AP® Language and Composition: Reading Guide
As an AP Language and Composition student, you need to be able to analyze more than 600 word
articles and test prompts. As we have gone through the last 18 weeks, I hope you have discovered
topics which you love to explore and topics which you would rather have a root canal than explore.
The next step is to read, summarize, analyze, and present a longer piece of literature. So, to begin,
choose a nonfiction book or memoir from the list below (see me to approve another text) then read
it, making entries in a dialectical journal; three entries per chapter is sufficient. For me to assess and
for you to showcase and grow your skills, complete a Reading Guide as described below.
A complete Reading Guide consists of:
a MLA citation
a rhetorical précis
pivotal quotations
provocative, context-driven questions
a visual text paired with a passage and a paragraph that explicates the connection
a paragraph that describes how the text will play a role in the research.
Education
There are no children Here, Alex Kotlowitz
Summerhill, A.S. Neill
Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi
Children of Crisis, Robert of Coles
The Future of the Race, Henry Louis Gates, JR.
The Autobiography of Malcom X
The Color of Water, James McBride
Black Ice, Lorene Carey
Lives on the Boundary, Mike Rose
Iron and Silk, Mark Salzman
Work
Working: People Talk about What They Do All
Day and How They Feel about What They
Do, Studs Terkel
Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an
Imperfect Science, Atul Gawande
Mountains beyond Mountains, Trace Kidder
Letters to a Young Journalist, Samuel Freedman
The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of
the American Worker, Mike Rose
Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich
Down and Out in Paris and London,
George Orwell
The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell
Community
Urban Tribes, Ethan Watters
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of
American Community, Robert Putnam
Miami, Joan Didion
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down,
Anne Fadiman
Dreans from My Father: A Story of Race and
Inheritance, Barack Obama
American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood,
Marie Arana
Fault Lines, Meena Alexander
Gender
Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus,
John Gray
Dave Barry’s complete guide to Guys, Dave Barry
Reviving Olphelia, Mary Pipher
Raising Cain,
Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson
This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolfe
The Road from Coorain, Jill Ker Conway
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Wolfe
Sports and Fitness
Seabiscuit, Luara Hillenbrand
The Summer Game, Roger Angell’s
Gold Dreams: Writings on Golf, John Updike
Best Seat in the House: My Journey in Sports,
Christine Brennan
Days of Grace, Arthur Ashe
Beyond a Boundary, C.L.R James
Language
The New Doublespeak, William Lutz
You just don’t understand, Deborah Tannen
Eats, Shoots & Leaves, The Zero Tolerance
Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss
The Language Police, Diane Ravitch
One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty
The Winged Seed, Li-Young Lee
The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
Hunger of Memory, Robert Rodriguez
Monkey Bridge, Lan Cao
Native Speaker, Chang-Rae Lee
The Farming of Bones, Edwidge Danticat
Science and Technology
The Best American Science and Nature Writing
Loren Eiseley
Steven Pinker
Sven Birkerts
Carl Sagan
Lewis Thomas
Stephen J. Gould
Edward O. Wilson
The Beak of the Finch by Jonas Weiner
Trilobite, Richard Fortey
Popular Culture
Amusing ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman
Thirty-One Songs, Nick Hornsby
Totally, Tenderly, Tragically, Phillip Lopate
An Empire of their own, Neal Gabler’s
Everything Bad is Good for You, Steven Johnson
John Leonard
Pauline Kael
Marcus Griel
Nature
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard
Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
The End of Nature, Bill McKibben
Rising Tide, John M. Barry
Coming into the Country, John McPhee
Of Wolves and Men, Barry Lopez
Omnivore’s Dillema, Michael Pollan
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver
The Way to Rainy Mountain, N Scott Momaday
The Solace of Open Spaces, Gretel Ehrlich
Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain
A Sand Country Almanac, Aldo Leopold
Never Cry Wolf, Farley Mowat
People of the Deer, Farlay Mowat
The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin
The Mountains of California, John Muir
Politics
A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid
Black Skins, White Masks, Franz Fanon
Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu
Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
The Book of Courtier, Baldassare Castiglione
Lincoln at Gettysburg, Gary Wills
Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag
The March of Folly, Barbara Tuchman
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown
The Assault on Reason, Al Gore
If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O’Brian
A Rumor of War, Phillip Caputo
Jarhead, Anthony Swofford
Thomas Jefferson’s Autobiography
Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs
The Education of Henry Adams
Student Name
Course Info
Date
CITATION:
Bordo, Susan. “The Empire of Images in Our World of Bodies.” They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in
Academic Writing. Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, eds. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. 149-161.
RHETORICAL PRECIS:
In “The Empire of Images in Our World of Bodies,” Susan Bordo, professor of English and Women’s
Studies at the University of Kentucky, examines the problems with the media’s view of body image and
how people try to obtain perfection through dieting and surgical and cosmetic procedures. Bordo supports
her position first by citing her personal experience watching TV, which suggests that she should
enthusiastically try to look younger and raise her daughter to be the idealistic “white girl;” second, by
employing statistics from a study done in Fiji, which demonstrates the degree that body image distortion
has been exported by western countries; third, by providing data that shows an increasing trend in
cosmetic surgery; and forth, by offering quotes from accredited professionals to emphasize her argument.
Bordo’s purpose is to emphasize the impact that television, internet, and magazines have on the way that
the body is perceived and to interrogate the media’s attempts to market the “perfect” celebrity body to the
average woman, thus encouraging plastic surgery, eating disorders and low self esteem. Bordo, a woman
over fifty, appeals to all generations of women whose sense of self is being shaped by the media.
PIVOTAL QUOTES: Include at least five quotes from the text that you would feel compelled to share with
your audience.
CONTEXT DRIVEN QUESTIONS: Draft at least five questions which might motivate someone to read the
book. These should be questions that someone who has not yet read the book would be able to consider;
they should not be identification questions.
1. Bordo shares her heartfelt concern about the messages being sent to young girls: “I accidentally
tune into the Maury Povich Show and my heart is torn in two. The topic of the day is ‘back-to-girl’
makeovers. One by one, five beautiful 12-, 13-, and 14-year old ‘tomboys’ (as Maury called them)
are ‘brought back’ to their ‘feminine side’ (156). How do programs like the Maury Povich Show
influence today’s definition of teenage femininity? Additionally, how do they influence mothers’
expectations for their girls?
2. Bordo opines, “’Aging beautifully’ used to mean wearing one’s years with style, confidence and
vitality. Today, it means not appearing to age at all” (150). In what ways does this claim express
the experiences of American women over fifty? Can you offer examples and counter examples of
her claim? What influences, if any, might mediate or make negligible such prescriptive media
images?
3. To what extent do media depictions affect how individuals see their bodies? Susan Bordo, a 56year-old professor, opines that while she is a cultural critic, she is not immune to media
prescriptions that would indicate that she needs to look young to have self esteem. What is your
own best and worst physical quality? How do media messages, if at all, shape your own self
assessment?
4. Do you believe, as does Bordo, that society or the media promotes the stereotype of “girls being
girls” and “boys being boys”? What evidence from popular media might you offer to either confirm
or contest this thesis?
5. Bordo emphasizes how the “perfect image” is promoted widely after going into a store and
browsing through the magazine isle. Can you identify the ideal image promoted for women and
trace the source(s) of the image in your everyday life?
6. Bordo maintains that media sources have a negative impact on image. Do you believe that
government sponsored messages such as “Verb . . . it’s what you do” have as great an effect on
a child’s self definition as opposing media images that promote obsession with physical beauty?
7. Bordo indicts a new myth “circulating among teenage girls: If you can get rid of it through exercise
rather than purging or laxatives, you don’t have a problem” (154-155). Do you believe, like Bordo,
that excessive or obsessive exercising is truly distinct from eating sicknesses like bulimia? Please
explain your response with contemporary examples.
8. Bordo contests the advice of psychologist Sharon Lamb who “advises mothers to chill out if their
9-year old girls ‘play lovely little games in high feels, strip teasing, flouncing, around and jutting
their chests out,’ to relax if their 11-year-olds go out with ‘thick blue eye shadow, spaghetti straps
and bra straps intertwined, long and leggy with short black dresses.’ They are ‘silly and adorable,
sexy and marvelous all at once,’ she tells us, as they ‘celebrate their objectification,’ ‘playing our
male fantasies . . . but without risk’” (158). When one considers that 22 to 29 percent of all rapes
against girls occur when they are under eleven, are these behaviors so benign? Does the way
our daughters dress affect this statistic? Where might you draw the line with your own children? Is
ambivalence worth risking your daughter’s sexual purity?
9. How has the use of cosmetic surgery among middle-aged Hollywood stars influenced the image
offered to or prescribed for everyday women? If Susan Sarandon looks younger today than she
did in the 1991 (150), as Bordo claims, is her appearance a driving force in the aspirations of socalled average women?
10. Bordo seeks to demonstrate that no group of women is immune, even those who come from
cultures where the body norms are less emaciated: “If they come from communities that
traditionally have celebrated voluptuous bodies and within which food represents love, safety, and
home, they may feel isolation and guilt over the widening gap between the values they’ve grown
up with and those tugging at them now” (154). How do your community, environment and beliefs
affect the way you define ‘inner beauty’ and deal with body image?
11. Bordo cites the increase in cosmetic surgeries from 681,000 in 1989 to 8.5 million in 2001 as
support for her claim that our culture is obsessed with the perfect body. Her critique also
implicates the ethics of plastic surgeons who play a critical role in reinforcing the discontentment
women feel with their “natural” bodies. Is the rise in cosmetic surgery a signal of unethical
medical practices, or is it simply an indication of technological innovations that have extended
access to cosmetic procedures that were previously reserved for the wealthy.
VISUAL EXPLICATION: Please reproduce a passage from the text. Pair it with a visual—self
produced or found—that mirrors or comments upon its message. Then, compose a paragraph that
explicates the connection between the visual and the passage.
RESEARCH PROPOSAL: Write a paragraph that traces the connection between this source and
your chosen research question.