Sarah Fletcher
English 1103 Section 7
The Egami Religion
For one of our assignments, we read a piece called the “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner. This piece was disguised as an American Anthropological Association piece, but in reality, it was a satirical piece of literature analyzing the strange and “stupid” methods of American society. As a response to the Nacirema piece, I wrote my own satirical literature about the “Egami Religion.” In this piece, I wrote about the ridiculous procedures Americans go through to achieve the perfect and ideal image (hence the title, Egami, which is “image” spelled backwards). Writing this piece pushed me to think outside of what I normally write, which are works based off of factual information or my own opinion. I found it to be a little challenging trying to disguise a real life problem as something else…or in my situation, a religion. I enjoyed writing this piece because of the challenges it brought on and the large amount of creativity that I was able to put into it. This piece was solely based off of my own imagination and I was very proud at how realistic I made the Egami religion sound, when in fact, it was a satirical stab at an aspect of American society mixed with a complete figment of my own imagination.
The Writer Mom
For one of our assignments, we had to write a piece on the literacy of a particular topic and how it relates to me personally. I choose to write my piece “The Writer Mom,” which was all about my mom’s job as a freelance writer and how it positively affected my life and my writing throughout the years as I grew up. This piece is important to me not only because it is based off of my mom, whom I love dearly, but also because it was a piece that I could incorporate my own writing style into, which made it more interesting for me to write, and hopefully, for my readers to read. This piece shows my growth as a writer, beginning at a young age, and my understanding of how writing should be today, and how that has changed throughout the years. Growing up with a “writer mom” really impacted my life and helped me evolve into the writer I am today. This piece incorporates my style, my family, and my improvements, while demonstrating my actual writing.
The Texting Argument
Earlier in the semester, we watched a TEDTalk video called “Txting is killing language! JK!” This video analyzed the argument that today’s generation is loosing its basic English language concepts due to the increased involvement with the “texting language.” As a response piece that I posted to Moodle, I argued my viewpoint that the “texting language” is not killing off the English language. This piece really highlights my ability as a writer to take into account an outside argument and create my own. I incorporated facts from the video as well as my own personal accounts and ideas, which is very important as a writer when writing an informative or argumentative piece. I also enjoyed including my own writing style into the piece, which allowed me to make my argument informal while also being formal (if you ask me, I think formality comes from the inclusion of the factual information). This Moodle piece was very interesting to me, considering texting and writing are both large parts of my day-to-day life. It very easy for me to form an opinion and I enjoyed voicing my opinion through this argumentative piece.