Short Stories
from Class
from Class
In Ken Liu's "Thoughts and Prayers," what Abigail does to eliminate the influence of trolls.
What is Abigail deletes all images of her daughter Hayley and forgets what she looks like
A reading from class that uses Second Person perspective.
What is the AI voice from the Founders in "Emergency Skin"
The school of literary criticism that focuses on the reader's reaction being at the core of the analysis.
What is Reader-Response Criticism
The maximum percentage of your paper that can be quotes.
What is 10%
Identify a central theme in I Cheerfully Refuse and the author's message.
What is (for example):
The defiance of despair in a crumbling society through building of compassionate communities.
The Climax of "What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky." Explain why you think this part of the story qualifies as the climax.
What is:
When Nneoma goes on a run and decides to find out how serious the man falling is for the formula and when she runs into her ex-girlfriend Kioni.
The literary term that refers to saying one thing and meaning the other.
What is irony.
Using Post-Colonial Criticism as a literary lens, make an interpretive argument about one of the readings from class.
For Example:
Kindred is a commentary on America's history of slavery and misogyny. The narrative reflects the harms caused by a colonial worldview of manifest destiny where the white men in power see other humans as objects beholden to their abuse and tools for their profit.
The audience for a literary analysis paper.
Someone who has already read the piece of literature but may not have thought about the interpretive argument you're asserting with your thesis.
In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, the symbolic sound that is emphasized at the start of Dex's journey and at the end of the book.
What is the sound of crickets
From Bora Chung's short story "Seed," the name of people who were genetically engineered, and the name of the people who came about through biological evolution.
What are the dolls and the plant people
Describe a character archetype associated with a piece of utopian/dystopian literature from our class. List the archetype as well as the character & text that exemplifies the archetype.
What are character archetypes such as:
The literary school of criticism that emphasizes charter motivations and archetypes.
What is Psychological Criticism
The two details you need for an MLA style in-text citation.
The first part of the source's works cited entry (which is usually the author's name) and a page number (if provided)
The reason why Butler revised Kindred so that the protagonist would be female instead of male.
What is because she couldn't realistically keep a male protagonist alive.
From Charlie Jane Anders' "Bookstore at the End of America," list one reason Molly wants to raise her daughter Phoebe on the border of California and America.
What are because:
"Molly had wanted Phoebe to be within easy reach of California if America ever started seriously following through on its threats to enforce all of its broadly written laws against immorality" (10).
"But more than that, Phoebe deserved to be surrounded by all the stories, and every type of person, and all of the ways of looking at life" (10-11).
Moreover, it was a way to two earn more income, doubling the customer base (11).
A text from class that explicitly models in media res. Describe why the beginning of the narrative fits this term.
What is (for example) when "What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky" begins with the new coverage of the mathematician that fell from the sky when Furcal's formula publicly failed.
Write an effective discussion prompt/question for a Feminist/Gender Studies analysis of a book from our class.
What is for example:
Define the social construct of gender reflected in A Psalm for the Wild-Built.
When quoting a source, you should I.C.E. the passage. What does this acronym stand for?
What is:
I = Introduce (lead into the quote with your own words. Do not start the sentence with the quote.)
C = Cite (connect the quote to the source on your works cited page and include a page number)
E = Explain how the quote relates back to the argument of your thesis
The climax of Moon of the Crusted Snow is when Evan Whitesky confronts Justin Scott and gets shot. What motivates Evan to challenge Justin?
What is because Evan suspected Justin and his followers were cannibalizing the dead
From N.K. Jemisin's "Emergency Skin," the resource sought by the Founders and freely shared by the people on Tellus (a.k.a. the folks who stayed behind on Earth).
What is HeLa 7713, an active cell culture to be used for the Founders' cloning purposes.
A reading from class that has a frame narrative. Explain how the text fits the definition for this literary concept.
For Example:
What is Memory Police because within the novel the protagonist writes a story about a typist.
Using Marxist Criticism as a lens for literary analysis, write a point of interpretation for one of our class readings.
What is (for example):
"Emergency Skin" is a commentary about a society that designs their economy around sharing vs the ideals of the Founders who built a society on the principle of taking. They represent a colonial capitalist authoritarian identity whereas the folks still on Earth survive and even thrive in a utopia when each member of society is valued and cared for.
Two MLA formatting requirements when citing dialogue from a character in literature (these are expectations beyond the usual requirements for a quote).
What are:
To specify which character is speaking
To use singe quotes for quotes within quotes.
For example:
The protagonist is elusive and yet shows relief when he replies, “‘I had something I wanted to check out at city hall,’ I said, with absolute naturalness” (14).
Write one significant point of analysis about the Memory Police and the relationship between the protagonist's story and the story she writes within the novel.
What is for example:
The novelist's memory is evaporating just as the her typist character's autonomy and voice disappear. The protagonist's fight to write her story is an attempt to hold onto meaning against the odds within the dystopian society. The authoritative energy of the memory police mirror the oppression of the typing teacher.