Essay 2

Essay #2 | Trending: Problem-Solution for a Marginalized Group

Worth: 100 points total

Process Due Dates:

·      Start of class, Wednesday, 3/9: Bring in a typed, and as a saved a file, an outline for Essay 2

·      End of Wednesday’s class, 3/9: have at least introduction and first body paragraph written, and you will post to Blackboard as a .doc or .docx

·      Start of class, Monday, 3/21: Bring in a typed, revised Essay 2 (after taking my feedback from Blackboard)

Format Guidelines:    

                                                                      

·      Header, @ top left-hand corner:        

Name

ENGL 002

Assignment

Title

·      MLA format: 12 pt. font, either Times New Roman, Calibri or Cambria; double-spaced

·      Use of rhetorical conventions, including 5-paragraph essay format. Must be at least four paragraphs (intro, two body paragraphs, conclusion)

·      450-500 words  (work towards two complete pages)

·      A Title that acts like a second thesis!

Prompt: Write a 450- to 500-word essay in which you pursue the following prompt:

Choose a minority group (ethnic, racial, religious, gender, sexual orientation, or more) that you feel is prejudiced against.

In an essay using the problem-solution organizational patter, identify a problem and explore why you think this problem exists. Also, identify and explore two specific solutions.

 Descriptive language and concrete examples are a must, but so is solid critical thinking about the problem. Your goal is to, from the first draft to the last, get more and more specific with your points. Use both historical and personal examples that speak to you, individually, but also ones that you will not have to provide cited sources for in the essay.

Multiple Free-writes to get your brain going on the many possibilities of such a topic: 

Pick a stereotype.

#1: Think about the types of prejudice things you have heard, read, or been told by other. Write down all the negative points of view that come to mind (10 minutes)

#2: Write down all of the positive points you can about the group being stereotyped. (10 minutes)

#3: What are some things that you want to be done to make life more equal in America? Just go, go, go, without trying to edit yourself (15 minutes)

HW for Monday, 3/7

1. Bring in your revised and edited Essay 1, which will be graded. Most importantly, try some new things in the essay so that I can give you feedback on the success of what you worked on.


2. Show & Tell: We will continue to discuss the landays and the essay from which they come from. To help us think about the importance of such a subject:

• Bring in a text, an object, or something else in society that you think shows us some kind of discrimination that exists in our society. 

HW for 3/2

Read pages 1-99 [!!!] of Eliza Griswold's "Landays: Poetry of Afghan Women." The reading, found under Unit 2, includes many pictures and an EXTRA LARGE FONT.

• You need to spend at least two hours reading this and be at minimum 1/2 of the way through by Wednesday's class.

• Record in your course notebook three to four sentences that help you understand why/how a contemporary Pashtun woman uses landays. Make sure to record the page numbers with each quote.

• Define these words used in the article in your course notebook:  
• licentiousness
• poppy
• refugee camp
• burqa
• paradox

Introduction to Landays: A voice for Afghan Women

Landay: two-line "folk poems" sung in Pashto. 

Pashto: one of the official languages spoken in Afghanistan, spoken by Pashtun peoples (Afghanistan and Pakistan). 

Taliban: Islamic fundamentalist political movement. Primary ethnic group of Taliban is Pashtun. Controlled Afghanistan's government from 1996-2001. 



(Photo: from "The New Face of Central Asia" by Ambassador (ret.) Michael W. Cotter)



Main Text

Eliza Griswold's  "Landays: Poetry of Afghan Women"  (PDF version on MyMC/in student e-mail)

"From the Aryan caravans that likely brought these poems to Afghanistan thousands of years ago to ongoing U.S. drone strikes, the subjects of landays are remixed like hip-hop, with old words swapped for newer, more relevant ones. A woman’s sleeve in a centuries-old landay becomes her bra strap today. A colonial British officer becomes a contemporary American soldier. A book becomes a gun. Each biting word change has much to teach about the social satire that ripples under the surface of a woman’s life." (Griswold)

Below is a video supplement directed by Seamus Murphy, the photographer, and produced with Eliza Griswold. The first landay from our handout is performed around the four-minute mark in Pashto, then translated into English.


Pashto Landay - Afghan Women Poets from Franco Pachtoune on Vimeo.

• Let's review the handout, which includes Eliza Griswold's definition of landays and provides examples of "the social satire that ripples under the surface of a woman's life" along with the poems spoken aloud in Pashto in the video. 

• I highly recommend watching this entire video as part of your work for the forthcoming essay.

A Fuller Introduction

General Essay Introduction Structure: 

1. Hook: opening sentence(s) of essay that sets up your topic==>something thematically connected 

2. Put the hook in context for thesis subject matter: transition from topic to specific subject matter

• Provides bridge of needed background information on thesis subject(s)

• Name  subject matter and other basic qualities of them relevant to essay

• Contextualize the subject matter based on essay prompt's purpose & your own essay theme of ideas

• use synonymous language from prompt (instead of "lesson"," use definition techniques to define lesson m as it relates to essay; instead of "the event" use the name and synonyms of the event

3. If you don't use the context to lay out subtopics, then explicitly lay out the body of essay in a succinct way 

• The most effective writing can combine #2's behaviors with #3
• Rather than thinking you need to fully state all of your ideas in full sentences, try to make a 1-2 sentence outline of subtopics. How?  Key words.

4. Finish off with the thesis statement.  

• Your thesis is another place where some of you like to include the subtopics within them. If so, okay. 

• Remember: the key is to know that when you write the subtopics into the thesis itself, it is a rhetorical strategy, an option, and not as a "requirement."

HW for 2/29

Dear Students, especially those absent on Wednesday. I believed the following homework was published, but there was apparently an error on my phone blogger app that did not publish this. As I was preparing for tomorrow's class, I just noticed that this post had not appeared. Here is the homework.

1. Read the Hooks blog post.

2. Re-read chapter 2 of Citizen

3. Work on your essay. Do a reverse outline fully, and start changing your ideas to make them clearer. Start working on a more relevant hook, too.

Introduction Hooks: (another area to consider in global revision)

General Hooks (p.26 in RR) The purpose of a hook is to draw your reader in to what you have to say. You don't want the hook to sound too broad and anonymous. 

***A conscientious, intelligent writer is going to interrogate his or her hook (and his or her whole introduction) after writing a draft and finding out exactly what content shows up in their essay.

• For each of the below: the power and relevance of a hook can come by looking at what you've written. Logically: you understand what shows up in the essay, which lets you know what should show up in the introduction.

You want to one of the general hooks below in a creative, but thesis-connected way: 

1. Relevant quote

• From the subject of your essay (the 'event' and lesson), or
• Something said about your subject that relates to your idea, or
• Something you said (real or imagined) about the person

2. Personal anecdote with relevance to thesis

• Perhaps, you can use one you can come back to?
• Perhaps, something about you that illustrates how much you needed a hero
• Or, something about you that illustrates how you've moved on from the person because of your realization

3. Provocative and relevant question

• Something specific asked about how the specific event changes a person
• Common question about the event...

4. Specific Example that fit your subject (perhaps one you will actually bring back and expand on later in your body)

• Perhaps a fact (#5) about the subject event or lesson learned. 

5. Relevant fact: particularly one that sets the tone and allows you to explore the fact specifically as it relates to your thesis.

• State (and even provide your stance on) statistics about the event that will get attention of readers. 

• State something about the time/setting and how it relates to the event's importance as a subject

Drafting an Introduction

1. Have, at the minimum, your thesis and subtopics drafted and outlined; these ideas are your map directions! 

• Since you've got a whole draft (or should by this point), you've got an introduction to interrogate, to re-envision and better. 

2. Decide which type of hook most interests you. Do some brainstorming that helps you (including, looking on the Internet for a relevant quote or fact to help you out)

3. Once you have the type of hook you want and have some content to work with, start drafting your introduction paragraph (

• Aim for around 6-8 solid sentences, or
• 1/3 to 1/2 a page at most of first page for 450 word essays

Once I find my hook, I can draft my introduction

• When using a quote or a fact, it is good to start your hook off with a phrase that introduces where that quote/fact is coming from:

• (subject of essay/author source) once said, "..."

• According to ________, ...

• Or...try out your own introductory phrase that gives context to the quote/hook!