The Genre of Nonfiction

Paper Summary:

The paper examines "Salvation" by Langston Hughes and "Who Will Light Incense When Mother's Gone?" by Andrew Lam and shows how both Langston Hughes and Andrew Lam take the creative, emotional approach to relate to the reader a particular element from their own lives. The paper discusses the nature of nonfiction writing and explains why, in the writer's opinion, imagination is required for both reading and writing nonfiction.

Outline:
"Salvation" by Langston Hughes
"Who Will Light Incense When Mother's Gone?" by Andrew Lam
The Nature of Nonfiction

From the Paper:

"Nonfiction is a particularly fertile genre of prose for the writer. Not only is copious material available for the focus of such stories, but the author is also free to choose from a great variety of approaches, which is not often the case with genre such as fiction or poetry. Indeed, the author can choose to take a creative, emotional approach to such writing, as in the case of the personal essay, or a more emotionally distant point of view, such as journalism. Both Langston Hughes and Andrew Lam take the former approach to relate to the reader a particular element from their own lives. The strongly emotional and somewhat tragic background of each story makes the former approach appropriate in both cases."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Hughes, Langston. "Salvation". In Literature for Composition, 8th edition by Sylvan Barnet, William Burto & William E. Cain, pp. 310-311
• Lam, Andrew. "Who will light the incense when Mother's gone?" In Literature for Composition, 8th edition by Sylvan Barnet, William Burto & William E. Cain, pp. 1,036-1,037

More papers on The Genre of Nonfiction:

• Film Review # 103321 : "Flaherty and the Documentary Film"
• Analytical Essay # 57821 : "Fiction versus Nonfiction"
• Analytical Essay # 125132 : "In Cold Blood" and the Nonfiction Novel"

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