The basic outline is:
1. Story
2. Thesis
To understand how an expressive essay might work, we read an expressive essay from Newsweek entitled, "I'm Not Who You Think I Am" (click on the link to read it). It was by a woman named Carol Piak who is tired of people seeing her only as "Asian." She implies that people who mistake her for other Asian people harbor kernels of racism. She establishes this idea in 300 words by telling about a few experiences she's had.
However, in the next 300 words Piak tells about how she mistook a woman from Piak's own country, causing her to wonder is Piak herself is racist.
Then in the next 300 words she tells about a time she actually mistook another little girl for her own daughter.
At the end of the essay Piak writes, "A plea, then, for all of us to take the time to look more carefully. For those who see the race and not the individual: look harder. And for those who, like me, may be hypersensitive after years of not being properly seen, keep in mind that while there are people who are racist, many others are merely distracted, overeager, careless, tired, old. We, the thin-skinned, also need to avoid applying the easy label."
We saw that Paik's essay followed story structure very well. It starts with her high on the graph (1), being righteously indignant about being mistook so often. But then she goes down hill, (2) committing the same mistakes she abhors in other people. Then she takes a real plummet (3) when she mistakes someone else for her own daughter. It is only at the end, (4) when she realizes that she is as likely to make mistakes as anyone else that she rises on the graph.
We could graph her story like this:
We worked on outlining the stories we wrote for bellwork according to this essay's format, outlining three events that act as turning points in the story, and then presenting our thesis at the end.That's the basic structure of an expressive essay
First story point
Second story point
Third story point
(each story point being a place where the direction on the story graph goes up or down)
Thesis
We might also notice that the essay also followed story structure in that the author had a goal and a dramatic need. Her goal was to get people to see her as a person instead of as a stereotype. But she kept being stopped by the fact that she stereotyped other people as well. Which led her to her dramatic need: to be more understanding of the people around her.
The bellwork for today was to write an outline for the following prompt.
Many of us encounter obstacles in our lives. Some are small, like a school test. Others can be life-altering, like the loss of a loved one or a major injury. Write about an obstacle you have encountered. How did you overcome it. Did it make you a better person, or did it leave you bitter and cynical?
Write an outline using the formula provided in this blog post.
