Paper Topics
ENGL 3922; Spring 2011
Thesis & outline DUE: 04/13 (in class)
FINAL ESSAY DUE: 05/04 IN CLASS
No email essays
**no extensions**
Always consider
challenges to
your argument!
CHECKLIST:
 6-8 pages; include full name and date
 Create a TITLE for your paper
 Respond to a prepared topic, or “design your own”
 Avoid summary; offer your own interpretations and syntheses of information + use quotes!
 1” margins, 12 pt Times New Roman font
 Double-spacing and left-justification required
 Works Cited page required (MLA style)
 Numbered pages
This writing assignment gives you the opportunity to study more closely a particular aspect of Mexican American
and Chicana/o Literature that we have touched upon in the course overall. The successful paper will actively
engage with a distinct question and elaborate a concise, creative and well-organized argument. Below you will
find writing prompts. Please take them as such and do not attempt to write an essay that replies to all the questions
in the prompts—I offer these to you as a way to begin to design your own argument.
1. Consider the role of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Sandra Cisneros’ story “Little Miracles, Kept Promises.”
Is the Virgin of Guadalupe a feminist icon in this story? Why or why not? What does this story argue,
and how does the Virgin fit into that argument? You can also consider the use of other deities invoked in
this story and create an argument including a comparison between other deities and the Virgin.
2. Consider the way that the experience of colonization impacts the development of Chicana/o literature,
especially when artists invoke the hierarchy of race. In what ways are Chicanas/os a “colonized people,”
and how does this claim inform a political agenda in the literature? How do Chicanas/os reconcile their
embodiment as both the colonizer and the colonized? Make your discussion relevant to one or two of the
novels, stories, or poems from our course.
3. Tomás Rivera offers a feeling of “orality” in his novel …And the Earth Did Not Devour Him. Devise an
argument about the use of “orality” in this work. How does this narrative device lend to the overall
argument of the novel? How does this practice particularly suit Chicana/o literature, given your reading of
it in this course overall?
4. The bildungsroman novel George Washington Gómez offers a critical view of the U.S. educational
system’s treatment of Mexican Americans. How does Paredes go about making this critique in his novel?
What examples, in addition to Gualinto’s experiences, make this case? How does Gualinto’s evolving
racial identity respond to his educational experience? How do his love interests trace his identity? What
does the ending, including his strange recurring dream, argue about the educational critique?
5. Women play an increasingly prominent role in the unfolding of events in Jovita González’s Caballero.
Choose one female character in Caballero and make an argument about her development, and how she
contributes to the novel’s outcome.
6. Consider the way that The Guardians builds upon stories from the Bible for its characters and
development. What argument does this structure make about the events in the novel, and how does the
ending comment upon this argument?
7. Create your own topic. If you choose to create your own topic, please meet with me or email me to
discuss your thesis.