LITR 4333: American Immigrant Literature

Midterm Assignment 2007

LITR 4333: American Immigrant Literature, University of Houston-Clear Lake

Midterm exam with research report proposal, fall 2007

Date: Thursday 25 October

Format: Open-book, open-notebook

2 options for taking exam

  • in-class: 10am-12:50pm; write in ink in bluebook or on notebook paper (fronts and backs of pages okay; single-spacing okay)
     

  • email: 2 hours and 50 minutes between Wednesday evening and 2pm Thursday; write in word processing file; attach and paste into email message to whitec@uhcl.edu (or just reply to my email); include log of starts and stops, total time spent

Contents and attachments: 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 2003. 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.

Total time: You may use the entire 2 hours and 50 minutes. If you spend less than two hours writing, you’re probably not developing enough material.

Email students keep a “log” of your writing times. Stops, starts, and pauses are okay.

Advance preparations:

  • You may complete your Research Report Proposal ahead of time and submit it with the rest of your midterm, or compose it during the exam period.
     

  • For your Web Review, you should prepare by scouting what you want to review, making notes on what you want to say about the submissions you review.
     

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

Purpose of midterm exam:

Demonstrate learning and practice critical thinking on essential issues in American multicultural literature, identity, and education. Your answers will enhance future instruction of this course.

Even if multicultural categories appear irrelevant or irritating to some students, the essay's formal structure creates an exercise in critical thinking and writing a personal literary essay.

 

Three parts to midterm exam and research report proposal (details below)

1. Web Review: Review submissions from previous semesters (undergraduate and graduate) to the Model Assignments on the course webpage. (30-40 minutes)

2. Long essay: Review and evaluate the “immigrant / minority” distinction as an organizing motif for multicultural literature (90-120 minutes)

3. Research report proposal (may be prepared ahead of time) (0-30 minutes)

Part 1. “Web Review.” (30-40 minutes)

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

Models for this assignment are available under the Model Assignments for LITR 4333 2006 midterms or the LITR 5731 2006 midterms.

Requirements & guidelines:

  • At least one Model Assignment must be a midterm from LITR 4333 (any semester) or LITR 5731 2006. You may restrict your review to midterms if you prefer, but you may also review research projects, final exams, and presentations from any offering of American Immigrant Literature.
     

  • “Review”: quickly describe what you found and where, what interested you and why, and what you learned from reading these materials. You may negatively criticize or differ with what you found, but not required.
     

  • To identify model passages you’re responding to, you may copy and paste passages into your web review, or simply refer to them using brief quotations and summaries. Either way, highlight the language used in the passages as part of your review.
     

  • What did you learn from reviewing model assignments that you didn't learn from in-class instruction? (Your learning may be in terms of immigrant literature, or about teaching and learning, or both.)
     

  • If you did a “Web Highlight” as your presentation, you’re welcome to use some of that, but also review some new materials.

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

Questions: How do stories or "cultural narratives" such as the immigrant and minority narratives give meaning, values, or purpose to Americans and their ethnic groups? What different kinds of stories do different American ethnic groups live and tell? How do immigrant and minority narratives reflect different ethnic groups' experiences? How do the stories diverge or overlap?

Assignment: Referring to 5-6 course readings and to course objectives 1-3, write an essay describing your learning experience with the “Immigrant Narrative” as a story that defines multicultural America.

  • Set up your text discussion by defining “narrative” in literary and cultural terms and connecting it to 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, using our readings for examples and illustrations of your points. 
     

  • At any point you may refer to your own backgrounds, previous knowledge, and interpretations of the materials, but relate all such materials to the larger assignment or objectives and keep reconnecting to the texts.

Broad Organization:

(You may vary this according to personal understanding, but all these topics should be covered. Given time limits, you can’t be exhaustive on every sub-topic, but indicate understanding and, ideally, coordinate these parts into a larger whole.)

  • Explain “narrative,” "storytelling," or "cultural narrative" as a way Americans create identity--that is, who we / they are as a people.
     

  • Describe the outlines and significance of the Immigrant Narrative (Objectives 1 and 2).
     

  • Describe variations on the Immigrant Narrative, especially the Minority Narrative (Obj. 3), and compare their differing backgrounds and trajectories:
     

  • Immigrants (classes of 30 August and 6 September)

  • Minorities (classes of 20 and 27 September)

  • Groups somewhere between immigrant and minority identity; New-World immigrants; mixed minority-immigrant identity (classes of 4, 11 & 18 October)

Length of essay: Different people write paragraphs of different lengths, but this essay should be at least 6-8 paragraphs. Spend at least one and a half hours developing 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 (such as Crevecoeur) 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.
     

  • Of the 6 texts, at least four should be prose pieces from Imagining America, the nonfiction handouts, or the Crevecoeur texts on the webpage. 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 to more.
     

  • You are welcome to refer to quotations or ideas from earlier midterms on the Model Assignments, but given the Web Review aspect of our midterm, this is not required.

Texts from which to choose for immigrant / minority essay

Immigrant narratives (select 2)

Fiction and nonfiction: Anzia Yezierska, “Soap and Water” [handout]; Nicholasa Mohr, “The English Lesson” (IA 21-34); 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 America is in the Heart [handout]

Poetry: Joseph Papaleo, “American Dream: First Report,” UA 88

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

 

Minority Narratives (select 2)

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

 

Mexican-American, Hispanic, and Afro-Caribbean narratives combining immigrant and minority identities (select 2)

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]; 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; “From an Island You Cannot Name” UA 139

Sample essays from LITR 4333 2006 and LITR 5731 2006

 

Writing pointers

A default starting point for the essay would be “narrative” or “immigrant narrative.” But you may also start the essay with a “personal path of learning” in terms of the course's identification of multicultural or ethnic groups.

Welcome to personalize the essay, explaining your own personal and educational backgrounds in similar subjects, along with your own attitudes toward multicultural literature. But return to our course objectives and texts.

Personal references are not required. Neither are you required to agree with the instructor. Apply the course’s terms and objectives to the texts, demonstrating that you understand even if you redevelop or extend the course’s objectives, purposes, or possibilities. The best essay exams follow some main ideas from the course but also try out surprising and rewarding directions.

Conclusion: summarize what you've learned. How have these texts, this course, and the exam changed, reinforced, or otherwise developed your perceptions of the USA as a multicultural nation?

 

3. Provisional Research report proposal (may be prepared ahead of time)

Note on Provisional Research Report Proposal

As part of your midterm exam, you will write and submit a proposal for the Research Report that will be part of your final exam.

You may write this proposal ahead of time and turn it in with the midterm, or you may write it during the midterm period.

Assignment: Write 3-5 sentences identifying your probable topic for a research report. Why did you choose it? What do you want to learn? How? Give some indication of what you already know.

Range of subjects: You have considerable freedom to choose, but a reader of your proposal should immediately recognize its relevance to a class on immigrant literature and identity.

Warning: The only recurrent mistakes made last time were that some students proposed pure Minority topics that didn’t have anything to do with immigration or the immigrant narrative. This course doesn’t exclude Minority Literature, but such a topic is more appropriate for LITR 4332 American Minority Literature. You can involve Minority identities and narratives, but they must relate to Immigrant literature or identity in some direct and obvious way.

Possibilities for topics:

  • Literature associated with a particular immigrant ethnic group—identify a group you’re interested in, e. g. Chinese-American, Mexican-American, Turkish-American.
     

  • History of a particular immigrant group plus or minus some literature or movements associated with them.
     

  • An immigrant or ethnic group that mixes immigrant and minority traditions, e. g. Haitians, Jamaicans, or other West Indians; Mexican Americans?
     

  • Literature associated with a particular immigrant writer, e. g. Gish Jen, Frank McCourt, Henry Roth, Anzia Yezierska. (This would be a career review with bibliography of major writings.)
     

  • Some other immigrant-literature-related topic, perhaps of a more formal literary nature focusing on narrative, language issues, publishing challenges, etc.
     

  • Other topics or areas may be developed as the semester progresses. The main thing is for you to choose a topic you care about and want to learn about and share.
     

  • The best way to get a sense of this report’s possibilities is to look at some previous models of the assignment on the course webpage.

2006 research report proposals

2006 research reports

Response to Research Proposal

  • Student does not receive an announced letter grade for the proposal, only a “yes” or instructions for receiving a yes. Students will not lose credit for problems in reaching a topic as long as they are working to resolve these problems.
     

  • The only way you can start getting into trouble over the proposal is if you simply don’t offer much to work with, especially after prompts from instructor. An example of a bad proposal is a single sentence that starts, “I’m thinking about . . . ” and ends with “ . . . doing something about immigration and gender.” Then for the question, “What do you think?” In these cases, a bad grade isn’t recorded, but notes regarding the paper proposal may appear on the Final Grade Report.

 

Final Exam with Research Report (6 December 2007)

Part 1: Research Report with bibliography or works cited (1-1.5 hours)

Part 2: Essay question regarding immigrant literature and dominant culture (1-1.5 hours)

Relative weight: 50% of final grade   Format: In-class or email

 

Links:

Full description of Research Report from 2007 syllabus

Course Objectives

Model Assignments