ENGL 1170.101: Linked Stories  Tags: literature research_strategies linguistics_language_literature  

Drown Essay #4, 4-6 pages

Due Friday, Oct. 31

For this essay, you will propose your own topic, inspired or informed by interviews, reviews, and scholarly articles you find at the library. Your essay should create a coherent view of Drown as a whole and should include at least two direct quotes from outside articles. While you may use the articles you find during our library session, don’t feel obligated to do so. I encourage you to go back to the library to find more relevant articles as your essay develops and changes. Along with your essay, remember to turn in your cover letter, works cited page, and all preliminary work (including the annotated bibliography, #4B, and rough draft).

Essay #4A: Annotated Bibliography

Due Monday, Oct. 20

Now that you’ve been acquainted or re-acquainted with the library resources, I’d like you to put that knowledge to work. Please bring an annotated bibliography that lists:

·        At least two articles about Drown

·        At least one article that is NOT about Drown, but some other topic altogether, which you think might be interesting or relevant to the book. (For example, U.S. involvement in the Dominican Republic, Dominican culture, Dominican Diaspora, machismo, etc. There are many topics to explore!)

These articles should be scholarly, interesting to you, and something that might inspire or inform your essay. At least one of the two articles must be shelved (meaning they aren’t available as full-text online through JStor, Project Muse, or other similar databases). You are, however, welcome to use online resources to locate them.

Your annotated bibliographies should include:

·        Full citations for each article

·        A brief (2-3 sentence) synopsis of what each article seems to be about, underneath the citation (This is the “annotation” part.)

·        A brief response considering the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of each article

Essay #4B

Due Monday, Oct. 20 (We will do the group work on this day.)

For each article, come up with one new original idea about Drown inspired by that article. Choose one of these ideas, and write 1-2 pages about how you could build your essay around this idea. (This doesn’t have to be organized; you’re working your ideas out in writing.) Use this material to generate a couple of possible thesis statements.

You will share your idea with your group, and each member of the group will come up with three questions or comments that will help your idea grow and develop. Take notes! Talk with your group about how your article inspired your idea. Did the article challenge something you believe(d) about the book? Did it articulate an idea that you had sensed but couldn’t quite put into words? Did you learn something completely new that took your thoughts in a different direction?

After you talk with your group, your thesis statement will probably change a bit. I encourage you to come to my office hours this week and show me your thesis statement. This is the first time you’ll be coming up with your own topics, so I’d like to make sure you’re on the right track before you start writing your rough draft!

Rough Draft, 4-6 pages

Due Friday, Oct. 24

Student Name

ENGL 1170.101

Allison Barrett

20 October 2008

Sample Annotated Bibliography

Benavides, Eugenia Viviana Hurtado. “(W)rites of Passage: Developing New

            Conceptions of Ethnicity in the Contemporary Latino Bildungsroman.” Diss. Yale

            University, 2001. 21 Sept. 2007 <http://proquest.umi.com>

            In her dissertation exploring the formation of Latino and Latina identity, Eugenia Benavides focuses on six different novels, including Drown. Using Drown, Benavides criticizes the common upper-middle-class view of Latino males as threatening, violent, macho outsiders. Instead, Benavides describes how Drown demonstrates the complex nature of Latinos’ sexual development through the characters’ experiences with missing fathers, crippling poverty, and homosexual encounters.

            One strength of this particular chapter is Benavides’s textual support. She is able to introduce different topics such as the absence of Yunior’s father, Yunior’s desire to be “macho,” and Yunior’s sexual development, all with relevant quotations to support the analysis. However, she isn’t necessarily clear regarding her rhetorical purpose. The examples are abundant, but they don’t lead the reader in any clear direction. Nevertheless, she does offer insight into conventional views of Latino masculinity, questioning the validity of the stereotypical aggressive, dominant Latino.

Jacklosky, Rob. “Drown by Junot Diaz.” Studies in Short Fiction 35 (1998): 93-94.

            In this review of Drown, Rob Jacklosky criticizes other reviewers’ consideration of Drown as a look into inner city life by somebody with experience living there. Instead, Jacklosky believes the collection is a “classic” story of growing up and developing one’s identity, told in a setting unfamiliar to suburban readers.

            One strength of the review is the author’s firmly rooted viewpoint, which directly challenges the opinions of previous reviewers of Drown. Jacklosky supports his point using various examples from the book. One particular weakness is his arcane (and virtually unexplained) references to other texts (“nothing you wouldn’t expect to find in John Updike’s ‘A&P’ or Raymond Carver’s suburbs,” “shares shelf space with Dickens”). The connections between these works are difficult to make with Drown since Jacklosky doesn’t elaborate on them. Nevertheless, Jacklosky’s review is useful in asking us to think about Drown as essentially a classic coming-of-age story such as Dickens’ David Copperfield.

Stavans, Ilan. Conversations with Ilan Stavans. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press,

            2005.

            In this interview, Ilan Stavans asks Junot Diaz about how he writes and how he feels about his writing becoming an object of academic scrutiny. Stavans also inquires about the source of Diaz’s ideas and his connection with the various cultures with which he identifies. Diaz’s responses include an examination of his early writing influences, such as Viriato Sencion and Toni Morrison.

            A strength of the interview is that it reveals much about Diaz’s thought process in his writing. For example, Diaz starts writing by identifying a personal silence about a certain issue in his life, and then sitting down and putting together a story about that issue. Also, Diaz reveals that the purpose of Drown is to produce an identity for a Dominican immigrant male in New Jersey. A weakness of the interview is that although Stavans and Diaz discuss Drown at the end, they do not discuss Diaz’s thoughts on any specific parts of Drown. At the same time, the interview offers a refreshing perspective on Drown insofar as the stories are written about aspects of life, especially from Diaz’s personal experiences, which people typically remain silent about because of societal convention.