Each essay should be a minimum of three pages.
Please pick three of the following essays.
Please email me your essays by 5 pm, December 21st. Do not use google drive. Please send your work in Word.
1. Miguel Chico is the protagonist of The Rain God and it is through his perspective that we see his family in El Paso. It is also through his emotional life that we see how guilt and loss have shaped the way his family sees the world. But one character in the novel, Uncle Felix, is arguably the most tragic figure of all. Write an essay about Uncle Felix and consider any of the following: his relation to his family to the men who work for him; to the young men he picks up; to music; to this son; to the song he hears at the bar on the night he is murdered; his daughters rage at the familys hypocrisy.
2 Identity Politics and Moraga. How do you see yourself and how do you want to be perceived? How do you think the world sees you and how do you want to be seen? Are these different things? Think over your self-perceptions along with our discussions about identity politics and about Moragas work. Craft an essay or a presentation about identity in the postmodern. When I say presentation, I mean that you can use whatever materials or technologies that you feel comfortable with in order to say something new about this thing we call identity.
3. You have been asked to give a presentation of a poem by a poet of color from the PDF I sent you. You will be presenting to a class of undergraduates at Fordham. These are students who come from all over the college and are of varying majors and backgrounds. What they all have in common is that they are intelligent, and they want to hear what you have to say about a poem. How would you present this poem? Write an essay describing your process. Or write up the presentation itself, the presentation that you would present. Or record it. Or do a power point or whatever. Do a tik tok. Do whatever it would take to engage your class about what you think this poem is doing.
4. There really was a Golden Age. Much of the material we read has had evocations of a Golden Age, a time in which all of life was connected in a meaningful whole. This Golden Age could have been during childhood, it could be a time in which love was in flower, or it could a place that was left behind. What is most insistent about the Golden Age is that it in the past. (The past is a different country; they do things differently there. (L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between) ) You can also use this occasion to write about your own Golden Age, as long as you demonstrate a facility with the concept as we discussed it in class and discuss texts we have covered.
