Reading Respones 3
Tianxing Wang (Ethan)
Reading Response
English
Mrs. Asaeli
I read “The Coffee Shop” by Casassa and “The Dope on Head Shops” by Dudley; both essays are very impressive. These two writers are following the feature of the form, which are from chapter 10 of The Curious Writer. An ethnography writer needs to spend enough time to observe and survey one’s culture. Even though Casassa and Dudley are both ethnography writer, they used different methods to describe a small subsets of a large group.
In “The Coffee Shop”, the author showed a harmony coffee shop before us, the lively pictures of a traditional England coffee shop made a very good impression on me. Why could the author move the readers? I think this is due to her three years work experience in Hopkinton Gourmet in England. Like The Curious Writing instructs: “your informational survey will likely be more convincing than anecdotal evidence or your personal observation, particularly if it’s thoughtfully developed.”(Ballenger 524) She worked in the coffee shop, and she observed the customers’ behaviors and listened to their conversation because she knew the coffee shop very well. She puts the special languages in her essay to help us know that she engaged this culture a lot. For example she writes about the customers’ words: “Small cup, one cream, one sugar, little ‘drop’ of water, ice if you have it.” It is pretty funny, and also we could know more about the Hopkinton Gourmet. As I learned from the chapter 10, “Ethnography depends on close observation over time.”(Ballenger 373) In this essay the author makes the essay as the time progress, and she tries to talk about the coffee shop in many details, so we could know more about the specific things of the coffee shop. According to the chapter 10, “Ethnography looks closely at the few to get hints of the big pictures.” (Ballenger 374) This feature was also used by Dudley.
In the “The Dope on Head Shops” Dudley talked about the history of the hemp shops, which was a sub-culture of America. The author did many surveys from the books, in order to relate an exact history of hemp. As Ballenger suggests, “A survey is a useful source of information when you’re making some kind of claim regarding ‘what people think’ about something.”(Ballenger 524) On the other hand, he used the way which Ballenger suggest in chapter 12, which states: “the interviewee is the main subject of your piece, as in a profile, and the interviewee is a source of information about another subjects.” (Ballenger 521)The author interviewed others. For example, he did an interview with Jon Napoli who is an expert because he could knew more about the hemp business.
I still think about my topic, and I think this topic is easier for me because it is something I had experienced before. Like Casassa, I can talk about many interesting things which happened around me, and I can interview with people I already know, such as some of my friends. Also like Dudley, I can do a topic which I haven’t experienced. I should do many surveys in the library or from website and interview some people who are experts in the area of my topic. However, I won’t forget put the details in my essay as “the hints of the big pictures.” The author of “The Coffee Shop” puts the words of customers in the essay. And the author of “The Dope on Head Shops” put some specific information in the essay. I will use both authors’ methods to describe some small subset of a large group.
