Pick a Book!
(ENGL 210-02-L, #22802, Prof. Tim Dalton) | Link to Collaborative Rubric (Sept 14)
Peer Editing Draft due
Sept 21, by 9:30am to Docs (see Chalkboard).
Graded Revision Due
Sept 28, by 9:30am to this Google Form
Note: Since this module’s readings and learning activities have covered skills related to source use practices and documentation, I will look for their demonstration in your essay while determining whether there is more to do for it to be marked “complete” (see our grading contract on the syllabus).
Instructions
As always, you may choose from any of the prompts below. Whichever you choose, this essay should be 750-1000 words. However, if you’re less than confident in your skills with APA format, source evaluation, quote integration, and active reading, I strongly encourage you to work with the “default prompt,” option 1. It’s perhaps the least exciting of the group, but probably the simplest. It’s also a place where I can give you the most direct feedback on what needs correction to have work that is “complete”.
The other “alternate” prompts are questions you can come back to in Essay 3, which will respond to the complete books you choose in this module.
Option 1 (Default Prompt):
Write an essay where you select a book to read (either Heavy or Ordinary Girls) in our Module 3 book groups. Use this essay to explain why you’ve picked that book based on our previewing and research activities. Remember: Your thesis for this can be relatively simple (I would like to read A because it will help me know more about B). There are more complicated ways to formulate this, too: (I would like to read A with Students B and C, because it will help us know more about topic D in the context of Situation E). But that second formulation is structurally the same as the simpler one. Whatever your reasoning, you’ll want to make sure that this reasoning stays consistent throughout your body paragraphs.
Hopefully helpful hint: Essentially, the logic of this argument (its unstated assumption) is that reading the book you’ve selected will help you (and maybe others) learn more about a topic. That interest in learning about that topic should drive the evidence you select, quote, and analyze in your body paragraphs. Those paragraphs should draw on both primary sources (work from these books and by these authors) and secondary sources (work about these books or about these authors).
Alternate Prompts: Essay 2
Option 1 is the default prompt (see above).
Option 2:
Your college is trying to choose between these two books for its campus-wide “Community Reads” book. Write an op-ed for the school newspaper arguing for one or the other. Try to refer to events relevant to your campus community (such as those referenced during #ScholarStrike)
Option 3:
From our previewing activity to the research to the writer’s own words, both Diaz and Laymon see themselves in traditions grounded in their various identities (Black literatures, Puerto Rican/Latinx literatures, queer/feminist literatures, and of course “American” literatures, hip-hop culture, among others). Use your research and previewing to connect one of these writers to another writer (for example, Jaquira Diaz and Sandra Cisneros or Junot Diaz or Julia Alvarez, or Kiese Laymon and James Baldwin or Ta-Nehisi Coates or Roxanne Gay). In your essay, explain that connection. (Maybe obvious, but worth saying: you’ll need to find and read work by that other author.)
Option 4:
Consider an issue raised in these readings so far—mental health, addiction, education, representation in popular culture, gender equity, sexuality, the criminal justice system. Define this topic, and describe the question these readings have raised for you on this topic. Then, summarize at least two peer-reviewed articles from the library database on the topic. In what ways do these articles engage or complicate the personal narratives of Diaz and/or Laymon on this issue? In what ways do the personal narratives complicate or engage the peer-reviewed article?
Option 5:
If there is a direction you’d like to go in that is not listed here, let me know before peer editing.
Please email with any questions.
