Homework for Thursday, Oct. 20

Complete the imitative paragraph that we started in class. Further details below.

Read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, chs. I-II, available here. Write one good sentence describing your reaction to this reading.

The paragraph you should imitate begins with "Ken Harvey was gasping for air" (50 Essays, p. 336). Identify an institution that has not lived up to its promises, and imitate Mike Rose's writing to show how it has failed someone. (The person it fails can be anyone in general; it doesn't have to be someone you know.) Follow Rose's writing strategies in the paragraph to draw attention to the institution's failures: his language, his examples, his sentence variety, and how his sentence structure (especially toward the end) reinforces his point.

Homework for Tuesday, Oct. 18

In 50 Essays, read Mike Rose, "'I Just Wanna Be Average.'" Write one page in response to the following prompt: As we discussed in class, Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son" goes back and forth between the specific and the general, the narrative and the analytic, and the personal and the public. Explain how Rose employs this strategy to achieve his purpose in "'I Just Wanna Be Average.'" It will help, of course, to identify Rose's purpose in your response.

Topic for Wednesday's Response

Here is your prompt for the one-page response: Now that you've finished The Color of Water, what is McBride's situation, and what is his story? In other words (for those who are new to the class),  what is the context for McBride's memoir (his situation), and what idea, or emotional insight, has he come to share with the reader (his story)?