Homework for the weekend

Hi all:

Sorry about missing you last week - was out sick and still not feeling the best.
Homework for the next class - read the first two chapters of Kindred for discussion on Monday.

Homework for Wednesday - continue working on your Whitman-esque poetry and post by Wednesday evening. We can talk about your progress Monday, as you were expected to work on it in last Thursday's class when I was out.

See you Monday!

Homework for next week

Please study hard and do well on the PSATs!

Also, re-read the Whitman poetry, consider his style and ideas, and begin to think about how you would model this in your own poetry, which we will do as an informal writing assignment next week.

Good luck this weekend!

Homework for Friday

For next class, please start a draft for your next formal assignment.  The question for this assignment is the following:

With reference to the Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, what are the implications of considering autobiographies as either historical “truth” or narrative “fiction” of a life’s journey? In your response, think about the goals of autobiographers (specifically Douglass, but also consider your own goals/motives when you wrote about your own “journey”), in terms of why they wrote the piece and who their expected audience would be. Also, does the fact that Douglass possesses multiple narrative voices in this novel - his past voice and his present voice the two dominant voices  - highlight the problem of memory and motive in writing autobiographies?

Bring in at least one page of your draft. We will continue our discussions of Frederick Douglass and this question in particular Friday. You will be working on this draft over the weekend and hand in a formal draft on Wednesday.

Those of you who have not had a chance to do a second performance, also practice for your recital!