Category: Writing

Assume you are a suspect and are made to appear in a police lineup. You are suspected of a sexual assault allegedly committed by “a Hispanic who was about 5 feet 8, wore jeans, and spoke with an accent.” You are Hispanic, about 5 feet 10, and one of three Hispanics of similar height in the lineup. All three of you speak with an accent; all three of you are wearing jeans. You are identified by the victim after you were made to repeat the statement “I will kill you if you shout.” Were your constitutional rights violated? If so, which specific rights?

Assignment: Through your reading thus far, you have been collecting your ideas about ethnic literature as well as Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. For this formal assignment, you will be answering one of two questions in an essay form. In doing this, you will need to not only determine which question to answer, but how you want to answer the question (there’s no “one” way). While, you are not simply summarizing The Woman Warrior, you will need to summarize briefly the scenes that you wish to discuss. The most important issue is that you will need to construct an argument about its meaning and how The Woman Warrior and Kingston achieves what you say she does.
Purpose: Writing about any topic allows a student to better understand that topic as well as better demonstrate to an instructor what one knows. For this reason, this paper will allow you to demonstrate what you have learned about ethnic literature (to this point), as well as Woman Warrior.
Questions:
1. Throughout The Woman Warrior, Kingston stresses how she wants to be “American-normal” (87). What does this term mean? What qualities make a person “American-normal”? Why does she want to be this? How does she “achieve” this in The Woman Warrior?
2. Folklore plays a huge role in The Woman Warrior. Consider the power of myth as a device in this memoir. That is, what does it allow Kingston to say that might be impossible to say in a more traditional memoir? In thinking about this, also consider how the myth(s) are intertwined in her story. What is the effect of this? What does this allow her to do?
Attachments:
3259559_1_Woman-Warrior-Essay-ladya.docx

Climbing the Golden Arches”
This week we’re working on concluding paragraphs. The conclusion is a chance to bring your ideas together and emphasize the key points in your essay.
Post 1:
In paragraph 18 (the conclusion) of “Climbing the Golden Arches” (pp. 439-443 of The Norton Sampler), Nuñez’s recounts several important points drawn from earlier in the essay; specifically, she talks about what she has learned. Choose one of the points she mentions and cite an early passage that supports her conclusion.
What was your first job like? Write a concluding paragraph that shares the key points of your experience and what you learned.
250 words minimum. Use quotations from the literature.