This morning in class, after your Scrabble debriefing, we will examine David Sedaris‘s essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” and you and two or three of your classmates will collaborate on an exercise that asks you to examine–and subsequently address in writing–these elements of his literacy narrative:
- Metaphors and similes
- Hyperbole
Your group will also identify a word or phrase that appeals to you, or that seems particularly effective—one that is not an example of a metaphor, a simile, or a hyperbolic statement—and compose a sentence that includes the word or phrase and your observations about it.
Metaphors and similes make writing more vivid and can deepen a reader’s understanding of and connection to a piece of writing. In Imaginative Writing, novelist Janet Burroway observes, “Both metaphor and simile compare things that are both alike and different, and it is the tension between this likeness and difference that their literary power lies” (25).
Hyperbolic statements, along with metaphors and similes, are common in Sedaris’s humor, which has garnered him considerable commercial and critical success. Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000) was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor. In 2019, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2021, the New York Public Library voted Me Talk Pretty One Day one of the 125 most important books of the last 125 years.
Sedaris rose to prominence in 1992 after National Public Radio broadcast his essay “Santaland Diaries,” which chronicles his stint as an elf at Macy’s flagship store in New York. That essay is included in his collection Holidays on Ice (1997), a copy of which you will have the opportunity to win in today’s class raffle.
Work Cited
Burroway, Janet. Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft. Pearson, 2014.
Scrabble Debriefings
Starting today, at the beginning of class on Mondays, I will return your Scrabble score sheets from Friday, and you and your group members will participate in a Scrabble debriefing in which you will (1) review and discuss your game, and (2) individually compose journal entries on the game. Questions to address include, but are not limited to, the ones on the handout that I will distribute this morning in class. Those questions for consideration are also listed below.
- Did you learn any new words from your teammate or from your opponents? If so, what were they? If you did not look up their meanings after class and record them in your journal, look them up and record their meanings now.
- What plays involved analyzing multiple options? Did your team opt not to make the highest-scoring play possible in order to either (1) block your opponent, or (2) keep letters that might enable you to score more points later?
- Where did creative problem-solving figure in the game? If your team had a rack of all consonants or vowels–or mostly consonants or vowels–how were you able to advance the game by playing only one or two letters?
- What was the largest number of words formed in a single play and what were they?
- Scrabble, like writing, is a process of composing, only the board game involves composing smaller units, words rather than sentences and paragraphs. What parallels, if any, can you draw between your Scrabble play and your writing process?
You will have the opportunity to draw on the journal entries that you write during debriefings when you compose your midterm and final reflections for the course. If you choose Scrabble as the focus of your final essay and annotated bibliography, you may incorporate portions of your Scrabble debriefings into that assignment as well.
Next Up
In class on Wednesday, you will begin drafting your first major writing assignment longhand. The assignment, a literacy narrative, is an account of a learning experience involving reading, writing, or learning to speak a language. As part of your prewriting process, look back at “Me Talk Pretty One Day” and consider how you might incorporate into your own essay some of the same elements that David Sedaris includes in his. Repeat the process with Helen Keller’s “The Day Language Came into My Life.”
Jane Lucas 