For this historiography essay assignment, our peers and I had to pick a topic from the list of different types of food and drinks we can research on. Afterward, we discuss our findings in our research by writing this historiography essay. My essay is called, “The Crisis of Coffee,” which was an essay based on Mexico’s experience on their declining market prices on coffee beans. In our class, we discussed the importance of purpose, audience, exigence, stance, and genre. The importance of purpose, audience… etc, was meant to provide a better understanding of the course learning outcomes. In this essay, I will access my work and on how well I was able to include the course learning outcomes. 

The purpose of this essay was to give readers an understanding of how coffee farmers in Mexico were going through a drastic decline in coffee bean market prices while Costa Rica had a more positive approach to the situation. In order to convey the purpose to my readers on the importance of coffee bean to farmers, I used evidence from a journal source discusses the economic value of coffee beans to farmers. For instance, I included a paraphrased citation of how coffee beans in Mexico were able to provide a sufficient income to farmers until the market decline occurred. Although the evidence was useful, I was not proud of the flow in my essay since it did seem like information on top of additional information. In some cases, it did seem repetitive which I need to work on more. 

This historiography essay mostly connects to those who are coffee fanatics, and those who are interested in the economic value of coffee bean in a different country. I wanted to convey to my readers how the business of coffee was not always successful since there were areas such as Mexico which struggled greatly from the decline. In addition, I wanted to inform my audience a clear rundown of the harsh reality of coffee beans back in the 1990s and how many had to immigrate to the Americas in order to live a better life. 

My exigence for writing this historiography essay was the limited focus on the coffee crisis in Mexico and how not a lot of people know about this situation. After accessing a media source on an interview based on another’s experience of the coffee decline. The harsh reality of many losing their jobs, their homes and their farm property due to coffee declines made felt emotion. Especially when Olga,  the lady being interviewed, mentioned the journey of farmers traveling to the Americas and how some were not able to make the long 8 days journey actually broke my heart. Therefore, I felt motivated in writing this essay in order to inform others on this topic of coffee.

My stance on writing this historiography essay is basically my thesis statement, which was “Coffee does have a negative effect in certain countries in the world.” This time I made sure to address my thesis statement in the introduction and conclusion since my last essay had an undecided approach to Carney’s position. I wanted the thesis statement in this essay strong and upfront. Therefore,  my approach to this was to state the benefits such as trades between farmers and the command for goods but there is also a lack of regulation in the coffee beans leading it to decline. I did not struggle with the thesis statement compared to my last essay since this essay was straight to the point with a clear approach. 

The genre of this essay assignment is a historiography essay. The definition of a historiographical essay is an article that analyzes how a single historical subject or issue is dealt with by a number of authors. This essay could be based on anything such as the Columbian Exchange journal article Carney wrote, while mine was mostly centered on the economy of coffee beans in Mexico. 

After writing this reflective essay and my historiography essay, I learned a lot of ways on how I can improve my writing on a certain topic. In addition, by re-evaluating my writing through the five rhetorical situations, I understand that I was still lacking the sense of a scholar’s mindset since there were parts of the essay which I should have explained better and added more details too. Overall, this assignment did seem to make a connection to Carney’s essay by how researching takes a lot of time and that finding evidence to fit your position can be difficult.