Novel: In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
As you know from the SMG, this paper requires you to “write an essay examining a specific subject.” You must “[e]xamine your subject closely and make a judgment about it. Give reasons for your judgment that are based on widely recognized criteria or standards for evaluating a subject like yours. Support your reasons with examples and other details primarily from your subject” (Axelrod and Cooper 365). More specifically, in keeping with our course topic and plan, you will need to write about one of the literary texts that we have read so far in this course, evaluating how (and how well) it addresses one or more social issues or problems in U.S. society.
That is to say, this assignment requires you to write a book review! Because many academic journals prefer to publish book reviews of texts that the authors are specifically recommending (rather than not recommending) to readers, I highly encourage you to review whichever text you have been enjoying most this semester, whether that is Rankine’s book of poems (which we are just now beginning to read) or Alvarez’s novel. You may need to read Rankine in advance if you are interested in reviewing her work. Length, Formatting, and Submission Guidelines Your paper must be at least 3 full pages long and should be formatted according to MLA guidelines, which means that it should have 1-inch margins, be double spaced, and use a standard 12-point font such as Times New Roman. You must submit your paper electronically as an MS Word document (.doc or .docx) to our class’s Canvas website using the “Assignments” function. If you do not have MS Word on your computer (e.g., if you use Pages instead), consider creating your document in Google Docs and then downloading it as a Word document. Pages files will NOT be accepted, nor will GDoc files, and papers uploaded in these formats will be considered late until you discover the error and upload the correct file; I will not be “chasing after” students who upload documents that cannot be opened J Remember the course policy regarding late papers, which will lose 1/3 of a letter grade for every day they are late
