"The Saterday Evening Post" by Russel Baker

I have just recently read an essay called “The Saturday Evening Post” by Russell Baker. I feel like the author was trying to tell his audience what his early life was like and how he discovered that he actually wanted to be a writer. Hey conveyed that his childhood was a rough one and that he had a lot of pressure to be great at something and become rich for his mother. He also wanted to convey that it was hard to grow up in the 1920’s, work was scarce, life was hard, families were poor, it was a lot and he wanted the reader to know that.
The style of this author is a sense of the fact that he should have a dry humor about him, he writes in a way that drips sarcasm, but still conveys a sense of intelligence. I liked the fact that he mentioned that his mother would use many maxims in her daily life and her talks with her son. For example, the author wrote; “By the time I was ten I had learned all my mother’s maxims by heart. Asking to stay up past normal bedtime, I knew that a refusal would be explained with, ‘Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.’”
I liked that the writer seemed intelligent, and I liked learning about what the beginning of his journey into his writing career was like. I didn’t like his mother just because she tried to conform him to something successful that she wanted, not what he wanted to do for the rest of his life, that is why I was glad that in the end he found something he liked and his mother thought was good enough for him to make into a career.
This essay seemed a lot like the life I feel like I live, the one where I have to be successful or I will fall, but I must also love what I am doing. That sometimes is hard because I don’t really know what I love more than anything that could be made into a successful career. I feel a lot of the time that I must be unique by doing something a lot of other people do as well, which fells almost impossible at times. Though my exact career is not chosen I do know what “kind” of stuff I like and wish to pursue a career in.

"Only Daughter" by Sandra Cisneros

I just read an essay written by the author Sandra Cisneros titled “Only Daughter”. I felt that the reason that she wants to get across to the reader is that impressing someone with your work to show your worth can be a great motivator for some great writings. She also wanted to get across her Hispanic back round, which she did very well. I was glad that she incorporated all of her back round into this one small piece of literature.
Her style of writing is one similar to talking to a younger audience, like she wanted to make her points written in an easy to understand, “flowing” manner. My favorite point she made was the part that said “When he was finally finished, after what seemed like hours, my father looked up and asked: ‘Where can we get more copies of this for the relatives?’ Of all the wonderful things that happened to me last year, that was the most wonderful.” This really touched me because it seemed to touch her deep in a place in her heart and she conveyed it well in her writing style.
What I liked about this essay was that it made me understand her as well as her culture in a personal way that I would have never been able to access without this fine piece of work. One thing I did dislike about it though was that she took the almost sexism like attitude from her father and made it seem okay, which it never is. Another thing I liked though was her use of English and Spanish words in a flowing way that just “felt” right to the eye, it didn’t look like she was trying to just throw some random Spanish in there to “spice” things up, it was used sparingly but in the right way with the right types of speech, which made I seem like iy was natural, which it probably was to her.
I related to the character in the way that I feel like I must impress my father as well because he always wanted to raise a boy, but he never got to for, obvious reasons, so I try to make him proud. Proud to have an accomplished daughter, even just a daughter, like me.

"No Wonder They Call Me A Bitch" by Anne Hodgeman

I have just finished reading an informative essay called “No Wonder They Call Me A Bitch” by a talented author that goes by the name of Ann Hodgman. I believe the author’s purpose was to inform her audience on the different types of dog food with a bit of hilarity twisted into the story. One of her main points was that she actually ate all of the dog food and wasn’t embarrassed or afraid to tell anyone.
The author had a very interesting style; she covered up every moment that she was uncomfortable very smoothly. A good example of this was when she said “I shrieked and went instead for a plain chunk, which I was able to swallow only after taking a break to read some suddenly fascinating office equipment catalogues.” In this instance she was able to hide the fact that she really didn’t have the courage to down that nasty first piece, which had a “long trailing grey vein”, so smoothly you almost don’t even notice it. Her sentences are exactly the right length and stay pretty consistent. I also noticed that she wrote the entire thing in first person, but it was written in a way that made it seem like she was writing just for you.
I liked the fact that her paragraph started with questions and she immediately started to answer them. What I didn’t like though was the gristly detail she went into, I suppose it was necessary to get the reader involved, but I felt like it was almost more than I wanted to know. It was slightly disgusting to have her describe the color that it was and then say that she actually put that in her mouth and ate it makes me almost ill. I also wished she would have explained the flavor of the Milk-Bone Snacks, those didn’t seem quite as disgusting to me and I wanted to know if they really tasted like the box said, for I have been using them for years.
I did relate with this story in the fact that I used to eat my dogs food when I was around 5 years old, but thank the moon that I never tried any of the wet dog food, and I will never make my dog suffer through that either.