ENGL 1158.106: How the Other Half Lives—Writing and the Poetics of Poverty (Spring 2009)  Tags: linguistics_language_literature hip_hop poverty  

Essay #6 Final

Deadlines:

Final project presentation due in class (be ready to speak on Tuesday April 27 or

Thursday April 30 for 5-7 minutes)

Final essay [Hard Copy] due Friday May 8 (in my office GS 364 A) between 1:00 PM

and 2:00 PM

Length:

At least 5 pages, no longer than 7 pages

Semester Overview:

Over the course of the semester, we have moved through a wide range of representations

and narratives of poverty. We began with the classic American myth of the self-made

man (Alger’s Ragged Dick), moved to the modern Cinderella story of Pretty Woman,

where upward mobility is yoked to a romantic story, and rounding out that unit with

satires and critiques of the Horatio Alger Myth (in Crane’s “Self-Made Man” and

Baraka’s “Death of Horatio Alger”).

In the next unit, we began by reading the writings of Jacob Riis and the sociology of

W.E.B. Du Bois, who both employ sociological frameworks; with these writers, we

looked at their strategies of representation for (Riis) “how the other half lives” and for

(Du Bois) the “problem of the color-line.” We then returned to fiction, except this time,

we read what might be called “downward mobility” narratives (in the works of Stephen

Crane’s Maggie, Tillie Olsen’s Yonnondio, and John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath).

Moving us from city, to farm, coalmines, to slaughter-houses: each of these authors

engaged the notion of “mobility” (in the sense of movement) and de-linked it from

economic mobility.

In the final unit of the class, we explored contemporary “narratives” or lyrics (in the case

of hip-hop) of poverty. In the work of the proto-hip-hop and hip-hop artists (Gil Scott

Heron, Grandmaster Flash, Tupac, Ghostface Killah, Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth, and the

Coup), Mr. Reed discussed the intersection between lyrics and beat, and the way musical

poetics may be employed to articulate the complex intersections of the personal, social,

and political. Although our generic focus changed (from hip-hop to the short story), we

continued to attend to this issue of poetics and style in the work of Sandra Cisneros

(House on Mango Street) and Alice Munro (Beggar Maid). Cisneros’s vignettes and

Munro’s short stories, while through the perspective of very different female

protagonists, have in common more nuanced depictions of issues of poverty (how these

intersect with gender, race, and region), and replaced linear development narratives of

escape or solutions to poverty with more episodic and interconnected stories.

Final Project:

Without pretending to be comprehensive, the object of this course has been to introduce

you to a wide range of materials about poverty (as you can see, these texts are not limited

by genre). For your final project, I encourage you to use any of the texts we’ve discussed

as a class as a jumping off point: that is, you are welcome to revisit and write on a text

you really enjoyed but which there may not have been direct assignments on), or you can

reach beyond the purview of the syllabus and consider any texts that you may have read,

heard, or seen.

The possibilities, really, are limitless. As you know, each of the assignments up to this

point have been designed to allow you hone and practice a important element of writing

(voice, argument, counterargument, prose analysis): my hope is that these tools will all

come into play as you start to put together your final paper.

You should feel free to write from any “angle” you would like and make any argument

you decide on. I ask only that the final essay is

• related to the subject of poverty in some shape or fashion,
• contains at least one primary text and at least one secondary source (meaning
• criticism or work written by someone other than yourself. This secondary source
• can be in the form of a critical article, review, book study, etc.
• uses proper citation format and includes a bibliography of works cited
• works through a sustained argument
• includes an introduction, body, and conclusion.

On Tuesday April 21, we’ll be meeting in front of Uris. The librarians there will

introduce you to some of the databases and research tools available here at Cornell.

Whether you want to talk about a newspaper article you’ve read, a film, an album, a

book, this will be an excellent way to build up and then narrow down your research

materials.

Oh, and last but not least: The idea here is not to stress you out; it’s to give you a chance

to write about what you want to write about. Try and have fun.