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Best Essay in a Developmental Freshman Writing Course, 2008-2009
"New York" by Tashana Thompson (click
here to read the essay)
Professor Deborah Mutnick's Citation:
In her book, The Situation and the Story: The Art of the Personal
Narrative, Vivian Gornick writes: "The situation is the
context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the
emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight,
the wisdom, the thing one has come to say" (13). She goes
on to suggest that once the crucial elements of story and narrative
persona become clear, other elements of the essay such as clarity,
diction, and syntax also fall into place. Tashana Thompson's essay
"New York" is a fine example of this crystallization.
From her suburban high school graduation to Manhattan's canyons
of skyscrapers and across the Brooklyn Bridge, Tashana blazes
a path for herself and for us:
"I stepped out of the subway car, and made
my way up the stairs. As I entered the streets of Brooklyn, I
felt like a gazelle in a lion's den. The busy streets roared as
cars zipped by, leaving a whirlwind of smoke and dust behind.
Walking down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, I smell the
aroma of cheese pizza and the exhaust from the honking cars. Amazing
how everyone is in a hurry in this city, I think, as a woman walking
towards me, vigorously biting into her ruby red apple, tries to
keep her balance as she buries her head in the Wall Street Journal.
The heavy, cold, smoked-filled breeze tugs at my navy blue wool
jacket; I pull my bag closer to my quivering ribs. Moving to New
York City was one of the biggest decisions I have ever had to
make. Who would have thought a quiet small town girl from the
suburbs of Connecticut, would be attending a multi-cultural urban
school in the heart of downtown Brooklyn?"
Capturing the ethos of the big city for a young newcomer, Tashana
succeeds in creating a persona who sees New York City anew, telling
an old story of the transformative powers of the city with fresh
insight. She achieves just that clarity, precision, and syntactic
grace that Gornick describes, and in so doing, she richly deserves
the Edelman Popper Award for the best English 14 essay in 2008-09.
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