Chapter sven

Chapter Five: Negotiating Borders

The Dynamics of Difference.

Critical Questions What happens when people meet across their differences, especially when there is an imbalance of power or status? Is there fear? Is there hate? love? trust? violence? understanding? How are individual responses to differences shaped by one’s larger group’s responses? Are individual members accountable for a group’s response? Are “victims” of difference at all responsible for their status? How is language affected, depending on whether one is speaking from one side of a power imbalance or the other? In what ways do new means of communication like the Internet provide opportunities for changing the ways identity and difference are negotiated?

Readings
Gary Soto: Black Hair [essay]
Cherylene Lee: Safe [story]
Mary Louise Pratt: Arts of the Contact Zone [essay]
Wong Sam and Assistants: An English-Chinese Phrase Book [phrase book]
Martin Luther King Jr.: Letter from Birmingham Jail [essay]
Bob Blauner: Talking Past Each Other: Black and White Languages of Race [essay]
Tobias Wolff: Say Yes [story]
Luis Alberto Urrea: from Across the Wire [essay]
Mary Gaitskill: On Not Being a Victim: Sex, Rape, and the Trouble with Following Rules [essay]
Sherry Turkle: TinySex and Gender Trouble [essay]

Framing Essay The framing essay introduces the readings and themes of the chapter. The electronic version of the framing essay differs from the version in the print text by including hotlinks to resources on particular authors as well as crosslinks to other sections of Border Texts Online.

Critical Questions
Revisited The section called Critical Questions Revisited poses four to six writing questions and topics for each chapter. These questions are generally broad and multifaceted. In order to help students break them down into manageable parts and to see how to generate a thesis and paper from them, these questions have been designed as part of a section called From Reading to Writing.

Taking It From Here This section contains bibliography and Web resources supporting the readings and themes in the chapter. It includes an interactive section called Writing Connections, in which students and teachers are invited to contribute links and descriptions that connect interesting Web resources with the themes and materials in Border Texts.

Critical Questions	What happens when people meet across their differences, especially when there is an imbalance of power or status? Is there fear? Is there hate? love? trust? violence? understanding? How are individual responses to differences shaped by one’s larger group’s responses? Are individual members accountable for a group’s response? Are “victims” of difference at all responsible for their status? How is language affected, depending on whether one is speaking from one side of a power imbalance or the other? In what ways do new means of communication like the Internet provide opportunities for changing the ways identity and difference are negotiated?

Readings	Gary Soto: Black Hair [essay] Cherylene Lee: Safe [story] Mary Louise Pratt: Arts of the Contact Zone [essay] Wong Sam and Assistants: An English-Chinese Phrase Book [phrase book] Martin Luther King Jr.: Letter from Birmingham Jail [essay] Bob Blauner: Talking Past Each Other: Black and White Languages of Race [essay] Tobias Wolff: Say Yes [story] Luis Alberto Urrea: from Across the Wire [essay] Mary Gaitskill: On Not Being a Victim: Sex, Rape, and the Trouble with Following Rules [essay] Sherry Turkle: TinySex and Gender Trouble [essay]

Framing Essay	The framing essay introduces the readings and themes of the chapter. The electronic version of the framing essay differs from the version in the print text by including hotlinks to resources on particular authors as well as crosslinks to other sections of Border Texts Online.

Critical Questions Revisited	The section called Critical Questions Revisited poses four to six writing questions and topics for each chapter. These questions are generally broad and multifaceted. In order to help students break them down into manageable parts and to see how to generate a thesis and paper from them, these questions have been designed as part of a section called From Reading to Writing.

Taking It From Here	This section contains bibliography and Web resources supporting the readings and themes in the chapter. It includes an interactive section called Writing Connections, in which students and teachers are invited to contribute links and descriptions that connect interesting Web resources with the themes and materials in Border Texts.