2nd Written Assignment:
For this week, there will be a second written assignment which students need to complete. Students are to read Molefi Kete Asante’s article, “Locating a Text: Implications of Afrocentric Theoryâ€, and apply his literary critical theory to your first assignment. For example, students are to review and evaluate the last book, novel, short story, poem, drama, or non-fiction that they chose to discuss for their first assignment at the beginning of the semester. The writing assignment should consist of 750–1000 words. Writing minimum requirement: 3–4 pages (double-spaced). The essay itself must consist of an introduction, multiple fully developed body paragraphs and a conclusion along with a separate works cited page. The assignment must be written in MLA format. The objective of this assignment is to help assist students with developing better reading techniques. In this second assignment, students need to consider these four categories of analysis when completing their’ assignments:
–Language (1):
How is the author using language in the text? What does the language tell us about the author of the text? How does the author use language to communicate their ideas to the reader? What words jump out at you from the text? Why? What does the language from the text tell us about deeper societal issues like racial discrimination, sexism, homophobia, gentrification, mass incarceration, income inequality, poverty, voting rights, access to equal education, the education achievement gap between Black and white students, lack of equal access to health care, Black on Black violence, and the police shootings of countless African Americans? How does the language from the text direct us toward developing solutions which will lead to improving the conditions of the Black community?
–Self-consciousness (2):
Do we learn anything important about African American people and their’ culture from the text? How does the author situate their self in the text? In other words, is the author grounded in a Eurocentric worldview or an African-centered worldview? Does the author incorporate African-centered words, ideas, themes, symbols, metaphors, images, and concepts etc., in the stories he or she writes?
–Attitude (3):
How does the author locate their self in the text? In other words, how is language being used to describe other people from different racial backgrounds? Following that same line of reasoning, the question could also be posed: how does the author use language to refer to people of different nationalities and ethnicities? What would these answers possibly tell us about the author? What type of attitude has the author established in the text?
–Direction (4):
Where is the author taking us in the story? What is the author’s overall objective? What does the author want us to learn or take away from their story? What is the author’s personal interests or agenda that they are trying to establish in the text? What type of atmosphere does the author create in the text? What is the author’s purpose in writing this text?
Here’s the link to one of the article
http://www.asante.net/articles/10/locating-a-text-…
The file is the essay I previously wrote and that was the book that I used.
