Writing Homework Help

YOUR POST: DUE Wednesday of Week 7:

Complete Parts 1 & 2 – have fun with this week’s discussion but be thoughtful in your responses. I expect for us to listen to one another, respect each other, be kind to one another even in disagreement. Please be sure to implement the Valencia PJI Principles: https://valenciacollege.edu/students/peace-justice-institute/who-we-are/principles.phpLinks to an external site.

• • • • PART 1: Answer one following questions in relation to Junot Diaz’s story “How to Date a Brown Girl.”:(1) Explain the key characteristics of each girl the narrator describes. Compare the stereotypes in the story with the stereotypes you hear/see/experience in the real world? For each character, how are the stereotypes within the story the similar to and different from those in our society? Does the information the narrator relies upon work for him within the story? Offer examples from the story and explain how they demonstrate your point.(2) Outline at least 25 rules that exist now for either girls or boys around the age of the narrator for dating. Write them out in a story that is commandment style like Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl”: Women should. Men should. Girls shouldn’t. Boys shouldn’t. (Here you may think of “Bro Code” or “Chick Code.”) Explain whether you think these are true or not true and why you believe this (yes, it’s okay to talk about the gender binary and gender fluidity). If you had to choose, do you think the character is outlining dating rules or performing a gender role? Defend your position? Do you think more people are defying gender roles today? How/Why?(3) Acknowledging the derogatory nature of the word “halfie,” how does the narrator characterize being biracial? When were the first biracial representations on TV, film, or pop culture? What was the response? Are you surprised by this? Why/Why not? Given the narrator’s Dominican-American biracial status, we might expect that he would know how to characterize the biracial “halfie” with more “knowledge” than perhaps the other girls. He doesn’t. Why do you think this is? How does his characterization compare to ones we now see in today’s media?
      • PART 2: Consider the following:

Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl” is a completely different kind of tale than either of the Diaz stories, and the way that it is written may make it seem like it’s not a short story at all. In spite of this, “Girl” is very similar in its theme – relating the struggle the narrator in the story faces to negotiate her own identity in the face of a mother who seems to insist that daughter mold herself into a very specific woman – a proper woman who society will not view as a slut.

Often stories deal with conceptions of masculinity that are built through strength and lack of fear. De Mirales story “Bullet Swallower” (not included in this unit) imagines what it’s like to build a public and self-perception of yourself over a lifetime and then have that shaken to the core with a singular event – being shot through the mouth and neck. It also deals with the limitations of masculinity and the question of whether masculinity can be lost based on finding oneself on the other side of those limits.

Edna St. Vincent Millay poems also deal with gender identity.For Millay’s poems, try to ask yourself whether the speaker of the poem should be considered masculine or feminine. When reading Millay’s work, it’s really important to ask yourself whether you are jumping to conclusions about how the poems should be interpreted because of your own preconceived notions about femininity (especially in relation to sexuality). For example, are we sure that the speaker in Millay’s “I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed” is grieving a one night stand, or is the speaker of the poem instead talking to the lover, telling that lover to get over it? And who is this lover, male or female? And does the poem every decidedly or even implicitly specify?

Part 2 Prompt: Choose any two pieces of literature from this unit that are not “How to Date a Brown Girl” to examine the representation of gender identity within them.

• • • • • • • • When I say examine, I am really asking “what’s actually there” and “what do we automatically believe is there because of our assumptions about masculinity and femininity. Consider this in relation to the two pieces you choose.
              • When I say gender identity, go back to the idea of “constructs.” If gender is a construct, this means it is constructed globally at a macro level (society) and locally at a microlevel (the person) and at all spots between (family, school, philosophy, science, friends, media, laws, religions, literature, music, television, film, video games, advertisements, toys, cosmetics, services, and the list goes on). As revealed with the example from Reel Bad Arabs, our social notions of middle easterners as terrorists goes back further and is embedded in media more than we ever imagined, even in movies like Back II the Future and Father of the Bride. Consider this in relation to the two pieces you choose.
              • What are we learning from these characters and texts about how women and men should act and interact?
              • Choose an example from (a) social media, (b) video games, (c) dating websites, (d) comic books, (e) Webtoon comic, (f) any other type of digital media that is not what we typically discuss in this class (so, not film, TV, music, poems, short stories, novels). Explain how “gender” is “constructed” in the example of choice. Compare and contrast this with the two examples from this class.

• • • • • • • • Find a scholarly article on gender identity construction and post one sentence from it that you find particularly intriguing. Tell us why. Cite this source in MLA Format

*To find an expert, read this first: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/conducting_research/evaluating_sources_of_information/where_to_begin.html (Links to an external site.)

**To cite in MLA format, visit our course resource, Purdue OWL: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_style_introduction.html (Links to an external site.) You may also begin inputting sources into your Zotero app if you have already downloaded it. Or, you may use the website generator version of Zotero for the time being: https://zbib.org/ (Links to an external site.)

3 PEER RESPONSES: DUE FRIDAY of Week 7

1. How are your and your peers’ understanding of literature similar and different?
2. Compare your peers’ scholarly source to your scholarly source. Be very specific about what criteria is met/unmet. Evaluate their source using the following criteria: https://www.library.illinois.edu/ugl/howdoi/scholarly/ (Links to an external site.)
3. What is your favorite part of your peer’s post? Explain using quotes from your peer’s post.