Essay/Advocacy Journalism prompts

Here's the assignment due next week according to your syllabus:

Cook your idea of a perfect meal for others and write about the entire experience.

If you're comfortable working with that, go for it. For those of you who like a little more prompting, here are some considerations:

Use The Omnivore's Dilemma as a jumping off point. Create a list of rules to follow like Pollan does on page 392. Set out to follow them, and allow your discrepancies to provide tension in the narrative.

Another great technique to borrow from Pollan is to write about your expectations and assumptions before the meal and as the experience of hunting, gathering, preparing, feeding and eating unfold, address how your expectations and assumptions are either met or not. This, too, provides tension in the narrative.

Allow yourself to be as transparent and conversational as possible.

Think about the religiosity or other moral implications of your meal. Consider the meal as grace, as Pollan does on page 407.

"Eating's not a bad way to get to know a place," Pollan writes on page 408. Make your meal as much about getting to know a place as possible.

Attempt to create "a meal that is eaten in full consciousness of what it took to make it" (409). Write about your successes and failures in all their glory.


Hopefully that gets you going. I can't wait to read about your experiences!