[{CHAPTER
10
Illustrating
“When I began to write, I found it was the best way to make sense out of my life.”
—JOHN CHEEVER
Giving examples to make a point is a natural part of communication. For example, if you are
trying to demonstrate how much time you waste, you can cite the fact that you’re on Facebook
about four hours every day. Or to tell your friends how much fun you are having, you might say,
“College is great because no one tells me what to do or when to go to bed. I am completely on
my own.” The message is in the examples you choose.
We also use examples every day to make various points in our writing. Think about the following situations that take place in our personal lives, at school, and at work.
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In a letter to your parents, you tell them how hard you are studying in college by giving them
examples of your weekend study schedule.
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For a psychology course, a student gives examples of gestures, facial expressions, and posture in a paper on nonverbal communication.
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A student answers a sociology exam question by giving examples to show how children are
integrated into society.
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A human resource director of a large company writes a memo on sexual harassment in the
workplace, including examples of inappropriate behavior.
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The owner of a catering business writes a brochure listing examples of dinners available in
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different price ranges.
An example is an illustration of the point you want to make. Well-chosen examples, then,
are the building blocks of an illustration essay. You draw examples from your experience, your
observations, and your reading. They help show—rather than tell—your readers what you mean,
usually by supplying concrete details (what you see, hear, touch, smell, or taste) to support abstract ideas (such as faith, hope, understanding, and love), by providing specifics (“I like chocolate”) to explain generalizations (“I like sweets”), and by giving definite references (“Turn left at
the second stoplight”) to clarify vague statements (“Turn left in a few blocks”).
Not only do examples help make your point, they also add interest to your writing. Would you
like to read an essay stating that being a server in a restaurant is a lot harder than it looks? Or would
you be more interested in reading an essay describing what it is like serving too many tables, carrying heavy trays, taking the wrong order to a table, and dealing with rude customers? The first statement tells, but vivid examples show your readers the point you want to make.
UnderstandingIllustration
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To test your knowledge of illustrating, go to MyWritingLab.com, and click on Illustrating
Essays. Then watch the video(s) on illustration paragraphs. When you feel you have mastered this
method of thinking, check your level of understanding by completing the Recall, Apply, and Write
activities in MyWritingLab. The Recall activity asks you to answer some general questions about
what you’ve just learned in the video(s); the Apply activity requires you to read an illustration essay
and answer questions about it; and in the Write task, you will select a question to answer and
practice your new illustrating skills. When you can write a good illustration essay, you are showing
at the highest level that you completely understand this pattern of thought.
PREPARING TO WRITE AN ILLUSTRATION ESSAY
For our purposes in this text, beginning to write starts with reading. Reading a good illustration essay can help you write a good illustration essay if you understand how the model essay
works—in content and in structure. Reading and writing are actually two halves of a whole
process. For example, if you can see how a writer is accomplishing his or her purpose in your
reading, you will be more likely to use that same strategy effectively in your own writing. Using
these strategies critically or analytically is especially important for success in college and beyond.
This section will guide you to higher levels of thinking as you learn to use illustration. In the next
few pages, you will read an effective illustration essay and then answer some questions to help
you discover how the essay accomplishes its purpose.
Reading an Illustration Essay
In her essay “Hold the Mayonnaise,” Julia Alvarez uses examples to explain the difficulties
involved in blending two cultures—American and Latino—within a stepfamily. Are you part of a
“blended” family, or do you know someone who is? Which features of the family are similar?
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Which are different? Are the two families from the same culture? Have you ever visited a foreign
country? What was it like to be in a different culture? What did you learn?
Applying a strategy to your reading will help you achieve a deep understanding of the material. In other words, it will help you read critically or analytically. If you read critically, you will
then understand your reading on this level and be able to write critically as well. Reading critically or analytically lets you discover not only what the author is saying but also how the author is
saying it. The strategy you will apply to all reading tasks in this chapter involves dividing the essay into logical sections or “chunks” as you read.
READING CRITICALLY: CHUNKING A PROFESSIONAL ESSAY
Reading an illustration essay critically means looking closely at it to discover what its purpose is
and how it is structured to make its point. To understand how this essay works, circle the main
idea or thesis. Then draw horizontal lines throughout the essay to separate the various topics Alvarez uses to support her thesis. These lines may or may not coincide with paragraph breaks. Finally, in the margins, give each “chunk” a label or name that makes sense to you. Be prepared to
explain the divisions you make.
HOLD THE MAYONNAISE
by Julia Alvarez
1
“If I die first and Papi ever gets remarried,” Mami used to tease when we were kids, “don’t
you accept a new woman in my house. Make her life impossible, you hear?” My sisters and I
nodded obediently and a filial shudder would go through us. We were Catholics, so, of course,
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the only kind of remarriage we could imagine had to involve our mother’s death.
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We were also Dominicans, recently arrived in Jamaica, Queens, in the early ’60s, before
waves of other Latin Americans began arriving. So, when we imagined whom exactly my father
might possibly ever think of remarrying, only American women came to mind. It would be bad
enough having a madrastra, but a “stepmother .”
3
All I could think of was that she would make me eat mayonnaise, a food which I identified
with the United States and which I detested. Mami understood, of course, that I wasn’t used to
that kind of food. Even a madrastra, accustomed to our rice and beans and tostones and pollo
frito, would understand. But an American stepmother would think it was normal to put mayonnaise on food, and if she were at all strict and a little mean, which all stepmothers, of course,
were, she would make me eat potato salad and such. I had plenty of my own reasons to make a
potential stepmother’s life impossible. When I nodded obediently with my sisters, I was imagining not just something foreign in our house, but in our refrigerator.
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So it’s strange now, almost 35 years later, to find myself a Latina stepmother of my husband’s two tall, strapping, blond, mayonnaise-eating daughters. To be honest, neither of them is a
real aficionado of the condiment, but it’s a fair thing to add to a bowl of tuna fish or diced potatoes. Their American food, I think of it, and when they head to their mother’s or off to school, I
push the jar back in the refrigerator behind their chocolate pudding and several open cans of Diet
Coke.
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5
What I can’t push as successfully out of sight are my own immigrant childhood fears of having a gringa stepmother with foreign tastes in our house. Except now, I am the foreign stepmother in a gringa household. I’ve wondered what my husband’s two daughters think of this stranger
in their family. It must be doubly strange for them that I am from another culture.
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Of course, there are mitigating circumstances—my husband’s two daughters were teenagers
when we married, older, more mature, able to understand differences. They had also traveled
when they were children with their father, an eye doctor, who worked on short-term international
projects with various eye foundations. But still, it’s one thing to visit a foreign country, another
altogether to find it brought home—a real bear plopped down in a Goldilocks house.
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Sometimes, it’s a whole extended family of bears. My warm, loud Latino family came up for
the wedding: my tía from Santo Domingo; three dramatic, enthusiastic sisters and their families;
my papi, with a thick accent I could tell the girls found it hard to understand; and my mami, who
had her eye trained on my soon-to-be stepdaughters for any sign that they were about to make my
life impossible. “How are they behaving themselves?” she asked me, as if they were 7 and 3, not
19 and 16. “They’re wonderful girls,” I replied, already feeling protective of them.
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I looked around for the girls in the meadow in front of the house we were building, where we
were holding the outdoor wedding ceremony and party. The oldest hung out with a group of her
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own friends. The younger one whizzed in briefly for the ceremony, then left again before the
congratulations started up. There was not much mixing with me and mine. What was there for
them to celebrate on a day so full of confusion and effort?
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On my side, being the newcomer in someone else’s territory is a role I’m used to. I can tap into that struggling English speaker, that skinny, dark-haired, olive-skinned girl in a sixth grade of
mostly blond and blue-eyed giants. Those tall, freckled boys would push me around in the playground. “Go back to where you came from!” “No comprendo!” I’d reply, though of course there
was no misunderstanding the fierce looks on their faces.
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Even now, my first response to a scowl is that old pulling away. (My husband calls it “checking out.”) I remember times early on in the marriage when the girls would be with us, and I’d get
out of school and drive around doing errands, killing time, until my husband, their father, would
be leaving work. I am not proud of my fears, but I understand—as the lingo goes—where they
come from.
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And I understand, more than I’d like to sometimes, my stepdaughters’ pain. But with me,
they need never fear that I’ll usurp a mother’s place. No one has ever come up and held their faces and then addressed me, “They look just like you.” If anything, strangers to the remarriage are
probably playing Mr. Potato Head in their minds, trying to figure out how my foreign features
and my husband’s fair Nebraskan features got put together into these two tall, blond girls. “My
husband’s daughters,” I kept introducing them.
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12
Once, when one of them visited my class and I introduced her as such, two students asked me
why. “I’d be so hurt if my stepmom introduced me that way,” the young man said. That night I
told my stepdaughter what my students had said. She scowled at me and agreed. “It’s so weird
how you call me Papa’s daughter. Like you don’t want to be related to me or something.”
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“I didn’t want to presume,” I explained. “So it’s O.K. if I call you my stepdaughter?”
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“That’s what I am,” she said. Relieved, I took it for a teensy inch of acceptance. The takings
are small in this stepworld, I’ve discovered—sort of like being a minority. It feels as if all the
goodies have gone somewhere else.
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Day to day, I guess I follow my papi’s advice. When we first came, he would talk to his
children about how to make it in our new country. “Just do your work and put in your heart, and
they will accept you!” In this age of remaining true to your roots, of keeping your Spanish, of
fighting from inside your culture, that assimilationist approach is highly suspect. My Latino students—who don’t want to be called Hispanics anymore—would ditch me as faculty adviser if I
came up with that play-nice message.
16
But in a stepfamily where everyone is starting a new life together, it isn’t bad advice. Like a
potluck supper, an American concept my mami never took to. (“Why invite people to your house
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and then ask them to bring the food?”) You put what you’ve got together with what everyone else
brought and see what comes out of the pot. The luck part is if everyone brings something you
like—no potato salad, no deviled eggs, no little party sandwiches with you know what in them.
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© Copyright 2024 Paperzz