Sound Ideas

Overview

Reading involves interpreting all types of texts: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, graphic novels, advertisements, spoken words, and more. Sound Ideas is a reader that acknowledges this – and that a wide variety of linguistic backgrounds make up today's college classrooms. Sound Ideas addresses the needs and interests of this diverse audience, while maintaining strong connections to a history of ideas.

Table of contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Letter to the Reader

The Reading-Writing Process

On Reading and Thinking
Reading: The Activity and Art of Reading, Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

On Writing and Revision
Reading: Everybody is Talented, Original, and Has Something Important to Say, Brenda Ueland
Reading: A Way of Writing, William Stafford
Reading: How to Write a Critical Analysis, John Trimble
Reading: Shitty First Drafts, Ann Lamott
Reading: Simplicity, William Zinsser

On Visual Texts
Reading: The Vocabulary of Comics, Scott McCloud

On Audio Texts
Audio Track 0.1: Anne Lamott
Audio Track 0.2: Louise Erdrich

For Writing


Chapter 1 - On Gender Differences: Separating the Boys from the Girls

Introduction

Nonfiction
Reading: Strong Girls, from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, Mary Pipher
Reading: Inside the World of Boys, from Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood, William Pollack
Reading: Why Boys Don't Play with Dolls, Katha Pollitt
Reading: The War Against Boys, Christina Hoff-Somers

Fiction
Reading: A and P, John Updike
Reading: Boys and Girls, Alice Munro
Reading: Girl, Jamaica Kincaid
Reading: Boys, Rick Moody

Poetry
Reading: Barbie Doll, Marge Piercy
Reading: Wishes for Sons, Lucille Clifton

Graphic Fiction
Reading: Gum of Mystery, Lynda Barry

Visual Texts
Visual: Quinceañera, Janet Jarman
Visual: Hannah, 13 years old, Lauren Greenfield
Visual: Shacktown Child, Dorothea Lange
Visual: Boy and Girl at Debutante Ball, Catherine Karnow

Audio Texts
Audio Track 1.1: Carol Gilligan
Audio Track 1.2: Paul Kivel
Audio Track 1.3: William Pollack
Audio Track 1.4: Joe Marshall
Additional Audio Resources

Connections

For Writing

Video Suggestions


Chapter 2 - Ideas about Family: Parents and Children

Introduction

Nonfiction
Reading: Nothing Lasts a Hundred Years, from Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Father, Richard Rodriguez
Reading: Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin
Reading: Mother of the Year, Paul Theroux
Reading: Shooting Dad, Sarah Vowell

Fiction
Reading: Mother, Grace Paley
Reading: My Mother’s Memoirs, My Father’s Lie, and Other True Stories, Russell Banks
Reading: Everyday Use, Alice Walker
Reading: River of Names, Dorothy Allison

Poetry
Reading: A Chinese Banquet, Kitty Tsui
Reading: Nikki-Rosa, Nikki Giovanni

Graphic Fiction
Reading: Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, Chris Ware

Visual Texts
Visual: For Dragonboat Festival, Komi Chen
Visual: Mother and Child, Edward Curtis
Visual: Family Eating Dinner in Kitchen, William Gottlieb

Audio Texts
Audio Track 2.1: Richard Rodriguez
Audio Track 2.2: Paul Theroux
Audio Track 2.3: Grace Paley
Audio Track 2.4: Alice Walker
Additional Audio Resources

Connections

For Writing

Video Suggestions


Chapter 3 - Ideas about Education: Stories from School

Introduction

Nonfiction
Reading: Claiming an Education, Adrienne Rich
Reading: New Spelling of My Name, from Zami, Audre Lorde
Reading: Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Neil Postman
Reading: The Graduation, from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

Fiction
Reading: The Lesson, Toni Cade Bambara
Reading: The School, Donald Barthelme
Reading: Saint Marie, from Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich
Reading: Paul’s Case: A Study in Temperment, Willa Cather

Poetry
Reading: We Real Cool, Gwendolyn Brooks
Reading: The History Teacher, Billy Collins

Graphic Fiction
Reading: Remembrance of Things Past: Combray, Marcel Proust, illustrated by Stephane Heuet

Visual Texts
Visual: Marshals escort girls from school, New Orleans, 1960
Visual: In the Schoolroom, Theophile Emmanuel Duverger
Visual: Schoolhouse and pupils, 1913, E.S. Shipp

Audio Texts
Audio Track 3.1: Panel discussion on interdisciplinary studies with Leonard Shlain, Herman Haluza, Jamie Molaro, and Geoffrey Green
Audio Track 3.2: Adrienne Rich
Additional Audio Resources

Connections

For Writing

Video Suggestions


Chapter 4 - Ideas about Love and Hate

Introduction

Nonfiction
Reading: Compassion and Love, from Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, Jane Goodall
Reading: All About Love, bell hooks
Reading: What’s So Bad About Hate? Andrew Sullivan
Reading: Hateful Things, from The Pillow Book, Sei Shonagon

Fiction
Reading: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver
Reading: Amor Divino, Julia Alvarez
Reading: The Lottery, Shirley Jackson
Reading: The Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry
Reading: Love Poem, Audre Lorde
Reading: Hate Poem, Julie Sheehan

Graphic Fiction
Reading: Ghost World, Daniel Clowes

Visual Texts
Visual: The Lovers, Rene Magritte
Visual: Love, Kawabata Ryushi
Visual: Cain and Abel, Jacopo Tintoretto

Audio Texts
Audio Track 4.1: Sue Gerhardt
Audio Track 4.2: Dr. Thomas Lewis
Audio Track 4.3: Mark Potok
Audio Track 4.4: bell hooks
Audio Track 4.5: Jane Goodall
Additional Audio Resources

Connections

For Writing

Video Suggestions


Chapter 5 - Ideas about War

Introduction

Nonfiction
Reading: The Art of War, Sun Tzu
Reading: The War Prayer, Mark Twain
Reading: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (excerpt), Philip Gourevitch
Reading: Handouts, from The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq, John Crawford

Fiction
Reading: The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
Reading: Civil Peace, Chinua Achebe
Reading: Two Words, Isabelle Allende
Reading: War, Luigi Pirandello

Poetry
Reading: The Colonel, Carolyn Forché
Reading: Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen

Graphic Fiction
Reading: Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia, Joe Sacco

Visual Texts
Visual: We Can Do It!, J. Howard Miller
Visual: Napoleon Bonaparte in the Grand Mosque at Cairo, Henri Levy
Visual: Children fleeing napalm, Trang Bang, South Vietnam, June 8, 1972; Nick Ut

Audio Texts
Audio Track 5.1: Srebrenicia Anniversary: Ambassador Swanee Hunt, General William Nash, General John W. Vessy, and Mike Shuster
Audio Track 5.2: Rwandan Genocide: Corinne Dufka and Louise Mushikiwabo
Audio Track 5.3: Iraq War: Michael Gordon
Audio Track 5.4: Chilean History: Isabel Allende
Additional Audio Resources

Connections

For Writing

Video Suggestions


Chapter 6 - Ideas about Crime and Punishment

Introduction

Nonfiction
Reading: Illegalities and Delinquency, from Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault
Reading: A Hanging, George Orwell
Reading: Prison Cruelty, Frank Tannenbaum
Reading: My Life is My Sundance, Leonard Peltier

Fiction
Reading: House of the Dead, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Reading: Outside Work Detail, Scott Wolven
Reading: Enemies, Jimmy Santiago Baca
Reading: Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig

Poetry
Reading: The Report, Dick Allen
Reading: Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital of the Criminal Insane, Etheridge Knight

Graphic Fiction
Reading: The Beast of Chicago: An Account of the Life and Crimes of Herman W. Mudgett, Rick Geary

Visual Texts
Visual: Prisoners Exercising, Vincent van Gogh
Visual: Prisoners, David Siqueros
Visual: Prisoner Behind Bars, Tom Grill

Audio Texts
Audio Track 6.1: Panel discussion on clemency and the death penalty: Arthur Serat, Michael Rushford, Wayne Owens, and Mike Perell.
Additional Audio Resources

Connections

For Writing

Video Suggestions


Chapter 7 - Ideas about the Environment: Human vs. Nature vs. Human

Introduction

Nonfiction
Reading: Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Reading: A Letter to Thoreau, from The Future of Life, Edward O. Wilson
Reading: Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
Reading: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard

Fiction
Reading: The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
Reading: Lessons from the Wolverine, from Fieldnotes, Barry Lopez
Reading: A White Heron, Sarah Orne Jewett
Reading: My Year of Meats, Ruth Ozecki

Poetry
Reading: The World is Too Much with Us, William Wordsworth
Reading: November Cotton Flower, Jean Tomer

Graphic Fiction
Reading: Moby Dick, Will Eisner

Visual Texts
Visual: Melting Clock and Globe, Marina Saba
Visual: The Polar Sea, Caspar David Friedrich
Visual: Mermaid Waiting in Dry Lake, Tomek Obinski

Audio Texts
Audio Track 7.1: Wangari Maathai
Audio Track 7.2: Panel discussion of the future of the oceans with Leon Panetta
Audio Track 7.3: Panel discussion of the future of the oceans with Brian Baird
Audio Track 7.4: Panel discussion of the future of the oceans with John E. McCoster
Audio Track 7.5: Panel discussion of the future of the oceans with Kate Wing
Additional Audio Resources

Connections

For Writing

Video Suggestions



Chapter 8 - Ideas about Art and Poetry A New New Wave

Introduction

Nonfiction
Reading: Can Poetry Matter?, Dana Gioia
Reading: Introduction to Break Blow Burn, Camille Paglia
Reading: ‘Stakes is High,’ Jeff Chang
Reading: loops of perception, Paul D Miller

Fiction
Reading: Seventeen Syllables, Hisaye Yamamoto
Reading: epilogue: women like us, from Krik? Krak!, Edwidge Danticat
Reading: A New Wave Format, Bobbie Ann Mason
Reading: Envy: or, Yiddish in America, Cynthia Ozick

Poetry
Reading: Beware Do Not Read This Poem, Ishmael Reed
Reading: Poetry, Marianne Moore

Graphic Fiction
Reading: Cages, Dave McKean

Visual Texts
Visual: Luna Cadillac, Jean Michel Basquiat
Visual: Death is Buried, the Flower is Pulled Up, Love is Lost; Joan Miro
Visual: Untitled, Francesco Clemente

Audio Texts
Audio Track 8.1: Paul D. Miller
Audio Track 8.2: Jeff Chang
Audio Track 8.3: W.S. Merwin
Audio Track 8.4: Adrienne Rich
Audio Track 8.5: Panel discussion on Pablo Neruda: Robert Bly, John Felsteiner, Mark Eisner, and Elan Stevens
Additional Audio Resources

Connections

For Writing

Video Suggestions


Chapter 9 - Ideas and the Mind

Introduction

Nonfiction
Reading: The Enchanted Loom, from An Alchemy of Mind, Diane Ackerman
Reading: Mind: A Brief Introduction, John Searle
Reading: Neural Networks, from On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins
Reading: Blink, Malcolm Gladwell

Fiction
Reading: Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Reading: A Clean Well-Lighted Place, Ernest Hemingway
Reading: Herzog, Saul Bellow
Reading: Night-Sea Journey, John Barth

Poetry
Reading: The Brain is Wider than the Sky, Emily Dickinson
Reading: Among Schoolchildren, W. B. Yeats

Graphic Fiction
Reading: Izzy the Cockroach and the Meaning of Life, from A Life Force, Will Eisner

Visual Texts
Visual: The Thinker, Auguste Rodin
Visual: The Inventor’s Head, Willam Mason
Visual: Morning Light, Hugh Shurley

Audio Texts
Audio Track 9.1: Malcolm Gladwell
Audio Track 9.2: John Searle
Additional Audio Resources

Connections

For Writing

Video Suggestions


Chapter 10 - Ideas about the Future: Utopia and Dystopia

Introduction

Nonfiction
Reading: On Time Travel, Nova interview with Carl Sagan
Reading: The Future Doesn’t Need Us, Bill Joy
Reading: Forecasting the Future, from What is Coming, H.G. Wells
Reading: Future Shock, Alvin Toffler

Fiction
Reading: Utopia, Sir Thomas More
Reading: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula K. LeGuin
Reading: Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
Reading: Little Brother, Walter Mosley

Poetry
Reading: Re-adjustment, C.S. Lewis
Reading: The Future, Rainer Maria Rilke

Graphic Fiction
Lone Wolf 2100: The Language of Chaos, Mike Kennedy

Visual Texts
Visual: In Chair Overlooking Wormhole, Tom Munnecke
Visual: Dystopia, Thomas Röpke
Visual: Boy with Robert the Robot

Audio Texts
Audio Track 10.1: Discussion of the history of utopian thought with Edward Rothstein
Additional Audio Resources
Connections

For Writing

Video Suggestions