Coffee mug with word Begin

In this lesson, we'll get started reading our writing textbook, The Hub, and the common read, The Address Book.

Continuing the Conversation of Writing as Exploration. Let us begin this next lesson by considering bell hooks, one of the most influential thinkers, writers, and educators of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Like Mike Rose, bell hooks died in 2021, and as with Rose, thinkers, writers, former students, and readers shared essay after essay and remembrance after remembrance of the effect hooks had on them through her writing and her emphasis on speaking out and talking back.

In a memorial essay in The New Yorker, Hua Hsu reminds us that bell hooks began as Gloria Watkins, born in highly segregated Kentucky in 1952. Her father was a janitor, and her mother was a maid. The schools that hooks attended were segregated. In her autobiographical writings, hooks explain that as a Black girl growing up in 1950s America, “to make yourself heard…was to invite punishment, the back-hand lick, the slap across the face that would catch you unaware” (5). These silencings had the desired effect, for although in intimate spaces of women, between sisters, mothers and daughters, and friends, women spoke with “pleasure” and “joy” along with “loud talk” and “angry words” within the community (whether the household kitchen or the national forum), “the voices of black women…could be tuned out, could become a kind of background music, audible but not acknowledged as significant speech” (hooks 6). It was significant, though, and hooks understood that it needed to be recorded, held onto, and considered: to be written.

For hooks and for you, writing may be “not solely an expression of creative power” but also “an act of resistance” (8). Let’s consider two other of Mike Rose’s “Tips on Thinking and Writing”: “Investigate the things that trouble you” and “Whatever it is you’re interested in or become interested in…learn its history.” In the common read for INRW and ENGL 1301, The Address Book, Deirdre Mask writes that her book, which explores What Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power, began with a simple act, mailing a birthday card from Ireland to her father in North Carolina, and a question, how do letters, bills, tax forms, and other important documents find us? This simple question about the process led to a deep exploration of how an address can determine much about a person’s financial, political, and career potential. Throughout The Address Book, Mask demonstrates Rose’s argument that through careful investigation, “you will have a better understanding of what you [see], a deeper grasp of the dynamics and background factors of what [troubles] you—which puts you in a better position to critique…in a substantial and principled way” (“Tips on Thinking and Writing”). Mask argues that our home addresses “are about identity, wealth, and… race. But most of all they are about power--the power to name, the power to shape history, the power to decide who counts, who doesn’t, and why” (13). She can make that argument because she investigated what troubled her and learned it deeply. Like Rose, Mask understands that studying the history of an idea or situation--where it began and how it developed--equips us to recognize and act on opportunities for change.

Introduction to The Address Book and the first major assignment, a Narrative of Place. “We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it -- for a little while.” - Willa Cather

As The Address Book shows us, the places from our past and present have profoundly affected who we are right now--the “you” who is sitting here, reading this assignment sheet. Some places and spaces hold special importance or meaning for you. It could be your hometown, your elementary school, your grandparents’ kitchen, an arcade, a specific tree you climbed, or the fort you built out of bamboo behind the building that no one dared to walk through. It is somewhere that has held onto you and has never let go. It is where the people you love live—the place where you are loved back.

The impact of these places is closely tied to our memories, and our connections to these places help shape our characters. No matter our age, the spaces we inhabit help us understand truths (and untruths) about the world around us. When did you learn your first lesson about love or happiness or loss? Where were you? What room were you in when life introduced you to the joy of cooking or the pain of regret? Where were you when you figured out the person you wanted to be when you grew up? Where is the place you sought refuge or comfort? There are places in your past that helped define you, helped you figure out how to live, and taught you lesson after lesson. Focus on the place-not the people.

To help you plan for ahead, for this assignment, you will revisit one of those places or spaces as realistically, specifically, detailed, and personally as you possibly can to write a Narrative of Place (approximately 750 - 1000 words).

Here's a model to give you an idea of how this essay should look and sound. (Special thanks to Prof. Allie Schmaltz and Erin Cook for sharing this example.)

For this lesson, we will:

Explore/Learn
- Read in The Hub:
  - Preface, "Introduction to ENGL 1301" (pg xxiii).
  - Preface, "Narrative of Place Essay" (pg xxiv).
  - "Active Reading" (pg 248).
- Read in The Address Book, "Kolkata: How Can Street Addresses Transform the Slums?" (pg 17).
- Read Writing Toolkit: Strategies for Writing the Narrative of Place.