Another insightful and enjoyable read. It’s one of those topics yet again that is obvious and true, something we may already probably know but tend to forget about; yet alone think much about. The passage brought up good points that I took note of and highlighted. Some ideas that stood out to me the most were:

• Corrections: teachers show the discrepancy between what the writing has actually achieved and what the ideal writing should look like.
• This also tends to show that the teachers agenda is more important than their (students) own.

This made me think, are teachers ultimately bias at the end of the day? Maybe but also maybe not. Teachers do have a protocol and a model set up for them on what they need to do with their students. But those models never tell them how to read or approach a students work when it comes to reading their paper. It’s impossible, that program never read that paper. When a teacher is reading the paper, how can it not come off bias in regards to what the paper should be like and the way the student should have written it. Maybe I am only speaking from personal experience and using an umbrella to describe all teachers is hurtful and insensitive. But for me, my teachers also kind of paved the way and really structure and made constructive criticism on my work that it basically became their paper in the end, rather than mines.

This reading helped me realize a few things as to why I probably for one, never use to like school. But it also makes clear sense as to why students should have their own text. They are the student, they are the ones who are learning and evolving. Shouldn’t they be the ones too do things a little bit their way too?

Another insightful and enjoyable read. It’s one of those topics yet again that is obvious and true, something we may already probably know but tend to forget about; yet alone think much about. The passage brought up good points that I took note of and highlighted. Some ideas that stood out to me the most were:

• Corrections: teachers show the discrepancy between what the writing has actually achieved and what the ideal writing should look like.
• This also tends to show that the teachers agenda is more important than their (students) own.

This made me think, are teachers ultimately bias at the end of the day? Maybe but also maybe not. Teachers do have a protocol and a model set up for them on what they need to do with their students. But those models never tell them how to read or approach a students work when it comes to reading their paper. It’s impossible, that program never read that paper. When a teacher is reading the paper, how can it not come off bias in regards to what the paper should be like and the way the student should have written it. Maybe I am only speaking from personal experience and using an umbrella to describe all teachers is hurtful and insensitive. But for me, my teachers also kind of paved the way and really structure and made constructive criticism on my work that it basically became their paper in the end, rather than mines.

This reading helped me realize a few things as to why I probably for one, never use to like school. But it also makes clear sense as to why students should have their own text. They are the student, they are the ones who are learning and evolving. Shouldn’t they be the ones too do things a little bit their way too?

It is really interesting how the projects have lined up. So far, all of the presentations that happen on the same night appear to go together and I would say the same for these.

There is a form of erasure in both, things left unsaid, unheard. The works show this and tackle this in very different ways, but still seem to connect here.

I really enjoyed the way the author interacts with the reader of “A Kiss,” it is not just a story but a conversation which is very interesting and makes it in engaging in a completely different way than we have seen with the other hypertext pieces that have been shared. It adds interaction on a mental level layering that on top of the physical interaction of the piece.

“The Infinite Woman” is extremely intriguing to me on a feministic level and thinking about gender roles and the way women “perform” in society. Adding the fact that all of that is wrapped up into a creation of your own poem and the erasure effect…wow. A lot to unpack and I am really excited to see the conversation that flows from that.

Both pieces are incredibly beautiful in a myriad of ways and in very complex and different ways. I look forward to seeing the presentations and conversations that will be conducted.

I was actually excited to read this piece. I thought this was going to be some sort of guide on how to discover and develop ones voice as a writer. I was a little disappointed to find out that was not the case. Personally, I was never really sure if I had a distinct writing voice. I never saw my writing as something that stood out or gave light to who I was as a person, but maybe that is something for the reader to decide and not me. Elbows piece goes on to discuss the arguments around writing in voice and how it is not exactly talked about as much anymore.

What I found interesting and useful was the “Reasons for Attending to Voice in Texts” section. It made me think about my students in my own classroom. Elbow says, “With practice, people can learn to write prose that ‘has a voice’ or ‘sounds like a person’, and , interestingly, when they do, their language-or when we hear a difficult text read aloud well- we don`t have to work so hard to understand the meaning”(176). My students always ask for me to do the class reading aloud or sometimes to even listen to an audio of what are we reading that day. I thought they preferred this because they just wanted to be lazy, but maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s genuinely easier for some of them to grasp the meaning by hearing a voice read it aloud.

Funny how I described the first time I considered myself a writer by recalling the realization that I had a “voice”. It’s such a blanket term, and Elbow points that out right away. I always considered it to be a stylistic thing but, in reality, there are so many different factors that make up a writer’s voice it’s nearly impossible to put our finger on one.

Because we fail to do that, it makes the voice a individualistic concept and I guess that’s where the argument stems from. I think it also has to do with the term “voice” itself. I mean everyone’s literal voice is so unique and personal to themselves and it’s something we can’t replicate, as hard as we try. So when I said I considered myself a writer once I found my voice, it really meant that I felt like I was writing on my own terms in a way that I felt like I owned my words, the same way I own my voice.

When talking about voice in writing, however, Elbow’s argument essentially states the necessity of voice in writing depends on the outcome you want of the reader. So, he mostly discusses it in a teaching concept, which is why he seems to point more towards the reduction of voice at times. It makes sense. If you want to teach writing, you wouldn’t want the student to indulge in their voice because it usually makes it to personal & takes away from the main objective of the writing.

But, what about creative writing? How much voice is too much? My guess is this would be less restrictive, but there is inevitably a point where too much is too much. Maybe it depends on the genre, but I think even a memoir can be hurt by too much voice. Elbow mentions persona/implied author and how the two are easily mistaken for one another, but it’s “character in the text and character in the author” (183). So, in a creative writing context, I believe the meshing of the two is a clear indicator the writer may have gone too far with the voice in their writing.

Also, Elbow uses the example of instructing his students to read Shakespeare aloud until they feel the meaning. This is where voice is helpful because sounds are more familiar than ye old English and less daunting. It can even be fun because of how ridiculous it sounds to us now. When a student puts themselves in those shoes, they become looser & less focused on what the unfamiliar words are because they feel the power in their pronunciations.

With this example, I realized that teaching writing reduces the importance of voice, while teaching reading amplifies its importance. It seems like this is why Elbow refuses to choose one side over the other. They have to go hand in hand. What is writing without reading and vise versa? What is understanding a meaning without feeling it?

This week’s reading of “Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries” was one of our most intriguing so far, in my opinion. I enjoy Peter Elbow’s work, but I will admit that at first, I wasn’t a fan of this reading. I guess that I was expecting Elbow to dive into a discussion of voice right from the very beginning of the essay, but in actuality, most of the first few pages were concerned not with voice in itself but with how Elbow was going discuss voice. He spoke a bit about the previous arguments that had occurred in the field regarding voice (arguments which surprised me; I never knew that people doubted the concept of voice in writing when it was something I was so used to believing), but mostly he talked about the ways in which people argue, how they work in a “zero-sum model” where only one side can be right and the other, therefore, must be wrong. He argues that this is the wrong approach to take with discussing voice, that there needs to be some sort of compromise, a “both/and” approach instead of an “either/or” one.” This is all well and good, but I felt like it was just overly theoretical and not really about voice, and I expected the rest of the paper to run along the same lines, leaving me frustrated and not very eager to keep going. However, at the bottom of page 174, Elbow states “in this essay, I will try to show that we can affirm the validity of both conflicting positions–even in their contradiction,” and from here, the rest of the essay really does deal with the issue of voice in writing, and I became much more interested!

At first, I was unable to see the benefits of what Elbow calls the “pure text lens,” i.e the way of viewing writing that completely disregards any voice. Elbow says that the text lens “foregrounds language as an abstract system…in which words have the same meaning whoever utters them in whatever context…” I initially chafed against this idea, because words do mean different things in different contexts. Elbow claimed that the pure text lens shows a “naked meaning dimension” that is present in discourse and that both lenses (voice and text) are of benefit to us, but I still was not able to understand the benefit of the text lens by this point in the essay. The voice lens already felt abundantly clear to me, but the points that Elbow made helped to cement its importance in my brain.

I found it very interesting how text with a clear voice (that sounds like a person) carries meaning more clearly. I also appreciate his statement that when students read their work aloud, they are more likely to be able to write sentences that are “inviting and comfortable” to speak aloud, in turn making those sentences better for even silent reading. I’ve heard a lot of benefits about reading one’s work aloud, and I think it’s something I do have to start doing even though I despise hearing my creative work read aloud. I was also interested in the fact that one can learn to analyze voice by reading not only their own drafts aloud but also the work of others in something called “ear training.” Elbow made a lot of points about the benefits of voice but these were some of the ones that really stood out to me.

And now for the argument against paying attention to voice in writing, i.e looking through the text lens. Before these examples, I really was unable to think of the ways that a pure text lens would be useful. Once Elbow started giving the examples, however, I quickly changed my mind and was able to see a lot of use. For one, he states that ignoring voice can help one to read critically, as voice “often functions like a persuasive courtroom lawyer” and can distract readers from the logic of an argument. By looking through a text lens, one can cut through the rhetoric and see the flaws in a writer’s thinking/argument. Also, if teachers put too much focus on voice, students might think that good writing only requires a strong voice, which is not the case.

Probably one of the most interesting uses of the text lens is working out multiple meanings in a work. Elbow believes that when you hear the actual performance of a work, such as a Shakespeare play, the meaning that work focuses on becomes cemented in your mind. However, if you are reading a work, the silent text invites many interpretations. If students are trained not to rely on voice when reading, they will be able to separate language and thought from the author and “read against the grain” (i.e read against the voice) and find their own meanings in a text.

After reading Elbow’s essay, I can see the benefits of reading both with and without a focus on the voice. Of course, I’m still a big fan of voice and think it can do wonders for writing (especially when storytelling), but now I can see the uses of a purely textual lens as well.

I (wrongly) assumed that Elbow’s “Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries” would be about strategies for developing your own voice in writing, or maybe even strategies for teaching voice development to students. So, I was surprised to find that it started by questioning whether or not we should even focus on voice at all.

Elbow makes a convincing argument for his both/and approach to voice, and I found myself agreeing with some of his points, especially when it comes to creating an “authentic voice.” The comparison he makes to online writing is true: it’s very easy to create a voice for the person you want to be seen as, but that’s not necessarily the same as the person you are. I also liked his proposal of a “compromise” between the pro-voice/anti-voice scholars, where we accept that voice should be analyzed with the understanding that it might not reflect the true character of its author, and where we attempt to analyze writing through the two different lenses of text and voice, thereby focusing on two different possible interpretations of the writing.

The parts of this piece that resonated with me the most were the parts that focused on student writing and voice. Elbow makes some great observations that definitely ring true in the classroom. First, he points out that students who write with a problematic voice are more likely to reveal other weaknesses in their writing. As someone who as graded her fair share of unsuccessful writing, this is definitely true. And I think the reasons it’s true is directly related to another point he makes, that “some of the most ineffective and even tangled student writing comes from trying too hard to avoid a ‘regular voice’.” At some point in their academic career, someone led these kids to the incorrect assumption that ALL of the writing they do for school MUST sound academic. (I hope this person steps on Legos.) As a result, some students try so hard to sound “professional” that their writing becomes nonsensical because they litter it with unnecessary (and often incorrectly used) synonyms, or they blather on and repeat themselves in cyclical arguments when they could’ve easily said what they needed to say in one or two sentences. It also makes it difficult for them to write anything non-academic, whether creative or personal. Any time I teach a “fun” English elective like creative writing or journalism, I feel like I need to tell the students to forget every rule about writing they’ve ever learned in an English class before. And every September, when my students from last year ask if I’ll give them feedback on their college essay, my number one comment is always that they’re trying to sound too academic, so their essay sounds stuffy, and impersonal, and not at all like them.

Finally, I think the section of this piece that focused on reasons to not attend to voice in text had some good points, but I think it would’ve been better if Elbow had spent more time differentiating between times when writers should focus on developing voice in their writing, and times when voice should take a backseat instead. He briefly touches on this when he mentions how scientific writing is often purposely impersonal, but I would’ve liked to see a more concrete breakdown of types of writing where it’s more appropriate to develop voice versus types where doing so may actually be detrimental to the writing.

When it comes down to it, I think Elbow raised more questions than he answered in this piece, but it certainly gave me some things to think about.

After watching Chimanada Ngoni Adichie speak I immediately thought about how limiting having a single story lens can be. I thought about how common this actually is and how maybe if we all took a little time to get to know each other more the world would be so different.

I think this is why representation and exposure is important especially with young children. Like Adichie mentioned, when she was younger she did not connect with the people she wrote about. Simply because she did not read about people that looked like her. Being represented, especially to children allows a sense of belonging and although being introduced to people who are on common ground is important so is being exposed to people who may not live a similar life.

What stuck out to me was when Adichie mentioned that her mother would always tell her how their house boy was poor and because she heard that so much she just was surprised when she found that one of his family members created a beautiful piece. He was made up of many stories. That got me to thinking about my own life and how I may be perceived one way because of one aspect of my self that I choose to show, but I have so many other experiences that make up who I am. Now that I think about it not many people get all my “stories”. It forced me to think about all the things I didn’t see in others and maybe what they didn’t see in me.

I’ve seen Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDTalk a few times now, but repeated viewing hasn’t made it any less impactful. I think this idea of the “single story” and the danger it poses should be a required study topic for all of us creators who are looking to share stories with the world. But even aside from creating, I think that everyone needs to be aware of how the media we consume influences our views on others and how we must be cautious to not let a single story cloud our thinking.

As students of writing practice and theory, many of us are creators and/or teachers. For those of us who want to create, as I’ve said, we need to be aware of how stereotypes can insidiously make their way into our work. We may not do so intentionally, but when we have a single story in our head about something, that is going to reflect in our writing. We should aim to be widely read on matters that we want to write about in order to avoid getting this single, narrow perspective that Adichie warns about. We should not be rehashing the same stories we’ve heard over and over.

For those among us who are educators, Adichie makes it clear that diverse reading is important in education. When children see themselves in books, their whole world view can change. Adichie says that, when she was young, she did not know that people like her could exist in literature. It was not until she discovered stories by African authors that she was saved from having a single story of what books are. She was able to see herself in books, and from there she realized that she could write about others like her, not just about the white British people she’d read about as a child.

This talk also gives us a glimpse of the power of story. Stories have, inevitably, shaped our view of the world over the years, but new stories can change those views. By what we read and what we write, we can change our minds and we can even hope to change others’. I think this is one of the most incredible things about stories, their capability to change the world, even if it’s in the tiny way of just changing the way one person sees something. That alone makes writing worth studying.