Choose one or mor
1. Is this a poem? What to make of the first line: "Here, the sentence will be respected?"
2. Relate the poem to the book cover below
3. If you have studied Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" in Leaves of Grass, can you establish any connection between the ending of "38" and these lines from section 52 of Whitman's poem?
“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love.
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles” (1338-39).
Your final project is a literary analysis project worth 25% of your grade, broken down into:
5% for the plan/proposal (your 300-word handwritten rationale by April 24)
10% for the process (your May 13 draft with about two-thirds of the paper)
10% for the final result (the June 1 submission, up to 2000 words)
Choose a primary literary text from your syllabus — but not the one you used for your oral presentation.
Select a major critical or theoretical text that engages with that literary work and a theme or question that interests you in it (for example, an essay, critical theory, or scholarly article researched in google scholar).
Summarize the critical author’s argument (what they say about the text and how they interpret it).
Respond to that critical perspective — using your understanding of both the primary text and the critical framework — to develop your own short analysis or argument.
Keep everything within 2000 words maximum.
You’ll need to handwrite a 300-word justification explaining:
Why you chose this particular text and critic.
What angle or question you want to explore.
How this project connects to your interests or course themes.
AI tools are discouraged for environmental reasons but their use as an auxiliary is not forbidden.
You may use them if you cite the assistance properly using APA’s guideline for generative AI citations (e.g., Perplexity, powered by GPT-5, chat on plan proposal for final assignment, April 2026, https://www.perplexity.ai/search/25-5-plan-proposal-10-process-HiAddwVBQ8qTZeF1Au0MRA).
Also, your text should remain primarily your own: less than 35% AI-typical phrasing (which the teacher will verify with an IA-pattern recognition tool)
To situate "Storyteller" and the groundbreaking work of the same title that launched Leslie Marmon Silko as a major US writer, you might want to know a little about the emergent acknowledgment of native-American literature in the native-American Renaissance (a controversial though widespread term) here: https://nativeamericanlit.com/.
As you read "Storyteller", please take your time to comment on one or more of these topics:
- intertwined narratives
- Focalization
- Description of natural elements
- Dramatization of cultural mediation and conflict
For next class, we will have a guest teacher, Maria Caroliina Vaz de Almeida, who has kindly prepared these questions for you:
1. In a 2021 article, Hai-Dang Phan mentions the centrality of An-My Lê’s photography to his poetry, remarking that it has allowed him to “reckon with my own thoughts and feelings toward war and conflict, dislocation and exile–and above all toward our shared experience of leaving Vietnam as refugees and growing up in the United States.” Succinctly, An My-Lê’s photography can be interpreted in light of thetransposition of time and space from the Vietnam War into the American landscape through the civil reenactments of the war. Either:
a) Select and comment on one of An-My Lê’s photographs from the collection Small Wars (1999-2002), which you can find here: Small Wars — An-My Lê.
b) Discuss Hai-Dang Phan’s poem “Small Wars” in comparison with An-My Lê’s photograph entitled Rescue (for example, the significance of usingdifferent artistic mediums, the continual process of reenactments, the use of rhetorical devices like Ekphrasis, or others).You can find Phan’s article here, if you would like to read it: Speak, Reenactment | Hai-Dang Phan.
2. Hai-Dang Phan’s work also engages with the turmoil of adopting and writing in the language rooted in the cause of the exodus, seeking to connect geographical dismembering with linguistic disruption. “My Father’s Norton Introduction to Literature, Third Edition (1981)” incorporates and quotes directly from multiple sources of the American and English literary tradition. Either:
a) Identify one of the poems, short stories, or plays referenced in the poem and discuss its significance within the context of Phan’s poem.
b) Comment on the poem’s dialogue with the American and English literary tradition, namely, how the linguistic and literary hybridization further challenges the boundaries of national literature.
phtos by An-My Lê
1. Read about Wong's life story here https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/03/ocean-vuong-forward-prize-vietnam-war-saigon-night-sky-with-exit-wounds and relate it to elements in the poem.
2. Do a close-reading analysis of the poem, with special focus on dectics, verb forms, and apostrophe.
(photo by Ocean Vuong from the exhibit depicted here https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/16914/ocean-vuong-photography-show-interview-grief-song-cpw-kingston)
1. Think of questions you would like to ask Ahmad Almallah (they can be questions about his situation as Palestinian-American, about the endurance of genocide, about his poetry, about being a poet...)
2. Create your own "fuck you" poem of 14 lines relating what you have learnt and read so far to the contents of this class (if you prefer, you can put the poem in one of the characters' voice, e. g. "the son" in Symbols and signs). Some exampes of possible first lines
Fuck you to "welcome" and to coming back
Fuck you Acme Beer. We will never reach the hill.
Fuck you golden door. My people came to sweep the floor.
Fuck you Riviera. Jesus this is Gaza.
Fuck you to the line break. We don't get breaks between classes
etc.
