Joshua Herrera

Wednesday, September 3 2014

Victor Villanueva Bootstraps: From an Academic of Color (WaW 107-18)

1)The account shifts back and forth between the first person ("I") and the third person ("Victor," "he"). What effects does that shifting create? Does it break any rules you've been taught?

1) The shift creates a more dramatic writing scheme. From what I have been taught it breaks the rule of writing in 1^st person on an account of your own life. But in my personal opinion, Villanueva is a genius for his writing in, “Bootstraps: From an Academic of Color,” because not only does it add a dramatic change to his writing (going from 1^st to 3^rd person), but it also makes it easier to understand what he is writing about.

2) How does Villanueva define rhetoric? What else does he say that studying rhetoric helps you study?

2) Villanueva defines “rhetoric” as the conscious use of language, and includes everything that is conveyed through language. Villanueva states that, “So to study rhetoric becomes a way of studying humans.” So by reading this, Villanueva literally means that studying rhetoric helps you study humans. “Studying the ways in which peoples have accomplished all that has been accomplished beyond the instinctual.”

3) Have you ever tried observing and imitating the writing moves that other writers make, as Villanueva describes doing with his English teachers ("Professorial Discourse Analysis")? If so, what was your experience doing so? If not, what would you need to look for in order to do the kind of imitation Villanueva describes? 

3) Personally I have never once tried to imitate writing moves other writers make. The way Villanueva describes how he imitated others writing moves, I would look for patterns in others writings and use their patterns as my writing format for whatever it is I am writing.

4) In paragraph 6, Villanueva describes his college writing process as, "The night before a paper was due, he'd grab pen and pad, and stare. Clean the dishes. Stare. Watch an 'I Love Lucy' rerun. Stare. Then sometime in the night the words would come." (A few more sentences finish his description.) What elements of this process resemble your own? How is yours different? 

4) Elements that resemble mine are I stare into space and try to find the words to start writing. The only thing different is I take about five to ten minutes to figure out what it is I’m going to be writing.