Our America : Voice and Diction

1. Our America: Voice and Diction April 21-22, 2014

2. Our America: A Personal Narrative • Personal narrative: Astory that offers a glimpse into its author’s life. It tells a true story of a particular moment, set of experiences, and/or part of the world. • Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago contains interviews, images, and stories that construct the events and circumstances that contributed to a horrifying moment in Chicago’s recent history. • Look at the title and cover of the book. What do you think is the significance of the words “Our America”?

3. Diction in the Personal Narrative • Diction: An author’s word choice. Different words have different connotations. • Connotation: the social and emotional meanings behind a word. IE – Mother, ma’, mommy. • Choosing particular words can enrich the sense of a writer’s unique identity, or voice. • Consider how your expectations of the book would change if the “Our” were missing from the title. • Diction can be extremely formal, using elevated language and advanced vocabulary, or it can be informal, using slang. Good writers can use different levels of diction effectively.

4. Read the following passage from Our America and write down answers to the questions about diction that follow it. “It’s Friday afternoon after school, and we’re going to take you on a tour of our neighborhood. It’s about sixty degrees today– feels good out. Walking down the streets. See an abandoned building, graffiti on the wall. See some little kids playing on a little shopping cart that they got from Jewel Supermarket. Walking by some abandoned houses– looks like some Scud missiles just bombed them out. A lot of trash here– glass and things. Used to be little snakes in this field in the summertime and we’d catch them. People out here pitching pennies. Houses boarded up. Walking through puddles of water. Bums on the street. An abandoned church. A helicopter. There goes somebody we thought was dead– guess he ain’t dead.”

5. Diction Questions • How would you describe the level of formality in this passage? Why do you think the authors use this level of diction in the narrative? • Consider the word “tour.” What do you expect to see and feel on a tour of a place? What do you see on this tour? • What words help you understand what this place is like?

6. Voice • Voice: the author’s unique personality expressed through writing. This is what makes writing original, interesting, and colorful. Voice is supported by diction. • Voice can be strong and distinct or reserved and generic, but all writing has a voice of some kind. • Make some guesses about the narrators’ lives and personalities based on the passage you just read. Who are they? How do you know?

7. Read this excerpt from an interview with a school principal in the text. How does the principal’s unique character differ from the boys’? How do you know? “It’s difficult because of the publicity that surrounds our housing development and community. People set their minds, before they come here, to expect problems, and generally you get what you expect. There is danger in and around the school. You all live in it every day. That means if we work here, we work in it. So that makes it difficult. And we have difficulty convincing you that we believe in you, that we don’t believe that you will grow up to be members of gangs, that you can achieve anything you want to achieve. We have to convince you of that every day. And you don’t believe that we believe you’re smart.”