Captain Wells AP Language and Composition
Summer 2015 Reading Assignment
Memoir/Autobiography Assignment
Part I
1.
Choose a memoir/autobiography from the list provided by Captain Wells.
2.
Keep a dialectical journal (refer to journal instructions) whereby you read, annotate
(using sticky notes), and analyze the work. Take notes in the journal on the selfdiscoveries of the author, as well as unlocking the tone of the work through the following elements: diction, imagery, details, language, and syntax. These elements are also known as
DIDLS. (refer to the DIDLS handout).
3.
The journal must have one entry per chapter, or 20 entries total. Whichever one is greater.
4.
Make sure that you document the page # of your quoted text in the journal so that you can provide the proper parenthetical documentation in the paper that will follow your reading.
5.
Cite the source of your work, (your book choice), at the end of the journals so that you can provide proper MLA citation on the paper that will follow your reading.
Part II
You will continue working with your memoir by drafting a letter to its author, infused with questions, relevant examples and vocabulary words. Please do the following in your letter.
1. Introduce yourself to the author. Help him/her understand who you are, why you read his/her book, and what happened as a result.
2. Share an adjective (must be approved) with which you chose to label the author, words such as: tenacious, sanguine, hidebound, eleemosynary, lachrymose, paternalistic, pragmatic, peevish, bilious, insouciant, contumelious, or waggish, tenacious, mulish, industrious, sedulous, etc. You must research the word that you chose in a good unabridged dictionary. The adjective could frame the letter; in other words, the theme of your letter could be to demonstrate the author has the character of the adjective that you chose. You cannot chose words like: good, bad, happy, smart, etc. The word must be a “big-ticket” vocabulary word.
3. Pose a question that you would like the author to answer. Perhaps you want him/her to explain an absence in the book. Perhaps you share what you think s/he meant and ask

for clarification. For example, you might ask the author of The Prize Winner why she stayed with an alcoholic husband.
4. Share your understanding of or confusion about at least one quote or event in the book.
5. Examine how the author might understand the impact of his/her work on others.
6. Draw his/her attention to the story of someone you know who might have faced the same problems, OR compare this author's story with the story of someone who faced a similar struggle.
Your typed rough draft must be at least five paragraphs.
Rubric is as follows:
Letter format (5 pts); Introduction (15 pts); Adjective (15 pts); Question (15pts);
Quote (15pts); Impact (15pts); Someone you know (15pts); Five Paragraphs (5pts)
Memoir/Autobiography Selections:

Adventures in Psychiatry: The Scientific Memoirs of Dr. Abram Hoffer, Abram Hoffer

All But My Life: A Memoir, Gerda Weissman Klein (holocaust)

An American Childhood, Annie Dillard

An Argument for Mind, Jerome Kagan (Harvard psychologist shares stories from his life and practice)
 The Assassins’ Gate,
George Packer (Iraqi War)

Aushwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account, Miklos Nyissli (holocaust)
 Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy (childhood illness, disfigurement)

Autobiography of Malcom X

Bad Boy: A Memoir, Walter Dean Meyers

Baghdad Express: A Gulf War Memoir , Joel Turnipseed

Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers his Armenian Past, Peter Balakian

Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin (southern white journalist passes as a black man to gain a better understanding of racism)
 Boy: Tales of Childhood, Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, Elyn Saks (professional with schizophrenia)

Change Me Into Zeus’s Daughter, Barbara Robinette Moss (childhood disfigurement)

Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother, James McBride (bi-racial identity)

Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody (civil rights)


Detour: My Bi-Polar Road Trip in 4-D, Lizzie Simon (young professional with bipolar disorder)

Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival, Anderson Cooper
(journalist’s perspective on both the stories that get told and those that get neglected)

Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia, Pamela Spiro
Wagner and Carolyn Spiro (schizophrenia as experienced by twins, one with the disease and one who is a psychiatric professional)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris (OCD, coming into ones sexuality, family life)

Emergence: Labeled Autistic, Temple Grandin (professional with autism)

Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic, Martha Beck

Fat Girl: A True Story, Judith Moore (mother/daughter trauma, weight oppression)

Finding Fish: A Memoir, Antwone Fisher (foster care)

First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple, Cameron West (professional with multiple personality disorder)
 The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children, and Struggling with Depression, Tracy
Thompson (post-partum depression)

The Glass Castle: A Memoir, Jeannette Walls (itinerant childhood with neglectful but spirited parents)
 The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sherrill (holocaust)

A Human Being Died that Night: A South African Woman Confronts the Legacy of Apartheid,
Pamela Gobodo-Madikizela

If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O’Brien (Vietnam war)

In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind, Eric Kandel

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, John Krakauer

The Last Lecture, Randy Paucsh and Jeffrey Zaslow

The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell, John Crawford

Limbo: A Memoir, A, Manette Ansay (living with a chronic illness)

Life Inside: A Memoir, Mindy Lewis (young person incarcerated in a mental health facility for two years)

Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran, Azadeh
Moaveni (bi-cultural identity)

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah (story of a twelve year old boy’s conscription into Sierra Leone’s civil war as a “child soldier” and his struggle to retain his humanity with the help of international intervention)

Lucky, Alice Sebold (rape survival)
 Beyond the Hippocratic Oath: A Memoir on the Rise of Modern Medical Ethic, John Dossetor

My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, Rebekah Nathan


My Pet Virus: Rebel without a Cure, Shawn Decker (LIVING with HIV infection on ones own terms)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave, Frederick Douglass

The Nazi Officer’s Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust, Edith Hahn Beer
(holocaust)

Night, Elie Weisel (holocaust)

On the Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives of “Straight” Black Men Who Sleep with Men, J.L.
King

On Writing, Stephen King

The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness, Lori Schiller and Amanda
Bennett (schizophrenia)

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, Azar Nafisi (story of an Iranian college professor who subverted restrictions on the education of girls after the shah was deposed)

The Secret Life of Cowboys, Tom Groneberg

She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders, Jennifer Finney Boylan (transexuality as experienced by college English professor who was also a happily married father)

Skating on the Edge: A Memoir and Journey Through a Metamorphosis of the CIA, Carlos D.
Luria

Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs, Jonathan Ames
 Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood, Julie Gregory

Teacher Man, Frank McCourt

Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism, Temple Grandin

The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur, Daoud Hari

Truth and Beauty: A Friendship, Ann Patchett (a companion piece to Lucy Grealy’s
Autobiography of a Face, one that describes what it was life to be Grealy’s friend)

Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Album

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, Kay Redfield Jamison (a professional with manic depression)

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Maxine Hong Kingston
(growing up as a first generation Chinese American)

Welcome Silence: My Triumph Over Schizophrenia, Carol North (medical professional’s experience with schizophrenia AND healing)

DIALECTICAL JOURNALS
The term “Dialectic” means “the art or practice of arriving at the truth by using conversation involving question and answer.” Think of your dialectical journal as a series of conversations with the texts we read during this course. The process is meant to help you develop a better understanding of the texts we read. Use your journal to incorporate your personal responses to the texts, your ideas about the themes we cover and our class discussions. You will find that it is a useful way to process what you’re reading, prepare yourself for group discussion, and gather textual evidence for your Literary Analysis assignments.
PROCEDURE:
* As you read, choose passages that stand out to you and record them in the left-hand column the chart (ALWAYS include page numbers).
* In the right column, write your response to the text (ideas/insights, questions, reflections, and comments on each passage)
* You must label your responses using the following codes:
* (Q) Question – ask about something in the passage that is unclear
* (C) Connect – make a connection to your life, the world, or another text
* (P) Predict – anticipate what will occur based on what’s in the passage
* (CL) Clarify – answer earlier questions or confirm/disaffirm a prediction
* (R) Reflect – think deeply about what the passage means in a broad sense – not just to the characters in the story/author of the article. What conclusions can you draw about the world, about human nature, or just the way things work?
* (E) Evaluate - make a judgment about what the author is trying to say
Sample Dialectical
Journal entry: Beyond the Yellow Highlighter
Passages from the text--
Must quote at least 10 per reading assigned.
Pg#/¶ EACH Passage you Quote must relate to one of the following codes above.
Make sure to use a variety. Using the same codes for most or all of
Make sure to number them.
1. "The yellow marks in my college textbooks...did not help me very much.”
2. "Annotations do make me read a lot slower and
82/1
87/2 your entries will result in a lower score.
(C) I can relate since I often used to highlight what I thought was important and then end up with most of the page highlighted.

I wish I didn't have to do them. It is so much harder to fake read if you have to annotate like we have to do now. So now I actually read, because it's too hard to fake annotate"
(C) It is harder to fake annotate--it almost takes more time. (R) People are prone to find the easy way to do something.
Since there's really no easy way to annotate-fake or real--it makes sense to really read and think about the texts.
(Q) Is it really harder to fake read if you have to annotate? Or does it just take longer?
CHOOSING PASSAGES FROM THE TEXT:
Look for quotes that seem significant, powerful, thought provoking or puzzling. For example, you might record:
* Effective &/or creative use of stylistic or literary devices
* Passages that remind you of your own life or something you’ve seen before
* Structural shifts or turns in the plot
* A passage that makes you realize something you hadn’t seen before
* Examples of patterns: recurring images, ideas, colors, symbols or motifs.
* Passages with confusing language or unfamiliar vocabulary
* Events you find surprising or confusing
* Passages that illustrate a particular character or setting
RESPONDING TO THE TEXT:
You can respond to the text in a variety of ways. The most important thing to remember is that your observations should be specific and detailed. You can write as much as you want for each entry. You can choose to type and save your journals as PDFs or you can write by hand and then scan and save as PDF.
Basic Responses
* Raise questions about the beliefs and values implied in the text
* Give your personal reactions to the passage
* Discuss the words, ideas, or actions of the author or character(s)
* Tell what it reminds you of from your own experiences

* Write about what it makes you think or feel
* Agree or disagree with a character or the author
Sample Sentence Starters:
I really don’t understand this because…
I really dislike/like this idea because…
I think the author is trying to say that…
This passage reminds me of a time in my life when…
If I were (name of character) at this point I would…
This part doesn’t make sense because…
This character reminds me of (name of person) because…