Integrating Outside Voices

Sample 1:

“Only Americans, conditioned by mass culture, could believe that it is possible to break cleanly away from such ties, from home, from family, from place; any place.” I agree completely; Fenton Johnson said it best.

Sample 2:

“Only Americans, conditioned by mass culture, could believe that it is possible to break cleanly away from such ties, from home, from family, from place; any place” (231). Fenton Johnson, a creative writing professor at the University of Arizona, made this claim in his essay “Notes of an Emigrant Son” in which he struggles to belong to his hometown in Kentucky and his desired community in California. I, personally, can vouch for his statement’s validity and relate to his predicament.

Sample 3:

In his essay, “Notes of an Emigrant Son,” Fenton Johnson, a fellow Kentuckian and writer, muses that “Only Americans, conditioned by mass culture, could believe that it is possible to break cleanly away from such ties, from home, from family, from place, any place” (231). Like Johnson, I wanted to forget my small town insular roots and move onward and upward, to a place with big ideas and few boundaries. But upon arriving to this new wide world, I realized…

Tips:

- Provide a little *relevant* context about where the quote comes from (author, perhaps something about the author if not well-known, title of work quote comes from)

- Integrate the quote into a sentence using an appropriate signal verb, like those listed on SM p. 273. Characterize the kind of thinking the writer is doing via that verb.

- Feel free to only quote PART of the sentence, i.e. whatever is most relevant to your own idea (but without, of course, changing the quote’s meaning.) Utilize ellipses (…) if you cut something in the middle.

- Be sure to interpret the quote afterwards. Restate it in your own words, connect it to your particular situation, explain why this quote is relevant in this essay. Don’t just leave it hanging with some statement like: “I couldn’t have said it better.”