LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature: Immigrant

University of Houston-Clear Lake, summer 2006

Midterm exam

Date: Monday, 19 June

Format: Take-home; Open-book, open-notebook; exam must be emailed to instructor

Schedule:

·        No class meeting on 19 June—but be aware that we have a reading assignment and meeting the next day, 20 June.

·        The exam is take-home, but you are not expected to spend more than 4 hours writing the exam. Two and a half-hours of writing may be adequate.

·        You may write and submit your exam any time after 6pm, Thursday, 15 June. The absolute deadline for email submission is 8pm, 19 June. If you can’t make that deadline, be in touch to explain your situation.

·        Keep a log of your writing schedule so that I can have some idea of how much time students are spending. Stops, starts, and pauses are okay.

Email procedures: Try both of the following

·        Paste the contents of the appropriate word processing file directly into the email message.

·        “Attach” your word processing file to an email message. (My computer and most of its programs work off of Microsoft Word 2000. The only word processing program my computer appears unable to translate is Microsoft Works, though Microsoft Word is fine, as are most others.  If in doubt, save your word processing file in "Rich Text Format" or a “text only” format.)

·       Email address: Send all emails to whitec@uhcl.edu. Note the "c" at the end of "whitec." If you send the email to "white" only, it goes to the wrong professor.

Advance preparations:

·        For your Web Review, you should prepare by scouting what you want to review, to the extent of noting what you want to say about submissions you review.

·        You may plan, outline, and practice your essay answers as much as helpful, but please do the actual writing within the time limits.

Purpose of midterm exam:

Students develop  learning and express critical thinking on essential issues in multicultural American literature, identity, and education. Your answers will help the instructor and future students to enhance this course.

Even if multicultural categories of thought or analysis may appear irrelevant or irritating to some students, the formal structure of the essay constitutes a useful exercise in critical thinking.

Two parts to midterm exam (details below)

1. Web Review: Review student submissions from previous semesters (both undergraduate and graduate offerings), especially in the Model Assignments on course webpage. (40-60 minutes)

2. Long essay: Evaluate “immigrant / minority” distinction as organizing motif for multicultural literature (90-120 minutes)

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Part 1. “Web Review.” (30-40 minutes)

Assignment: Review at least 3 submissions on the course’s “Model Assignments” page and write at least three paragraphs indicating what you learned from this review.

Requirements & guidelines:

·        At least one of the model assignments should be a midterm from LITR 4333 or from LITR 5733 2004. You may limit yourself to midterms, but review midterms from more than one semester. Beyond midterms, you are welcome to review research projects, research reports, final exams, and presentations.

·        By “review,” I mean you should quickly describe what you found and where, why you became interested, and what you learned or gained from reading these materials. Of course you may negatively criticize what you found, but overall that’s not the purpose of the exercise. Your learning may be in terms of immigrant literature, or about teaching and learning, or both.

·        To identify the model passages you’re responding to, you may copy and paste passages, or simply refer to them by location in webpage (e. g., headings, years), or by paraphrases and brief quotations, or combinations of these approaches. Either way, highlight the language used in the passages as part of your review.

·        Please consider what you may learn from reviewing model assignments that you didn’t learn from in-class instruction.

·        If you’ve done a previous “Web Highlight” as your presentation, you’re welcome to use a portion of that, but you’d also be expected to extend it to some new materials.

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Part 2. Long essay on “immigrant / minority” distinction as organizing motif for multicultural literature (90+ minutes)

Assignment: Focusing on objectives 1-3 and referring to our course readings, write an essay describing your experience with the course’s themes and categories. Starting with objective 1's claim that “the immigrant story” is a fundamental story-line for organizing American multicultural literature, describe and evaluate the course's “immigrant / minority” distinction as an organizing motif for multicultural literature 

Absolutely essential elements of the essay:

The primary organization and content of the essay is to describe, compare, and contrast the differing historical backgrounds and literary narratives for the following multicultural categories:

·        Immigrants (classes of 1 & 5 June)

·        Minorities (classes of 6 & 8 June)

·        Groups that may fall somewhere between immigrant and minority identity to form a mixed minority-immigrant identity (12, 13, 15 June)

Required references: You are expected to refer to the course objectives, particularly objectives 1 through 3, but welcome to range elsewhere. Your essay should involve at least some discussion of the following issues:

·        assimilation and resistance

·        the ethnic group’s original relation with USA & the resulting Social Contract

·        family structure & individualism, or traditional & modern culture

·        the “color code”

Additional writing pointers

·        One possible way to enter or start the essay may be as a “personal path of learning” in terms of identifying and distinguishing types of multicultural or ethnic groups.

·        You are welcome to personalize the essay somewhat, explaining your own personal and educational backgrounds in such subjects, along with your own attitudes toward multicultural literature. But keep returning to the historical backgrounds, the course objectives, and our shared texts.

·        You are not required to agree with the instructor. You are only required to apply the course’s terms and objectives to the texts. The best essay exams follow some main ideas from the course but also extend them in unexpected and rewarding directions.

·        Conclude by summarizing what you have learned. How have these texts, this course, and the exam changed, reinforced, or otherwise developed your perceptions of the USA as a multicultural nation?

·        Is it possible for Americans to talk systematically and constructively about race and ethnicity? If not through this approach, how?

Length of the essay: Different people write paragraphs of different lengths, but this essay should be at least 8-10 paragraphs. You should spend at least one and a half hours writing the essay.

Textual requirements: Refer to at least 6 texts from our course readings—either the daily assigned readings, the poems presented, or the texts (Crevecoeur, Yezierska, and Equiano) presented on the course webpage.

·        Of the 6 required texts, two should exemplify the immigrant narrative, two should exemplify the minority narrative, and two should be from the “in-between” groups. You may "relocate" the instructor's distribution of texts as long as you explain the change.

·        Of the 6 texts, at least four should be prose pieces from Imagining America, the nonfiction handouts, or the webpage texts. Two of the texts may be poems presented from Unsettling America. You may use all prose texts if you prefer.

·        (These are only minimal requirements. Of course you may refer briefly or allusively to more.)

Texts from which to choose for immigrant / minority essay

Immigrant narratives

Fiction and nonfiction: Anzia Yezierska, “Soap and Water” (IA 105-110) [handout]; Nicholasa Mohr, “The English Lesson” (IA 21-34); Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, “Going Home: Brooklyn Revisited” (VA 158-169) [handout]; Sui Sin Far, "In the Land of the Free" (IA 3-11); Gish Jen, “In the American Society” (IA 158-171); Maxine Hong Kingston, from The Woman Warrior (VA 195-200) [handout]; Carlos Bulosan, from American is in the Heart [handout]

Poetry: Joseph Papaleo, “American Dream: First Report,” UA 88; Nellie Wong, “When I was Growing Up,” UA 55

Online:

Crevecoeur, Notes from an American Farmer (1782), esp. “What is an American?” & “Description of Charlestown: Thoughts of Slavery.” Copy posted on “Research Links” of course webpage, or use the following URL:

http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4333/sylsched/
crevecoeur.htm

Anzia Yezierska, excerpt from Bread Givers (1925). Copy posted on “Research Links” of course webpage, or use the following URL:

http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4333/sylsched/
breadgiversexcerpt.htm

Minority Narratives

Fiction and nonfiction: James Baldwin, from No Name in the Street [handout]; Jewelle Gomez, “Don’t Explain” (182-190); Toni Cade Bambara, “The Lesson” (IA 145-152); Alice Walker, “Elethia” (IA 307-309); Leslie Marmon Silko, “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” (IA 205-209); Louise Erdrich, "American Horse" (IA 210-220); Mei Mei Evans, “Gussuk” (IA 237-251)

Poetry: Patricia Smith, “Blonde White Women,” UA 77; Chrystos, “I Have Not Signed a Treaty with the United States Government,” UA 304

Online: Olaudah Equiano, Interesting Narrative of the Life of Gustavus Vassa, or Olaudah Equiano, the African. Copy posted on “Research Links” of course webpage, or use the following URL:

http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4333/
lecture/equianoexcerpt.htm

"New World Immigration": Mexican-American, Hispanic, and Afro-Caribbean narratives that may fall or move somewhere between immigrant and minority identities

Fiction and nonfiction: Richard Rodriguez, from Hunger of Memory [handout]; Gary Soto, “Like Mexicans” [handout]; Nash Candelaria, "El Patron" (IA 221-228); Sandra Cisneros, "Barbie-Q" (IA 252-253); Junot Diaz, "How to Date a Browngirl . . . “ (IA 276-279); Oscar Hijuelos, “Visitors, 1965” (IA 310-325) Judith Ortiz Cofer, "Silent Dancing" [handout]; June Jordan, “Report from the Bahamas” [handout]; Edwidge Danticat, “Children of the Sea” (IA 98-112); Paule Marshall, “The Making of a Writer: From the Poets in the Kitchen” [handout]; Paule Marshall, “To Da-Duh, in Memoriam” (IA 368-377)

Poetry: Martin Espada, “Coca-Cola and Coco Frio,” UA 124; Pat Mora, “Immigrants,” UA 119; Tino Villanueva, “Haciendo Apenas la Recoleccion,” UA 191