composition #2

Assignment #2: Storytelling, Interviewing, & Writing Activity

1. Tell a story from your personal experience in response to one of the following prompts:

·      Tell a story about a time you learned something by helping someone.

·      Tell a story about a time you learned something when someone helped you.

·      Tell a story about a time you learned something by taking a risk.

·      Tell a story about a time you learned something by being careless.

·      Tell a story about a time you learned something when you did something difficult.

·      Tell a story about a time you learned something when you succeeded at something.

·      Tell a story about a time you learned something when you failed at something.

2. Write an essay that tells your story. Be sure (a) to describe the sequence of events that occurred in the story and (b) to explain what the story means to you.

Your essay may be one paragraph or a few paragraphs, but it must be at least eight sentences long.

Possible structure for a one-paragraph story:

1.   Topic sentence/ Introductory sentence

2.   First event / step of the story

3.   Explanation

4.   Second event / step of the story

5.   Explanation

6.   Third event / step of the story

7.   Explanation

8.   Conclusion – meaning of the story

Here is an example of the kind of essay you are being asked to write. You can find this on page 449 in Stepping Stones

Pius Kamau 

A Duty to Heal 

Pius Kamau was born in Kenya, Africa. He has studied in Spain, England, and Kenya, and he moved to the United States in 1971. He is now a surgeon and lives in Aurora, Colorado. 

Growing up in the grinding poverty of colonial Africa, America was my shining hope. Martin Luther King’s nonviolent political struggle made freedom and equality sound like achievable goals. America’s ideals filled

my head. Someday, I promised myself, I would walk on America’s streets. 

But, as soon as I set foot in America’s hospitals, reality — and racism — quickly intruded on the ideals. My color and accent set me apart. But in a hospital I am neither black nor white. I’m a doctor. I believe every patient that I touch deserves the same care and concern from me. 

In 1999, I was on-call when a nineteen-year-old patient was brought into the hospital. 

He was coughing up blood after a car accident. He was a white supremacist, an American Nazi with a swastika tattooed on his chest. 

The nurses told me he would not let me touch him. When I came close to him, he spat on me. In that moment, I wanted no part of him, either, but no other physician would take him on. I realized I had to minister to him as best as I could. 

I talked to him, but he refused to look at me or acknowledge me. He would only speak through the white nurses. Only they could check his body for injury. Only they could touch his tattooed chest. 

As it turned out, he was not badly hurt. We parted strangers. 

I still wonder: Was there more I could have done to make our encounter different or better? Could I have approached him differently? Could I have tried harder to win his trust? 

I can only guess his thoughts about me, or the beliefs he lived by. His racism, I think, had little to do with me, personally. And, I want to think

it had little to do with America, with the faith of Martin Luther King and other great men whose words I heard back in Africa, and who made me believe in this nation’s ideals of equality and freedom. 

My hands—my black hands—have saved many lives. I believe in my duty to heal. I believe all patients, all human beings, are equal, and that I must try to care for everyone, even those who would rather die than consider me their equal.