Background Author Anna Quindlen (b.

1953 ) was born in

Philadelphia. She is a columnist and author who has been
described as having a “common touch” because so many
people relate to her writings about politics and gender-
specific issues. In 1992, she became the third woman to
win a Pulitzer Prize for commentary. “A Quilt of a Country”
was published after the World Trade Center attacks of
September 11, 2001. The argument was written at a time
when many people were thinking about what it means to be
an American.

A Quilt of
a Country
Argument by Anna Quindlen

AS YOU READ Pay attention to how the details in the text support
the idea of America as “an improbable idea.” Write down any
As you read, mark up
questions you generate during reading. the text. Save your
work to myNotebook.
Image Credits: (c) ©Boston Globe via Getty Images; (tr) ©Bobby Bank/WireImage/Getty Images

t
Highlight details.

A merica is an improbable idea. A mongrel1 nation built of t
Add notes and

questions.
ever-changing disparate2 parts, it is held together by a notion, t
Add new words to
myWordList.
the notion that all men are created equal, though everyone knows
that most men consider themselves better than someone. “Of all
discordant
the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody’s (d∆-skôr´dnt) adj.
image,” the historian Daniel Boorstin wrote. That’s because it was conflicting or not
built of bits and pieces that seem discordant, like the crazy quilts harmonious.
that have been one of its great folk-art forms, velvet and calico and pluralistic
checks and brocades. Out of many, one. That is the ideal. (pl≥r´∂-l∆s´t∆c) adj.
10 The reality is often quite different, a great national striving consisting of many
consisting frequently of failure. Many of the oft-told stories of ethnic and cultural
groups.
the most pluralistic nation on earth are stories not of tolerance,
but of bigotry. Slavery and sweatshops, the burning of crosses

1
mongrel: something produced by mixing different breeds.
2
disparate: distinct or not alike.

A Quilt of a Country 3
 and the ostracism 3 of the other. Children learn in social-studies
class and in the news of the lynching of blacks, the denial of
rights to women, the murders of gay men. It is difficult to know
how to convince them that this amounts to “crown thy good
with brotherhood,” that amid all the failures is something
spectacularly successful. Perhaps they understand it at this
20 moment, when enormous tragedy, as it so often does, demands a
time of reflection on enormous blessings.
This is a nation founded on a conundrum, 4 what Mario
Cuomo5 has characterized as “community added to individualism. ”
These two are our defining ideals; they are also in constant conflict.
Historians today bemoan the ascendancy of a kind of prideful
apartheid6 in America, saying that the clinging to ethnicity, in
background and custom, has undermined the concept of unity.
These historians must have forgotten the past, or have gilded it.
The New York of my children is no more Balkanized,7 probably
30 less so, than the Philadelphia of my father, in which Jewish boys
would walk several blocks out of their way to avoid the Irish divide
of Chester Avenue. (I was the product of a mixed marriage, across
barely bridgeable lines: an Italian girl, an Irish boy. How quaint it
seems now, how incendiary then.) The Brooklyn of Francie Nolan’s
famous tree, the Newark of which Portnoy complained, even
the uninflected WASP suburbs of Cheever’s characters:8 they are
ghettos, pure and simple. Do the Cambodians and the Mexicans in
California coexist less easily today than did the Irish and Italians of
Massachusetts a century ago? You know the answer.
40 What is the point of this splintered whole? What is the point
of a nation in which Arab cabbies chauffeur Jewish passengers
through the streets of New York—and in which Jewish cabbies
chauffeur Arab passengers, too, and yet speak in theory of hatred,
one for the other? What is the point of a nation in which one part
seems to be always on the verge of fisticuffs with another, blacks
and whites, gays and straights, left and right, Pole and Chinese and
interwoven
Puerto Rican and Slovenian? Other countries with such divisions (∆n´t∂r-w∫´v∂n) adj.
have in fact divided into new nations with new names, but not this blended or laced
one, impossibly interwoven even in its hostilities. together.

3
ostracism: exclusion or separation from society.
4
conundrum: a riddle or a puzzle.
5
Mario Cuomo: Governor of New York from 1983 until 1994.
6
apartheid: a political system of racial or ethnic separation and discrimination.
7
Balkanized: divided into small, uncooperative groups like countries on the
Balkan Peninsula in the early 20th century.
8
Francie Nolan’s . . . WASP suburbs of Cheever’s characters: characters in
the novels A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Portnoy’s Complaint; John Cheever’s
characters were generally White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or WASPs.

4 Collection 1
 “What is the point
of this splintered
whole?”
50 Once these disparate parts were held together by a common
enemy, by the fault lines of world wars and the electrified fence of
communism. With the end of the cold war9 there was the creeping
concern that without a focus for hatred and distrust, a sense of
national identity would evaporate, that the left side of the hyphen—
African-American, Mexican-American, Irish-American—would
overwhelm the right. And slow-growing domestic traumas like
economic unrest and increasing crime seemed more likely to
emphasize division than community. Today the citizens of the United
States have come together once more because of armed conflict and
60 enemy attack. Terrorism has led to devastation—and unity.
Yet even in 1994, the overwhelming majority of those surveyed
by the National Opinion Research Center agreed with this
statement: “The U.S. is a unique country that stands for something
special in the world.” One of the things that it stands for is this
vexing notion that a great nation can consist entirely of refugees
from other nations, that people of different, even warring religions
and cultures can live, if not side by side, then on either side of the
country’s Chester Avenues. Faced with this diversity there is little diversity
(d∆-vûr´s∆-t∏) n.
point in trying to isolate anything remotely resembling a national
having varied
70 character, but there are two strains of behavior that, however social and/or ethnic
tenuously, abet the concept of unity. backgrounds.

9
cold war: diplomatic and economic hostility between the United States and the
Soviet Union and their respective allies in the decades following World War II.

A Quilt of a Country 5
 There is that Calvinist undercurrent10 in the American psyche
that loves the difficult, the demanding, that sees mastering the
impossible, whether it be prairie or subway, as a test of character,
and so glories in the struggle of this fractured coalescing. And there
is a grudging fairness among the citizens of the United States that
eventually leads most to admit that, no matter what the English-
only advocates try to suggest, the new immigrants are not so
different from our own parents or grandparents. Leonel Castillo,
80 former director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and
himself the grandson of Mexican immigrants, once told the writer
Studs Terkel proudly, “The old neighborhood Ma-Pa stores are still
around. They are not Italian or Jewish or Eastern European any
more. Ma and Pa are now Korean, Vietnamese, Iraqi, Jordanian,
Latin American. They live in the store. They work seven days a
week. Their kids are doing well in school. They’re making it. Sound
familiar?”
Tolerance is the word used most often when this kind of
coexistence succeeds, but tolerance is a vanilla-pudding word,
90 standing for little more than the allowance of letting others live
unremarked and unmolested. Pride seems excessive, given the
American willingness to endlessly complain about them, them
being whoever is new, different, unknown, or currently under
suspicion. But patriotism is partly taking pride in this unlikely
ability to throw all of us together in a country that across its length
and breadth is as different as a dozen countries, and still be able
to call it by one name. When photographs of the faces of all those
who died in the World Trade Center destruction are assembled in
one place, it will be possible to trace in the skin color, the shape of
100 the eyes and the noses, the texture of the hair, a map of the world.
These are the representatives of a mongrel nation that somehow, at
times like this, has one spirit. Like many improbable ideas, when it
actually works, it’s a wonder.

COLLABORATIVE DISCUSSION Why does Anna Quindlen consider

America to be “an improbable idea”? Discuss Quindlen’s argument with
a partner.

10
Calvinist undercurrent: the social influence of Calvinism, a Christian religion
with a strict moral code and a belief in God as absolutely sovereign.

6 Collection 1
 EL A RI.9-10.8
Delineate and Evaluate an Argument ELD PI.9-10.7

In “A Quilt of a Country,” Anna Quindlen presents an argument about how America

works as a country. An argument presents a claim, or position, on an issue and
supports it with reasons and evidence. To evaluate the strength of Quindlen’s
argument, you must delineate, or describe in detail, these elements:
t
Identify the claim, or Quindlen’s position, on the issue.
t
Look for the reasons Quindlen uses to support her claim. Reasons should be
valid and logical.
t
Evaluate whether the evidence Quindlen cites for each reason is credible,
or believable, and relevant to the claim. Evidence can include facts, statistics,
examples, anecdotes, or quotations.
t
Look for counterarguments, which are statements that address opposing
viewpoints. Does Quindlen anticipate opposing viewpoints and provide
counterarguments to disprove them?

EL A RI.9-10.5
Analyze and Evaluate Author’s Claim ELD PI.9-10.6, PI.9-10.8

To support a claim, authors develop and refine their ideas throughout the text. An
author may use a particular sentence to develop a claim, or use an entire paragraph
or larger section of the text to develop a claim with reasons and evidence.
Use a chart to help you analyze and evaluate how Anna Quindlen develops
her claim in “A Quilt of a Country.” First, identify the claim. Then, list specific reasons
or evidence from the text. Finally, evaluate if the reason or evidence supports the
claim. Read this example from a student newspaper editorial.

CLAIM
More time should be given to students to transition between classes.

CLAIM
Reasons/Evidence from Text How the Reasons/Evidence Support the Claim

“Students have told me how
rushed they are to gather
materials from their lockers for
their next classes.”
The evidence is a quotation from the school counselor,
an objective observer who hears from many students.
Her statement is logical support for the claim because
it would be easier to gather materials if students had
more time.

A Quilt of a Country 7
 eBook
EL A RI.9-10.1, RI.9-10.4, RI.9-10.5, RI.9-10.6,
RI.9-10.8, W.9-10.1a–b ELD PI.9-10.6, PI.9-
Analyzing the Text 10.7, PI.9-10.10, PI.9-10.11

Cite Text Evidence Support your responses with evidence from the selection.
1. Summarize What is Anna Quindlen’s claim in “A Quilt of a Country”? Summarize
her claim in your own words.
2. Interpret In lines 7–8, what does Quindlen mean when she describes America
as being “like the crazy quilts that have been one of its great folk-art forms”?
How does this description support her claim?
3. Evaluate What opposing viewpoint does Quindlen respond to in paragraph 3?
What counterargument does she offer to it? List the reasons and evidence she
includes in her counterargument and evaluate if it is relevant and sufficient.
4. Analyze In paragraph 4, Quindlen uses repetition and parallelism—
expressing related ideas using similar grammatical constructions. What sentence
structure and words does she repeat? What is the effect of this repetition?
5. Analyze Reread Quindlen’s conclusion. What specific words and phrases does
she use to link the conclusion to her introduction? How do these words and
phrases support her argument?
6. Evaluate Quindlen uses many different types of evidence throughout the
argument to support her claim, for example, facts, statistics, and quotations.
Identity at least three examples of evidence and evaluate how she uses each
one to support her claim.

PERFORMANCE TASK
Writing Activity: Argument Using what you have learned about how to develop
an argument, write and support a claim about a positive aspect of your school or
community.
1. Think about something you feel is an 3. Write the draft of your argument.
important, positive feature of your Work carefully to present your reasons
school or community. Write a claim and evidence in a logical order.
about it.
4. Revise your draft to eliminate
2. Make notes about the reasons that unrelated or illogical evidence.
support your claim. Then collect Finally, check your work to make sure
evidence that supports your reasons. you have used the conventions of
Consider an opposing claim and list standard English.
valid counterarguments.

8 Collection 1