Double-spaced

Formatting
4-6 pages (the Works Cited page does not count toward this number.)
12 point, Times New Roman font
1” margins (standard in Microsoft Word)
Double-spaced
Indented paragraphs
MLA-style header and page numbers
MLA in-text citations and Works Cited
Prompt
In this second essay, you will be putting together the skills of quotation, paraphrase, summary, analysis, interpretation, and argumentation we will be learning in the next few weeks. This essay is a “standard” or “classic” literary analysis, and it is therefore much more like the standard academic essays you will write for English classes in the future. With this in mind, you are encouraged to reach for interesting and original interpretations of the text at hand—this is college, after all!
For this essay, you will critically analyze a narrative piece of writing from class and formulate a clear, coherent, and convincing argument with appropriate evidence and rhetorical strategies (appeals, mode[s], and the like). Your goal in this literary analysis is to determine the message (the subtextual point) in the story, in order to show the story’s cultural/societal relevance. It may also be beneficial to describe the way the narrator uses actual events from his or her life in his or her writing to explain/exemplify/prove the argument of the article.
For example, you may: identify and explain a single theme; identify, explain, and compare two major themes; or explain the significance of a specific theme by using a specific person or event(s).
You may select any article below to write your paper on:
– Zora Neale Hurston “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”
– Sherman Alexie’s “Superman and Me”
– James Balwin’s “Stranger in the Village”
– bell hooks’ “Coming to Class Consciousness”
– Farah Jasmine Griffin’s “Chapter 8. Music & Something Like Self-Determination”
– Farah Jasmine Griffin’s “Chapter 2. Black Freedom and the Idea(l) of America”
– Farah Jasmine Griffin’s “Chapter 3. The Quest for Justice”