"Port-au-Prince: The Moment" by Mischa Berlinski

When it comes to tragedies such as natural disasters, the news reporters try to describe every aspect of the tragedy the best they can, to inform people who are unaware of what happened. Although the reporters try their hardest, viewers will never know everything that happened unless they were actually there. Experiencing a tragedy is completely different from watching the report on television, Mischa Berlinski would know. Author Mischa Berlinski attended Columbia University and University of California at Berkley to study classics. Both from Italy, Berlinski and his wife moved to Haiti in 2007 after his wife got a job with the Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haïti (MINUSTAH). Unfortunately Berlinski, his wife, son, and father-in-law (who was visiting from Italy) were in Haïti when the 7.0 earthquake hit in 2010. Berlinski wrote about his experience during and after the earthquake. He really focuses on what reporters reported and what viewers thought compared to what experiencing the tragedy was really like. For example, he talks about how reporters would ask about the bodies and his reply was that, "...at the time, the bodies were far less shocking than the collapsed houses." Berlinski wanted to notify his readers, those who only knew what they saw on the news, about the presence of being there during the earthquake. Berlinski described his experienced by using similes and imagery to make his readers feel like she/he were there with him. To describe the sound of the earthquake Berlinski wrote that, "it was tremendously loud-- like huge stones grinding." Berlinski writes about the aftermath with great detail, noticing how, "a women had been caught in the flatbed [of a truck]. Her eyes were open; the impact had split open her guts; she was covered in a film of gray dust."Although Berlinski did try to make his readers go back in time with him by using imagery and similes, in my opinion Berlinski did not achieve his purpose. He should have written more about the whole experience; if he was less brief he would have achieved his purpose.

Even pictures cannot get people to understand what the experience of the earthquake was like

Title: No name

Author: Jorge Silva Photography 

Author information from: http://www.berlinski.com/mischa/author/

"Grieving" by Meenakshi Gigi Durham

Projections about many things are mostly right, but there is a small chance that they are not from time to time. For example, a meteorologist could announce that there is an 85% chance that it will rain the next day, but then it doesn't rain. Unfortunately for Meenakshi Gigi Durham's husband, Dallas, a projection was not true for him. Author of The Lolita Effect, Durham is an associate professor of journalisms at the University of Iowa since the year 2002. She has written many short stories, scholarly articles and essays like the one found in the book The Best American Essays: 2011 Edition. In her essay, Durham writes about how her husband is in love with his teaching job and how much it means to him. Until one day in the mail Durham's husband received a letter saying he has been fired. This was such a surprise due to the fact that projections stated "that only 45 percent of faculty members have tenure" and that more than two thirds are men.  Knowing this projection, "Dallas [being] a white male. Statistically, he should have succeeded." Durham's purpose is that people should not rely on projections too much because they might not be true all of the time. People who are always relying on projections blind themselves from the chances of reject: chances of it not happening. This way of thinking could be hard-hitting for many people, depending on the situation; for Dallas hard-hitting for him was grieving, hence Durham's title choice. Durham did successfully achieve her purpose in her essay. One important strategy that Durham did use, to get her point across, was when she gave an example where a health projection was wrong. A women had brain cancer, and was predicted to live for six more months but, "...the tumor disappeared without a trace." Using an example related to her husband's situation, about wrong projections, help Durham achieve her purpose. If more people relied less on projections, they're would maybe be less "grieving" for people today.

Preventing disappointment and hard-hitting affects from relying of projections

Title:Depressed Man

Author: Ricardo Liberato

Author information from: The Best American Essays: 2011 Edition

"Long Distance" by Victor LaValle

Many people today do not feel comfortable with themselves; either they think they are too skinny, too fat, too short, too tall, etc. There are those who are so uncomfortable that they hide behind technology, such as fake profiles and in this case phone sex. LaValle is an author of a collection of stories and was the winner of the 2010 Guggenheim Award and assistant professor at Columbia University's School of the Arts. He was asked to write about his life after losing a lot of weight, thus composing the essay Long Distance. Although LaValle was supposed to write about his life after losing weight, much of the essay was about his life before losing the weight. Being overweight and attending college, LaValle did not attract many girls leading to him being less sexually active, so he turned to phone sex. He ended up chatting with a fifty year old women on a regular basis, until she could not talk to him anymore. This was very much like a break up. After two years he decided to lose his weight, since he stopped the phone sex. In the end, LaValle learns that even with his extra skin (caused by losing the weight), that there are girls out there who do not care and like him for who he was; allowing him to make progress in being comfortable with himself. Reaching out to those who are not comfortable in their skin, LaValle tried to communicate to his readers that if they are not comfortable themselves, do not mope around; get up and do something to fix it. Using descriptive vocabulary and emotion, LaValle achieved his purpose of writing his essay.Vocabulary such as besieged, lewd, and euphemisms creates a better understanding in the essay.Along with the descriptive vocabulary, LaValle used emotion that allowed the reader to connect to the author on a personal level. After reading and analyzing this essay, LaValle did achieve his purpose. Showing how miserable LaValle was when he was not comfortable with himself, then doing something about it (losing weight) allowing him to be a happy, really gets his purpose across to his readers.

Striving to being comfortable in your own skin/body

http://www.miscfinds4u.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/bodies.jpg

Author information from: The Best American Essays: 2011 Edition

"Lucky Girl" by Bridget Potter

In the short essay Lucky Girl by Bridget Potter, the author shares a personal experience about when she was pregnant at the age of 19 in the year 1962. During the 60's being pregnant at a young age was not a pleasant situation. Young unmarried women would often be shunned by their own family and friends and sent to home for young pregnant women. One would think that they could simply get an abortion to solve their problems but they could not, for it was illegal at the time. Potter included her struggle into finding a way to prevent the pregnancy from continuing by trying remedies such as hot baths and drinking caster oil. Eventually Potter's only solution was to find a place where she could get an illegal abortion before it was too late. Potter continues to go into detail about her experience and being a lucky girl to have survived her illegal abortion in Puerto Rico. With such a detailed, serious topic Potter's audience are mature young adult women who might be going through the same situation, but less extreme. In the 60's a young women in Potter's situation was lucky to even go through an abortion and survive, whereas today it is much safer. As mentioned before how it was shameful to be pregnant at such an age and not married back in the 60's, today it is still not favored, but it is more accepting than it was before. Potter tries to communicate that women today are more lucky than they were back in the 60's. Potter uses statistics and her personal account as well, to communicate this idea. Potter is a good communicator considering that she was in TV production for the first forty years of her career. Now living in Manhattan and Wassaic, New York, Potter is writing her first memoir/social history book that takes place in the 1960's, inspired by her essay Lucky Girl. Potter did accomplish her purpose due to the comparison of today's subject of abortion and how it was in the 1960's that she explained, using statistics and her personal account.

Feminist pioneers fight for their rights for legal abortion in the 1960's

Excerpted from "All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s"

Author information from: The Best American Essays: 2011 Edition