Pre-Course Reading

Pre-Course Reading Label the left side of your journal, “Chosen Quote" and label the right side, "Respond and Analyze." 2. The left side is where you will record quoted text and page numbers from the novel. 3. The right side is where you will record the matching analysis: your opinions, comments, inferences, insights, questions, etc. Consider what makes the writing stand out as unique and memorable. Does NOT need to be an actual journal—stapled sheets of paper are fine! Left side- words directly from the text. Right side- words directly from your brain.

Pre-Course Reading 4. Your entries should reflect the scope of the entire novel: Select quotations from the beginning, middle and end of the text. 5. As a general rule of thumb, responses should be longer than the selected material you are referencing. The significance of the text to the overall work should also be related. If you write down 6 quotes from the first 3 pages of the book, I’m going to know that you didn’t really read it. Don’t try to make your assignment look more impressive by choosing really long quotes—your writing is what should be substantial. Don’t choose random quotes that have nothing to do with anything important. It is obvious.

This is NOT: just telling who the character is and summarizing what happens to them. Instead, try: explaining how the quote shows a change in the character. Explaining how the quote shows the character’s personality. Two entries should focus on character and analyze the chosen character for each entry. Who are they and what do you think of their personalities and roles within the book? How do they develop throughout the novel? Two entries should focus on theme. Is there an implied meaning that gives the work a larger significance? Consider the following themes: journey, the search for identity, and the struggle between the demands of the individual and society. This is NOT: “The theme is slavery” or “A theme of Copper Sun is (thing that happened).” Instead, try: thinking about what makes this story—which takes place long ago—powerful or meaningful to us in 2018. What quote can you find to show this meaning?

The last two entries are significant quotes of your choosing The last two entries are significant quotes of your choosing. These quotations may include examples of imagery, (simile, metaphors, personification etc.), literary techniques (irony, satire, allusions, foreshadowing etc.), organizational or rhetorical strategies (multiple narrators, pacing elements etc.) This is NOT: A quote that you liked. Or a quote you related to personally. The “chosen quote” category just means that you’re not specifically looking for something like character or theme! Instead, try: Where do you see the story give you hints that something bad is coming? That’s foreshadowing. Where do you see a description of something using like or as? That’s simile. Once you find those places, just write them down and explain!

“My Name” by Sandra Cisneros excerpted from The House on Mango Street In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing. It was my great-grandmother's name and now it is mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse--which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female-but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong. My great-grandmother. I would've liked to have known her, a wild, horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That's the way he did it. And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window. At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as thick as sister's name Magdalena--which is uglier than mine. Magdalena who at least- -can come home and become Nenny. But I am always Esperanza. would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.