Consider how Studs Terkel, Elijah Anderson, and Sandra Cisneros describe the people and characters in their work. What traits of these people do they emphasize, and how do they communicate those traits either explicitly or implicitly to the reader? What do they consider important enough to emphasize? How do they moralize the person/character, or avoid moralizing them? How do the characters reflect the urban setting in which we find them?
For this exercise, create a written portrait of a real or fictional person, keeping in mind the lessons you have learned from studying the assigned vignettes. The portrait can be a general description of the person, a narrative of them at a specific moment, pure dialogue, a speech or stream of conscious thought from their perspective, or some mix of these. This link(https://blog.reedsy.com/character-descriptions/) offers advice on character construction to writers–you don’t need to review this webpage, but some students may find it helpful.
The portrait of the person should be 1-2 double-spaced pages long.
Then write a brief paragraph explaining your portrait: how are you borrowing or imitating any techniques from Anderson, Terkel, or Cisneros? What did you want to emphasize about the character, and how did you attempt to do it?