Response To: Genre Theory by Deborah Dean

This reading was hard for me because I never thought genres were that complex. I always thought a genre was the type of book you were reading like science fiction, non-fiction, or a biography. I really thought it was interesting once I read further.
Dean first starts off telling us what a genre is, which helped me because I wasn't clear on what they were. She tells us that genres are not about literary texts anymore but instead genre can have a social aspect. Imagine how you talk around your friends then imagine how you talk to your employer. The different ways you talk are different genres of social interaction. Dean also says that Genres are more than forms. You can't define a genre because there are so many different aspects that contribute to a genre. Genres are also not fixed, Dean states. A genre can be change by a certain event. For example, the communication between spouses would be different after one lies or cheats on the other.
Then Dean goes on to characterize genres so it can be easier to understand what a genre is. The characterizations of genres are social, rhetorical, dynamic, historical, cultural, situational, and ideological. Genre can be social because you talk to certain people different ways like I mentioned before. Genres can also be rhetorical because they establish and enforce relationships. A leader has to talk like a leader to assert himself as the leader. If a leader talked with a tone of a friend or a follower then his followers will feel like he's not a very good leader. The common change in genres makes it easy to understand that genres can be dynamic. Also history can effect a genre. If your friend has often lied to you, that history is going to affect your genre of communicating with him. Culture has a huge effect on your genre. Many cultures have different ways of communicating and they definitely speak and write with a genre unique to there culture. For example, many languages have different contexts they speak in so learning a new language can be difficult cause it may have different genres than your first language. Genres can also be varied on the situation your in. Imagine going to your friends birthday party and talking with the people there, would you act the same way at a classy charity event? Finally genres vary highly on your ideas. A democratic politician would have a completely different genre than a dictator. They both have different ideas and they will communicate differently because of these ideas.
 After all that Dean goes on to explain the genre theories. The theories are about how genres are constructed. There are three different theories how genres should be developed and they are genres as text, genres as rhetoric, and genres as practice. The genres as text theorist look directly at the genre and what makes it that genre. Theorist who choose the genre as rhetoric look what effected the genres and how it came to be that genre. Finally, the genres as practice examine class rooms to see how students learn their genres.
I thought this text was similar to learning what literacy's were. It was interesting and often made made think of my own genres. I thought about how my genres came to be and who influenced my genres. Dean said that this text is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to genres so I would like to learn more about the theories and how genres develop.

Response To: Shitty FIrst Drafts by Anne Lamott

I really liked this passage. It made me feel better about my writing and gave me insight on how to improve my writing. The main idea of this story is that writing does not come easily. Lamott says most published and accomplished writers never sit down and just take off with beautiful writing. I thought that writers specifically knew how to write once and idea was in there head. Lamott continues and says that most writing is done draft by draft, the first being horrible until the writer holds a draft that is near perfect in their opinion. In my writing I usually write only two or three drafts and I never really got the feedback I wanted. This advice from Lamott is really going to help me cause I now get what I need to do to get my writing where i want it. The idea is to start your first draft with what ever you want to write, however you want to write it. This draft will be terrible but you can go back and improve it sentence by sentence and even add new ideas and subjects. After each draft look over it and read it as if  it wasn't yours. Lamott shows the audience this by using the example of her writing restaurant reviews for a magazine she use to work for. She said it was horrible trying to start writing and became really frustrated, but she decided to write a horrible draft and then come back to it later. The thing she said that was most difficult getting past were the judge mental voices in her head. I have problems with this too because I'm often scared of turning in a paper that is horrible and imagining a teacher or peer insulting my writing. The way Lamott got around this was a trick she learned from a hypnotist where you focus on these voices isolate them and put them in a jar and tune them out in your mind. I'm definitely going to try this and see if it works. This passage mad me feel much better about writing this essay, I just have to know that my writing is going to be bad at first and slowly improve it everyday.

Response to: If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I? - Geeta Kothari

I really liked this reading because it was about one of my favorite things: food. The reading was about the author, Geeta Kothari, and her experiences with cooking and eating foods from different cultures. Kothari said she came from India but lives in america. The start of the reading she tells us about her childhood and how at her school many of the her classmates were eating typical american foods, but she didn't because her mother would always make her Indian foods. Kothari's mother did not want her eating american foods because she didn't know much about it. Also it was a common not to eat any beef in India so Kothari's mother did not let her have any. As she gets older Kothari gets many chances to indulge in food from different cultures and she enjoys it sometimes. Although when she was sent to boarding school in London she had the chance to eat foods with beef in it, but she declares her self a vegetarian. Which I thought was weird considering she wanted to eat meat when she was younger. Later in life Kothari regrets not enjoying the foods of her childhood because she no longer had the opportunity to get these meals cause she have the recipes or anyone who knew how to cook them. Many restaurants she went to didn't cook indian food the proper way. So she tries to gather as many recipes she can over the phone from relatives. She eventually got married to american who often ate the foods she wanted as a child but then she seemed to miss her Indian foods more. Kothari also talked about this unfamiliar smell she recognized on him that was like the meat foods he ate. She said she didn't like but she used to want those foods she want as a child which is a bit ironic.
After reading it i felt like I could relate to Kothari missing her childhood foods. Now as a college student I really miss my parents cooking even though it was not always the best its sure beats eating microwave dinners and fast food. Like Kothari I also didn't like my parents food all the time. I loved eating at my friends house because his mom was from El Salvador and I loved getting a chance to experience new types of food. I think many kids do not just dislike they're parents cooking it's just that they get used to it and it gets boring after 10 years of the same cooking. I think we should all be open to new foods becuase we never know if we like them until we try.

Response to: The Sponsors of Literacy

I really liked reading  The Sponsors of Literacy by Deborah Brandt. I got really interested in the part about Dwayne Lowery and how he went from a hard labor job to becoming a key communicator in a employee union. Lowery went on a trip to DC to get more educated on the behalf of a work union. This trip helped get more literate which made him very valuable to the union. Brandt calls this trip for Lowery a Sponsor. Sponsors are anything that helps us become more literate. She emphasizes a lot on how important sponsors are for us and I agree they are. If Lowery never had that trip as a sponsor he'd still be working at the production line. Brandt's essay made me think about my own sponsors and if my level of literacy is high enough to get me a worthwhile career.