > been sexually assaulted, harassed at work, or raped.  Hearing open--and
> > often rather casual--discussion of certain topics could be very invasive
> > and damaging to some class members.( And for males who have similar
> > painful experience, their shame can be overwhelming).  I don't think I can
> > know what's gone on in the lives of my students, so I steer clear of
> > abortion, rape, and other topics precisely because I know that some in
> > class won't think twice about being what I(and others) might think overly
> > frank.
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > 
> > Dee Baer
> > University of Delaware Writing Center
> > 
> > 
> > On Thu, 20 Mar 1997, Jeanne H. Simpson wrote:
> > 
> > > I had a colleague in the English Dept. who used to assign the topic of "A
> > > Difficult Experience" to his students.  And then spent a lot of time
> > > talking to me about his struggle to handle the incredibly sad, horrifying,
> > > upsetting things he read about: child abuse, incest, abortions, rapes....
> > > He expressed shock at the content, that students would tell him about
> > > these things, and also concern that he was ill-equipped to respond and
> > > that he had a problem assigning grades to essays about such suffering,
> > > feeling as if it were equivalent to assigning a grade to the experiences
> > > the students wrote about.
> > > 
> > > I finally asked him, why did you assign this topic if you find it
> > > difficult to read these papers?   
> > > 
> > > I am not advocating that the reading and assignments about them in our
> > > classes should be confined to the innocuous and noncontroversial.  But it
> > > does seem to me that we need to be prepared for what might happen when we
> > > assign things like essays about abortion.  Our students do not grow up in a
> > > Leave It to Beaver sitcom, and their experiences will resonate.  
> > > 
> > > One way to do that would be to begin with some ground rules--not limiting
> > > people's speech, but certainly creating awareness.  And requiring not just
> > > civility but also prudence.  Falstaff was right, the better part of valor
> > > is discretion.  Students do need educating about just how public this
> > > medium is and how they can and cannot exercise control over it.
> > > 
> > > Having said that, I also know that sometimes, when people bring up the
> > > unspeakable, it's a good thing.  That the saying is a signal that someone
> > > needs to be listened to and that it may be a cri de coeur.  It is a
> > > terrible thing, a kind of addition to the original crime or horror, to
> > > ignore such cries.  We can lead students to places where the
> > > listeners are genuinely capable of helping them.  I do not think most
> > > classrooms, real or virtual, are the best arena for therapy.
> > > 
> > > Jeanne Simpson
> > > csjhs@eiu.edu
> > > 
> > 
> > 
>