For this assignment, you will close read and analyze how race and ethnicity shape the works of fiction from weeks one to ten we’ve read this quarter. You are to show how race and ethnicity contribute to one of the text’s overall meanings. You must also integrate one secondary source into your essay.
Length: 5-6 pages (about 1,500-1,800 words)
1” margins
Double-space
12pt, Times New Roman font
MLA format
Include a Works Cited
Develop an original, debatable thesis that answers a question. You must support your thesis with textual evidence. Keep in mind that you can construct a clear, powerful claim while acknowledging ambiguity and ambivalence in the work you are treating. A complex-counter intuitive argument is usually more arguable than a simple, obvious one. If you find yourself forcing the evidence to fit your claim, this is a hint that you need to go back and revise your claim. Weak essays frequently merely describe the text, present a list of loosely connected points, or make unsupported generalizations.
Close read on Ty Pak, “The Court Interpreter”
(Focus on one of the five following topics, May be “Class and Race” is better!)
Humor and racialization. Several of the works we’ve read this quarter employ humor to contend with racialization – to confront or reject it. Choose one of these examples, and think about how your chosen text either sets itself apart from more traditional conceptions of race, or how it embraces it, or even how it attempts to do both at the same time. Then try to answer the following questions: What is at stake in how your chosen text presents race and ethnicity? What does humor obviate in the rigidity of racialization? Is the text praising or critiquing the models of racial identity it presents? Is this behavior meant to be realistic? Fantastical? Allegorical? What, then, is this text’s relationship with humor and how it comes to understand racialization and racial identity? What kind of values, qualities, or personae does the text associate with appropriate or inappropriate racial performance?
Displacement and otherness. How does one of the texts we’ve read tackle displacement and otherness? Several of the works we’ve read advocate for community to counter these dislocations, whether explicitly or implicitly. How does one of the texts we’ve read this quarter do this? Choose one reading to discuss the ways it reclaims space, place, and community. How does identity fit in these frameworks? What does the author say is at stake if the marginalized subjects in these works lean into narratives of otherness?
Gender and race. How does one of the texts we’ve read tackle the Venn diagram of race and gender? Several of the works we’ve read look at gendered figures and gendered responses to racism, or inter-community violence. How does of the texts we’ve read this quarter respond to this? How does gender and race fit into the discussion of these texts.
Class and race. Where do you see class and race interacting in the stories we’ve read this quarter? How do authors play with class? What role does class play in the character’s experiences?
Sexuality and race. How do sexuality and race interact in the space of the fiction we’ve read this class? How has the sexuality of a character impacted their relationships? How has their race impacted their sexual relationships?
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