What's the Big Idea?: Writing Through Reading and Thinking

This exploration of the writing process teaches readers to read, think, and write critically, analytically, and creatively — and gives them hands-on practice in turning their own feelings, opinions, and thoughts into powerful ideas and then creating and developing a writing style to showcase those ideas. Unique in approach, it features a diverse and intriguing collection of multicultural readings designed to stimulate readers to ask meaningful questions that will challenge their own opinions. They then move from listening to their own reactions, to analyzing what they read, and then to building further questions that will deepen their reactions into thoughtful, intelligent responses, ideas, and arguments that they can develop in a variety of writing projects. Presents a writing process that is predicated on how to ask meaningful questions. Features a unique and eclectic collection of multicultural readings from around the world -- ranging from shorter to longer fiction and non-fiction -- that reflect major connecting themes (e.g., world unrest and conflict; mortality; politics; personal identity; public identity), and that deal with multiculturalism on a number of different contextual levels (racial, ethnic, religious, geographic, literary, gender, political, historical, scientific, economic, artistic, anthropological, etc.). Shows how to “utilize” rather than simply “use” a source — how to research in a three-dimensional manner — and how to use non-print media (film, art, and music) as part of the wealth of sources that can be drawn on for writing. For anyone who wants engaging "hands-on" instruction in reading, thinking, and writing critically, analytically, and creatively.