Part of the Penguin Academics Series, Rhetorical Choices is a rhetorically-organized reader whose selections and apparatus encourage students to pay attention to the social and rhetorical dimensions of language and writing.
The exploration of these dimensions throughout the book also helps students to see the power of writing and the lifelong benefits of writing well. Through its choice of readings and pedagogical elements throughout the book, Rhetorical Choices stresses more than any other reader the idea that writers are always making choices and that these choices always occur in a particular social, political, and cultural context.
Each chapter begins with “Introduction” and concludes with “Strategies for Writers” and “Research and Writing Assignments.”
1. Writers, Readers, and Rhetorical Choices.
2. Narration.
Annie Dillard, “The Chase.”
Richard Wright, “The Library Card.”
Austin Bunn, “The Bittersweet Science.”
Elizabeth Alexander, “Narrative: Ali.”
Amy Tan, “Mother Tongue.”
George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant.”
Shirley Jackson, “Seven Types of Ambiguity.”
3. Description.
Meredith F. Small, “Captivated.”
Alice Walker, “Am I Blue?”
Julia Alvarez, “Snow.”
E.B. White, “Once More to the Lake.”
Sherman Alexie, “Father Coming Home.”
Rachel Guido De Vries, “On Alabama Avenue, Paterson, NJ 1954.”
Kira Salak, “The Vision Seekers.”
Barry Lopez, “Stone Horse.”
4. Definition.
Judy Brady, “I Want a Wife.”
Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl.”
Jonathan Rauch, “Caring for Your Introvert.”
Lisa Kanae, “Pidgin.”
Gloria Naylor, “The Meanings of a Word.”
Gretel Ehrlich, “About Men.”
Elie Wiesel, “How We Can Understand Their Hatred?”
Cynthia Ozick, “What Helen Keller Saw.”
5. Exemplification.
Ian Frazier, “If Memory Doesn’t Serve.”
Emily Tsao, “Thoughts of an Oriental Girl.”
Diane Ackerman, “The Vagaries of Taste.”
Countee Cullen, Two Poems: For a Lady I Know and Incident.
Toni Cade Bambara, “The Lesson.”
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Delusions of Grandeur.”
Amy Wang, “The Same Difference.”
Barbara Ehrenreich, “What I've Learned from Men.”
David Brooks, “People Like Us.”
6. Classification.
Selections from Harper's Magazine, ““Bill Gates Is…”
Peggy Orenstein, “Where Have All the Lisas Gone?”
Judith Viorst, “Friends, Good Friends, Such Good Friends.”
Margaret Atwood, “Pornography.”
William Zinsser, “College Pressures.”
Gloria Anzaldua, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.”
Philip Elmer-DeWitt, “Bards of the Internet.”
Malcolm Gladwell, “Big and Bad.”
7. Process.
Frederick Douglass, “Learning to Read and Write.”
Kenneth M. Stampp, “To Make Them Stand in Fear.”
Fan Shen, “The Classroom and the Wider Culture.”
Malcolm X, “My First Conk.”
Jessica Mitford, “The American Way of Death.”
Paul Roberts, “How to Say Nothing in 500 Words.”
Charles Johnson, “Dr. King’s Refrigerator.”
8. Comparison and Contrast.
Bruce Catton, “Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts.”
Bharati Mukherjee, “Two Ways to Belong in America.”
Jodi Kantor, “Wham! Bam! Thanks a Bunch!”
Cornel West, “Blacks and Jews.”
R. A. Hudson, “Language Worlds.”
Richard Rodriguez, “Aria.”
Frank McCourt, from `Tis a Memoir.
Deborah Tannen, “Sex, Lies, and Conversation.”
Wendell Berry, “The Failure of War.”
9. Cause and Effect.
Atul Gwande, “Cold Comfort.”
Brent Staples, “A Black Man Ponders His Ability to Alter Public Space.”
Sharon Begley, “The Stereotype Trap.”
Eric Hansen, “The Bali Saleng.”
Louise Erdrich, “Sister Godzilla.”
Pauline Arrillaga, “One by One.”
Michael Davitt Bell, “Magic Time: Observations of a Cancer Casualty.”
David Ropeik, “What Really Scares Us.”
10. Argument.
William F. Buckley, Jr., “The Conflict over the Unusual Word.”
Joy Williams, “The Killing Game.”
Paul Shephard, “Hunting and Human Values.”
Norman Cousins, “Who Killed Benny Paret?”
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
Paul Goldberger, “Building Plans: What the World Trade Center Meant.”
Camille Paglia, “It's a Jungle Out There.”
Lani Guinier, “The Tyranny of the Majority.”
Curtis Chang, “Streets of Gold: The Myth of the Model Minority.”