Short Writing Assignments


Optional Short Writing

Choose either "The Prologue" or "Upon the Burning of Our House" as evidence for your answer to the following question: How does Anne Bradstreet negotiate her culture's demands for women's silence and modesty in order to write poetry? To what extent does Bradstreet's poetic voice/narrator fulfill her society's expectations of women, and to what extent does she express rebellion?

Short Writing 1
According to Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, what do young Paiute women sing about themselves? How does this compare with the ideals young women in European American culture learn in today's United States?

Short Writing 2
What is the significance of Jacob's hiding place? Why does she describe it in such detail? What does it mean for her?

Short Writing 3
What do you find difficult about reading Emily Dickinson's poetry? How is her poetry different--in style, content, or form--than poetry you are used to reading? What is the effect of those differences? Why do you think she choose to write the way that she writes?

Short Writing 4
Why does Edna swim to her death at the end of the novel? Do you read the ending as a triumph or a defeat for Edna? Why?

Short Writing 5
In several of the narratives we have read, the authors portray romantic relationships, especially marriage, in a negative light. How does the background of the characters influence their behavior in and beliefs about romantic relationships in the stories by Davis, Yezierska, and Wharton?

Short Writing 6
Describe the style of Getrude Stein's "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene." Why does she write the story in the style that she does?

Short Writing 7
What gender roles does Adrienne Rich include, challenge, or resist in her poem "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law"? What images does she use to illustrate those roles?

Short Writing 8
How does Kingston portray women's silence in "No Name Woman"? Why does Kingston break that silence?

Short Writing 9
Choose one symbol from The House on Mango Street and trace it through three chapters of the novel. Use specific examples and explain what the symbol means in each chapter. Does the meaning build consistently? Or does the meaning change or even contradict itself from chapter to chapter? Either way, what is its significance in temr of one/some of the larger themes of the novel?

Short Writing 10
What is the relationship between Celie's maturation and her letter writing? Why does she write to God first and then to Nettie? Who is the last letter written to and why?

Short Writing 11
How does the excerpt from The Woman Who Watches Over the World affect your interpretation of Angel's story? What value does this kind of biographical information have? Does it interfere with or enhance your understanding of the novel? Why? How?

Short Writing 12
Consider the chapter "Joe" in How the García Girls Lost Their Accents.  Why does Yolanda have so many names? How does each name mean something different for her, or, to put it another way, how does each name stand for a different part of herself? Why does she have so many different identities?

Short Writing 13

Throughout the novel, Reta tries to understand her daughter’s absence by trying to determine the meaning of “GOODNESS.” What does Norah’s sign mean
to Norah?
to Reta?
to Shields?
and to this novel?

Short Writing 14
Naomi Shihab Nye is known for the depiction of the ordinary in her work. What images of "the ordinary" can you find in the selected poems? How do those images function in the poems themselves?