Includes index.

I. The informal voice: Diaries, journals, notebooks, testimony from The black notebooks / Toi Derricotte on keeping a notebook / Joan Didion -- from The diary of a young girl / Anne Frank from Hiroshima diary / Michihiko Hachiya -- The price we pay / Adam Mayblum -- from Her journals and Bitter strawberries / Sylvia Plath -- The first hours / Tim Townsend -- from Specimen days: Civil war diary / Walt Whitman from A writer's diary / Virginia Woolf -- II. Personal writing: Exploring our own lives -- The joy of reading and writing: Superman and me / Sherman Alexie -- My English / Julia Alvarez -- Julia Alvarez on Her identity as a writer -- What's your name, girl? / Maya Angelou -- Gumption / Russell Baker -- My father's life / Raymond Carver -- Silent dancing / Judith Ortiz Cofer -- Judith Ortiz Cofer on memory and personal essays -- A clack of Tiny Sparks: Remembrances of a Gay boyhood / Bernard Cooper -- Learning to read and write / Fredrick Douglass -- A few words about breasts / Nora Ephron -- In the kitchen / Henry Louis Gates Jr., -- Henry Louis Gates Jr. on the Writer's voice -- On stuttering / Edward Hoagland -- Edward Hoagland on what an essay is -- Learning in the shadow of race and class / Bell books -- Salvation / Langston Hughes -- Langston Hughes on How to be a bad writer -- How it feels to be colored me / Zora Neale Hurston -- Biography of a dress / Jamaica Kincaid -- Creating an Asian American identity / Eric Liu -- On being a cripple / Nancy Mairs -- Nancy Mairs on Finding a voice -- Homeboy / Malcolm X -- The rake: A few scenes from my childhood / David Mamet -- Shooting an elephant / George Orwell -- Split at the root: An essay of Jewish identity / Adrienne Rich -- Green cards / Alberto Alvaro Rios -- Aria: A memoir of a bilingual childhood on a writer's identity / Richard Rodriguez -- Richard Rodriguez on a writer's identity -- Oranges and sweet sister boy / Judy Ruiz -- Me talk pretty one day / David Sedaris -- Just walk on by: A black man ponders his power to alter public space / Brent Staples -- Another version of Just walk on by -- Mother tongue / Amy Tan -- University days / James Thurber -- My inner shrimp / Garry Trudeau -- Beauty: When the other dancer is the self / Alice Walker -- Once more to the lake / E. B. White -- E. B. White on the essayist -- I choose exile / Richard Wright --

III. Expository writing: Shaping information -- How to tame a wild tongue / Gloria Anzaldua -- Cognition and understanding / Veronica Boix-Mansilla and Howard Gardner -- The insufficiency of honesty / Stephen L. Carter -- Calculated risks / K.C. Cole -- Why women smile / Amy Cunningham -- In the ruins of the future: Reflections on terror, loss, and time in the shadow of September / Don DeLillo on dumpster diving / Lars Eighner -- What American would be like without blacks / Ralph Ellison -- The witches of Salem Village / Kai Erikson -- Throwing like a girl / James Fallows -- Tracks / Ian Frazier -- The tipping point / Malcolm Gladwell -- The ghosts of Ellis Island -- Sex, drugs, disasters, and the extinction of dinosaurs / Stephen Jay Gould -- The hidden life of SUV's / Jack Hitt -- Marianne Moore assists the Ford Motor Company -- Dwellings / Linda Hogan -- Mess / John Hollander -- Living words / Helen Keller -- Everything you need to know about writing successfully-in ten minutes / Stephen King -- No name woman / Maxine Hong Kingston -- Maxine Hong Kingston on writing for oneself -- The way to Rainy Mountain / N. Scott Momaday -- Two ways to belong in America / Bharati Mukherjee -- A question of language / Gloria Naylor -- The holy use of gossip / Kathleen Norris on the vocabulary of religion -- The American man at age ten / Susan Orlean -- Politics and the English language / George Orwell -- George Orwell on the four reasons for writing -- Why boys don't play with dolls / Katha Pollitt -- Daytime inquiries / Elayne Rapping -- The ground beneath my feet / Salman Rushdie -- What secrets tell / Luc Sante -- Why McDonald's fries taste so good / Eric Schlosser -- Should children play with guns? / Benjamin Spock -- In the mind's eye of the bomber / Robert Stone -- The "He" hormone / Andrew Sullivan -- Listening to men, then and now / Deborah Tannen -- Mean cuisine / Sallie Tisdale -- A traditional family / Calvin Trillin -- This is the end of the world / Barbara Tuchman -- Car talk / John Updike -- TV addiction / Marie Winn -- The death of the moth / Virginia Woolf --

IV. Argumentative writing: Contending with issues -- This is our world / Dorothy Allison -- Equal in Paris / James Baldwin -- James Baldwin on black English -- In praise of the greats / Harold Bloom -- We are ugly, but we are here / Edwidge Danticate -- Edwidge Danticate on becoming a writer -- Living like weasels / Annie Dillard -- Annie Dillard on the writing life -- The myth of fingerprints / Gregg Easterbrook -- Family values Barbara Ehrenreich -- When principles get in the way / Stanley fish -- A well-regulated militia / Paul Russell -- The net is a waste of time / William Gibson -- Twenty-one questions / Jane Easton Hamilton -- What's wrong with animal rights / Vicki Hearne -- The declaration of independence / Thomas Jefferson -- A new politics of sexuality / June Jordan -- The word police / Michiko Kakutani -- Let's talk about gender, baby / Wendy Kaminer -- Letter from Birmingham Jail / Martin Luther King Jr., -- Marin Luther King Jr. on self-importance -- Stone soup / Barbara Kingsolver -- Can gays and straights be friends? / Paul Monette -- Can patriotism be compassionate? / Martha Nussbaum -- Race over / Orlando Patterson -- Why I am not a Christian / Bertrand Russell -- The men we carry in our minds / Scott Russell Sanders -- Scott Sanders on writing essays -- The cult of ethnicity, good and bad / Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., -- In the combat zone / Leslie Marmon Silko -- The singer solution to world poverty / Peter Singer -- Every dictator's nightmare / Wole Soyinka -- Media and democracy: A "daily me" or a "daily we"? / Cass Sunstein -- A modest proposal / Jonathan Swift -- On cloning a human being / Lewis Thomas -- And ain't I a woman? / Sojourner Truth -- Corn-prone opinions / Mark Twain -- Drugs / Gore Vidal -- Race matters / Cornel West -- The night I was nobody / John Edgar Wideman -- Hate radio / Patricia J. Williams -- The clan of one-breasted women / Terry Tempest Williams --

V. The voices of fiction: Ten modern short stories -- The toughest Indian in the world / Sherman Alexie -- Sherman Alexie on the responsibilities of Native writers -- Popular Mechanics / Raymond Carver -- Girl / Jamaica Kincaid -- Jamaica Kincaid on "girl" -- The hotel story: Two versions / Stephen King -- A good man is had to find / Flannery O'Connor -- Flannery O'Connor on her own work -- I stand here ironing / Tillie Olsen -- Jing-Mei Woo: Two kinds / Amy Tan -- Amy Tan on being an Asian American writer -- A & P / John Updike -- Everyday use / Alice Walker -- Weight / John Edgar Wideman -- John Edgar Wideman on the value of storytelling.