Eng 1A / Zappa / Fall ’11
ESSAY ONE: America Is in the Heart
This paper is a reading-based assignment. Using evidence (avoiding summary) from Bulosan’s
AIH, you will present an analysis of the text and its related issues. Your thesis, or main point, will
analyze your topic through the lens of social justice in both our text and the ways social justice does
or does not function in the US today. Consider, too, our discussions in class about democracy.
Please focus on one of the topics below and address it by answering the following questions:
•How have the problems or issues as Bulosan experienced them been resolved? How
do they still persist? What can be done about them?
•Two Americas: throughout the text, Bulosan experiences and comments upon the “American
paradox”
•Workers’ rights and the labor movement(s): the US has long been involved in tensions and
struggles, sometimes violent, between workers and their more wealthy owners or corporations
•Immigration: various groups of immigrants have experienced prejudice, racism, and scape-goating
throughout US history
Though you will not summarize the reading, you must use (and correctly cite) direct quotes and/ or
paraphrase specific parts of the text as support. Make sure your focus has a social concern (i.e., that
affects a large group of the population, as opposed to something that annoys or affects you,
personally, which equates to narrow opinion). Your analysis should include such factors as media
portrayal and/ or public practices and/ or current politics. You may include personal experience or
observation, but this should not take up more than approximately one paragraph (or half a page) of
your paper. See thesis statement handout, especially the “so what?” factor.
*Always due at the BEGINNING of class
Draft (minimum, FOUR FULL PAGES, TYPED): Due Thurs. Sept. 22 (25 points)
Final paper (minimum, four FULL pages): Due Thurs. Sept. 29 (75 points)