43. Textbook of readings for my intro comp classes

Because this book is published by and for the college where I'll be teaching, I'm not including the name of the text. It's a compilation of essays about writing, identity, thinking, culture, and education. Some of the readings are familiar--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," for example. But I also made some fun new discoveries. Among them, my favorite is Firoozeh Dumas; her selection, "The F Word," is both hilarious and sobering as it highlights the plight of American immigrants with unpronounceable (to Anglos) names. After reading this piece, I've added her memoir, Laughing Without an Accent, to my Wishlist.*

And I now have a clear idea of what readings I'm going to assign, at least for the first week of classes, which begins Monday.

*For reasons both of finances and of my eventual move, I need to stop buying books for the foreseeable future. I'm very bad at open-ended moratoria on book-buying, however. Last year I gave it up for Lent, with a degree of success that pleasantly surprised me. I'm thinking of doing the same this year, but starting now-ish, rather than waiting until Ash Wednesday. Of course, that doesn't preclude anyone else from buying books for me, should anyone else be so inclined.