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Against the Current: Readings for Writers
by Pamela J. Annas and Robert C. Rosen
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The eighty-six works of nonfiction collected in Against the Current: Readings for Writers offer models of socially engaged and socially responsible writing. The writers included here--whether they are remembering, describing, explaining, analyzing, satirizing, arguing, philosophizing--are all cognizant of themselves in relation to their social context. They take positions, sometimes implicitly, more often explicitly, on social issues: from the cumulative neurological effects of television or toys on children's creativity (Mander, Barthes) to the "corrosive bitterness" of the legacy of racism (Baldwin); from serious topics such as the confining effects of ethnic stereotyping (Cofer, Parenti) to lighter topics, such as what the American obsession with lawns tells us about the national psyche (Pollan) and what mail order catalogs seek to tell us about ourselves (Jones).
Rather than floating downstream, trailing one hand in the water oblivious to water moccasins and snapping turtles, these writers have chosen to paddle against the current. Many write out of a lifetime commitment to critical perspectives on twentieth-century culture and society. From Barry Commoner in "At War with the Planet" to June Jordan in "Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future of Willie Jordan," these writers, some already famous and some relatively unknown, perform necessary acts of responsible citizenship in a democratic society. They hold up a mirror to current trends, asking us to see the causes and effects of our actions, both when we intend these actions and when they reveal our unintentional complicity in systems larger than ourselves. Their critical perspectives are informed by choices alternative to the main stream. They explore eddies of possibility, branch streams that would change our direction of travel and offer us new vistas. They question authoritative, accepted, and conventional explanations; they reframe the issues and the very questions that inform everyday life. They are involved in education in its highest sense, education not merely to explain the way the world is, but to consider how we, as creative and intelligent beings endowed with more power than most of us think we have or know what to do with, can accept a responsible stewardship of ourselves, our children, and the earth on which we live. A sense of ethics, an appreciation of history, a respect for the individual, and a belief in community anchor the writings within each section.
Each of the eleven thematic sections includes seven to nine nonfiction writings that provide an array of perspectives on a given topic: Growing Up and Growing Older; Education; Mass Culture; Gender; Race and Ethnicity; Money, Work, and Social Class; Science and Technology; Nature/The Environment; War; Protest and Change; Art and the Artist. Unlike anthologies that offer a debate format, providing opposing viewpoints on topics such as abortion or affirmative action, Against the Current instead offers a conversation among writers who take various critical stances on specific aspects of a broad theme, such as gender or race/ethnicity. That is, we offer an array of socially critical perspectives on each theme. In some cases, we have included a more conservative if quirky viewpoint, such as Joyce Carol Oates's provocative and engagingly written "Against Nature," which offsets a group of pieces--essays, feature journalism, memoir, prose poem--that develop various facets of a pro-environmentalist stance. In its own way, each of the thematic sections constructs a collective analysis of the way things are and ponders alternatives. The section on Gender, for example, is composed of writing by four men and four women. All of them consider the ways their gender, the social construction of gender, and the social expectations around gender affect their own lives and the lives of people around them.
The selections are carefully chosen to represent a variety of critical perspectives on a wide range of important contemporary issues. They also represent the diversity of perspectives currently available in an increasingly heterogeneous United States. (The overwhelming majority of readings are by North American writers.) More than half the readings are by women and over a third are by people of color. Working-class, gay and lesbian, Native American, Italian American, Asian American, Indian, Latina and Latino, African American, Jewish American, female and male perspectives appear throughout the eleven thematic sections as well as in sections like Gender or Race and Ethnicity explicitly devoted to issues of diversity. In the section on Nature/The Environment, for example, Elizabeth Martinez writes about "When People of Color Are an Endangered Species." In Science and Technology, Joy Harjo's "Three Generations of Native American Women's Birth Experience" offers traditional alternatives, from her own and her culture's history, to the increasing technologization of the act of giving birth. Growing Up and Growing Older, the opening section of Against the Current, demonstrates our commitment to providing an array of diverse and particular perspectives on "universal" topics. Five memoirs of growing up in the United States--female, gay, Asian American, Jewish American, and African American--represent in vivid particularity the pain and possibility inherent in positioning oneself, or in finding oneself positioned, against the current of mainstream America. The three other essays also included in that section consider a lesbian perspective on birth and motherhood, the institutional treatment of the elderly, and the challenges of coping with physical disability, which by the end of Nancy Mairs's "Carnal Acts" becomes a challenge thrown back at the reader to accept his or her own embodied self in all its complexity.
These narratives and essays--autobiography, memoir, journal, prose poem, editorial, feature journalism, sociological study, exposition, description, speech, epistle, analysis, argument, persuasion--invite readers to participate from the inside in experiences and ways of thinking that might be different from their own. The study questions and writing exercises appended to each selection promote critical reading, taking readers through each piece toward a thorough understanding of both content and form. What are the issues? How does the writer develop her narrative or argument or exposition? How does he use figurative language and rhetorical devices? How might the reader, in response or in emulation, construct an essay, a memoir, a satire of his or her own? These selections are intended as invitations, as readings for writers. They demonstrate the vitality, range, and brilliance of an alternative tradition of nonfictional prose and they encourage beginning and more advanced writers to explore the particulars of their own experience, to discover and forge their own principled position on issues, and to practice and cultivate their own writing skills.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank a number of friends for their suggestions and help with this project: Linda Dittmar, Emily Filardo, Linda Hamalian, Jim Hauser, Reamy Jansen, Mary Jane Karp, Dan Perlstein, Donna Perry, Neill Rosenfelt, Stephen Rosskamm Shalom, Saul Slapikoff, and Zippie Bauman. Thanks also to the students in Introductory Composition at the University of Massachusetts/Boston.
Finally, we would like to thank a few people connected with Prentice Hall: Alison Reeves and Mary Jo Southern for their advice and encouragement, Harriet Prentiss for her invaluable work on the headnotes and footnotes, and Charlyce Jones Owen and Leah Jewell for helping us see the book to completion.
-- Pamela J. Annas, University of Massachusetts/Boston
-- Robert C. Rosen, William Paterson College
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