Date:  26 June 2008

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

Schedule:

• No class meeting on 26 June.
   

• The exam is take-home, but you are not expected to spend more than about 4 hours writing. (Prep-time is up to you.)
   

• You may write and submit your exam any time after 6pm, Tuesday, 24 June. The deadline for email submission is noon Saturday, 28 June. If you can’t make the deadline, communicate.
   

• Keep a log of your writing schedule so I can have some idea of how much time students are spending. Stops, starts, pauses, and divided work sessions are OK.

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 Microsoft Word 2007. The only word processing program my computer appears unable to translate is Microsoft Works. Most versions of Microsoft Word work.  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.
   

• Acknowledgement: Instructor email acknowledgement of your submission, usually within a few hours. If 24 hours pass without acknowledgement, check address or resend.

Advance preparations:

• For Web Review, scout and note materials to review.
   

• Plan, outline, and practice your essay answers as much as helpful, but please write your final draft within the time limits.

Purposes of midterm exam:

• Web Review: Students practice online self-instruction while potentially extending previous seminars' work. Your answers In turn serve as models to help instructor and future students.
   

• Long essay: Students demonstrate knowledge of representative texts and critical thinking on the immigrant narrative as a standard for discussing American multicultural literature.

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. (60+ minutes)

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

**************

Part 1. “Web Review.” (60+ minutes)

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

Requirements & guidelines:

• At least one Model Assignment must be a midterm from LITR 5731 2006. You may restrict your review to midterms, but research projects, final exams, and presentations are available from any offering of American Immigrant Literature (graduate or undergraduate).
   

• “Review”: quickly describe what interested you, where, why, and what you learned. You may criticize what you found, but not required.
   

• To identify model passages you’re responding to, copy and paste brief selections into your web review, or simply refer to them using brief paraphrases, summaries, and quotations. (You'll see both options in 2006 models.) 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)

Assignment: Referring to objectives 1-3 and our course readings, write an essay describing your experience with and understanding of 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 a yardstick or norm for classifying multicultural literature. 

Questions:

• What different types of stories do different American ethnic groups live and tell?
   

• How do immigrant and minority narratives reflect different ethnic groups' experiences and resulting social contracts?
   

• How do these distinct stories diverge or overlap? What common field of American experience may be created or represented?

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 10 & 12 June)
   

• Minorities (classes of 16 & 17 June)
   

• Ethnic groups mixing immigrant and minority identities (19, 23, 24 June)

Required references: You are expected to refer to the course objectives 1 through 3, but welcome to range elsewhere. Consider the following issues:

• assimilation and resistance
   

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

•  traditional & modern culture, or family values vs. individual rights
   

• the “color code”

Writing strategies for long essay

• One entrance may be a “personal path of learning” in identifying and distinguishing multicultural or ethnic groupings.
   

• Welcome to personalize the essay somewhat, explaining personal and educational backgrounds in such subjects, along with your attitudes toward multicultural literature. But keep returning to the course objectives, our shared texts, and cultural-historical backgrounds.
   

• You need not agree with the instructor--so many contradictory attitudes in a subject this large! Only apply the course’s terms and objectives to the texts. The best essay exams follow some central ideas from the course but also extend them in interesting 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?
   

• Possible options for conclusion: Is it possible for Americans to talk systematically and constructively about race and ethnicity? If not through this approach, how? What are the approach's shortcomings or blind spots?

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

Textual requirements: Refer to at least 6 texts from our course readings—either the daily assigned readings, a poem presented, or the excerpts (Crevecoeur, Yezierska) 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 five should be prose pieces from Imagining America, the nonfiction handouts, or the webpage texts. One of the texts may be poems presented. 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); 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”

Online:

Crevecoeur, Notes from an American Farmer (1782), esp. “What is an American?”

Anzia Yezierska, excerpt from Bread Givers (1925).

Minority Narratives

Fiction and nonfiction: James Baldwin, from No Name in the Street [handout]; 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: Chrystos, “I Have Not Signed a Treaty with the United States Government"

Online:

Crevecoeur, Notes from an American Farmer (1782), esp. “Descriptions of Charles-Town: Thoughts on Slavery"

"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]; 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: Pat Mora, “Immigrants”