Extraordinary Otherness

James Baldwin, John Edgar Wideman, Luis J. Rodriguez, and Ruben Salazar--along with Hunter S. Thompson, explore what it means to be an outsider in a culture.

What do you see as common links in their themes?
How does reporting strengthen their writing?
How does their use of language and voice make their writing memorable?
How do they reference their own race, gender, class or sexual-orientation identities in their non-fiction writing?

Read aloud from each of these. See how they differ. How does the place of publication or the era of publication influence their production and the audience consumption of what they write? Considering the manifold forms of media, who or where today reports and writes the way these authors do?

What do you discover about these authors when you Google them?
For example, Luis J. Rodriguez http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0907/p02s04-lign.html

When you read them deeply?

BH