incidents in life of slave girl, and bless me Ultima
Write a well-structured essay, approximately 1000 words long, in response to ONE of the following prompts:
Both Jacobs and Anaya attempt to get the white readers of their day to accept and respect members of racial or ethnic minority groups. Compare the strategies these writers use in their work to generate respect from readers. Support your answer with analysis of quotations from both books.
In both Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Bless Me, Ultima, characters have to choose a path amid a great many expectations from their parents and grandparents. Analyze the relationship between the dreams of one generation and those of their children and/ grandchildren in these books, paying attention to cultural context. Support your answer with analysis of quotations from both books.
this needs to be in MLA-style citations.
Be sure to include the following:
An effective introduction that contains a clear thesis statement
Topic sentences that express your main points
Transitions that show how your points fit together
Fully developed paragraphs that support your ideas with detailed analysis of specific passages from the books
A conclusion that emphasizes the importance of your argument
An MLA-style Works Cited page
Quoting passages from the books
In a paper about literature, the evidence that will support your ideas comes from the literary texts themselves. Thus, it is important to quote passages from the books and explain them to support every point you make in your essay—just like you do in your weekly lessons. see the model paragraph that expresses a main point in its topic sentence and then supports it with specific passages from the reading.
Do not simply drop quotations into your paper, however. Analyze the passages and integrate them into your writing in the following ways:
Often, you can incorporate a quoted phrase directly into your own sentence, like this: Greta’s desire to assert control over the people in her life is apparent in her promise to “perfect them” (83). Notice that there is no need to set off the quotation with a comma when it is woven into your own sentence structure in that way. You also don’t need an ellipsis (three dots) at the beginning or end of the quotation since readers know that there is more of the book before and after it.
Brackets can be used to make minor changes in the quotation to make it fit into your sentence, like this: Greta believes that by manipulating the people in her life she is “perfect[ing] them” (83).
If you quote an entire sentence, set it off with commas: Greta admits, “So maybe I can perfect their lives. And maybe … they can perfect mine” (85).
In the previous example, an ellipsis indicates that a phrase has been removed from the middle of the quoted sentence.
If your introduction to the quoted material is itself a complete sentence, use a colon rather than a comma: Greta acknowledges that her improvement plans for others are self-interested: “So maybe I can perfect their lives. And maybe … they can perfect mine” (85).
Citations
For quotations from Jacobs or Anaya, include a page number in parentheses. The parentheses go at the end of the sentence, after the quotation marks but before the period, as shown in the examples under “Quoting passages.” This is your in-text citation. You do not need to include the author’s name (Jacobs or Anaya) unless you think readers might be confused which book you are talking about.
Include Works Cited entries for both books (Anaya and Jacobs) at the end of the essay.
Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima. 1972. Grand Central Publishing, 1999.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. 1861. Signet, 2010
