If You Want to Know What We Are by Carlos Bulosan If you want to know what we are who inhabit forest

mountain rivershore, who harness beast, living steel, martial music (that classless language of the heart), who celebrate labour, wisdom of the mind, peace of the blood; If you want to know what we are who become animate at the rains metallic ring, the stones accumulated strength, who tremble in the winds blossoming (that enervates earths potentialities), who stir just as flowers unfold to the sun; If you want to know what we are who grow powerful and deathless in countless counterparts, each part pregnant with hope, each hope supreme, each supremacy classless, each classlessness nourished by unlimited splendor of comradeship; We are multitudes the world over, millions everywhere; in violent factories, sordid tenements, crowded cities; in skies and seas and rivers, in lands everywhere; our number increase as the wide world revolves and increases arrogance, hunger disease and death. We are the men and women reading books, searching in the pages of history for the lost word, the key to the mystery of living peace, imperishable joy; we are factory hands field hands mill hand everywhere, molding creating building structures, forging ahead, Reaching for the future, nourished in the heart; we are doctors scientists chemists discovering, eliminating disease and hunger and antagonisms; we are soldiers navy-men citizens guarding the imperishable will of man to live in grandeur,

We are the living dream of dead men everywhere, the unquenchable truth that class-memories create to stagger the infamous world with prophecies of unlimited happiness_a deathless humanity; we are the living and the dead men everywhere. If you want to know what we are, observe the bloody club smashing heads, the bayonet penetrating hallowed breasts, giving no mercy; watch the bullet crashing upon armorless citizens; look at the tear-gas choking the weakened lung. If you want to know what we are, see the lynch trees blossoming, the hysterical mob rioting; remember the prisoner beaten by detectives to confess a crime he did not commit because he was honest, and who stood alone before a rabid jury of ten men, And who was sentenced to hang by a judge whose bourgeois arrogance betrayed the office he claimed his own; name the marked man, the violator of secrets; observe the banker, the gangster, the mobsters who kill and go free; We are the sufferers who suffer for natural love of man for man, who commemorate the humanities of every man; we are the toilers who toil to make the starved earth a place of abundance who transform abundance into deathless fragrance. We are the desires of anonymous men everywhere, who impregnate the wide earths lustrous wealth with a gleaming fluorescence; we are the new thoughts and the new foundations, the new verdure of the mind; we are the new hope new joy life everywhere. We are the vision and the star, the quietus of pain; we are the terminals of inquisition, the hiatuses

of a new crusade; we are the subterranean subways of suffering; we are the will of dignities; we are the living testament of a flowering race. If you want to know what we are WE ARE REVOLUTION!

Examples & Observations: "Some guy hit my fender the other day, and I said unto him, 'Be fruitful, and multiply.' But not in those words. (Woody Allen) "When I put down words that I say somebody said they needn't be the exact words, just what you might call the meaning." (Mark Harris, The Southpaw. Bobbs-Merrill, 1953) "I've often heard Steve [Jobs] explain why Apple's products look so good or work so well by telling the 'show car' anecdote. 'You see a show car,' he would say (I'm paraphrasinghere, but this is pretty close to his words), 'and you think, "That's a great design, it's got great lines." Four or five years later, the car is in the showroom and in television ads, and it sucks. And you wonder what happened. They had it. They had it, and then they lost.'" (Jay Elliot with William Simon, The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a New Generation. Vanguard, 2011 "The other important joke for me is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx, but I think it appears originally in Freud's Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious. And it goes like this--I'm paraphrasing--'I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.' That's the key joke of my adult life in terms of my relationships with women." (Woody Allen as Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, 1977) "A summary, written in your own words, briefly restates the writer's main points. Paraphrase, although written in your own words, is used to relate the details or the progression of an idea in your source. Quotation, used sparingly, can lend credibility to your work or capture a memorable passage." (L. Behrens, A Sequence for Academic Writing. Longman, 2009) How to Paraphrase a Text "Paraphrase passages that present important points, explanations, or arguments but that don't contain memorable or straightforward wording. Follow these steps:

Quickly review the passage to get a sense of the whole, and then go through the passage carefully, sentence by sentence. State the ideas in your own words, defining words as needed. If necessary, edit for clarity, but don't change the meaning. If you borrow phrases directly, put them in quotation marks. Check your paraphrase against the original for accurate tone and meaning." (R. VanderMey, The College Writer. Houghton, 2007) Paraphrase as a Rhetorical Exercise "A paraphrase differs from a translation in not being a transfer from one language to another. . . . We generally associate with paraphrase the notion of an expansion of the original thought by definitions, periphrasis, examples, etc., with a view to making it more intelligible; but this is not essential. Here is meant the simpler form, in which the pupil reproduces in his own words the complete thought of an author, without attempting to explain it or to imitate the style. "It has been frequently urged against this exercise, that, in thus substituting other words for those of an accurate writer, we must necessarily choose such as are less expressive of the sense. It has, however, been defended by one of the greatest rhetoricians--Quintilian." (Andrew D. Hepburn, Manual of English Rhetoric, 1875) Monty Python and Computer Paraphrasing "In the famous sketch from the TV show 'Monty Python's Flying Circus,' the actor John Cleese had many ways of saying a parrot was dead, among them, 'This parrot is no more,' 'He's expired and gone to meet his maker,' and 'His metabolic processes are now history.' "Computers can't do nearly that well at paraphrasing. English sentences with the same meaning take so many different forms that it has been difficult to get computers to recognize paraphrases, much less produce them. "Now, using several methods, including statistical techniques borrowed from gene analysis, two researchers have created a program that can automatically generate paraphrases of English sentences."

Paraphrasing Blocks of Text Paraphrasing can be done with individual sentences or entire paragraphs. There are several examples of paraphrasing listed below for both long and short blocks of text.
Paraphrasing SentencesHere are some sentences that have been paraphrased: Original: Her life spanned years of incredible change for women. Paraphrase: Mary lived through an era of liberating reform for women.

Original: Giraffes like Acacia leaves and hay and they can consume 75 pounds of food a day. Paraphrase: A giraffe can eat up to 75 pounds of Acacia leaves and hay everyday. Original: Any trip to Italy should include a visit to Tuscany to sample their exquisite wines. Paraphrase: Be sure to include a Tuscan wine-tasting experience when visiting Italy. Paraphrasing Paragraphs -Duke's online website provides many examples of paraphrasing in order to help students understand the difference between paraphrasing and plagiarism. Here is an example of paraphrasing of a longer passage taken from the Duke website. Original Passage: In The Sopranos, the mob is besieged as much by inner infidelity as it is by the federal government. Early in the series, the greatest threat to Tony's Family is his own biological family. One of his closest associates turns witness for the FBI, his mother colludes with his uncle to contract a hit on Tony, and his kids click through Web sites that track the federal crackdown in Tony's gangland. Paraphrased Passage:-In the first season of The Sopranos, Tony Sopranos mobster activities are more threatened by members of his biological family than by agents of the federal government. This familial betrayal is multi-pronged. Tonys closest friend and associate is an FBI informant, his mother and uncle are conspiring to have him killed, and his children are surfing the Web for information about his activities. The main point of this passage is that problems within the family are as bad as or even worse than problems caused by the federal government. Details about this betrayal include one family member turning informant, a hit being put out on Tony by family members, and Tonys kids tracking his activities. Here is a summary of some of the changes made during the paraphrasing process: Early in the series = first seasonMore threatened = greatest threat Closest friend and associate = one family memberHis mother colludes with his uncle = his mother and uncle are conspiringHis kids click through Web sites = his children are surfing the Web