Welcome to the blog for Prof. John Talbird's English 101 class. The purpose of this site is two-fold: 1) to continue the conversations we start in class (or to start conversations before we get to class) and 2) to practice our writing/reading on a weekly basis in an informal forum.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Best American Essays

I feel like the majority of the essays we read in Best American Essays (2014 edition) by John Jeremiah Sullivan are based on experiences that somehow affected the author's life for an incredibly long period of time. Especially in "Thanksgiving in Mongolia" by Aerial Levy and "Sliver of Sky" by Barry Lopez. Both authors had this traumatic experience/s that changed their life forever. I also noticed most of the essays we read have this negative situation that has affected the author's life in some manner. Do you guys think writers or at least most writers are motivated by negative experiences to write? In a way, I see it as writing can be seen as a therapeutical activity so most writers in general write and then advance into the profession later in their adulthood.
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1 comment:

  1. Prof. John TalbirdOctober 13, 2015 at 7:07 PM

    This is a great question, Muhammad. I wonder why so many personal essays are about trauma. What do you guys think?

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