NOTE: Small Schedule Change--see below

 Since only one person came to class out of our three on Thursday, I'm pushing everything back one day so we don't get behind. The questions for Taub's essay "The Titan Submersible Was "An Accident Waiting to Happen"" will be discussed on Tuesday instead of today. So the questions (in the post below this one) will be due on Tuesday instead. Please read the essay since it will be very useful for your Paper #2 assignment, and it's very interesting as well. You have extra time to read it now, so you have no good excuse not to! :) 

We'll also talk about finding sources for your Paper #2 on Tuesday. See you then! 

For Thursday: Taub, "The Titan Submersible Was "An Accident Waiting to Happen""

 

For Thursday: Taub, “The Titan Submersible Was “An Accident Waiting to Happen” (130-148)

Answer TWO of the following as usual:

Q1: What’s so important about the opening paragraph, and how does it become a kind of ‘thesis’ for the entire essay? Similarly, what does it say about Stockton Rush’s approach to underwater exploration?

Q2: A passenger on one of the trips to the Titanic in the Titan submersible says that “she had delayed buying a car, getting married, and having kids all “because I wanted to go to Titanic”” (145). And she really did have to choose, since buying a seat on the vessel cost 250,000! Do you think this is worth it, as she and many others did? Why are people spending so much money, and risking their very lives, just to get a glimpse?

Q3: Rush thinks that using carbon fiber is the future of underwater exploration, even after people raise doubts about its reliability. According to the essay, why was he so married to this idea? What about it appealed to him? And what did he tragically overlook about its suitability to submarines?

Q4: One of the biggest “why does it matter?” answers comes from another question: why didn’t anyone try to stop Rush when so many people felt he was doomed to fail? For over a decade he continued to build his submersibles and take people down to the Titanic, even though there were multiple whistleblowers. What prevented him from getting in trouble or simply being regulated more carefully?

Paper #2: The Ugly Truth, due Wed, June 9th by 5pm!

English 1113

Paper #2: The Ugly Truth

INTRO: In each of the essays for this section, the writers explore a topic from a different angle, the one that isn’t ‘touristy,’ and shows us the ugly truth behind these beautiful places and activities. For example, traveling to an ancient temple in the Guatemalan jungle reminds Melissa Johnson that no civilization lasts forever, even her own; likewise, Mosab Abu Toha shows how a city where he grew up and had a normal life can suddenly become a nightmare, where the horrors of history are blindly repeated. The closer we look at a place or an activity (such as Titanic tourism), the more of the ‘ugly truth’ we can see, which helps us understand who we are, and why our society works the way it does, for good and ill.

PROMPT: For this paper, I want you to write about an ‘ugly truth’ that you’ve seen, experienced, or learned about in our daily lives. It should be about something that is normal, that people do every day, but maybe don’t see the other side of. Explain what people normally see, and how people can even enjoy/interact with it, but then explain what they don’t often see, and why that’s just as important. FOR EXAMPLE, many people go to places like Sonic for a cold drink or something quick to eat, and don’t think twice; but if you’ve ever worked there, you know the struggles of what it’s like to be a carhop, or the frustration of having ice cream machines break down, or a co-worker who never shows up to work. Your paper should ask, in some way, “why does the ugly truth matter? What do we learn from seeing inside this activity?” You can also show us the ‘beautiful truth’ as well—the important, powerful things that most people don’t see about a place or activity.

REQUIREMENTS: You should have at least FOUR sources for this assignment, TWO of which should be essays from class. Even though the essays might be more serious than your topic, you can compare ideas and observations about Titanic sightseeing to your own job at Sonic (you might have a boss like Stockton Rush, for example). Use the essays to help us see the conversation and understand why it matters. TWO or THREE sources should be from outside class (we’ll talk about how to find good sources) relating to your place/activity that can help us understand and can give you more to respond to. If you’re writing about the volunteering at a local animal shelter, for example, you can find articles that you can compare your experience to, or help bring out other ‘truths’ people might not know about (facts, statistics, etc). Find your sources FIRST, so you can respond to them in your essay, rather than trying to stick in random sources later.

REVISED DUE DATE: Despite what the course calendar says, I’ve moved this back a day, so it’s now due in TWO WEEKS, on Wednesday, July 9^th by 5pm.

For Tuesday: Johnson, “The Hungry Jungle” (37-47)

 

For Tuesday: Johnson, “The Hungry Jungle” (37-47)

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Why do Angela and Suley want to get married in such a dangerous, inaccessible place in the world? What does it represent to them as a couple, and how does the author try to explain it to the reader?

Q2: The author agrees to tag along because, in her words, “My future was a cloudy mess, but I knew this: I am an adventurer” (39). What do you think she means by this word, given that she is not an experienced adventurer, at least in the sense of exploring foreign lands? Why might this word be an important part of her self-identity?

Q3: The essay is entitled “The Hungry Jungle”: how is this phrase both literal and symbolic in the essay? Also, how does this essay reveal some of the darker realities to ‘adventure’ travel that we often don’t think about?

Q4: Toward the end of the essay, the author writes, “I have never felt anything close to the bond these women share. Merging with another person requires a kind of faith I’ve distrusted and resisted. But this alter was made for transformation” (44). How is this essay, like many of our food essays, also about relationships? How is travel a way to examine our relationships with other people—and ourselves?

For Tuesday: Resta, "My Catalina" (82-88)

 

For Tuesday: Resta, “My Catalina” (82-88)

Answer TWO of the following in a short response:

Q1: Like Laymon’s essay about the gas station restaurant, this essay is also about loving food “that lives somewhere in the triangulation of white trash, lower-middle class, and solid-middle-class” (83). How can food define your economic status? In other words, how is what you eat indicative of how the rest of the world sees you? What makes Catalina one of those foods?

Q2: After she makes her first Catalina salad in ages, she becomes obsessed with it, eating it by the forkful, “as if I actually needed it to survive” (85). A few weeks later, she finds it absolutely disgusting. How does she explain her brief love affair with Catalina in adulthood? What did it allow her to taste or to experience again?

Q3: In a way, Catalina is a metaphor for her mother: she is able to see and understand something about her mother through the condiment. How do you think this works? Why did her mother’s reliance on a cheap condiment say a lot about who she was, and what kind of mother she was, bad or good?

Q4: Resta has a very tragic back story, leaving home at age 13 because her mother simply didn’t want to take care of her anymore (after she was arrested for hitchhiking to another state!). Why do you think she brings this into an essay about her relationship with a cheap food item? How does it help answer the question, “why does this matter?”

Handout: Quoting Essays in Your Paper, MLA Style

NOTE: This is not an assignment, but a reference handout for your Paper #1 assignment. 

Quoting Essays in Your Paper, MLA Style

From My Favorite Restaurant Served Gas, page 55

“Yet it is the experience of eating food from restaurants that serve gas that really elucidates our American, or our deeply Southern American, conundrum. Our practices are literally poisonous. Mississippi charges me a tax for driving a hybrid car. It literally charges me for not wanting to fuck up our environment more. And. But. The friendships we make while experimenting and/or surviving the poisonous parts of Mississippi are what make our lives and definitely our childhoods—if we are willing to mine them—heavier, and actually most wonderfully Southern.”

INTRODUCE & CITE

In Kiese Laymon’s essay, “My Favorite Restaurant Served Gas,” he writes about his childhood memories surrounding a gas station in his hometown of Forrest, Mississippi, which also served some of his favorite food. However, later in life he reflects that, “Yet it is the experience of eating food from restaurants that serve gas that really elucidates our American, or our deeply Southern American, conundrum. Our practices are literally poisonous” (55). OR (Laymon 55).

ALWAYS RESPOND AFTERWARDS

In Kiese Laymon’s essay, “My Favorite Restaurant Served Gas,” he writes about his childhood memories surrounding a gas station in his hometown of Forrest, Mississippi, which also served some of his favorite food. However, later in life he reflects that, “Yet it is the experience of eating food from restaurants that serve gas that really elucidates our American, or our deeply Southern American, conundrum. Our practices are literally poisonous” (55). In other words, he realizes that his favorite childhood memories were bound up things he has learned to look down on: fossil fuels, pollution, and fast-food culture. Can he still love and appreciate a childhood based in things he can no longer respect?

WORKS CITED PAGE

Laymon, Kiese. “My Favorite Restaurant Served Gas.” The Best American Food and Travel Writing 2024. ed. Lakshmi. New York: Mariner Books, 2024.

For Wednesday: Laymon, “My Favorite Restaurant Served Gas” (52-56)

For Wednesday: Laymon, “My Favorite Restaurant Served Gas” (52-56)

Answer TWO of the following questions in a short response, at least enough for me to see you thinking on paper, and not just giving a vague, bland response. Remember that none of these questions has one answer—there are many possible paths to explore.

Q1: Since Laymon is writing about his own childhood experiences and culture growing up, he wants you to not only see it but hear it, too. To emphasize this, he often writes the way he speaks (or spoke as a kid), using “drank” instead of “drink,” “shole” instead of “sure,” and even drops the odd f-bomb. How does this affect you as a reader? Does it help you understand or identify with him? Or does he go too far? Why would this technique make it a “best” American essay?

Q2: This essay is all about the “romance” of eating at his favorite childhood restaurant, which just happened to be attached to a gas station. According to him, what was “romantic” or “nostalgic” about this experience? What does he want you to see and appreciate about it? Why might another restaurant in town—such as McDonald’s, etc.—not have given him this sense of romance?

Q3: Toward the end of the essay, Laymon writes about our “deeply Southern American conundrum,” which is that “Our practices are literally poisonous…[but] the poisonous parts of Mississippi are what make our lives and definitely our childhoods—if we are willing to mine them—heavier, and actually most wonderfully Southern” (55). What do you think he means by this statement? Why was growing up in Mississippi “poisonous,” and why is he still nostalgic about this fact? What he did he gain from the poison once he “mined” it?

Q4: Once he learns about Ms. Joyce and her experience working at Jr. Food Mart, he reflects, “This, now, is part of my favorite restaurant memory too” (56). How does her experience of the ‘other side’ of the restaurant change what he experiences and remembers about the place? Does it destroy the romance? Or simply change it?