9th Grade Honors

1. Read the story Girl in your anthology.

2. Then read the short critical article here.

3. Next, re-read the story.

4. Finally, write a carefully constructed response based on this assignment:

Low Stakes Writing

Response Paper

Write your paper at your google document site, then share it with me for credit.

Length: about two pages word processed, double spaced

Audience: academic audience, including peers and instructor, the group of educated people who understand and appreciate literature.

Purpose: to demonstrate that you have read and comprehended the text; to express your intellectual response to the text; to help you become more curious about how literature works.

Prompt: read the story/poem Girl by Jamaica Kincaid. Then write a series of paragraph in which you discuss how Kincaid describes the life of women and girls in this culture. In what ways are their lives difficult. How do they react to or even overcome the difficulty? How do women retian their individuality in the face of oppression?

Argument

Read the essay here. What does it add to our discussion of the modes of reason?

Also this is fascinating....

What Truths Science Cannot Speak

Read and respond to this essay from the New York Times. Bring our class discussions about argument into play...you can even reference David Quammen and others.

Raymond Carver Boxes

Carver's story Boxes gives us two of the patterns I have stressed: 1. the difficulty and desperation of the working class and 2. the pre-epiphanic moment, at which a character sort of "wakes up." I have noted that many of the moments are also moments of the awareness of mortality.

When you have read Boxes, please write about 200 words. Tell me the defining characteristics of the narrator and note for me any significant details, that is, any details that function not only as part of the setting or plot, but also of theme or motif.

Where I'm Calling From

This is one of Carver's most praised stories. Published in the early 1980's, it was included in the Best American Short Stories and was subsequently tagged for inclusion in John Updike's BASS of the Century Anthology.

The style is somewhat richer than the spare minimal sentences that Carver produced under the editorial hand of Gordon Lish. I think it points the way Carver would be turning in his last years, as he wrote true masterpieces like Errand.

In the story, Carver uses supporting characters to develop the voice and character of the narrator. Given your reading and completion of the worksheet, please write no more than 4000 characters in which you discuss how several supporting characters helps us to understand the protagonist-narrator.

Carver Video

Please watch parts 1, 2, 3.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Rayond Carver

You have read Cathedral, the poem Photograph of My Father in his 22^nd Year and the memoir piece that includes that poem.

What themes does Carver announce in these pieces? How might we expect that he enlarge (beyond mere stereotype) our understanding of a certain part of American culture?

What parts of each piece of writing (story, essay, poem) communicate most clearly to you? Just begin with a short quote and then tell how that quote means something to you.

Then go the blog and write in your response. Create about 300 words worth of writing. Your audience is your peer group, plus teachers and other smart folks who like to learn about writers and writing. So pay attention to grammar and spelling. But the most important part is the quality of your ideas, the sincerity of your response. This is a Pass/Fail grade. No late work, no excuses.