Section 3: Overview

The Storyteller’s Voice

We will move to stories that focus on the storyteller’s voice (first-person narration) and that blur the lines between narrative fiction, memoir, and essay. We will continue to learn about the elements of good storytelling, focusing on who tells the story and the narrator’s perspective. We will consider questions and concepts related to the narrative point of view and study a classic American author, Mark Twain, focusing on how Twain uses his stories and narrative voice to communicate his view of the world. We will also examine how two contemporary figures, Amy Tan and former President Barack Obama, reflect on personal and cultural experiences in the memoir genre—Tan’s a personal essay about her ”Mother Tongue” and Obama’s reading from a memoir he wrote as a young man, Dreams from My Father. We will practice and develop our own storytelling skills by writing a personal narrative, memoir, or essay based on our own experiences or observations of the world.

• Lesson 1:

  We will consider another aspect of the storyteller’s art: the voice that tells the story. We will be reintroduced to the concepts of narrative point of view and narrator’s voice, then analyze Twain’s creative use of first-person point of view within his classic short story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”

• Lesson 2:

  We will closely reread one of two narrative essays by Mark Twain, in order to study how his narrative voice is used in stories with a more distinct message or theme. In reading teams, we will analyze and discuss “Corn-Pone Opinions” or “The War Prayer,” and develop an interpretive claim about the central message of either essay, which we will share in a comparative jigsaw discussion.

• Lesson 3:

  We will learn about the narrative form of memoir and study a narrative essay by contemporary writer Amy Tan that is based on her life as a member of a Chinese immigrant family in America. We will read “Mother Tongue,” in which Tan reflects on the “Englishes” she uses, and examine closely her use of language to communicate her experiences and ideas.

• Lesson 4:

  We will learn more about the narrative form of the memoir by viewing and discussing a 1995 reading by President Barack Obama of his early-life personal narrative, Dreams From My Father.

• Lesson 5:

  We will finalize our personal narratives, which are based on our experiences or view of the world. We will emulate the storytelling approach used by an author we have read to recount and dramatize a meaningful experience from life (memoir) or to produce a narrative essay that communicates a view of the world.

• Lesson 6:

  We will review feedback on the Section Diagnostic. We will use the feedback to make revisions to our work.

• Lesson 7:

  We will share the understanding we have gained through our independent reading and continue to read our texts.