- How effective is this as an explanatory/enterprise-type narrative?
- How does Read develop the relationship between the Pacific Northwest farmers and Asian business partners in his narrative?
- Did this capture your attention as a reader? Could you follow the narrative with your current level of familiarity with the subject matter?
- After reading this, have you taken away more knowledge of the world economy? Did the subject matter explored in this narrative change your understanding of the intricacies of business relationships?
Sunday, May 6, 2012
CYOA- "The French Fry Connection"
For our CYOA, in anticipation of our next assignment, we decided to find an example of explanatory narrative. We considered choosing the Ted Conover article, but while we recommend everyone read that anyway at their leisure, we instead opted for Richard Read's Pulitzer Prize-winning four-part article "The French Fry Connection," which follows a shipment of McDonalds french fries from potato crop to preparation in McDonalds locations in Asia, and explores the Asian economic crisis through this lens.
This narrative was originally published in The Oregonian in four parts over the course of four issues in 1998. The first part can be found here, at the University of Chicago Press website; each subsequent part is linked at the bottom of each page.
As you read, we urge you to consider the following questions:
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Hi Tanj,
ReplyDeleteI think you raise an interesting question about whether or not this series captures the attention of its readers. For me, my response is initially yes. I think Read really challenges his readers to think more deeply about the implications of the U.S. French Fry Industry and how in many ways it can be used as a vehicle to explore the larger issue of the Asian Economic Crisis. It is a very interesting and complex topic that I believe has the ability to attract a lot of attention and readership.
However, I would also argue that the execution of the three-part series could have been completed a bit more effectively. For example, I thought (and others from the class did too) that Read was somewhat repetitive in his content, perhaps in consideration of readers who did not get through all three parts. I honestly think he could have consolidated his work into a longer, one-part narrative that explores many of the same topics, just in a shorter, more condensed version. According to Jon Franklin, Read relies on "lazy" transitions anyway (such as using ***), so he ultimately could have used those (or better transitions) to navigate between each section.