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    Be A Writer!

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    poiu0987
    The document discusses identity writing and invites the reader to write a micro-memoir poem about an important language learning experience in their life. It provides an example micro-memoir poem and asks readers to try writing their own version based on the given structure. The document also shares a passage from Sandra Cisneros' book 'The House on Mango Street' about her name and its meaning and invites readers to write about their own name.

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    Be A Writer!

    Uploaded by

    poiu0987
    29 views2 pages
    The document discusses identity writing and invites the reader to write a micro-memoir poem about an important language learning experience in their life. It provides an example micro-memoir poem and asks readers to try writing their own version based on the given structure. The document also shares a passage from Sandra Cisneros' book 'The House on Mango Street' about her name and its meaning and invites readers to write about their own name.

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    Tips on great writing from someone in the teacher's Hall of Fame.

    Original Title

    BE A WRITER!

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    The document discusses identity writing and invites the reader to write a micro-memoir poem about an important language learning experience in their life. It provides an example micro-memoir poem and asks readers to try writing their own version based on the given structure. The document also shares a passage from Sandra Cisneros' book 'The House on Mango Street' about her name and its meaning and invites readers to write about their own name.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    29 views2 pages

    Be A Writer!

    Uploaded by

    poiu0987
    The document discusses identity writing and invites the reader to write a micro-memoir poem about an important language learning experience in their life. It provides an example micro-memoir poem and asks readers to try writing their own version based on the given structure. The document also shares a passage from Sandra Cisneros' book 'The House on Mango Street' about her name and its meaning and invites readers to write about their own name.

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    Be an Identity Writer!

    Language Turnaround by Gini Rojas,

    Sometimes I remember
    My first English days

    In a NYC class I sat – very still


    Living for the day when I could join their world

    I wondered if I would ever speak those words


    Those yellow-haired girls had such long sentences

    Sometimes I tried …. They laughed


    And I had no defense at all … guilty as I was back then

    But now I am English-language Doctor


    At times discomforted to use my Spanish voice

    I long for the day when I find my way all the way back
    That gentle compelling ‘r-rolling’ language reminding me of my past

    I really can't imagine


    anything better than that
    _____________________________________________________________

    Ralph Fletcher likes to think of this type poem as a "micro-memoir" written in


    three parts:

    1) The first two lines tell the reader: I am going to look back and remember an
    important ‘language learning’ time in my life.
    2) The next three stanzas describe the memory itself.
    3) The last three stanzas tell the reader: Now that I'm back in the present, I
    will reflect on why this experience was important to me.

    If you like the idea behind this poem, he invites you to put on the "shirt" of this
    structure and try creating your own version.

    Feel free to borrow the first two lines and/ or the last two lines.

    ©VIRGINIA P. ROJAS Language Education Consultant [email protected]/ [email protected]/ SKYPE vprojas1


    Be an Identity Writer!

    MY NAME from the House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

    In English, my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It


    means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the
    Mexican records my father plays on Sunday morning when he is shaving, songs like
    sobbing.

    It was my great-grandmother's name and now it’s mine. She was a horse
    woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse - which is supposed to be
    bad luck if you're born female - but I think this is a Chinese lie because the
    Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong.

    My great-grandmother. I would've liked to have known her, a wild horse of a


    woman, so wild she wouldn't marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over
    her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier.
    That's the way he did it.

    And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her
    whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she
    made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the
    things she wanted to be. Esperanza, I have inherited her name, but I don't want to
    inherit her place by the window.

    At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin
    and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer
    something, like silver, not quite as thick as my sister's name - Magdalena - which is
    uglier than mine. Magdalena who at least can come home and become Nenny. But I
    am always Esperanza.

    I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real
    me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X.
    Something like Zeze the X will do.
    _____________________________________________________________
    Write your full name. Then do a quickwrite in which you write about your name (or
    your names in English and Chinese or Spanish or French), your feelings about your
    name, whether you would change your name if you could, or whatever comes to your
    mind when you think about your name.

    ©VIRGINIA P. ROJAS Language Education Consultant [email protected]/ [email protected]/ SKYPE vprojas1

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