<![CDATA[TORDA'S SPRING 2026 TEACHING SITE - ENGL489 OCCASIONAL BLOG]]>Thu, 23 Apr 2026 02:14:06 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Thinking about H is for Hawk and nonfiction in general]]>Wed, 10 Feb 2016 02:16:49 GMThttp://www.leetorda.com/engl489-occasional-blog/thinking-about-h-is-for-hawk-and-nonfiction-in-generalWe’ve spent quite a fair amount of time with the genre of nonfiction. In reading your ICRNs from last week, one thing that surprised me was what surprised many of you about the genre. If we had met for class, I would have had us finalize a list of qualities of the genre that reflected what you’d learned and to think about how they appear (the same and differently) in H. I’ll dispense with teasing out the genre characteristics. Instead I list them here:

  1. Nonfiction has a narrative arc.  In other words, it typically has some manner of plot.  It might and often does have multiple narratives working together in service to a larger narrative. 
  2.  Nonfiction is true, but it is not always factual. It uses truth in the service of its larger point
  3. And it has a larger point. When you talk about what an essay is about, you are not really asking about a summary of plot. You are asking about what the essay is trying to accomplish thematically.
  4. Nonfiction borrows from fiction in the telling of the story the essay is concerned with: the development of character, the use of setting, the handling of time.
  5. Nonfiction demonstrates knowledge/research/expertise beyond the personal.
 
There are other things I might write about here, but I think that these four points are the most central to understanding the genre. In roughly 500 words, please identify the ways the H is for Hawk embodies these four points. Be specific and thoughtful.
 
Please post your initial thoughts no later than noon on Thursday by simply hitting the "comments" button at the top or bottom of this page or the "leave a reply" link below.
 
After the class has posted, please read what your colleagues have to say. Please respond either to a specific post or to what you notice people are talking about generally.
 
Completion of these two posts will serve as your ICRN for memoir and will serve as the majority of your class discussion as well.
 
Thanks in advance for your thoughtful and serious attention to this discussion.

]]>