LITR 4332: American Minority Literature

Sample Student Final Exam Answers 2004

Click on the titles of the questions below to be taken to sample student answers.

Complete copy of final exam 2004

1. Native American Indian Literature & Culture

A. (default option). Referring to at least one Amerind origin story, American Indian Stories, and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, discuss how Native Americans qualify as a minority culture and how their cultural narrative of “Loss and Survival” responds to this situation.  (Objective 3b)

B. (creative option). Apply another course objective besides 3b to at least one Amerind origin story, American Indian Stories, and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Explain the significance of your chosen objective. Describe how it appears in the texts and in Amerind culture generally. Conclude with what you have learned through this essay about the objective and Amerind literature and culture.

2. Mexican American Literature & Culture

A. (default option). Describe “Latinos / Hispanics” as an ethnic group and locate Mexican Americans within it as an “ambivalent minority.” Why may this description be appropriate, given the history of Mexican America and the Southwest United States? How successfully does “ambivalence” characterize Mexican and Mexican American experience in our readings? Apply to “The Miraculous Apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe,” Bless Me, Ultima, and a Mexican American poem presented in class. (Objective 3c—mostly).

B. (creative option). Apply another course objective besides 3c to the subjects of Latinos / Hispanics, Mexican Americans, and the texts of “The Miraculous Apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe” Bless Me, Ultima, and one Mexican American poem presented in class. Explain the significance of your chosen objective and use it as a means of exploring the unique qualities of Hispanic / Latino and Mexican American identity. Describe the appearance of your objective in the texts and in Hispanic / Latino and / or Mexican American culture generally. Conclude with what you have learned through this essay about the objective and about Hispanic / Latino and Mexican American literature and culture.

3. Options: poetry or trans-minority

3b: Is American Minority Literature about Literature or Culture?

How do you resolve the question, Is a course like American Minority Literature primarily about literature, or is it about culture, history, sociology, etc.?

·        You’re not expected to come down absolutely on one side or the other but to discuss the competing pressures for this course or the study of its texts.

·        What kind of balance have we struck, and what are the upsides and downsides of this balance? (Option: How would you “rebalance?”)

·        As an alternative or complement to the “balance” approach,” emphasize how and where literature and culture “meet and merge.”

·        Be prepared to use course themes, such as the “alternative narratives to the American Dream,“ the minority concept, etc. (Objectives 1 & 3).

·        Refer to at least one text from at least two different minority groups.

3c. Analyze a Poem by a Minority Writer. Several sample poems are provided below. Analyze one, both thematically and stylistically.

·        Thematically, how does the poem exhibit minority themes, particularly those of the minority group represented? (gender and class themes also possible)

·        Stylistically, how do these themes benefit from being written as poetry rather than as simple prose?