Family and Personal Experience: Describing a Special Person or Place p.

Ecology of Language and Place In-Class Writing Workshop No. 7

With: R. Chamberlain & R. McKinnon 4-20-09

Part 1: The Essays: Terry Tempest Williams, “The Village Watchman”

Scott Saunders, “Inheritance of Tools”

I. Reading the Essays (15 Min.)

Each group will take turns reading aloud an essay by Saunders or Williams. When you are
finished, you will discuss the essay and give a description of your analysis to the other group.
Keep track of time so you move through this activity with focus and attention.

II. Discussing The Essays (30 min.)

How does each essayist tell a story, introducing us, step by step, to the special people and places in
their lives? How do they bring us up close, into the descriptive scenes or events of their lives? How do
they then explain or synthesize what they have learned from these people, places, and events? What
phrases or images stand out? What are the cultural or social issues in their families? How does Williams’s
family deal with being “insiders,” “outsiders,” or having someone who is “special” or “unique,” like Alan?
How does Saunders explore the layered family relationships that he “inherited” through tools?
What elements in Saunders or Williams’s writing express an appreciation for family relationships,
the natural world, or the beauty and struggle of life? How do you think they view their connection to
family, community, nature and place? How might this inspire your vision for writing essays that resonate
with a sense of culture and place, or to write about unrecognized or “unsung” people in your life?

How is each essay framed?” How does it begin?

How does it end?

What techniques does each essayist use to structure the body of their essay? What are the parts or pieces
that each essay is constructed from? How do these different parts flow together?

Where is each writers’ theme or thesis? When do you understand what the essays are about?

How do they explore their complex relationships or juxtapositions to family, place, others

Insiders/Outsiders Family/Community Life/Death

Self/ Family Nature/Human Inner/Outer perception

Where are the descriptive passages? How does each of them use descriptive language to paint a vivid
picture or to make a point?

Is there an oral flow to the text, (i.e. repetition. alliteration, memorable phrases, etc.)?

How do they use a variety of sentences, and to what effect?

Short, terse sentences
Well balanced sentences
Find examples of simple, compound, and complex sentences.

How do they include questions or answers?

How do they include poetry, quotes, data, journals, research, etc.?

Notice how compact these essays are. How do these writers tell a story in the most concise language
possible?

Inner Story/ Outer Story:

How do these writers describe scenes and give details of sight, sound, smell, taste? How do they use
descriptive language to explore outer events, activities, doing, and being?
Family and Personal Experience: Describing a Special Person or Place p. 2

Then, how do they evaluate experience? How do they move into inner reflection, assessment, description,
and evaluation?

In personal or disjunctive essays, the theme or thesis is woven throughout the essay in a carefully
crafted story. In the academic essay—the thesis is stated in the beginning and is highly structured
throughout. A personal or disjunctive essay, like all good storytelling, relies on the weaving together of
these two shifting perspectives—the inner and outer story.

-Outer Story: description, scene, events, action, drama--close-up like a hummingbird,

-Inner Story: synthesis, panorama, meaning, mind, overall picture—a bird’s eye view, like an
eagle,

A disjunctive essay is the marriage between the personal and academic essay. The essayist is
weaving together internal and external worlds, internal and external authorities, personal and academic
writing techniques. The theme and purpose of the disjunctive essay is more sophisticated to develop.

Look at the essays again. How does each essayist achieve their effect? As you prepare your explication or
analysis
Mark or show the inner story/ the outer story.
Mark or show the thesis or theme.
How they and begin and end?
What does this suggest?

III. Presentation: Return and Give you analysis of your essay to the other group. (30 min.)

Part 2: Writing Activity--Describing a Special Person and Place (45 Min.)

Work alone on the following writing activity. Write your name, the date, and title of your entry,
“In-Class Workshop, Describing a Special Person and Place.” When completed, place this exercise in the
“In-Class Writings/ Workshops” section of your class portfolio. If there is time, you might share what you
have written.
Layers of our personal history converge with special places and people. Sometimes vivid sensory
experiences anchor them into our memories. Perhaps it's the smell of a summer rain storm; the clatter of
silverware in a sink; the sound of seagulls or ravens; the texture of fog or light on an autumn day; the smell
of an old, musty basement or the scent of a garage; suddenly you are taken back to a past event. Strong
sensory experiences bring our memories to life.
Whenever I smell the heady scent of sweet-peas, I am taken back to the colorful vines in my
grandmother’s garden in Montana. I am also remind of the taste of fresh tomatoes, peas, carrots and
strawberries eaten from the vine, and of home-made vanilla ice-cream made with fresh cream on warm
summer evenings.

1) Recall a significant person in your life; someone from your family, a close friend, or someone who is important to
you. What do they look like? How do they stand? What do they sound like? Use all of your senses to remember
and describe them. Write for 10 min.

2) Now describe a special place that you share with this person. Share in detail your connection to this
place. Recall the tastes, smells, sounds, and textures of this place. Write for 10 min.

3) Now, carry on a dialogue or conversation with this special person. What do you want to say to them?
What do they want to say to you? Perhaps you re-play a special conversation that you had in the past.
Invent a conversation that you would like to have in the future? What have you always wanted to say but
never shared? Write for 10 min.

Part 2: Retelling What You Write If there is time

Read excerpts from your writing with each other. Take turns (10 min).
Family and Personal Experience: Describing a Special Person or Place p. 3

For writers…there is the challenge and promise of a whole new

psychic geography to be explored…But there is difficult and
dangerous walking on ice, as we try to find language and images
for a consciousness we are just coming into.
--unknown

There is a world inside each of us that we know better than

anything else, and world outside of us that calls for our
attention—the world of our families, our communities, our history.

--Addonizio and Laux (p. 21)

You have to know and describe your brother so well he becomes

everyone’s brother, to evoke the hatred of a winter so passionately
that we all begin to feel the chill.
--Addonizio and Laux (p. 21)

“Daydream back. Somewhere in your ancestry is a Celtic

musician, a slave prisoner, a Druid priest or a Cheyenne Contrary.
You may just “sense” it and never know for sure. List the people
you “Know” are your ancestors, then add other types of people
that you feel a kinship.
Susan Goldsmith Woolridge, Poemcrazy

Ask yourself and your family questions….Begin piecing together

“who” you feel you come from…Title a poem with his or her name
or relationship—Poppa, Granny, Ima, Aunt Belle, etc. Make your
poem a letter or a request, whether this person is alive or dead.
Ask all the questions you want. Include the answers given back to
you if they come. Say everything you’ve ever wanted to say to this
person, angry, loving, sad, confused, accusing or grateful….