Preparation:  Brainstorm and freewrite in class, talk with others, and fastwrite an idea
                    draft before making it “reader-friendly.”

Due Date:   Tues, 2/12 at the start of class.  Revision:  2/21.

Length:   3-5 typed, double-spaced pages.  Bring three copies to class.

Audience:  The class now; eventually, readers of a magazine like The New Yorker or, to
                   create one, The Culture-Crosser, Cultural Crossings, Crossing Cultures, or-?

Purpose:  To explore and reveal something about your experience as a reader and writer,
                especially your negotiation  of cultural models.  You will include examples of
                stories you heard or read early in  life as well as those that influenced your
     family members (not just Dick, Jane, and Spot, but stories parents read or told
     you—Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne, nursery stories, Grimm’s Fairy tales, ?).
     Ideally, you will (re-)discover early influences and use current perspective
     to relate ways that they shaped you.
 

Topic:     Describe yourself as a reader and writer in several significant phases, from
    early in life to the present.  You may include family members, teachers, friends,
    and others whose reading and writing you imitated, identified with, or reacted
    against.  Include any physical and mental sensations as well as the particular
    feelings they created:  mastery, frustration, power, curiosity, addiction, escape,
    and so on.
 
 OR
 Tell a story about a relative and examine the influence of the story and/or relative
 on your life.  For example, your parents may have said you were growing up to
 resemble someone who had great musical talent, became schizophrenic, left
 home for a wild life of adventure, or never married.  Relate this to “cultural”
 crossings, roles and beliefs (i.e., the engineer uncle whom you took after who
 embodied “macho” traits whose example you can only partly follow).
 

 OR
 Tell your “Origin story,” as Silko puts it.  What do you know about your birth,
 conception, and infancy (first year of life)?  What effect has this Origin story had
 already in locating you culturally, and what other associations come to mind
 as you explore the details of the story, perhaps asking parents for more?  (Are
 you a first-born, youngest, or only; a Rabbit, Horse, or Dragon; a quiet, obedient
 daughter who is expected to succeed financially?)   Consider the cultures you
 entered and crossed: national, ethnic, professional, scientific-humanities,
 educational (first to attend college), etc.