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Modern nonfiction [mumbling]

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people don't get how hard it is to be a work of nonfiction with all that [Book talking]

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biographical info pumping through your pages it's easy to forget who you are

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but you're not here to hear about my issues are you? you're here to learn

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about modern non-fiction well there are a bunch of different types of modern

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nonfiction out there one of the most common is the memoir a book that

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documents a writer's life popular memoirs includes the diving bell and the [The Diving Bell and the Butterfly book appears]

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butterfly by Jean Dominique Bauby which follows the author's life after a

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debilitating stroke there's also running with scissors by

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Augusten Burroughs which had nothing to do with running with actual scissors and [Hand swipes away scissors]

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Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert which documents Gilbert's spiritual

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pilgrimage to India well that last one is known as a travel memoir by the way

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in travel memoirs is you might have guessed about a journey taken by a

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writer they do get out of the house every once in a while so how's a memoir

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different from an autobiography well some people use the terms [Modern nonfiction folder appears]

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interchangeably but the real difference is that an autobiography covers a

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person's entire life while a memoir documents only a portion of it some

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popular autobiographies are the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin which

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covers the entire life of the founding father up from slavery by Booker T [Up from slavery book appears]

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Washington which follows Washington's journey from enslavement to national

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notoriety and the story of my experiments with truth by Gandhi himself

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which documents his life story and spiritual outlook, well, personal essays on

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the other hand are mini versions of memoirs the taco to their burrito if [Taco and burrito appears]

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you're looking for some legit personal essays, then you could check out notes of

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a native son by James Baldwin which concerns Baldwin's relationship to his

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father- Shooting an elephant by George Orwell which uses

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an elephant stampede to make a statement about British imperialism and consider

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the lobster by David Foster Wallace the most mind-bending essay about [Lobster sitting on a rock]

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crustaceans you'll ever encounter personal essays typically follow some

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common forms we call them text structures fancy talk for the way that

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information is organized think of a text structure as the cone holding a scoop of

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delicious information we'll look at a simple one first basically you get [Text structure points appear on clipboard]

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yourself a nice idea like say that shmoop is the greatest website of all

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time which it is and then come up with supporting details that make your tape [Man accepting award on stage]

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like the browsing shmoop daily gives you a 300% higher chance of meeting the

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hottie of your dreams, hey big brains are sexy another simple structure is the

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classic chronological order which is a narrative that occurs from past to

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future in a straight line which means that no time travelers are allowed so

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you could tell a beat by beat account of your most terrifying birthday party [Clown appears at young boys birthday party]

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depict how you changed over the course of high school or just spit out your

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entire life story as long as everything's in the order in which it

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happened we call it chronological next up meet cause and effect cause and

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effect is when you start off with a meaningful event and then you see the

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consequences of that event both good and bad something usually bad so we could [Car drives off a cliff]

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see how a brush with a particularly touchy Chihuahua affected someone's

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feelings for dogs or how a tragic visit to the theatre led to the birth of one

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of the most famous superheroes of all time

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shmoop man what were you expecting someone else will follow up with another [Shmoop man appears from the dark]

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big text structure compare and contrast with this structure an author tells two

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stories they complement each other in some way these two narratives don't have

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to be best friends though no bromance required here a big part of compare and

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contrast is juxtaposition when you put two things next to each other to [Juxtaposition definition appears]

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highlight their differences like hiring Bigfoot to model your new shoe

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collection one example of compare and contrast would be to compare your

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reaction in a friend's reaction to the outcome of the Super Bowl but you don't [Men watching Super Bowl]

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have to keep it personal you could also compare your experience

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with watching the Super Bowl with what it was like for the star QB to

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play in it the final text structure will look at is known as problem and solution

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in this structure you start with a problem and then you solve it, no

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shockers there this problem can be personal like how to convince your [Boy playing Zelda on videogame]

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little brother to give you a turn with the new Zelda game or it can be broader

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like what changes that the economy would have ensured that you had two copies of

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the game well here's one big thing to remember about text structures before we

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move on they're not an either-or kind of deal most personal essays use several

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different text structures as we're about to see let's start with in search of our

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mother's gardens the creativity of black women in the south by Alice Walker in

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search of our mother's gardens is an ode to african-american women their [African-American woman appears]

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creativity their resilience and their secret superpowers were only a half

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joking about that last one Walker's main idea is that

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african-american women are capable of doing great things but society worked [African-American woman painting]

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his butt off to keep them from doing so like Virginia Woolf and her famous

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feminist essay a Room of One's Own Walker argues that women can't reach

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their creative potential without having independence which is an even bigger

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deal here because you know african-american women were enslaved for

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a good chunk of American history prevented from being artists these

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African American women focused their creative energy elsewhere like towards

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their family into mega elaborate quilt designs or in Walker's mom's case into [Woman carrying basket of vegetables]

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her garden I'd stick with Minecraft but maybe that's just me so in Walker's

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estimation of things she's not the only artist in her family she's just the only

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one who realizes it Walker uses every text structure Under the Sun to convey

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this message she introduces the piece with the main idea that african-american [Sentence highlighted in Chapter 1]

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women are deeply creative and follows it up with supporting details that

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establish her claim later in the essay she compares and contrasts various

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female artists like Virginia Woolf, Phyllis Wheatley and Zora Neale Hurston

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She also throws in some structures we can't even define like these weird

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poetry breaks the old school equivalent of the artsy spoken word pieces on a [Beyonce performing on stage]

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Beyonce album... so why does Walker pack so much into

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such a short essay well check out this little nugget Walker says that the essay

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is a personal account that is shared by us all us being african-american women

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of course and not Doctor Who fan girls as was my first interpretation [Fan girl taking selfie of Doctor Who phone box]

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well because Walker is connecting her own experiences with those of other

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african-american women it makes sense that she'd include their story too

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instead of hogging all the spotlight for herself next up we're going to look at [Alice Walker under spotlight on stage]

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mother tongue by Amy Tan... Tan is a first-generation American born to two

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Chinese parents and the essay revolves around her struggles with her Chinese

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American identity and specifically how it relates to language, see Tan realizes

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that she speaks more than one brand of English she speaks this super precise

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language of academia she speaks the simplified grammatically incorrect brand [Tan driving a car]

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of English spoken by her mother and presumably she swears like a sailor

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whenever she owns noobs in online shooters these different dialects mapped [Tan playing shooting video game]

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two distinct sides of Tans identity first there's Amy the writer who makes her

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living from words and takes them super seriously second there's Amy the

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first-generation citizen who still feels different from other Americans in

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addition Tan points out that her mom's limitations with speaking don't apply to

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understanding mama Tan reads Forbes analyzes stock reports and probably [Stock report graphs appear]

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loves 50 shades of gray on the down low unfortunately Mama Tan also faces

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prejudice for the way she talks and people often don't take her seriously

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until Amy shows up and speaks perfect English... Tan plays the linguistic mix up

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for laughs at first like when an adolescent mama tan forces Amy to

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impersonate her on calls with her stockbroker but we see its dark side [Amy answers mobile phone]

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when her mom is ignored by doctors after getting a brain scan until Amy arrives

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so language becomes a pretty important symbol in the essay language represents

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both Tans identity as a chinese-american and the prejudice her mother faces in

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America just look at the title it twists the definition of mother tongue the

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first language a person can speak to refer to Tans mother's heavily accented

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form of English which is then twisted into a symbol of Tans multi-dimensional

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identity as a Chinese-American so what about the text

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structures in this sucker well we start off with a main idea that Tan speaks [Book opens]

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multiple forms of English and then drop the supporting detail in the form of a

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story about a book reading where she became aware of this distinction

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we also see some compare and contrast going down in the middle of the essay

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when Tan compares her Mothers broken English to her own refined speaking

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style our grand finale is straw into gold the metamorphosis of the everyday

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by Sandra Cisneros which is not a guidebook on alchemy sorry [Person puts item into a bowl and explosion occurs]

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Hogwarts helpful.... well the essay starts with an anecdote about how Cisneros was

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asked by friends to make tortillas because she's mexican-american even [Sandra in a kitchen and man asking for tortillas]

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though she knows less about tortilla making than Justin Bieber does about the

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quantum physics somehow, Cisneros manages to make some passable tortillas

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the most delicious miracle since Jesus turned water into wine...To Cisneros [Man pours glass of red wine]

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this miracle shows her ability to achieve the impossible which is

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something she's done throughout her life like when she revolted against her

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father's expectations of her as his only daughter earned her master's degree and

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became a successful writer and somehow watched the season finale of The [Cisneros watching the bachelor on TV]

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Bachelor without shedding a tear the title references this overachievement

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after all it's impossible to spin straw into gold no matter what late-night

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infomercials might tell you but if you put your mind to it Cisneros argues

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you can achieve anything....now wait just a second

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just put my mind to making an eligible young swimsuit magazine appear

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and fall in love with me but nothing, hopes dashed back in the essay, Cisneros

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personal stories are filtered through the lens of her Mexican heritage

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her father born in Mexico City took an epic journey to America during his young [Cisneros father travelling from Mexico City to America]

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adulthood while her mom was born in a Mexican American place in Chicago

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Cisneros has a bit of both rents inside her she's got her pops flair for

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adventure and her mom's streetwise spunk Cisneros attributes her current

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success to both of these qualities even if she still has complaints about her [Cisneros giving speech on stage]

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parents preferential treatment of her brothers as usual we can identify some

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tasty tech structures here although the essay jumps back and forth in time the

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middle section of Cisneros childhood is written in chronological order

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there's also some cause and effect going down when Cisneros explains how she

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bucked her dad's gendered expectations and then shows us how the inner family

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feminist revolution affected their relationship as she got older making her

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feel like an outsider straining her relationship to her dear old dad and

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even pushing her away from her brothers well if you're in the middle of writing [Cisneros book paragraphs highlighted]

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your memoir you can officially end the chapter on your modern nonfiction

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education because this lesson is done and what did we learn well we learned

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that modern nonfiction is a broad category of writing one that includes

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memoirs autobiographies and personal essays these works of nonfiction use a [Text structure points appear on screen]

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variety of text structures to convey information mastering them will help us

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understand personal essays a whole lot better finally we can look at in our

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mother's gardens, mother tongue and straw into gold as elite examples of personal

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essays which we can use to learn about the medium as a whole

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alright well take care I'm going to keep searching for that swimsuit magazine of [Sports Illustrated magazine appears]

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my dreams and what can I say I'm a you know hopeless romantic...

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