DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

                                                                                                      

          Project #1: Narrating Your Neighborhood


Background & Foreground: Last session we discussed Colson Whitehead’s writing as a conduit to thinking about our own personal experiences of New York City. Whitehead employs anecdotes, images, descriptive language and the second person to illustrate how his ideas about New York could easily belong to you, his reader. On September 21st by midnight, your first formal assignment is due. Post it under the
"Selfies in the City" tab. Title the post, "Formal Assignment #1:________." The blank is where your original title for your essay will go.  
If you choose to submit the assignment after the due date, 10-points will be deducted from your grade every class period the assignment is late.
Whether you choose the Whitehead-inspired topics, or those more aligned with Milgram’s “The Experience of Living in Cities,” you are going to write a 2-3 page essay where you focus on developing your voice, i.e. your personality on the page. If you want to reshape any of the topics, knock yourself out.

 

 


Whitehead Topics

                    

  • Write a biography of your neighborhood or block from your perspective. Remember biographies, as you learned from your creative non-fiction assignment in Eng 101, are not just about the facts: when the neighborhood formed, who lives there, etc.  But also about relaying a story of a tipping point that has a beginning, middle and end.  Things to think about: any momentous event that has happened in your neighborhood like a robbery, a block party, arrival of a new family.  As Whitehead does, discuss sites like a pizza parlor, nail salon, bodega, and use descriptive language to bring them to life.

 

  • Write an autobiography of an inanimate object in your neighborhood from its perspective. What do things look like from the garbage can on your corner?  What stories would it tell about your neighborhood if given a voice?  What does that park bench know and think about people in your neighborhood?  What conversations has it overheard?  What does that tree in the middle of the block have to say about its carvings?  Or about the dirty t-shirts that hang from it?  In this essay, you will inhabit an object and describe how the world looks and feels from its perspective. 

 

  • Write an essay about your experience of New York that uses Whitehead’s writing.  This means that your paragraphs will either implicitly or explicitly employ Whitehead’s most successful devices as springboards for own essay by blowing them up. For example:  

*Whitehead begins his work with, “I’m here because I was born here…”  You could start your essay: “I’m here because my family immigrated to this country from China in 2000,” or some such and continue from there. 

 

*Another phrase of Whitehead’s to blow-up: “No matter how long you have been here, you are New Yorker the first time you say…” Well, say what?  What phrase makes someone a New Yorker to you?  Why?

 

*Whitehead also writes: “I started building my private New York…” Well, what does your “private New York” consist of?  When did you start building it?  What makes it yours and no one else’s?

 

*Whitehead nearly concludes his essay: “Consider what all your old apartments would say if they got together to swap stories.”  What would all the places you have lived talk about if they got together and chatted it up?  How would they describe you, your family and the conditions in which you lived?  What do those conditions say about life in New York?  Or if you are not a resident of the five boroughs, about living in the tri-state area generally? 

 

Milgram Topics

 

  • Milgram writes that “observation is the indispensable starting point” of “constructing an “urban theory.” Visit a park, or Starbucks, or another venue where people sit for long periods. Observe how people adapt to overload, i.e. headphones, smartphones, laptops, books, etc. What kinds of restricted involvement do you observe among strangers? What kinds of interactions between familiars?  Are you able to identify those patrons you consider to be long-time inhabitants versus newcomers to the city? If so, what observations is your theory based on?

 

  • Milgram uses the term “cognitive map” to describe the frequented landmarks of individual city dwellers. In your neighborhood, what locations do you frequent? Describe them. What’s the significance of these places? Are they similar or different to the “brochure” version of the city? Why? Why not?

 

  • According to Milgram, life in New York can be boiled down to “tempo and pace, visual components and sources of ambiance.” Explain what “ambiance” means. What’s the “ambiance” of your neighborhood? How do the pace and visual components of your neighborhood contribute to the ambiance? In turn, how do you think the ambiance contributes to your mindset and to those of your neighbors?

 

 

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.