In the spirit of creative writing, the final assignment will be a fictional short story (4-5 pages), using our final text, Eat the Mouth That Feeds You, as inspiration and as a guiding model. While students have complete freedom to decide what to write their short story about, the following stylistic and substantive components must be present in order to receive full credit. Stylistically, students are encouraged to write in richly descriptive language that uses metaphors and/or symbols to illustrate a clear picture for the reader. Substantively, students must develop subaltern characters of color (Latinx, Chicanx, migrants, queer subjects…) and make the story partly about their struggles for justice, their strength, resistance, aspirations, deprivations, and/or contradictions. Rather than paint one-dimensional characters, students should attempt to capture the full complexity of their characters’ humanity (contradictions and all). Lastly, to connect their short story to our class, students should cite one or two academic studies from our course readings as context or references for their stories in a footnote. This citational practice will allow students to connect the themes of their story more explicitly to the topics discussed in our class. For those of you who have never written in this genre (myself included), we will be reading and discussing multiple short stories in class and hearing from practitioners on how to write one. Your short story is worth 40 points and is due to your TA by December 6 no later than 10 PM.
