AHWOSG, Class Friday 3/4

1. General Reactions (using notes from reading)

2.  How do you define "authenticity"? What is the relationship between notions of authenticity and AHWOSG?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticity 

Free-write and discuss

3. Read NY Times Review and write your own beginning review

4. In groups, answer study questions below, and share with class (time permitting)

HW: Reflection Paper due Monday. Use any discussion questions from class (all are posted in various places on this BLOG) as a prompt. make sure to have a thesis, and to include examples from the book. Your reflection paper should make it clear that you are up-to-date on the reading.
7. Compare and contrast Eggers' tone and voice in the preface material with his tone and voice of the stories' first 45 pages. How do these fit together? How do they complement each other?

8. What acts of "construction" do you notice in the narrative of the first 104 pages? (i.e. what work is Eggers doing to transform events from his life into a story?)

9. React to this quotation from a scholarly article written about AHWOSG: "The politics of self-disclosure center around the social and cultural forces that press certain individuals to 'bare all' and press other individuals to closet themselves, all because their stories are or are not valued as consumable 'goods.'"
Does the memoir genre (think: AHWOSG and books like it, and also reality tv) run the risk of reducing peoples lives to commodities to be consumed by readers/viewers?

10. Compare and contrast how Eggers discusses his mother and his father. Use specific examples to back up your ideas.