Book Reviews

Brief Book Reviews

#1 Between Worlds, A Reader, Rhetoric, and Handbook. Pearson Longman. Susan Bachmann and Melinda Barth. 2007. Fifth edition. 626 pages. $66.00.


This is a promising textbook that might actually work well in the classroom for me. I have been looking for a text that would allow the students to explore the themes related to cross-cultural/intercultural communication. I wanted to use this topic area as a frame to explore argumentative writing. I think that I would be able to do that with this text in that it offers some specific readings that take up issues involving intercultural communication.

The book is nicely divided – very traditional I suspect – in the following manner:

Part I The Reader

Part II The Rhetoric

Part III The Handbook

There appears to be a substantial amount of cross-referencing going on between all areas of the text which I believe will help to make the book more of a piece to the students. I like the way the reader provides a variety of essays in many different genres in the following categories:

Chapter 1: Between Generations
Chapter 2: Between Genders
Chapter 3: Between Cultures
Chapter 4: Between Perceptions
Chapter 5: Between Values
Chapter 6: Between Screens

Chapter 6 above deals with visual culture – film as text, image as text. This section looks interesting and it looks like it would provide a real material change from the forgoing chapters. The chapters has activities and exercise that deal with six different films.

While this book does pick up and explore some of the topics that I am interested in exploring in the class, I am a little concern that it is really just to much book. It weighs a ton and goes over 600 pages. Do I, do my students, really need such a mighty tome. Physically and visually, I would like to find something a bit more elegant, something along the lines of Bri’s book, Everything Is An Argument.

#2 Frame Work, Culture, Storytelling, and College Writing. Gary Columbo, Bonnie Lisle, Sandra Mano. Bedford Books. Boston. 1997. $56.95

I continue in my adventure of learning what “culture” means in the United States and specifically what it means in English departments. In Japan, they tend think of Cultures as monolithic, i.e. the Japanese culture, the American Culture. When they talk of internationalization, they think of it in terms of learning more about other cultures, learning how to interact with other cultures, learning more about your own culture and what assumptions and values you carry with you – often unknown and un-reflected upon. Cultural anthropologists like Edward Hall speak about the importance of hidden culture – all the stuff below the surface – below our awareness - that informs and shapes much of way we interpret the world – the way we behave in it. Culture of this sort is a deep river baby. OK enough of that..

This book is disappointing, period. So, I really don’t want to say too much about it other than to explain what is disappointing. Culture in this book seems to refer to ethnicity, near as I can tell. I’m not saying that is a bad thing. I think there is a lot of truth to the notion that a classroom of university students brings with it a lot of “cultural” diversity, one hopes. My issue is this, the authors have decided on a “fresh new approach” to writing ( Yeah, like that SOUNDs fresh) and this new approach asks the students to focus on writing narrative stories as a way of developing their writing, and also as a way of social empowerment, I think. Hmm.

Now, I as a guy interested in non-fiction writing, I hope I don’t have a problem with narrative essays. My issue is this, are freshman university students really going to be well served by learning how to write narrative essays instead of argumentative/analytical essays? Apparently, the authors of this text believe so:

“Recent research in anthropology, linguistics, cognitive science, and women’s and ethnic studies suggests that our understanding of the world is mediated by story frames – culturally constructed narrative patterns that filter, organize, and interpret all of our experiences. The concept of the story frame offers a powerful alternative to pedagogies based on personal/academic or narrative/analytic oppositions.”

Well, I dunno, there you go. Maybe we need to dump this academic analytic stuff, especially in light of that “recent research.”

Seriously, I think I follow the argument they are making, and I believe there is something to be said for it. But I am troubled. I am thinking students need to learn “the language of the academy,” in a sense. I know that might sound rough – and I don’t mean to disparage the cultural histories of the students. I am really speaking here about how best we serve them, serve their needs? Don’t they need to develop their argumentive/analytic writing skills to survive in the university and beyond it?

The authors of this text in keeping with their over all purpose and design have included readings primarily from minority writers. “Most of the selections we’ve included are by authors who stand outside the dominant culture, and more than half are by women.” This is not a bad thing. One could easily argue that it is about time such an anthology was used in the class. My concern is with the somewhat implicit message in this i.e. writers outside the dominant culture write in narrative forms. Or, maybe it means that writers outside the dominant culture CAN’T write in academic argumentative form an by implication students outside that dominant form can’t either and therefore we are going to offer this new approach - take it down a notch and teach young writers (who are outside the dominant culture) this empowering narrative way of writing? Am I missing something here?

So you see, I am bothered by the science here and by the presuppositions the authors are making in deliberately privileging the narrative essay over the academic/analytical essay. They are doing all of this in the name of greater cultural sensitivity – diversity.

“Because the idea of cultural diversity lies at the heart of our approach to composition, Frame Work weaves a broad selection of readings into its cultural storytelling approach to college writing.”

What I have been reminded of in looking at textbooks is how political an act it can be to choose any text for class.

In closing, (I wasn’t going to say much about this book) this book bmight work for a different kind of college writing class, but I don’t think it is suitable for a class in argumentative writing. My hunch is that this would be an effective lead-in text to a class like ours.