Anker Susan. Real Essays with Readings with 2009 MLA Update

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Chapter 45 • Description 767

the University of California at Irvine, where he was editor of the uni-

versity’s literary magazine, Faultline. Currently a member of the English

faculty at California State University at Fresno, Espinoza published his

ﬁ rst novel, Still Water Saints, in 2007. Espinoza is one of the Proﬁ les of

Success included in this book (see p. 191).

“An American in Mexico” originally appeared on February 25, 2007,

in the New York Times Magazine. In it, Espinoza recounts a visit to Mex-

ico that he made with his mother to connect to his roots in Mexico.

GUIDING QUESTION

What expectations does Espinoza have for his visit to the house his

mother built in Mexico? Are these expectations fulﬁ lled or disappointed?

1 When my father came to the United States to work as a day laborer

many years ago, he intended to move back to the village in Michoacán

where my mother and seven of my siblings lived. He wired my mother

money, some of which she used to build a house there in El Ojo de Agua

on a parcel of land that has been in her family since before the Mexican

revolution.

But at some point, my mother had enough of waiting for

my father’s return. She packed up what little she had and, with her chil-

dren, traveled to Tijuana to be closer to him and to make visits easier.

She stayed in Tijuana for several years — I was born there, the youngest

of eleven children. Eventually, we moved to the three-bedroom house

outside Los Angeles where I grew up.

2 My childhood was different from the childhood of most of my sib-

lings. I rode my BMX bike through vacant lots, watched cable, and

collected “Star Wars” action ﬁ gures. They climbed mesquite trees,

made handmade dolls from old rags, and stole chicken eggs from a

neighbor’s henhouse to sell for candy. They also shared hardships and

misfortunes — hunger, long hours of working in the ﬁ elds at young ages,

the loss of two infant sisters.

3 Their connection to Mexico was close, deep, and also painful,

something I simply could not grasp. Growing up, I felt no ties to El Ojo

de Agua. I traveled into Mexico with my family as a child a few times,

but I felt disconnected and uninterested during those trips — and was

always eager to return to my American life. But as I grew older, I began

to want to see the place most of my family called home, the place my

siblings had talked about with such complicated feelings. Two years

ago, at 33, I ﬁ nally decided to go. I took my mother along; it had been

more than 25 years since she had returned.

PAUSE: Summarize

the main differ-

ences between

Espinoza’s child-

hood and his older

siblings’ childhoods.

Mexican revolution: a period of civil war lasting from 1910 to 1917

PAUSE: Why do

you suppose that

Espinoza ﬁ nally

decided to visit

his family’s former

home?

■ NOTE: Alex Espi-

noza is a Proﬁ le of

Success in Chapter 12.

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4 We ﬂ ew into Mexico City, where we stayed for one day — strolling

through parks and museums and visiting the Basilica of Our Lady of

Guadalupe; there we watched the steady ﬂ ow of devotees making their

pilgrimages to the altar on their knees, their hands clasped in prayer.

The next day, we traveled by bus to the city of La Piedad, where my

uncle picked us up at the depot.

5 After many years in the U.S., my uncle had recently returned home

to sell agricultural equipment to local farmers. He employed a maid

named Chavela, who lived in one of the nearby villages. Chavela told me

that her boyfriend had left for the United States about a month before

but that weeks had gone by without news of his whereabouts. She said

she hoped to save enough money to be able to go and ﬁ nd him. It made

me think of the trip my mother took more than three decades earlier,

traveling by train to Tijuana with her children to be near my father.

6 It was threatening to rain the afternoon my uncle drove us out over

unpaved roads to the old house. Many of the houses along the main

road of the village were empty and dark, with overgrown weeds and bro-

ken fences. Now and again, I’d spot one with dim lights illuminating the

small windows. Tricycles and toys might be scattered around the front

yard, and a column of white smoke threaded out through a hole in the

corrugated-metal roof.

7 Gradually, the houses vanished, giving way to tall cornstalks, and

we reached the wooden fence marking the entrance to my grandfather’s

property. We drove up a short distance before stopping and getting out.

I spotted a reservoir behind some trees, and the water glistened when

the clouds broke enough to allow a few beams of sunlight to touch the

surface.

8 The house my mother built was nothing more than four walls made

of orange bricks surrounded by thickets of wild shrubs and grass. The

windows had no glass, and the front door had been ripped from its

hinges. My uncle said that the house was sometimes used as a stable for

the livestock that grazed in the hills not far away. There were broken

bottles on the dirt ﬂ oor, and it smelled of urine and manure.

9 “I lived here,” my mother said to me, as if she couldn’t believe it

herself. “Right here.”

10 This was a place that had, over the years, become mythic

in my

mind. But it was real. I touched the brick walls, and I saw the trees my

siblings had climbed, the ﬁ elds where they had worked. The soft mud

gave way underneath my shoes. A clean set of my footprints remained.

11 I took pictures, and after the ﬁ lm was developed, I sat on the ﬂ oor

of my apartment back in California and took the photos out. I looked

at each one and tried piecing them together, assembling a memory.

PAUSE: What do

you predict that

Espinoza and his

mother might ﬁ nd

when they reach

the house?

PAUSE: Why might

the house have

become “mythic”

to Espinoza?

mythic: unreal but often with wondrous associations

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I really wanted to connect to that land the way my brothers and sisters

had — to get a better sense of our shared past. I thought I could under-

stand things like sacriﬁ ce, the small traces of ourselves we are forced to

leave behind. But all that the pictures showed were indistinguishable

sections of walls, windows, and dark doorways.

indistinguishable: impossible to tell apart

SUMMARIZE AND RESPOND

In your reading journal or elsewhere, summarize the main point of “An

American in Mexico.” Then, go back and check off support for this main

idea. Next, write a brief summary (three to ﬁ ve sentences) of the reading.

Finally, jot down your initial response to the selection. How does Espinoza

make you feel about his visit to the house that his mother built in Mexico

many years earlier?

CHECK YOUR COMPREHENSION

1. Which of the following would be the best alternative title for this essay?

a. “Growing Up the Youngest of a Large Family”

b. “A Journey to My Mexican Past”

c. “Photographs and Memory”

d. “A Connection to the Past”

2. The main idea of this essay is that

a. immigrants have an obligation to visit the places where their families

originally lived.

b. the younger children in immigrant families generally have a more

privileged life than do their elder siblings.

c. the author’s attempt to make a connection to his family’s former life

in Mexico was not successful.

d. photographs can never do justice to one’s memories of a place.

3. The author’s mother’s response to visiting the house she built in Mexico

is one of

a. disgust that the place is so ﬁ lthy.

b. amazement that she once lived there.

c. sadness that no one lives there any longer.

d. anger toward her brother for allowing it to become shabby.

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770 Part Eight • Readings for Writers

4. If you are unfamiliar with the following words, use a dictionary to check

their meanings: disconnected (3); devotees, pilgrimages (4); illuminating,

corrugated (6).

READ CRITICALLY

1. Espinoza begins his essay with a brief history of his immediate family.

What purpose does this opening serve?

2. In paragraph 3, Espinoza refers to his siblings’ feelings about their home

in Mexico as “complicated.” Why does he think that they might feel the

way they do?

3. Note Espinoza’s use of descriptive detail in paragraphs 6 to 8. To what

senses does he appeal? What overall impression does he create?

4. Espinoza makes use of direct quotation only once in the essay, and he

does so in a one-sentence paragraph (para. 9). Why do you suppose that

he chose to do so? How would the effect be different if he had put what

his mother said into his own words rather than quoting her directly?

5. Evaluate Espinoza’s concluding paragraph. What impression does he

seem to wish to create? What makes you think as you do?

WRITE AN ESSAY

Write an essay about a place that has special meaning for you. Your associa-

tions with the place may be either positive or negative or some combination of

the two. Be sure to include the kinds of descriptive detail that will bring your

subject to life for your readers and let them understand its signiﬁ cance.

Debra Marquart

Chores

Growing up on a rural North Dakota farm near the tiny hamlet of

Napoleon in the 1960s and 1970s, Debra Marquart was a rebel from an

early age. She escaped to college only to drop out and tour with rock

and heavy-metal bands. Eventually returning to school, she completed

a master’s degree in English at Iowa State University and a master’s

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degree in liberal arts at Moorhead State University in Minnesota. She

published her ﬁ rst book of poetry, Everything’s a Verb, in 1995, fol-

lowed by a jazz-accompanied spoken-word CD, A Regular Dervish, in

1996. Now a member of the faculty at Iowa State’s creative writing and

environment program, she has written The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll

Stories (2000), a collection of short stories based on her experiences as

a road musician, along with poetry and prose for a variety of journals.

Her memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of

Nowhere (2006), received the Elle Lettres award from Elle magazine and

the 2007 PEN USA Creative Nonﬁ ction Award.

“Chores,” adapted from The Horizontal World, originally appeared

in Orion magazine. In it, Marquart describes in stark detail the experi-

ence of slaughtering chickens on her family’s farm.

GUIDING QUESTION

Which descriptive details presented in this essay do you ﬁ nd most

memorable?

1 Chores — even the word registers a feeling for the task at hand:

“I’ve gotta go home and do chores.” Never singular, always plural,

a job that interrupts some fun you’re having, then grows and grows

like polyps

in an intestine. One syllable quickly spat out or yelled up

creaky stair, the word chores describes a job so unsavory that to spend

the energy using two syllables means you’d probably never get around

to doing it.

2 It’s best to turn away from chores, pretend you didn’t hear the call,

hope someone else will do them, better to turn back to the softness and

warmth of your own bed, back to the brush of cotton and the sweet

downy smell of sheets, than to skitter across a cold wood ﬂ oor in the

dark, pull on the old clothes and worn smelly shoes, and go out into the

drafty, shit-smeared places where chores are done.

3 I have been pulled from my bed in my white nightgown after I’ve

disregarded my mother’s ﬁ rst and second calls, my father’s third call for

chores. I have been taken down to the big backyard near the chicken

coop to help with butchering the hens.

4 My mother has already started. She is cutting necks. My grand-

mother kneels beside her, also cutting. Between them is a growing pile

of chicken heads, wall-eyed, astonished open beaks, the stunned crop of

white feathers against the pink wavy ﬂ esh of fading combs.

5 My oldest sister, Kate, is galloping around the yard like the cloaked

angel of death, snaring chickens with a long wire leg-catcher. When she

PAUSE: What

comes to your mind

when you think of

the word chores?

polyps: a type of tumor

PAUSE: Based on

this paragraph,

what do you

predict the author

will describe in the

essay?

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traps them by the ankle, they squawk wildly, trying to catch the ground

with the other leg and run away until she lifts them in the air and hands

them, wings ﬂ apping, feathers ﬂ ying loose, over to the neck cutters. In

this way, my sister is god today.

6 My second-oldest sister, Elizabeth, is retrieving the chickens from

the headless places they have ﬂ own to. Around and around she runs,

looking for the vivid sprays that will signal a chicken is nearby — blood

rising in fountains on the white stucco walls of the chicken coop, blood

bucking up against the trunks of cottonwoods, blood in soaked patches

on the grass, the red-iron smell of oxidization strewn across the dewy

green lawn.

7 As the youngest girl, I stand on the edge of this slaughter, guarding

the three loads of laundry my mother has risen early to wash, the whites

now ﬂ apping on the line. My mother is quick with the knife; her blade

is sharp. She places the chicken on the ground, pulls its wings back and

severs the neck with one quick motion. Without turning to look up, she

throws the bird into the air as if to separate herself from the act, then

she grabs another live chicken.

8 My grandmother kneels beside her, moving more slowly. She cuts

off the head, then holds her hand around the chicken’s neck, tilting

it like a wine bottle she means to pour down to nothing. Under her

knee, the chicken bumps and claws until all the electrical impulses that

drive its muscles are ﬁ nished. Beside her is a large red pool running

down the hill. And so, it seems, there are at least two ways to butcher a

chicken.

9 The water is already boiling in tubs up the hill in the barn where we

go to pluck the feathers. Sitting in a circle, we grasp the upturned claws

and dip the chickens in steaming water. The feathers come off in clumps

and drop into another tub between us. The smell is complex — water

meets wool meets vinegar meets dirt — like wet fur, like bad feet.

10 We pluck the strong wing feathers with their deep roots and peel

away the body’s blanket of feathers. Then we rub the skin for the downy

layer and pick away the tiny pinfeathers nestling inside the deep pockets

of skin.

11 Across the yard, Mother is in the milk house with the burning

candle. She is the ﬁ re woman singeing the plucked bodies as she passes

them over the ﬂ ame. The room smells of sulfur, the deep-caked odor of

burnt hair and ﬂ esh. Grandmother sits beside her, on a stool in front of

the sink. She is the last one to receive the bodies.

12 She places the chicken on its back before her and opens the bird’s

legs, looking for the soft spot unprotected by bone. “The pooper,” she

says, “the last part to go over the fence.” She repeats these words all day

again and again to keep us from fainting.

PAUSE: Why do

you suppose this

memory is so vivid

for Marquart?

PAUSE: Underline

the speciﬁ c

descriptive details

Marquart uses in

this paragraph.

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Chapter 45 • Description 773

13 She draws a sharp blade across the ﬁ lm of skin between the legs.

A world of steaming darkness spills out into which she must thrust her

hand, extracting the long weave of intestines, the soft gray lungs, the

heart, the liver, the tiny green row of developing egg yolks, the brown

gizzard, all swimming in a gelatinous ooze. Carefully, she ﬁ nds the small

sac of bile, the green-black poison that, if ruptured, will ruin the meat

of the bird, and she cuts it away.

14 Only she knows how to distinguish the edible from the throwaway

parts. She crops the feet from the body with a hard crunch of her knife

and trims away the claws, the dirt still packed tight under the nails from

the chicken’s constant scratching for food. We recoil when she places

the trimmed yellow feet on the edible pile. She’ll then take them home

in a bag to Grandpa at the end of the day, and we have no idea what

they do with them.

15 And when she holds the gizzard in her palm like a warm bun and

draws a blade along the edge, turning the sac inside out to show us the

chicken’s last supper, I expect to see bottle caps, shiny pennies, dia-

mond rings inside, but I ﬁ nd only an undigested clump of oats, a few

tiny bits of gravel.

16 At the end of the day, we tuck in the wings and legs, slipping the

naked birds into the dozens of water-ﬁ lled milk cartons my mother has

been saving all year for freezing the meat. She sets aside four of the

biggest birds for frying that night.

17 “Mmm, girls,” she says, “just think — fresh chicken.”

18 “Ughh,” I say to Grandmother as we walk the red wheelbarrow to

the dump ground to bury the parts, the metallic tinge of blood still in

my mouth.

19 “Do I really have to eat it?” I ask.

20 I could use a few days for amnesia

to set in. But Grandmother tells

me I must. I must learn to know the taste of what my hands have done

on my tongue.

amnesia: a state of forgetfulness

SUMMARIZE AND RESPOND

In your reading journal or elsewhere, summarize the main point of “Chores.”

Then, go back and check off support for this main idea. Next, write a brief

summary (three to ﬁ ve sentences) of the selection. Finally, jot down your initial

response to the reading. To what extent do you share the feelings that the au-

thor expresses in her ﬁ nal paragraphs about not wanting to eat the chickens?

PAUSE: Summarize

the impression of

her grandmother

that Marquart

creates.

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CHECK YOUR COMPREHENSION

1. Which of the following would be the best alternative title for this essay?

a. “Jobs We’d Rather Avoid”

b. “Butchering Day”

c. “Bad Taste”

d. “A Yard Full of Chickens”

2. The main idea of this essay is that

a. it is only right to know where one’s food actually comes from.

b. chores are those tasks that nobody really wants to do.

c. the author feels that her mother and grandmother do not understand

her.

d. butchering chickens on a family farm is a brutal and difﬁ cult job.

3. According to the author, when killing chickens her mother and grand-

mother

a. apply different techniques.

b. take pleasure in the task.

c. want to get the job over with as quickly as possible.

d. always do laundry ﬁ rst.

4. If you are unfamiliar with the following words, check a dictionary for

their meanings: unsavory (para. 1); skitter (2); wall-eyed (4); gelatinous,

ruptured (13); edible, recoil (14).

READ CRITICALLY

1. What purpose do the ﬁ rst two paragraphs serve? How do they relate to

the rest of the essay?

2. Note Marquart’s use of repetition in paragraph 6. What is the effect of

this repetition?

3. In describing how her mother and grandmother cut the chickens’ necks

(paras. 7–8), what does Marquart’s language suggest about their different

attitudes toward the job?

4. Note Marquart’s appeal to different senses in the essay. How would you

evaluate her use of such appeals?

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Chapter 45 • Description 775

5. Where in the essay does Marquart give you a sense of what she was like

as a child? What impression of her do you come away with?

WRITE AN ESSAY

Write an essay describing an experience from your childhood that you remem-

ber vividly. You might choose something particularly pleasurable, something

unpleasant or frightening, or something that happened once or many times —

anything, as long as you can recall the experience in detail. Like Marquart’s,

your essay may use elements of narration, but your goal should be to appeal

to your readers’ senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.

Description: Linked Readings

FEELING FOREIGN

Each of the following readings focuses on various aspects of feeling foreign

or, in Mukherjee’s essay, the ways that people from other countries adapt to

a new one.

Alex Espinoza, “An American in Mexico” (this chapter, p. 766)

Uzodinma Iweala, “A Close Encounter” (Chapter 43, p. 749)

Bharati Mukherjee, “Two Ways to Belong in America” (Chapter 49,

p. 822)

Read the selections, and draw from at least one in addition to “An American

in Mexico” to write an essay titled “Feeling Foreign.” You can use the term

foreign in the sense of being from another country or in the sense of being in

a new situation, such as starting at a new job or a new school.

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776

Caption

Process Analysis

Each essay in this chapter uses process analysis to get its main point across.

As you read these essays, consider how they achieve the four basics of

good process analysis that are listed below and discussed in Chapter 13

of this book.

■ IDEA JOURNAL

Write about a time

you felt pressured to

do something that

wasn’t true to your-

self.

FOUR BASICS OF GOOD PROCESS ANALYSIS

It helps readers either perform the steps themselves or

understand how something works.

2. It presents the essential steps in the process.

3. It explains the steps in detail.

4. It arranges the steps in a logical order (usually in chrono-

logical order).

Malcolm X

My First Conk

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925.

When a teacher told Malcolm that he would never fulﬁ ll his dream

of becoming a lawyer because he was black, Malcolm lost interest in

school, dropped out, and spent several years committing drug-related

crimes. Malcolm turned his life around, though, when he was sentenced

conk: a method of straightening curly hair

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