Includes bibliographical references (p 485-487) and index.

Introduction for students: Active reading, critical thinking, and the writing process: Joy of reading and writing: Superman and me / Sherman Alexie -- Graduation / Maya Angelou -- Men, women, sex, and Darwin / Natalie Angier -- How to tame a wild tongue / Gloria Anzaldua -- On compassion / Barbara Lazear Ascher -- Notes of a native son / James Baldwin -- Lost in the kitchen / Dave Barry -- Never just pictures / Susan Bordo -- How you became you / Bill Bryson -- Why don't we complain? / William F. Buckley Jr., -- Insufficiency of honesty / Stephen L. Carter -- Myth of the latin woman: I just met a girl named Maria / Judith Ortiz Cofer -- Clack of tiny sparks: Remembrances of a gay boyhood / Bernard Cooper -- Keeping a notebook / Joan Didion -- Death of a moth / Annie Dillard -- Learning to read and write / Frederick Douglass -- Serving in Florida / Barbara Ehrenreich -- On dumpster diving / Lars Eighner -- Ways we lie / Stephanie Ericsson -- Women's brains / Stephen Jay Gould -- What's wrong with animal rights? / Vicki Hearne -- Salvation / Langston Hughes -- How it feels to be colored me / Zora Neale Hurston -- Declaration of Independence / Thomas Jefferson -- Letters from Birmingham jail / Martin Luther King Jr., -- No name woman /Maxine Hong Kingston -- Notes of a native speaker / Eric Liu -- On being a cripple / Nancy Mairs -- Learning to read / Malcolm X -- Way to rainy mountain / N. Scott Momaday -- Two ways to belong in America / Bharati Mukherjee -- Shooting an elephant / George Orwell -- Aria: Memoir of a bilingual childhood / Richard Rodriguez -- I just wanna be average / Mike Rose -- Clashing civilizations? / Edward Said -- Inheritance of tools / Scott Russell Sanders -- Me talk pretty one day / David Sedaris -- Animal Liberation / Peter Singer -- Declaration of sentiments and resolutions / Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- Just walk on by: Black men and public space / Brent Staples -- Modest proposal / Jonathan Swift -- Mother tongue / Amy Tan -- Where I lived for / Henry David Thoreau -- Ain't I a women? / Sojourner Truth -- Shooting dad / Sarah Vowell -- Beauty: When the other dancer is the self / Alice Walker -- Once more to the lake / E.B. White -- Television: plug-in drug / Marie Winn -- Death of the moth / Virginia Woolf -- Documentation guide -- Glossary of writing terms -- Index of authors and titles.