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American Literature and Rhetoric by Robin Aufses; Renee Shea; Katherine E. Cordes; Lawrence Scanlon - First Edition, 2021 from Macmillan Student Store
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American Literature and Rhetoric

First  Edition|©2021  Robin Aufses; Renee Shea; Katherine E. Cordes; Lawrence Scanlon

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Contents

Table of Contents

Guided Tour of American Literature & Rhetoric

1 Rhetorical Analysis

ACTIVITY Recognizing Civil Discourse

The Rhetorical Situation

Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address

Occasion, Context, and Purpose

ACTIVITY Defining a Rhetorical Situation

The Rhetorical Triangle

ACTIVITY Analyzing the Rhetorical Situation

Billie Jean King, Serena Is Still Treated Differently Than Male Athletes

Rhetorical Appeals

Ethos

Building Ethos

J. D. Vance, from Hillbilly Elegy

ACTIVITY Building Ethos

Logos

Conceding and Refuting

ACTIVITY Analyzing Logos and Counterargument

Jia Tolentino, from What It Takes to Put Away Your Phone

Pathos

Making Balanced Appeals

Richard Nixon, from The Checkers Speech

ACTIVITY Analyzing Pathos

Diana Abu-Jaber, from On Recognition and Nation

Combining Ethos, Logos, and Pathos

Helen Keller, Letter to Mark Twain, 1906

ACTIVITY Combining Ethos, Logos, and Pathos

Analyzing Visual Texts | Identifying Rhetorical Appeals

Tom Toles, Rosa Parks (cartoon)

ACTIVITY Identifying Rhetorical Appeals in a Visual Text

Nate Beeler, Government Is Watching (cartoon)

Analyzing Rhetoric and Style

Diction

Figurative Language

ACTIVITY Analyzing Diction

John Muir, from Save the Redwoods

Syntax

ACTIVITY Analyzing Syntax

John F. Kennedy, from Inaugural Address

Tone

ACTIVITY Analyzing Tone

Analyzing Visual Texts | Analyzing Visual Rhetoric

Dodge Durango (advertisement)

ACTIVITY Close Reading a Visual Text

KFC Hot and Spicy Chicken (advertisement)

From Reading to Writing: Crafting a Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Shirley Chisholm, from People and Peace, Not Profits and War

Preparing to Write: Annotating Nonfiction

ACTIVITY Annotating an Excerpt

Developing a Thesis Statement

Supporting Your Thesis

ACTIVITY Organizing a Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Writing Topic Sentences

ACTIVITY Writing Topic Sentences

Using Quotations as Evidence

Documenting Sources

ACTIVITY Writing a Body Paragraph

Revising a Rhetorical Analysis Essay

ACTIVITY Revising a Paragraph

Analyzing a Sample Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Joseph Barrett, "People and Peace, Not Profits and War"

ACTIVITY Providing Peer Feedback for Revision

CULMINATING ACTIVITY Crafting a Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Order of the Day

2 Evidence-Based Arguments

What Is Argument?

Understanding Claims

ACTIVITY Identifying Arguable Claims

Types of Claims

Claims of Fact

ACTIVITY Making Claims of Fact

Claims of Value

ACTIVITY Making Claims of Value

Claims of Policy

ACTIVITY Making Claims of Policy

Understanding and Analyzing Evidence

Types of Evidence

Personal Experience

Anecdotes

ACTIVITY Using Personal Experience and Anecdotes as Evidence

Current Events

Historical Information

ACTIVITY Using Current Events and Historical Information as Evidence

Expert Opinion

Quantitative Evidence

ACTIVITY Analyzing Evidence

Florence Kelley, Speech on Child Labor

Logical Reasoning and Organization: Shaping an Argument

Induction

Deduction

ACTIVITY Using Inductive and Deductive Reasoning

Logical Fallacies

Red Herrings and Ad Hominem Fallacies

Faulty Analogies

Straw Man Fallacies

Either/Or Fallacies

Hasty Generalization

Circular Reasoning

Post Hoc Fallacies

Appeal to False Authority

Bandwagon Appeal

ACTIVITY Identifying Logical Fallacies

Analyzing Visual Texts | Identifying Fallacies in Visual Texts

PETA, Feeding Kids Meat Is Child Abuse (advertisement)

Heap Analytics, Same Data, Different Y-Axis (graphs)

ACTIVITY Identifying Fallacies in Visual Texts

Omega Watch, George Clooney’s Choice (advertisement)

U.S. Department of Education, High School Graduation Rate (graph)

Patterns of Development

Narration

Judith Ortiz Cofer, from The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria

Description

Theodore Dreiser, from A Certain Oil Refinery

Process Analysis

E. B. White, from Farewell, My Lovely!

Exemplification

Sarah Grimké, from Letter on the Equality of the Sexes

Comparison and Contrast

Eleanor Roosevelt, from Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do

Definition

Barack Obama, from 2004Democratic National Convention Speech

Cause and Effect

Robert F. Kennedy, from The Mindless Menace of Violence

ACTIVITY Analyzing Patterns of Development

Working with Sources to Build an Argument

Approaching Sources

ACTIVITY Approaching Sources

Examining Sources

ACTIVITY Examining Sources

Synthesizing Sources

From Reading to Writing: Crafting an Evidence-Based Essay

Conversation: Has Technology Changed the Way We Think?

Jacqueline Howard, This Is How the Internet Is Rewiring Your Brain

ACTIVITY Summarizing a Source

Americans’ Cell Phone Use during Social Activity (graph)

ACTIVITY Analyzing Quantitative Evidence

Nicholas Carr, The Illusion of Knowledge

ACTIVITY The "Yes, But" Game: Conceding and Refuting

Sherry Turkle, from Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.

ACTIVITY Comparing and Contrasting Sources

Alison Gopnik, Is "Screen Time" Dangerous for Children?

ACTIVITY Playing the Believing Game

Osmani Simanca, Technology Shackle (cartoon)

ACTIVITY Using Visual Texts as Evidence

Preparing to Write: Identifying Key Issues

ACTIVITY Formulating Your Position

Developing a Thesis Statement

Supporting Your Thesis

Introducing Your Argument

Acknowledging the Counterargument

Supporting Your Argument with Evidence

Citing Sources

ACTIVITY: Writing a Body Paragraph

Revising an Evidence-Based Argument Essay

ACTIVITY Revising a Paragraph

Analyzing a Sample Evidence-Based Argument Essay

Christopher Rowley, "Has Technology Changed the Way We Think?"

ACTIVITY Providing Peer Feedback for Revision

CULMINATING ACTIVITY Crafting an Evidence-Based Argument Essay Conversation| The First Amendment: How Free Is Free Speech?

  1. Thane Rosenbaum, Should Neo-Nazis Be Allowed Free Speech?
  2. Lata Nott, Free Speech Isn’t Always Valuable. That’s Not the Point.
  3. Laura Beth Nielsen, The Case for Restricting Hate Speech
  4. Signe Wilkinson, Free Speech (cartoon)
  5. Jacob Mchangama, The U.N. Hates Hate Speech More Than It Loves Free Speech
  6. College Students’ Views on Whether Hate Speech Should Be Protected By the First Amendment (graph)

3 Analyzing Fiction

The Big Picture: Analyzing Major Elements of Fiction

Alice Walker, The Flowers

Plot

ACTIVITY Analyzing Plot

Character

Developing Character

ACTIVITY Analyzing Character

Setting

Khaled Hosseini, from A Thousand Splendid Suns

ACTIVITY Analyzing Setting

Point of View

N. K. Jemisin, from The Fifth Season

Amy Tan, from The Joy Luck Club

Jhumpa Lahiri, from The Namesake

Toni Morrison, from Sula

ACTIVITY Analyzing Point of View

Symbol and Allegory

Norman Maclean, from A River Runs Through It

ACTIVITY Analyzing Symbol and Allegory

Theme

ACTIVITY Putting It All Together: Analyzing Theme

Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Close Reading: Analyzing Passages of Fiction

Talking with the Text

ACTIVITY Talking with the Text

Denis Johnson, from Tree of Smoke

Literary Elements

Zora Neale Hurston, from Sweat

Diction

Figurative Language

Imagery

ACTIVITY Analyzing Language Choices

Dana Czapnik, from The Falconer

Syntax

ACTIVITY Analyzing Syntax

De’Shawn Charles Winslow, from In West Mills

Tone and Mood

ACTIVITY Connecting Style with Tone and Mood

Robert Penn Warren, from All the Kings’ Men

From Reading to Writing: Crafting a Close Analysis of Fiction

Herman Melville, from Moby Dick

Preparing to Write: Annotating Fiction

ACTIVITY Annotating an Excerpt

Developing a Thesis Statement

Supporting Your Thesis

Writing Topic Sentences

Integrating Quotations

ACTIVITY Writing a Body Paragraph

Revising a Fiction Analysis Essay

ACTIVITY Revising a Paragraph

Analyzing a Sample Fiction Analysis Essay

Ashley Cammiso, "Moby Dick"

ACTIVITY Providing Peer Feedback for Revision

CULMINATING ACTIVITY: Crafting a Fiction Analysis Essay

Ernest Hemingway, from A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

4 Analyzing Poetry

Step 1: Reading for Literal Meaning

Robert Frost, Out, Out—

ACTIVITY Reading a Poem for Literal Meaning

Billy Collins, The Blues

Step 2: Considering the Speaker

Diction

Shifts

Tone and Mood

ACTIVITY Considering the Speaker

E. A. Robinson, Richard Cory

Step 3: Reading for Detail

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Recuerdo

Figurative Language

Imagery

ACTIVITY Connecting Figurative Language and Imagery to Meaning

Joy Harjo, For Keeps

Structure

Poetic Syntax

Meter

Form

ACTIVITY Connecting Form to Meaning

Countee Cullen, Yet Do I Marvel

Sound

Rhyme

ACTIVITY Connecting Sound to Meaning

Natasha Trethewey, Providence

From Analysis to Essay: Crafting a Poetry Analysis Essay

Stephen Dunn, The Sacred

Preparing to Write: Annotating a Poem

ACTIVITY Annotating a Poem

Denise Levertov, The Secret

Developing a Thesis Statement

Supporting Your Thesis

Writing Topic Sentences

Integrating Quotations

Documenting Sources

ACTIVITY Writing a Body Paragraph

Revising a Poetry Analysis Essay

ACTIVITY Revising a Paragraph

Analyzing a Sample Poetry Analysis Essay

Lily Krakoff, "The Sacred"

ACTIVITY Providing Peer Feedback for Revision

CULMINATING ACTIVITY Crafting a Poetry Analysis Essay

Denise Levertov, The Secret

5 Redefining America

2001 to the Present

Barbara Ehrenreich, from Serving in Florida (nonfiction, 2001)

George W. Bush, Address to the Nation on September 11, 2001 (nonfiction)

TALKBACK | Omer Aziz, The World 9/11 Took from Us (nonfiction, 2019)

Barack Obama, 2004 Democratic National Convention Speech (nonfiction)

Brian Turner, At Lowe’s Home Improvement Center (poetry, 2010)

TALKBACK | Ilya Kaminsky, In a Time of Peace (poetry, 2019)

Viet Thanh Nguyen, Fatherland (fiction, 2011)

Natalie Diaz, Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation (poetry, 2012)

Roxane Gay, from Bad Feminist: Take Two (nonfiction , 2014)

Ross Gay, A Small Needful Fact (poetry, 2015)

Kathryn Schulz, from Citizen Khan (nonfiction, 2016)

Ted Closson, A GoFundMe Campaign Is Not Health Insurance (graphic essay, 2017)

Bryan Stevenson, A Presumption of Guilt (nonfiction, 2017)

Tracy K. Smith, Refuge (poetry, 2018)

Jesmyn Ward, My True South: Why I Decided to Return Home (nonfiction, 2018)

Amy Sherald, First Lady Michelle Obama (painting, 2018)

Kehinde Wiley, President Barack Obama (painting, 2018)

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black (fiction, 2018)

José Olivarez, My Family Never Finished Migrating We Just Stopped (poetry, 2019)

Louise Erdrich, The Stone (fiction, 2019)

Bill McKibben, 2050: How Earth Survived (nonfiction, 2019)

CONVERSATION | A Nation of Immigrants: What Is the American Dream?

  1. Joshua Zeitz, The Real History of American Immigration (2017)
  2. Khalil Bendib, Help Wanted (cartoon, 2010)
  3. Julia Preston, Newest Immigrants Assimilating as Fast as Previous Ones, Report Says (2015)
  4. Amanda Machado, from My Immigrant Family Achieved the American Dream. Then I Started to Question It. (2017)
  5. Andrew Lam, Is America Still a Nation of Immigrants? (2001/2017)
  6. Views on Immigration to the United States of America, 1994–2019 (graphs, 2019)
  7. Austan Goolsbee, Sharp Cuts in Immigration Threaten U.S. Economy and Innovation (2019)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Short Simple Sentences and Fragments

Suggestions for Writing | Redefining America

6 A Meeting of Old and New Worlds Beginnings to 1830

American Indian Trickster Stories (fiction)

Iroquois Confederacy, from The Iroquois Constitution (nonfiction, c. 1142)

Christopher Columbus, from Journal of the First Voyage to America (nonfiction, 1492)

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, from The Relation of Cabeza de Vaca (nonfiction, 1542)

Richard Frethorne, Letter to Father and Mother (nonfiction, 1623)

John Winthrop, from A Modell of Christian Charity (nonfiction, 1630)

Anne Bradstreet, The Author to Her Book (poetry, 1678)

Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World: A Hortatory and Necessary Address to a Country Now Extraordinarily Alarum’d by the Wrath of the Devil (nonfiction, 1693)

Jonathan Edwards, from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (nonfiction, 1741)

Benjamin Franklin, The Speech of Miss Polly Baker (nonfiction, 1747)

Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America (poetry, 1773)

To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works (poetry, 1773)

To His Excellency General Washington (poetry, 1776)

TALKBACK | June Jordan, from The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America: Or Something like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley (nonfiction, 2002)

Patrick Henry, Speech to the Second Virginia Convention (nonfiction, 1775)

Thomas Paine, from Common Sense (nonfiction, 1776)
Abigail and John Adams, Letters (nonfiction, 1776)

Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence (nonfiction, 1776)

Philip Freneau, To Sir Toby, A Sugar Planter in the Interior Parts of Jamaica, Near the City of San Jago de la Vega (Spanish Town), 1784 (poetry, 1784/1792)

Alexander Hamilton, from The Federalist No. 1 (nonfiction, 1787)

Preamble to the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights (nonfiction, 1789)

Judith Sargent Murray, from On the Equality of the Sexes (nonfiction, 1790)

TALKBACK | H. L. Mencken, from In Defense of Women (nonfiction, 1918)

George Washington and Moses Seixas, Letters on Religious Tolerance (nonfiction, 1790)

Benjamin Banneker, Letter to Thomas Jefferson with Response from Thomas Jefferson (nonfiction, 1791)

Absalom Jones , Petition of the People of Colour, Freemen, within the City and Suburbs of Philadelphia (nonfiction, 1799)

Red Jacket, Defense of American Indian Religion (nonfiction, 1805)
Francis Scott Key, The Star-Spangled Banner (poetry, 1814)

TALKBACK | Ada Limón, A New National Anthem (poetry, 2018)

Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle (fiction, 1820)

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, The Forsaken Brother (fiction, 1827)

Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom (painting, 1833)

Conversation | The Second Amendment: What Does It Mean Today?

  1. Akhil Reed Amar, from Second Thoughts: What the Right to Bear Arms Really Means (1999)
  2. Thomas Sowell, Do Gun-Control Laws Control Guns? (2013)
  3. Pew Research Center, Some Agreement and Many Divisions between Owners and Non-Owners on Gun Proposals (graph, 2017)
  4. Leah Libresco, I Used to Think Gun Control Was the Answer. My Research Told Me Otherwise. (2017)
  5. Bret Stephens, Repeal the Second Amendment (2017)
  6. Sarah Morris | If I’m Killed by an AR-15 — Forget Burial — Just Drop My Body on the Steps of the N.R.A. (photograph, 2018)
  7. Nicholas Kristof, How to Win an Argument about Guns (2018)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Subordination in Complex Sentences

Suggestions for Writing | A Meeting of Old and New Worlds

7 America in Conflict

1830–1865

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minister’s Black Veil (fiction, 1832)

John Ross and Elias Boudinot, Response to the Treaty of New Echota (nonfiction, 1836)

Sarah Grimké, from Letter on the Condition of Women in the United States (nonfiction, 1838)

Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher (fiction, 1839)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Self-Reliance (nonfiction, 1841)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments (nonfiction, 1848)

Sojourner Truth, Ain’t I a Woman? (nonfiction, 1851)

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Preface to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (nonfiction, 1852)

Frederick Douglass, from What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July? (nonfiction, 1852)

Go Down Moses (poetry, c. 1852/1861)
Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For (nonfiction, 1854)

TALKBACK | Kathryn Schulz, from Pond Scum (nonfiction, 2015)

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Bury Me in a Free Land (poetry, 1858)

John Brown, Last Speech (nonfiction, 1859)

Walt Whitman, I Hear America Singing (poetry, 1860)

TALKBACK | Langston Hughes, I, Too (poetry, 1926)

O Captain! My Captain! (poetry, 1865)

Harriet Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (nonfiction, 1861)

Alfred M. Green, Let Us Take Up the Sword (nonfiction, 1861)

Emily Dickinson, "Hope" is the thing with feathers — (poetry, c. 1861)

I heard a Fly buzz — when I died — (poetry, c. 1862)

My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun — (poetry, c. 1863)

TALKBACK | Hans Ostrom, Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven (poetry, 2006)

Herman Melville, Shiloh: A Requiem (April, 1862) (poetry)

Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (nonfiction, 1865)

Mathew Brady Photography Studio, Civil War Photography (visual essay, 1861–1865)

Conversation | Reparations: How Do We Address the Legacy of Slavery in America?

  1. Erik K. Yamamoto, from Racial Reparations: Japanese American Redress and African American Claims (1998)
  2. Khalil Bendib, Apology, Hold the Reparations (cartoon, 2009)
  3. Americans’ Views on Reparations (graph, 2016)
  4. Robert L. Woodson, Embracing Reparations Debases Blacks, Raises Troubling Questions (2019)
  5. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Congressional Testimony on Reparations (2019)
  6. Charles M. Blow, from Reparations: Reasonable and Right (2019)
  7. Charles Lane, Would Reparations for Slavery Be Constitutional? (2019)
  8. Jonathan Capehart, No Reparations Check of Any Amount Could Substitute for an Apology (2019)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Cumulative, Periodic, and Inverted Sentences

Suggestions for Writing | America in Conflict

8 Reconstructing America

1865–1913

Jourdon Anderson, To My Old Master (nonfiction, 1865)

Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (painting, 1865)

TALKBACK | Natasha Trethewey, Again, the Fields (poetry, 2006)

Red Cloud, Speech on Indian Rights (nonfiction, 1870)

Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, Life among the Paiutes (nonfiction, 1882)

Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus (poetry, 1883)

Mark Twain, from Life on the Mississippi (nonfiction, 1883)

Jacob Riis, The Mixed Crowd (nonfiction, 1890)

Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (fiction, 1890)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (fiction, 1892)

TALKBACK | Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of a Lady (painting, 2013)

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, from Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (nonfiction, 1892)

Frederick Jackson Turner, from The Significance of the Frontier in American History (nonfiction, 1893/1920)

Booker T. Washington, The Atlanta Exposition Address (nonfiction, 1895)

Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask (poetry, 1896)

Jane Addams, from The Subtle Problem of Charity (nonfiction, 1899)

Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life (nonfiction, 1899)

James Weldon Johnson, Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing (poetry, 1900)

TALKBACK | Augusta Savage, The Harp, or "Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing" (sculpture, 1939)

Andy Adams, from The Log of a Cowboy (fiction, 1903)

W.E.B. DuBois, The Talented Tenth (nonfiction, 1903)

Willa Cather, The Sculptor’s Funeral (fiction, 1905)

TALKBACK | Kim Stafford, Willa Cather’s Ride (poetry, 2019)

E. A. Robinson, Miniver Cheevy (poetry, 1910)

Sui Sin Far, Its Wavering Image (fiction, 1912)

Katharine Lee Bates, America the Beautiful (poetry, 1912)

TALKBACK | Gregory Djanikian, In the Elementary School Choir (poetry, 1989)

Conversation | Income Inequality: Are We Living in a New Gilded Age?

  1. Andrew Carnegie, from The Gospel of Wealth (1889)
  2. Eugene V. Debs, from Capitalism Has Nearly Reached Its Climax (1902)
  3. Occupy Wall Street (photograph, 2011)
  4. John Divine, How to Solve Income Inequality (2017)
  5. David R. Henderson, from Income Inequality Isn’t the Problem (2018)
  6. Joseph Blasi and Maureen Conway, A Better Way to Share the Wealth (2018)
  7. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Income Gains at the Top Dwarf Those of Low- and Middle-Income Households (graph, 2019)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Modifiers

Suggestions for Writing | Reconstructing America

9 America in the Modern World

1913–1945

María Cristina Mena, The Vine-Leaf (fiction, 1914)

Carrie Chapman Catt, Women’s Suffrage Is Inevitable (nonfiction, 1917)

Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (poetry, 1917)

Edna St. Vincent Millay, First Fig (poetry, 1918)

Marianne Moore, Poetry (poetry, 1919)

Claude McKay, If We Must Die (poetry, 1919)

Theodore Dreiser, A Certain Oil Refinery (nonfiction, 1919)

Emma Goldman, Deportation Hearing Statement (nonfiction, 1919)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bernice Bobs Her Hair (fiction, 1920)

E. E. Cummings, in Just- (poetry, 1920)

Robert Frost, Fire and Ice (poetry, 1920)

William Carlos Williams, The Great Figure (poetry, 1921)

TALKBACK | Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (painting, 1928)

This Is Just to Say (poetry, 1934)

Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers (poetry, 1921)

Zora Neale Hurston, Drenched in Light (fiction, 1924)

Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me (nonfiction, 1928)

TALKBACK | Eve Ewing, What I mean when I say I’m sharpening my oyster knife (poetry, 2018)

Countee Cullen, Yet Do I Marvel (poetry, 1925)

T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men (poetry, 1925)

Eleanor Roosevelt, Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do (nonfiction, 1928)

TALKBACK | Rebecca Solnit, If I Were a Man (nonfiction, 2017)

E. B. White, Farewell, My Lovely! (nonfiction, 1936)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address: One-Third of a Nation (nonfiction, 1937)

Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish (poetry, 1938)

W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen (poetry, 1939)

Farm Security Administration and the Works Progress Administration Photographers, The Great Depression (visual essay, 1930–1942)

Gordon Hirabayashi, from Diary in King County Jail (nonfiction, 1942)

Conversation | Women in the Workforce: Breaking the Glass Ceiling or Falling Off a Glass Cliff?

  1. Emma Goldberg, Why the Gender Pay Gap Persists (and What We Can Do about It) (2019)
  2. Alfred T. Palmer, Operating a Hand Drill at Vultee-Nashville, Woman Is Working on a "Vengeance" Dive Bomber (photograph, 1943)
  3. David Rock and Heidi Grant, Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter (2016)
  4. Median Annual Earnings and Gender Earnings Ratio for Full-Time, Year-Round Workers Age 15 Years and Older by Race/Ethnicity, 2017–2018 (graph)
  5. Anita Hill, Class Actions Could Fight Discrimination in Tech (2017)
  6. Claire Cain Miller, from Women Did Everything Right. Then Work Got "Greedy." (2019)
  7. Ruth Whippman, Enough Leaning In. Let’s Tell Men to Lean Out. (2019)
  8. Garry Wills, from My Education in the Patriarchy (2019)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Direct, Precise, and Active Verbs

Suggestions for Writing | America in the Modern World


10 The Rise of a Superpower

1945 to the Present

Harry S. Truman, Statement by the President of the United States (nonfiction, 1945)

Lillian Hellman, I Cannot and Will Not Cut My Conscience to Fit This Year’s Fashions (nonfiction, 1952)

Flannery O’Connor, Good Country People (fiction, 1955)

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (nonfiction, 1955)

Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California (poetry, 1955)

Philip Roth, The Conversion of the Jews (fiction, 1959)

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address (nonfiction, 1961)
Joan Didion, On Self-Respect (nonfiction, 1961)

Sylvia Plath, Mirror (poetry, 1961)

John F. Kennedy, Cuban Missile Crisis Speech (nonfiction, 1962)

TALKBACK | Nikita Khrushchev, Letter to John F. Kennedy (nonfiction, 1962)

Rachel Carson, from Silent Spring (nonfiction, 1962)

Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (nonfiction, 1963)

TALKBACK | Malcolm Gladwell, Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted (nonfiction, 2010)

Robert F. Kennedy, The Mindless Menace of Violence (nonfiction, 1968)

Toni Cade Bambara, Raymond’s Run (fiction, 1971)

Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck (poetry, 1973)

Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman (fiction, 1974)

Naomi Shihab Nye, Arabic Coffee (poetry, 1986)

Brent Staples, Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space (nonfiction, 1986)

Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It (poetry, 1988)

TALKBACK | Ocean Vuong, Aubade with Burning City (poetry, 2014)

Tim O’Brien, On the Rainy River (fiction, 1990)

Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named María (nonfiction, 1992)

Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture (nonfiction, 1993)

Kerry James Marshall, Our Town (painting, 1995)

Rita Dove, Rosa (poetry, 1998)

Conversation | Military Spending: How Much Is Too Much?

  1. Jill Lepore, from The Force: How Much Military Is Enough? (2013)
  2. Signe Wilkinson, Military Budget (cartoon, 2017)
  3. Greg S. Jones, The Myth of the Military Industrial Complex (2017)
  4. Jessica T. Mathews, from America’s Indefensible Defense Budget (2019)
  5. Robert J. Samuelson, No, Military Spending Is Not Bankrupting Us (2019)
  6. Discretionary Spending, 2015 and 2023 (graphs, 2019)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Parallel Structures

Suggestions for Writing | The Rise of a Superpower

Glossary / Glosario

Grammar Workshops

MLA Guide

Index

Authors

Robin Dissin Aufses

Robin Dissin Aufses is director of English Studies at Lycée Français de New York, where she teaches AP® English Language and Composition. Previous to this position, Aufses was the English department chair and a teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore, New York, for ten years, and prior to that she taught English at Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington, New York, for twenty years. She is co-author of Literature & Composition, The Language of Composition, and Conversations in American Literature and has published articles for the College Board® on novelist Chang-Rae Lee and the novel All the King’s Men.


Renee H. Shea

Renée H. Shea was professor of English and Modern Languages and Director of Freshman Composition at Bowie State University in Maryland. A College Board® faculty consultant for more than thirty years in AP® Language, Literature, and Pre-AP® English, she has been a reader and question leader for both AP® English exams. Renée served as a member of the Development Committee for AP® Language and Composition and the English Academic Advisory Committee for the College Board®, as well as the SAT® Critical Reading Test Development Committee. She is coauthor of The Language of Composition, Literature & Composition, Advanced Language & Literature, and Conversations in American Literature, as well as two volumes in the NCTE High School Literature series (on Amy Tan and Zora Neale Hurston).


Katherine E. Cordes

Katherine E. Cordes is a National Board Certified English Teacher with a B.A. in English, Psychology, and Medieval Studies; an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction; more than 18 years of experience in the secondary English Language Arts classroom; and 6 years of experience working with NBCT candidates through the National Education Association. She currently teaches tenth grade English, dual enrollment College Writing, AP® English Language, and AP® English Literature at Skyview High School in Billings, Montana. As part of the College Board®’s Instructional Design Team, Katherine contributed to the development, review, and dissemination of the 2019 AP® English Literature and Composition Course and Exam Description, and she has been an AP® Reader for the AP® English Literature exam for eight years. She has authored teacher resource materials for Conversations in American Literature and The Language of Composition, Third Edition. She is also co-author of Literature & Composition, Third Edition.


Lawrence Scanlon

Lawrence Scanlon taught at Brewster High School for more than thirty years and now teaches at Iona College in New York. Over the past twenty years, he has been a reader and question leader for the AP® Language and Composition Exam. As a College Board® consultant in the United States and abroad, he has conducted AP® workshops in both language and literature and has served on the AP® English Language Test Development Committee. Larry is co-author of Literature & Composition, The Language of Composition, and Conversations in American Literature and has published articles for the College Board® and elsewhere.


Engaging with the past, framing the present

Table of Contents

Guided Tour of American Literature & Rhetoric

1 Rhetorical Analysis

ACTIVITY Recognizing Civil Discourse

The Rhetorical Situation

Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address

Occasion, Context, and Purpose

ACTIVITY Defining a Rhetorical Situation

The Rhetorical Triangle

ACTIVITY Analyzing the Rhetorical Situation

Billie Jean King, Serena Is Still Treated Differently Than Male Athletes

Rhetorical Appeals

Ethos

Building Ethos

J. D. Vance, from Hillbilly Elegy

ACTIVITY Building Ethos

Logos

Conceding and Refuting

ACTIVITY Analyzing Logos and Counterargument

Jia Tolentino, from What It Takes to Put Away Your Phone

Pathos

Making Balanced Appeals

Richard Nixon, from The Checkers Speech

ACTIVITY Analyzing Pathos

Diana Abu-Jaber, from On Recognition and Nation

Combining Ethos, Logos, and Pathos

Helen Keller, Letter to Mark Twain, 1906

ACTIVITY Combining Ethos, Logos, and Pathos

Analyzing Visual Texts | Identifying Rhetorical Appeals

Tom Toles, Rosa Parks (cartoon)

ACTIVITY Identifying Rhetorical Appeals in a Visual Text

Nate Beeler, Government Is Watching (cartoon)

Analyzing Rhetoric and Style

Diction

Figurative Language

ACTIVITY Analyzing Diction

John Muir, from Save the Redwoods

Syntax

ACTIVITY Analyzing Syntax

John F. Kennedy, from Inaugural Address

Tone

ACTIVITY Analyzing Tone

Analyzing Visual Texts | Analyzing Visual Rhetoric

Dodge Durango (advertisement)

ACTIVITY Close Reading a Visual Text

KFC Hot and Spicy Chicken (advertisement)

From Reading to Writing: Crafting a Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Shirley Chisholm, from People and Peace, Not Profits and War

Preparing to Write: Annotating Nonfiction

ACTIVITY Annotating an Excerpt

Developing a Thesis Statement

Supporting Your Thesis

ACTIVITY Organizing a Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Writing Topic Sentences

ACTIVITY Writing Topic Sentences

Using Quotations as Evidence

Documenting Sources

ACTIVITY Writing a Body Paragraph

Revising a Rhetorical Analysis Essay

ACTIVITY Revising a Paragraph

Analyzing a Sample Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Joseph Barrett, "People and Peace, Not Profits and War"

ACTIVITY Providing Peer Feedback for Revision

CULMINATING ACTIVITY Crafting a Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Order of the Day

2 Evidence-Based Arguments

What Is Argument?

Understanding Claims

ACTIVITY Identifying Arguable Claims

Types of Claims

Claims of Fact

ACTIVITY Making Claims of Fact

Claims of Value

ACTIVITY Making Claims of Value

Claims of Policy

ACTIVITY Making Claims of Policy

Understanding and Analyzing Evidence

Types of Evidence

Personal Experience

Anecdotes

ACTIVITY Using Personal Experience and Anecdotes as Evidence

Current Events

Historical Information

ACTIVITY Using Current Events and Historical Information as Evidence

Expert Opinion

Quantitative Evidence

ACTIVITY Analyzing Evidence

Florence Kelley, Speech on Child Labor

Logical Reasoning and Organization: Shaping an Argument

Induction

Deduction

ACTIVITY Using Inductive and Deductive Reasoning

Logical Fallacies

Red Herrings and Ad Hominem Fallacies

Faulty Analogies

Straw Man Fallacies

Either/Or Fallacies

Hasty Generalization

Circular Reasoning

Post Hoc Fallacies

Appeal to False Authority

Bandwagon Appeal

ACTIVITY Identifying Logical Fallacies

Analyzing Visual Texts | Identifying Fallacies in Visual Texts

PETA, Feeding Kids Meat Is Child Abuse (advertisement)

Heap Analytics, Same Data, Different Y-Axis (graphs)

ACTIVITY Identifying Fallacies in Visual Texts

Omega Watch, George Clooney’s Choice (advertisement)

U.S. Department of Education, High School Graduation Rate (graph)

Patterns of Development

Narration

Judith Ortiz Cofer, from The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria

Description

Theodore Dreiser, from A Certain Oil Refinery

Process Analysis

E. B. White, from Farewell, My Lovely!

Exemplification

Sarah Grimké, from Letter on the Equality of the Sexes

Comparison and Contrast

Eleanor Roosevelt, from Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do

Definition

Barack Obama, from 2004Democratic National Convention Speech

Cause and Effect

Robert F. Kennedy, from The Mindless Menace of Violence

ACTIVITY Analyzing Patterns of Development

Working with Sources to Build an Argument

Approaching Sources

ACTIVITY Approaching Sources

Examining Sources

ACTIVITY Examining Sources

Synthesizing Sources

From Reading to Writing: Crafting an Evidence-Based Essay

Conversation: Has Technology Changed the Way We Think?

Jacqueline Howard, This Is How the Internet Is Rewiring Your Brain

ACTIVITY Summarizing a Source

Americans’ Cell Phone Use during Social Activity (graph)

ACTIVITY Analyzing Quantitative Evidence

Nicholas Carr, The Illusion of Knowledge

ACTIVITY The "Yes, But" Game: Conceding and Refuting

Sherry Turkle, from Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.

ACTIVITY Comparing and Contrasting Sources

Alison Gopnik, Is "Screen Time" Dangerous for Children?

ACTIVITY Playing the Believing Game

Osmani Simanca, Technology Shackle (cartoon)

ACTIVITY Using Visual Texts as Evidence

Preparing to Write: Identifying Key Issues

ACTIVITY Formulating Your Position

Developing a Thesis Statement

Supporting Your Thesis

Introducing Your Argument

Acknowledging the Counterargument

Supporting Your Argument with Evidence

Citing Sources

ACTIVITY: Writing a Body Paragraph

Revising an Evidence-Based Argument Essay

ACTIVITY Revising a Paragraph

Analyzing a Sample Evidence-Based Argument Essay

Christopher Rowley, "Has Technology Changed the Way We Think?"

ACTIVITY Providing Peer Feedback for Revision

CULMINATING ACTIVITY Crafting an Evidence-Based Argument Essay Conversation| The First Amendment: How Free Is Free Speech?

  1. Thane Rosenbaum, Should Neo-Nazis Be Allowed Free Speech?
  2. Lata Nott, Free Speech Isn’t Always Valuable. That’s Not the Point.
  3. Laura Beth Nielsen, The Case for Restricting Hate Speech
  4. Signe Wilkinson, Free Speech (cartoon)
  5. Jacob Mchangama, The U.N. Hates Hate Speech More Than It Loves Free Speech
  6. College Students’ Views on Whether Hate Speech Should Be Protected By the First Amendment (graph)

3 Analyzing Fiction

The Big Picture: Analyzing Major Elements of Fiction

Alice Walker, The Flowers

Plot

ACTIVITY Analyzing Plot

Character

Developing Character

ACTIVITY Analyzing Character

Setting

Khaled Hosseini, from A Thousand Splendid Suns

ACTIVITY Analyzing Setting

Point of View

N. K. Jemisin, from The Fifth Season

Amy Tan, from The Joy Luck Club

Jhumpa Lahiri, from The Namesake

Toni Morrison, from Sula

ACTIVITY Analyzing Point of View

Symbol and Allegory

Norman Maclean, from A River Runs Through It

ACTIVITY Analyzing Symbol and Allegory

Theme

ACTIVITY Putting It All Together: Analyzing Theme

Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Close Reading: Analyzing Passages of Fiction

Talking with the Text

ACTIVITY Talking with the Text

Denis Johnson, from Tree of Smoke

Literary Elements

Zora Neale Hurston, from Sweat

Diction

Figurative Language

Imagery

ACTIVITY Analyzing Language Choices

Dana Czapnik, from The Falconer

Syntax

ACTIVITY Analyzing Syntax

De’Shawn Charles Winslow, from In West Mills

Tone and Mood

ACTIVITY Connecting Style with Tone and Mood

Robert Penn Warren, from All the Kings’ Men

From Reading to Writing: Crafting a Close Analysis of Fiction

Herman Melville, from Moby Dick

Preparing to Write: Annotating Fiction

ACTIVITY Annotating an Excerpt

Developing a Thesis Statement

Supporting Your Thesis

Writing Topic Sentences

Integrating Quotations

ACTIVITY Writing a Body Paragraph

Revising a Fiction Analysis Essay

ACTIVITY Revising a Paragraph

Analyzing a Sample Fiction Analysis Essay

Ashley Cammiso, "Moby Dick"

ACTIVITY Providing Peer Feedback for Revision

CULMINATING ACTIVITY: Crafting a Fiction Analysis Essay

Ernest Hemingway, from A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

4 Analyzing Poetry

Step 1: Reading for Literal Meaning

Robert Frost, Out, Out—

ACTIVITY Reading a Poem for Literal Meaning

Billy Collins, The Blues

Step 2: Considering the Speaker

Diction

Shifts

Tone and Mood

ACTIVITY Considering the Speaker

E. A. Robinson, Richard Cory

Step 3: Reading for Detail

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Recuerdo

Figurative Language

Imagery

ACTIVITY Connecting Figurative Language and Imagery to Meaning

Joy Harjo, For Keeps

Structure

Poetic Syntax

Meter

Form

ACTIVITY Connecting Form to Meaning

Countee Cullen, Yet Do I Marvel

Sound

Rhyme

ACTIVITY Connecting Sound to Meaning

Natasha Trethewey, Providence

From Analysis to Essay: Crafting a Poetry Analysis Essay

Stephen Dunn, The Sacred

Preparing to Write: Annotating a Poem

ACTIVITY Annotating a Poem

Denise Levertov, The Secret

Developing a Thesis Statement

Supporting Your Thesis

Writing Topic Sentences

Integrating Quotations

Documenting Sources

ACTIVITY Writing a Body Paragraph

Revising a Poetry Analysis Essay

ACTIVITY Revising a Paragraph

Analyzing a Sample Poetry Analysis Essay

Lily Krakoff, "The Sacred"

ACTIVITY Providing Peer Feedback for Revision

CULMINATING ACTIVITY Crafting a Poetry Analysis Essay

Denise Levertov, The Secret

5 Redefining America

2001 to the Present

Barbara Ehrenreich, from Serving in Florida (nonfiction, 2001)

George W. Bush, Address to the Nation on September 11, 2001 (nonfiction)

TALKBACK | Omer Aziz, The World 9/11 Took from Us (nonfiction, 2019)

Barack Obama, 2004 Democratic National Convention Speech (nonfiction)

Brian Turner, At Lowe’s Home Improvement Center (poetry, 2010)

TALKBACK | Ilya Kaminsky, In a Time of Peace (poetry, 2019)

Viet Thanh Nguyen, Fatherland (fiction, 2011)

Natalie Diaz, Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation (poetry, 2012)

Roxane Gay, from Bad Feminist: Take Two (nonfiction , 2014)

Ross Gay, A Small Needful Fact (poetry, 2015)

Kathryn Schulz, from Citizen Khan (nonfiction, 2016)

Ted Closson, A GoFundMe Campaign Is Not Health Insurance (graphic essay, 2017)

Bryan Stevenson, A Presumption of Guilt (nonfiction, 2017)

Tracy K. Smith, Refuge (poetry, 2018)

Jesmyn Ward, My True South: Why I Decided to Return Home (nonfiction, 2018)

Amy Sherald, First Lady Michelle Obama (painting, 2018)

Kehinde Wiley, President Barack Obama (painting, 2018)

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black (fiction, 2018)

José Olivarez, My Family Never Finished Migrating We Just Stopped (poetry, 2019)

Louise Erdrich, The Stone (fiction, 2019)

Bill McKibben, 2050: How Earth Survived (nonfiction, 2019)

CONVERSATION | A Nation of Immigrants: What Is the American Dream?

  1. Joshua Zeitz, The Real History of American Immigration (2017)
  2. Khalil Bendib, Help Wanted (cartoon, 2010)
  3. Julia Preston, Newest Immigrants Assimilating as Fast as Previous Ones, Report Says (2015)
  4. Amanda Machado, from My Immigrant Family Achieved the American Dream. Then I Started to Question It. (2017)
  5. Andrew Lam, Is America Still a Nation of Immigrants? (2001/2017)
  6. Views on Immigration to the United States of America, 1994–2019 (graphs, 2019)
  7. Austan Goolsbee, Sharp Cuts in Immigration Threaten U.S. Economy and Innovation (2019)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Short Simple Sentences and Fragments

Suggestions for Writing | Redefining America

6 A Meeting of Old and New Worlds Beginnings to 1830

American Indian Trickster Stories (fiction)

Iroquois Confederacy, from The Iroquois Constitution (nonfiction, c. 1142)

Christopher Columbus, from Journal of the First Voyage to America (nonfiction, 1492)

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, from The Relation of Cabeza de Vaca (nonfiction, 1542)

Richard Frethorne, Letter to Father and Mother (nonfiction, 1623)

John Winthrop, from A Modell of Christian Charity (nonfiction, 1630)

Anne Bradstreet, The Author to Her Book (poetry, 1678)

Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World: A Hortatory and Necessary Address to a Country Now Extraordinarily Alarum’d by the Wrath of the Devil (nonfiction, 1693)

Jonathan Edwards, from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (nonfiction, 1741)

Benjamin Franklin, The Speech of Miss Polly Baker (nonfiction, 1747)

Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America (poetry, 1773)

To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works (poetry, 1773)

To His Excellency General Washington (poetry, 1776)

TALKBACK | June Jordan, from The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America: Or Something like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley (nonfiction, 2002)

Patrick Henry, Speech to the Second Virginia Convention (nonfiction, 1775)

Thomas Paine, from Common Sense (nonfiction, 1776)
Abigail and John Adams, Letters (nonfiction, 1776)

Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence (nonfiction, 1776)

Philip Freneau, To Sir Toby, A Sugar Planter in the Interior Parts of Jamaica, Near the City of San Jago de la Vega (Spanish Town), 1784 (poetry, 1784/1792)

Alexander Hamilton, from The Federalist No. 1 (nonfiction, 1787)

Preamble to the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights (nonfiction, 1789)

Judith Sargent Murray, from On the Equality of the Sexes (nonfiction, 1790)

TALKBACK | H. L. Mencken, from In Defense of Women (nonfiction, 1918)

George Washington and Moses Seixas, Letters on Religious Tolerance (nonfiction, 1790)

Benjamin Banneker, Letter to Thomas Jefferson with Response from Thomas Jefferson (nonfiction, 1791)

Absalom Jones , Petition of the People of Colour, Freemen, within the City and Suburbs of Philadelphia (nonfiction, 1799)

Red Jacket, Defense of American Indian Religion (nonfiction, 1805)
Francis Scott Key, The Star-Spangled Banner (poetry, 1814)

TALKBACK | Ada Limón, A New National Anthem (poetry, 2018)

Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle (fiction, 1820)

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, The Forsaken Brother (fiction, 1827)

Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom (painting, 1833)

Conversation | The Second Amendment: What Does It Mean Today?

  1. Akhil Reed Amar, from Second Thoughts: What the Right to Bear Arms Really Means (1999)
  2. Thomas Sowell, Do Gun-Control Laws Control Guns? (2013)
  3. Pew Research Center, Some Agreement and Many Divisions between Owners and Non-Owners on Gun Proposals (graph, 2017)
  4. Leah Libresco, I Used to Think Gun Control Was the Answer. My Research Told Me Otherwise. (2017)
  5. Bret Stephens, Repeal the Second Amendment (2017)
  6. Sarah Morris | If I’m Killed by an AR-15 — Forget Burial — Just Drop My Body on the Steps of the N.R.A. (photograph, 2018)
  7. Nicholas Kristof, How to Win an Argument about Guns (2018)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Subordination in Complex Sentences

Suggestions for Writing | A Meeting of Old and New Worlds

7 America in Conflict

1830–1865

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minister’s Black Veil (fiction, 1832)

John Ross and Elias Boudinot, Response to the Treaty of New Echota (nonfiction, 1836)

Sarah Grimké, from Letter on the Condition of Women in the United States (nonfiction, 1838)

Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher (fiction, 1839)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Self-Reliance (nonfiction, 1841)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments (nonfiction, 1848)

Sojourner Truth, Ain’t I a Woman? (nonfiction, 1851)

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Preface to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (nonfiction, 1852)

Frederick Douglass, from What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July? (nonfiction, 1852)

Go Down Moses (poetry, c. 1852/1861)
Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For (nonfiction, 1854)

TALKBACK | Kathryn Schulz, from Pond Scum (nonfiction, 2015)

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Bury Me in a Free Land (poetry, 1858)

John Brown, Last Speech (nonfiction, 1859)

Walt Whitman, I Hear America Singing (poetry, 1860)

TALKBACK | Langston Hughes, I, Too (poetry, 1926)

O Captain! My Captain! (poetry, 1865)

Harriet Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (nonfiction, 1861)

Alfred M. Green, Let Us Take Up the Sword (nonfiction, 1861)

Emily Dickinson, "Hope" is the thing with feathers — (poetry, c. 1861)

I heard a Fly buzz — when I died — (poetry, c. 1862)

My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun — (poetry, c. 1863)

TALKBACK | Hans Ostrom, Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven (poetry, 2006)

Herman Melville, Shiloh: A Requiem (April, 1862) (poetry)

Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (nonfiction, 1865)

Mathew Brady Photography Studio, Civil War Photography (visual essay, 1861–1865)

Conversation | Reparations: How Do We Address the Legacy of Slavery in America?

  1. Erik K. Yamamoto, from Racial Reparations: Japanese American Redress and African American Claims (1998)
  2. Khalil Bendib, Apology, Hold the Reparations (cartoon, 2009)
  3. Americans’ Views on Reparations (graph, 2016)
  4. Robert L. Woodson, Embracing Reparations Debases Blacks, Raises Troubling Questions (2019)
  5. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Congressional Testimony on Reparations (2019)
  6. Charles M. Blow, from Reparations: Reasonable and Right (2019)
  7. Charles Lane, Would Reparations for Slavery Be Constitutional? (2019)
  8. Jonathan Capehart, No Reparations Check of Any Amount Could Substitute for an Apology (2019)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Cumulative, Periodic, and Inverted Sentences

Suggestions for Writing | America in Conflict

8 Reconstructing America

1865–1913

Jourdon Anderson, To My Old Master (nonfiction, 1865)

Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (painting, 1865)

TALKBACK | Natasha Trethewey, Again, the Fields (poetry, 2006)

Red Cloud, Speech on Indian Rights (nonfiction, 1870)

Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, Life among the Paiutes (nonfiction, 1882)

Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus (poetry, 1883)

Mark Twain, from Life on the Mississippi (nonfiction, 1883)

Jacob Riis, The Mixed Crowd (nonfiction, 1890)

Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (fiction, 1890)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (fiction, 1892)

TALKBACK | Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of a Lady (painting, 2013)

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, from Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (nonfiction, 1892)

Frederick Jackson Turner, from The Significance of the Frontier in American History (nonfiction, 1893/1920)

Booker T. Washington, The Atlanta Exposition Address (nonfiction, 1895)

Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask (poetry, 1896)

Jane Addams, from The Subtle Problem of Charity (nonfiction, 1899)

Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life (nonfiction, 1899)

James Weldon Johnson, Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing (poetry, 1900)

TALKBACK | Augusta Savage, The Harp, or "Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing" (sculpture, 1939)

Andy Adams, from The Log of a Cowboy (fiction, 1903)

W.E.B. DuBois, The Talented Tenth (nonfiction, 1903)

Willa Cather, The Sculptor’s Funeral (fiction, 1905)

TALKBACK | Kim Stafford, Willa Cather’s Ride (poetry, 2019)

E. A. Robinson, Miniver Cheevy (poetry, 1910)

Sui Sin Far, Its Wavering Image (fiction, 1912)

Katharine Lee Bates, America the Beautiful (poetry, 1912)

TALKBACK | Gregory Djanikian, In the Elementary School Choir (poetry, 1989)

Conversation | Income Inequality: Are We Living in a New Gilded Age?

  1. Andrew Carnegie, from The Gospel of Wealth (1889)
  2. Eugene V. Debs, from Capitalism Has Nearly Reached Its Climax (1902)
  3. Occupy Wall Street (photograph, 2011)
  4. John Divine, How to Solve Income Inequality (2017)
  5. David R. Henderson, from Income Inequality Isn’t the Problem (2018)
  6. Joseph Blasi and Maureen Conway, A Better Way to Share the Wealth (2018)
  7. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Income Gains at the Top Dwarf Those of Low- and Middle-Income Households (graph, 2019)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Modifiers

Suggestions for Writing | Reconstructing America

9 America in the Modern World

1913–1945

María Cristina Mena, The Vine-Leaf (fiction, 1914)

Carrie Chapman Catt, Women’s Suffrage Is Inevitable (nonfiction, 1917)

Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (poetry, 1917)

Edna St. Vincent Millay, First Fig (poetry, 1918)

Marianne Moore, Poetry (poetry, 1919)

Claude McKay, If We Must Die (poetry, 1919)

Theodore Dreiser, A Certain Oil Refinery (nonfiction, 1919)

Emma Goldman, Deportation Hearing Statement (nonfiction, 1919)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bernice Bobs Her Hair (fiction, 1920)

E. E. Cummings, in Just- (poetry, 1920)

Robert Frost, Fire and Ice (poetry, 1920)

William Carlos Williams, The Great Figure (poetry, 1921)

TALKBACK | Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (painting, 1928)

This Is Just to Say (poetry, 1934)

Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers (poetry, 1921)

Zora Neale Hurston, Drenched in Light (fiction, 1924)

Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me (nonfiction, 1928)

TALKBACK | Eve Ewing, What I mean when I say I’m sharpening my oyster knife (poetry, 2018)

Countee Cullen, Yet Do I Marvel (poetry, 1925)

T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men (poetry, 1925)

Eleanor Roosevelt, Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do (nonfiction, 1928)

TALKBACK | Rebecca Solnit, If I Were a Man (nonfiction, 2017)

E. B. White, Farewell, My Lovely! (nonfiction, 1936)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address: One-Third of a Nation (nonfiction, 1937)

Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish (poetry, 1938)

W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen (poetry, 1939)

Farm Security Administration and the Works Progress Administration Photographers, The Great Depression (visual essay, 1930–1942)

Gordon Hirabayashi, from Diary in King County Jail (nonfiction, 1942)

Conversation | Women in the Workforce: Breaking the Glass Ceiling or Falling Off a Glass Cliff?

  1. Emma Goldberg, Why the Gender Pay Gap Persists (and What We Can Do about It) (2019)
  2. Alfred T. Palmer, Operating a Hand Drill at Vultee-Nashville, Woman Is Working on a "Vengeance" Dive Bomber (photograph, 1943)
  3. David Rock and Heidi Grant, Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter (2016)
  4. Median Annual Earnings and Gender Earnings Ratio for Full-Time, Year-Round Workers Age 15 Years and Older by Race/Ethnicity, 2017–2018 (graph)
  5. Anita Hill, Class Actions Could Fight Discrimination in Tech (2017)
  6. Claire Cain Miller, from Women Did Everything Right. Then Work Got "Greedy." (2019)
  7. Ruth Whippman, Enough Leaning In. Let’s Tell Men to Lean Out. (2019)
  8. Garry Wills, from My Education in the Patriarchy (2019)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Direct, Precise, and Active Verbs

Suggestions for Writing | America in the Modern World


10 The Rise of a Superpower

1945 to the Present

Harry S. Truman, Statement by the President of the United States (nonfiction, 1945)

Lillian Hellman, I Cannot and Will Not Cut My Conscience to Fit This Year’s Fashions (nonfiction, 1952)

Flannery O’Connor, Good Country People (fiction, 1955)

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (nonfiction, 1955)

Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California (poetry, 1955)

Philip Roth, The Conversion of the Jews (fiction, 1959)

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address (nonfiction, 1961)
Joan Didion, On Self-Respect (nonfiction, 1961)

Sylvia Plath, Mirror (poetry, 1961)

John F. Kennedy, Cuban Missile Crisis Speech (nonfiction, 1962)

TALKBACK | Nikita Khrushchev, Letter to John F. Kennedy (nonfiction, 1962)

Rachel Carson, from Silent Spring (nonfiction, 1962)

Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (nonfiction, 1963)

TALKBACK | Malcolm Gladwell, Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted (nonfiction, 2010)

Robert F. Kennedy, The Mindless Menace of Violence (nonfiction, 1968)

Toni Cade Bambara, Raymond’s Run (fiction, 1971)

Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck (poetry, 1973)

Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman (fiction, 1974)

Naomi Shihab Nye, Arabic Coffee (poetry, 1986)

Brent Staples, Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space (nonfiction, 1986)

Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It (poetry, 1988)

TALKBACK | Ocean Vuong, Aubade with Burning City (poetry, 2014)

Tim O’Brien, On the Rainy River (fiction, 1990)

Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named María (nonfiction, 1992)

Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture (nonfiction, 1993)

Kerry James Marshall, Our Town (painting, 1995)

Rita Dove, Rosa (poetry, 1998)

Conversation | Military Spending: How Much Is Too Much?

  1. Jill Lepore, from The Force: How Much Military Is Enough? (2013)
  2. Signe Wilkinson, Military Budget (cartoon, 2017)
  3. Greg S. Jones, The Myth of the Military Industrial Complex (2017)
  4. Jessica T. Mathews, from America’s Indefensible Defense Budget (2019)
  5. Robert J. Samuelson, No, Military Spending Is Not Bankrupting Us (2019)
  6. Discretionary Spending, 2015 and 2023 (graphs, 2019)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Parallel Structures

Suggestions for Writing | The Rise of a Superpower

Glossary / Glosario

Grammar Workshops

MLA Guide

Index

Robin Dissin Aufses

Robin Dissin Aufses is director of English Studies at Lycée Français de New York, where she teaches AP® English Language and Composition. Previous to this position, Aufses was the English department chair and a teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore, New York, for ten years, and prior to that she taught English at Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington, New York, for twenty years. She is co-author of Literature & Composition, The Language of Composition, and Conversations in American Literature and has published articles for the College Board® on novelist Chang-Rae Lee and the novel All the King’s Men.


Renee H. Shea

Renée H. Shea was professor of English and Modern Languages and Director of Freshman Composition at Bowie State University in Maryland. A College Board® faculty consultant for more than thirty years in AP® Language, Literature, and Pre-AP® English, she has been a reader and question leader for both AP® English exams. Renée served as a member of the Development Committee for AP® Language and Composition and the English Academic Advisory Committee for the College Board®, as well as the SAT® Critical Reading Test Development Committee. She is coauthor of The Language of Composition, Literature & Composition, Advanced Language & Literature, and Conversations in American Literature, as well as two volumes in the NCTE High School Literature series (on Amy Tan and Zora Neale Hurston).


Katherine E. Cordes

Katherine E. Cordes is a National Board Certified English Teacher with a B.A. in English, Psychology, and Medieval Studies; an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction; more than 18 years of experience in the secondary English Language Arts classroom; and 6 years of experience working with NBCT candidates through the National Education Association. She currently teaches tenth grade English, dual enrollment College Writing, AP® English Language, and AP® English Literature at Skyview High School in Billings, Montana. As part of the College Board®’s Instructional Design Team, Katherine contributed to the development, review, and dissemination of the 2019 AP® English Literature and Composition Course and Exam Description, and she has been an AP® Reader for the AP® English Literature exam for eight years. She has authored teacher resource materials for Conversations in American Literature and The Language of Composition, Third Edition. She is also co-author of Literature & Composition, Third Edition.


Lawrence Scanlon

Lawrence Scanlon taught at Brewster High School for more than thirty years and now teaches at Iona College in New York. Over the past twenty years, he has been a reader and question leader for the AP® Language and Composition Exam. As a College Board® consultant in the United States and abroad, he has conducted AP® workshops in both language and literature and has served on the AP® English Language Test Development Committee. Larry is co-author of Literature & Composition, The Language of Composition, and Conversations in American Literature and has published articles for the College Board® and elsewhere.


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