ìThere and Back Againî

ESSAY #2
A Portrait of Place

Background and Purpose: The primary goal of a portrait is to use a lens capture the essence of your chosen subject. Using the tools of creative nonfiction you identified in your open letter narrative analysis, your goal as a writer is to illustrate a place you know well, using its significant and concrete details (raw material, evidence, situation) to argue for its essence (larger meaning, purpose, story). Think about Joan Didion using the Santa Ana winds as a lens to describe the subject of an unsettled Los Angeles. Anthony Bourdain uses the lens of foodóvery particular food, lavishly describedóas a means of forging a broader and deeper understanding of his subjects, the cities and countries that offer it. Jesmyn Ward uses the lens of a hurricane (and the poisonous water left over and the lack of available drinking water) to both structure her essay and offer insight into the future of her subject, the Gulf Coast.

Assignment: Write a profile of a subjectóa place you know wellólensed by water. Water can appear in any form or capacity in the essay (weather, lawn watering, swimming practice, the drought in California, the duration of a shower, how your life has changed in Davis with the rain this winter). In doing so, you should develop two kinds of essences: how you have changed or gained insight (personal essence), and how the subject can be used to argue larger ideas in the world (global essence).
Awareness is important here. Are you an outsider in this place? An insider? What is your distance to the place, and does it change over the course of the essay? What kind of journey can you show in your understanding of this place? One of the most valuable aspects of a portrait is to show yourself (and, often, other people) in action and interacting with the place, and this happens most often in scenic writing. How can you ìput the reader next to youî in the place?
Remember, essences are subjective and argumentative. Though we all took or made pictures of the same campus view, each was lensed differently and became a unique ìargument.î

Requirements: Your portrait must include the following.
– A specific lens of water that narrows your writing to a particular angle on the subject
– A specific subjectóthe place you know well
– Global essence(s) to suggest the larger significance of the place
– Personal essence(s) to show how your relationship with the place has changed
– At least one scene (though more are often helpful and successful) with action, description, characterization, and dialogue
– Your personal voice, one specific and creative yet authentic to you

<Class Note>
Author ñ Lens ñ Subject
(outsider
or insider)

[Lens]
1) Tangible or intangible
2) Narrower or wider

{Lens}
-Appropriately ìsizedî (large subject ? narrow lens)
-tangible (actual thingsÖ not concepts or ideas)
-donít make your lens an aspect of yourself

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