Identity, Constructing a Persona, Using Metaphors

Reading Assignment 2
Bloom and White, Inquiry: Questioning, Reading, Writing, all of Chapter 1
Williams, Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace, Lesson 2: Correctness
Discussion
Bloom and White point out in Chapter 1 of Inquiry that all writers speak through a persona, that is the narrative self you present to your readers. Writers are in control of their persona and can create one, or call upon one, to fit a particular narrative situation. Writers write about a specific topic with a purpose and for an audience, hence the necessity to choose/show the appropriate persona (or part/side of your self) to please your audience and reach your goal. This persona will have to be modified whether you write for people you know, are comfortable with; or people you know very little or do not know (boss, client, teacher, banker, unknown readers, etc.). This persona, in a social context, will also be modified depending on whom you are with at a specific moment. The switch in person does not just apply to writing. It happens all the time as you move from one particular social or cultural environment to another. See Richard Wright’s text, The Power of Books, an excerpt taken from Wright’s book Black Boy. In this text, Wright describes the event that led to his accessing a public library for the first time with the help of a white man who gave him his library card. The story takes place in the Jim Crow South at a time when African Americans were not allowed to mingle with Whites in public places, and thus did not have easy access to knowledge. In this text, you can see the obvious switch in persona performed by the author/narrator throughout the text: the prominent persona is that of the intelligent and knowledgeable narrator/writer who discusses with ability and conviction his obsession with literature and describes retrospectively the events that led to his discovery of fiction, but a different persona replaces this self-secure one, and that is the persona the narrator had to take on when addressing or responding to the questions of white men at the time of his discovery (see p. 105). This other persona is not as self-secure and independent as the main one (his white coworkers call him a boy while he answers to them with a sir that punctuates all of his sentences in response to their questions), but rather demonstrates the racial and social discrimination and the presence of a racial hierarchy in the narrator’s Southern, racist community. This switch in persona illustrates the need for a change in attitude and language according to context and audience; problematic change in this case. Think about the ways in which the different authors in the texts you have to read in this lesson perform the same kind of switch when a situation occurs that requires such a switch.
Let me here emphasize the stylistic elements of concreteness I am asking you to think about as you write the second assignment. Vague and generalized details contribute nothing but words. They weaken your paper, as they would weaken your arguments or your proposals or your job application letters or any kind of writing you will do. Do not just say black hair when you mean shoulder-length curly and shiny black hair. Do not simply say you had a good meal when it was a particularly fine piece of aged filet mignon or a huge spinach and mushroom salad with hard-boiled eggs and a honey-mustard dressing you enjoyed. In Ski School 2, a film I hesitate to admit having seen, the heroes are getting up courage to fight their rivals.

“What will we do to them?” one asks. “We’ll pound them,” says another. “We’ll beat their brains out,”says another. “We’ll grab their uvula (that thing that hangs down in your throat), pull it out of their mouths, nail it to a two-by-four, and make human paddle balls out of them,” says the last in a fine display of concreteness. Aim for this sort of graphic detail.
Finally, avoid excesses and avoid any too-familiar details. Do not detail the familiar. Do not overwrite. Show, do not tell.
Lesson 2 Persona, Description
Complete this written assignment in a word processed document, and submit it via the E-Learning System email tool for grading. Keep a copy of the assignment.
Write a 1500- to 2000-word description of yourself in different contexts. Describe the different images of yourself you tend to project depending on the situation you are in (dinner with friends, meeting with family, lunch with boss, weekend alone with your dog). Use at least four different contexts and clearly describe how and why you switch persona from one context to another. These contexts can be specific (a particular, punctual event) or broad (simply being in the presence of a particular person). ¨Use various kinds of detail; physical, dialogue, actions, etc. to describe your persona in these different contexts. Place yourself in four (or more) defined environments and show us a different persona functioning in each environment. Clearly emphasize the differences between each persona through what should be rather dissimilar descriptions and focus on being concrete. Note the simplicity and avoidance of sentimentality in the texts dedicated to the description of the ways in which literacy can change one’s identity (pp. 85-115). In fiction, character description, including physical detail, is often used to make a comment on a character; Willie Loman’s stooped shoulders in Death of a Salesman reflect his sense of defeat, for example. We are not looking for a literary description here, but you should be able to describe the unique characteristics of your attitude, behavior, looks, those traits which make one of your personas identifiable and different from the next (mannerisms, gestures, posture, other bodily indicators; dress; manner of speaking, etc.).
A metaphor is an implied comparison. In “Beyond Traditional notions of Identity”(p. 77), Gloria Anzaldua uses the metaphor of the bridge as she tries to explain the heterogeneity and multiplicity of her identity (p. 78). Take this text as an example of the productive use of metaphor. In this second assignment, as you describe yourself in different contexts, use at least two metaphors in order to further emphasize a particular aspect of one of your personas. Use bold face to point out the presence of metaphors in your paper.
Again, I caution you to avoid excesses of any kind. This assignment is simply a description of you as you move from one space to another. Be concrete, clear, and use simple structures and language. This essay is not intended as a symbolic piece. Be truthful in the description of your behavior.
A short comment on writing a conclusion: you will find that you are often better off without the paragraph that you wrote for a conclusion, especially if all it does is to reiterate what has already been said. That is, write your concluding paragraph and then if it does not add to the quality of your paper, remove it entirely, ending your paper with the paragraph before the one you thought would be your conclusion. In this way you can at least escape the triteness of most ending paragraphs that fall flat at the end, thereby destroying so many papers.
Once you have written your rough draft and made every detail concrete and you should write your draft in one sitting, as quickly as possible; you can spend some time editing it. Use your spellchecker and whatever else you have available. Read your paper aloud, checking for grammatical and mechanical errors and especially for unnatural diction. If it does not sound like you, it is probably exaggerated and pompous and will be penalized. Remember to be economical. “Being in love with a place, like being in love with a person, is a stimulus to excessive eloquence.” (Lynn Bloom, Fact and Artifact).