Blessed are the White Trash
Dr. Joshua Wilkey · May 5, 2017
Dr. Joshua Wilkey · May 5, 2017
Unit II · Reading the Conversations
Project 2: Summary & Synthesis. You'll read all four Unit II texts, pick two, summarize each in your own words, and then write a synthesis paragraph putting them in conversation.
This is the first of four texts that are all arguing about the same issue. You don't need to connect it to the others yet — you haven't read them. Just get this one clearly.
It's short: about 1,775 words, maybe seven minutes. That's the trap. Short and moving is exactly the kind of piece you can finish without being able to say what it claimed.
Recreational reading is built for momentum — you read to find out what happens next, and you're good at it. Academic reading asks for something different: stopping where the writer makes his move. Four things to do on this one.
Once at your normal speed, for the shape and the feeling of it. Then once more, slower, for the argument. Two passes on 1,775 words is still a short assignment.
Most essays have one sentence that states what the writer wants you to believe. It's often not in the first paragraph — writers frequently open with a story and put the claim after it. Find it and put a line next to it.
Notice the exact paragraph where he stops telling you what happened to him and starts telling you what it means. That turn is where a personal essay becomes an argument, and it's the part that's easy to read straight past.
After each chunk, say in one sentence what he was trying to prove there and what he used as proof. If you can't, that's the part to reread — not the whole thing.
Joshua Wilkey grew up poor in Appalachia and is now a college professor and historian of the region. He writes essays at jwilkey.com under the heading "Essays from Appalachia." That biography is not incidental to this piece — pay attention to what he does with it.
Three questions. Three tries each. It's a checkpoint on whether the reading landed, not a graded course quiz — nothing here goes to Dr. Wells.
Assigned in full. Planner note 585, due 2026-08-24. First of the four Unit II texts.