Any topic (writer’s choice)

Please answer all of the following questions:

1. In “No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear,” Morrison focuses on how an artist reacts to the world around her rather than on race.  What voice emerges in her writings this week?  Would you classify her as an African-American author, a feminist author, or as an artist?

2. What subjects and themes discussed in the poetry read for this week reflect the longstanding issues in the African American community and how do they differ?

3.  What causes the friction between the two brothers in Bloodchild? Can their story be considered a reconsideration of the Biblical story of Cain and Abel?

**please follow this Mla formate

https://libguides.umgc.edu/mla-examples

If you cant access the link please disregard

Class –

As you continue with this week’s readings, please consider that the works of these authors and those we have read thus far do not represent every African American individual, community, or situation.  Also remember that although autobiographical elements may exist, most of the works are not autobiographies.  That is to say, James Baldwin is not Sonny and Gwendolyn Brooks has not necessarily had an abortion. Not all urban neighborhoods are overrun with drugs and not all are predominantly black.  It is a talented writer who can make you feel certain circumstances are real, but readers must be careful not to fall prey to overgeneralized beliefs about particular groups of people, whether positive or negative, which leads to overgeneralized and unsubstantiated statements in your work.  In your posts and especially in your final project you must qualify your remarks. Stay within the realms of the particular authors you are reading and writing about, using specific examples from the texts to support your views.

Learn to use the proper terms; for instance, in writing about lyrical poetry (so many of you are writing about Langston Hughes and his poetry), use speaker and reserve narrator for narrative poetry.  Learning the difference should be part of your research. You should also know the difference between primary texts (the original writings of the authors under study in this course) and secondary texts (scholarly books, articles, journals; handbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedia, etc.).  In addition to the poetry and fiction, the non-fiction essays by Locke, Du Bois, Hurston, Baldwin, Baraka, and Morrison in the assigned readings are primary texts.

While acknowledging that some experiences are shared, you can also challenge terms that are used in the weekly questions such as “the” African American experience, which suggests undifferentiated experience of an entire group. We can then discuss these issues as a class to posit and understand our various views on these important subjects.