Name: _________________________
ENGLISH Unit 1
California Today (Geography & Demographics)
What is the California Dream?
Vocabulary
social
political
economic
demographic
diversity
majority
minority
race
ethnicity
assimilate
Texts
o Selected poems
o Chabon, Michael. “The Mysteries of Berkeley.” Gourmet. February 2002.
o Ghias, Summar. “California dreaming?” Christian Science Monitor. June 29, 2013.
o Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner (excerpt). California Uncovered: Stories for the
21st Century. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, William E. Justice, and James Quay, eds.
Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2005.
o Rawls, James J. “The California Dream.” California Dreams and Realities: Readings
for Critical Thinkers and Writers. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon, eds. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999.
o Reed, Ishmael. “My Oakland.” West of the West: Imagining California. Leonard
Michaels, David Reid, and Raquel Scherr, eds. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1995.
o Sutter, John D. “The California Dream Is Fizzling Out.” CNN. July 11, 2007.
Graded Assignments
Please note that this list does not include several assignments which will not be turned in, but
which will be extremely important in preparing for the final assessment.
o Do Nows 8/26, 9/3, 9/9
o Vocabulary & Grammar Quizzes 1-3
o Quickwrite: Summer Reading (Essay Preview)
o Quickwrite: Response to Rawls
Final Assessment
o Essay: What is the California Dream? Use the short stories and poems we read to
define and analyze the dream. (Essay includes outline, rough draft, and final draft.)