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In a 6-8 page essay, develop an answer to ONE of the following prompts. Your papers will be evaluated on your ability to develop and support an argument by demonstrating familiarity with the primary texts,

as well as your ability to analyze and interpret these texts within the context of the prompts. This assignment is an exercise in close reading; however, you are also required to consult a minimum of three

additional sources. Sources MUST be cited properly in-text and on a separate Works Cited page.
1. In an interview with Opal Palmer Adisa, Edwidge Danticat discusses her relationship to “vodou” and Haitian cosmology and their influence on Breath, Eyes, Memory: “Vodou is part of my belief system as a

Haitian. Erzulie, the goddess of love, has always intrigued me. She is the loa of Sophie’s family, their chosen protector, which is why she almost always stands by them as a character in their story.” Discuss the

significance of vodou in Danticat’s novel and the role it plays in helping the characters cope with or overcome their personal and/or inherited traumatic experiences.
2. Adrienne Rich writes in Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence of what she calls “the lesbian continuum,” a term she uses to “include a range—through each woman’s life and throughout

history—of woman-identified experience.” Sula, Rich suggests, is one of the few pieces of literature to reveals the lesbian continuum; the passionate friendship between Nel and Sula illuminates the complexity

of bonds between women. In an essay that engages Rich’s theory, explore the relationship between Nel and Sula. Does Morrison’s novel reveal the lesbian continuum? To what extent does Sula privilege

female-female bonds over male- female bonds? In what ways is Sula critical of heterosexual institutions, such as marriage? In what capacity have Nel and Sula sustained or salvaged their friendship by the

novel’s (arguably ambiguous) end?
3. In “9/11 and After: Masculinity, Citizenship, and National Crisis,” Brenton J. Malin writes: “From pictures of ashen-covered firefighters featured in U.S. magazines and newscasts following the attacks to

descriptions of burned human bodies featured in the New York Times and elsewhere, the tragic aftermath of September 11 has been dramatized in the bodies of American citizens. The photographs in Time

magazine’s special September 11 issue clearly illustrate this profound sense of vulnerability and crisis, particularly in terms of the magazine’s depiction of the September 11 male heroes. While the issue’s

pictures show the heroic firefighters and police officers…hard at work to save lives, they also capture the tragic toll the events take upon these heroes. One photograph, taken by Time photographer James

Nachtwey, shows four firemen, all wearing paper facemasks, standing or crouching on piles of building debris and discarded papers as they assemble a fire hose. The photograph’s caption reiterates the

conflicted sense of heroic action and tragic vulnerability captured within the photo: ‘New York’s Bravest: Firefighters were still going in when buildings collapsed. One ducked under his truck and emerged to

find everyone else in his squad dead.’ Time’s coverage here, like that of so many other news sources immediately after September 11, depicts a tragically conflicted masculinity, at once the embodiment of

traditional masculine notions of strength and valor as well as the picture of pain and suffering” (146). In what ways does Don DeLillo’s Falling Man negotiate the post-9/11 crisis of masculinity that
Malin describes? To what extent does Keith eschew conventional definitions of manhood as he attempts to redefine himself following the collapse of the Twin Towers? Is Keith a symbol of strength and

heroism, or of vulnerability? Or does he embody a “tragically conflicted masculinity”?