Write a Response Paper on Farming of Bones and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Response papers should be 2-3 pages double-spaced. (Times New Roman/12 point-please limit papers to 3 pages if you want me to read and return these to you in a timely fashion).
Trauma , whether personal or political or both, has devastating effects on the body, mind and spirit of the individual and of the group. We see evidence of trauma in both Farming of Bones and HTGGLTA. Although the malign effects of trauma might appear more tragic and more in your face in Danticat’s novel (which centers acts of genocide on the Haitian people) the psychological effects of trauma in Alvarez’s novel and the fact that both are partly set in the DR and have some time/plot overlaps, make for useful points of comparison between these two works of fiction. Write a thesis statement about the effects of trauma on the lives of two characters from each book. How does trauma look from the outside and how does it impact the lives of these characters. What coping strategies do you identify in how these characters deal with trauma? Do they ever get over it and go on to live productive and happy lives or do they remain stuck? Use examples from both books and from your secondary sources to support your main points.
However, feel free to ignore my prompt unless you need it. You are encouraged to come up with your own thesis ideas and thesis statements for upper division courses.
You need an introductory paragraph and a well-developed and coherently written thesis statement (all skills you were taught in 1101/1102 and ENG 2012) which should act as a roadmap to the points you plan to cover in your argument. All subsequent paragraphs should begin with strong topic sentences, and clear transitional phrases between paragraphs, and must support your thesis statement using examples from the novels and secondary sources. You are required to write on at least 2 primary sources (novels) from our reading list and a minimum of two secondary sources per Response Paper. Use the MLA guidelines for citing sources (quotation, paraphrasing, and Works Cited).
You may use the documentary “Sugar Babies” as a secondary source to support your argument. This Bridge Called My Back, Feminism is for Everybody, Sister Outsider are also excellent secondary sources. However, you are not limited to these texts as secondary source material. You may also find articles on the individual novels from Project Muse, MLA, First Search, and other research databases on the FIU Library system.) Do not rely on google for secondary sources.
