Week 2 Blog

I did a metacognitive reading of Sue William Silverman’s "The Meandering River: An Overview of the Subgenres of Creative Nonfiction” during week 2, where I better understood what a genre is, examples of genres, and what makes something a particular genre (genre conventions). This has helped me understand course objectives like identifying genre using conventions and purpose. For example, if I were to read an excerpt about someone, I can better identify if it is an autobiography, a biography, or a personal essay because I know the genre conventions and goal of each of these genres. If the excerpt focuses on the whole life of a person but is written by someone else (genre conventions), it is a biography (genre), and when written by the subject itself (genre convention), it is an autobiography (genre). Both have the purpose of an advertisement of that person. If it only focuses on one part of a subject’s life and has reflection (genre conventions), it is a memoir (genre), but if it focuses on a smaller part of life, it is a personal essay (genre). Both have a purpose of reflection and telling a story to persuade or inform.

Additionally, reading Silverman’s essay in the context of writing the exploratory essay draft #1 helps me start learning another course objective, seeing how genre conventions convey message. By understanding genre conventions and the purpose of a genre from Silverman, I could better see how genre conventions help convey a message in the exploratory essay. For example, when looking back at Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime, I was able to pay more attention to the analytic voice, a genre convention, and that helped me see Noah’s message about identity being impacted by racism and apartheid.

In conclusion, Silverman’s paper helped me understand more course objectives.

Example of Learning about Genres

Applying Learning to Real World

Sources: https://booksontour.net/born-a-crime-book-review/ for 2nd picture